Organizing for Economic Justice in The Late 1960s

Shortly before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched the Poor People’s Campaign that aimed to highlight the links between economic and racial injustice. Although t 1960s are usually characterized as a period in which race, gender and sexuality were the key identity issues for American protest, this chapter brings to the fore issues of class and poverty. From SCLC to labor unions to coalitions of African American single mothers, a range of activist organizations waged their own wars on poverty, putting into action the poverty tours that Robert Kennedy conducted in the mid-1960s and accounts such as socialist Michael Harrington’s influential 1962 book The Other America. These organizations worked at the intersections between economic and identity politics. Their successes and failures account for the new, often regressive contours of political action, discourse and policy around class and poverty in the following decades, and the re-emergence of a progressive vision in contemporary protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

1968: End of The Civil Rights Movement?

1968 is commonly seen as the end of the classic era of modern civil rights protest: a year when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, when violence seemed endemic in urban black communities, when Black Power groups fractured and when candidates opposed to further civil rights legislation made giant strides at the ballot box. 1968 seemed to usher in a decade bereft of major civil rights activity, ahead of a resurgence of conservative politics. And yet a look behind the headlines tells a different story in the post-1968 years at the local level: of increasing civil rights protest, of major gains in the courts and politics and the workplace, of substantial victories by Black Power activists, and calls for new rights by African American groups hitherto unrecognised by civil rights leaders. This chapter argues that in many ways 1968 marked the beginning of a vibrant new phase of race-centred activism, rather than the end, of the modern civil rights movement.

The Irony of Protest: Vietnam and The Path to Permanent War

The Vietnam War was one of the most controversial issues in 1968. The intense and polarised debate between anti-war demonstrators and defenders of the Vietnam War cast a shadow on US foreign policy, engendering what came to be termed the “Vietnam Syndrome” amongst policy-makers and the public. This chapter assesses the legacies of pro- and anti-war activism, arguing that the debates that took place during the late 1960s remained relevant long after US troops had left Indochina. Yet the possibility that direct action could prevent or divert American military intervention diminished over time due to two fundamental adjustments made in the wake of the turmoil of Vietnam: the end of the draft and the shift to an all-volunteer military; and a revolution in military affairs that used advanced technology to wage aerial warfare in place of the mass deployment of ground troops. Resistance to the Vietnam War thus had an ironic long-term effect: the US government found a way both to intervene militarily and blunt the effectiveness of popular antiwar protest.

Gay Liberation and The Spirit of ’68

This chapter considers the historical significance of 1968 for the gay rights movement in the context of the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. The gay rights movement of the 1970s embodied the animating spirit of late 1960s activism, with its emphasis on the revolutionary potential of personal politics; embrace of direct action and street theatre; commitment to building alternative institutions; and idealistic faith that a more equal world was possible. For a time, gay liberationists echoed the activists of 1968 by denouncing American imperialism and calling for revolution. Yet, within months of the Stonewall riots, such militancy was already on the wane, as groups like the Gay Activists Alliance emerged to lead the fight for full equality and first-class citizenship rights. This more liberal, integrationist stance has, in many ways, come to define the gay rights movement in the years since Stonewall, and helped deliver some of its signature triumphs. As well as charting this post-1968 moment, the chapter also considers those who still hold true to the revolutionary values of 1968.

The Ceremony is about to Begin: Performance and 1968

Cultural visibility was one of its most effective mechanisms of protest in the late 1960s via posters, slogans, songs and images that gave collective purpose to ideas and campaigns. This chapter looks at performance of protest, looking specifically at the way that protest was “staged” as musical and theatrical spectacle in 1968. It focuses on three case studies: the musical spectacle of the Los Angeles rock group The Doors and the folk singer Phil Ochs who performed at the Chicago Democratic National Convention in August 1968; the theatrical experimentation of The Living Theatre’s radical play Paradise Now which was honed in Paris and performed first in New Haven, Connecticut in September 1968; and the British filmmaker Peter Whitehead’s ambivalent take on New York City in his 1969 film The Fall, the third part of which focuses on the student sit-in at Columbia University in April 1968.

1968 and The Fractured Right

This chapter examines populist insurgents and rebellions in local elections and state primaries in the years leading up to 1968. It discusses how right-wing conservatives sought to defend democracy, capitalism and religion and how New Right activism reworked how Americans defined the left, right and centre. It looks particularly at the internal logic that shaped post-1968 metropolitan uprisings, and uses the Sunbelt region of Arizona as an example of how New Right principles were embedded within both top-down and grassroots revolutions. It examines the relationship between business and local government, as well as the reaction from white suburbanites who grew enraged that leaders seemed to be ignoring their conservative values. The chapter argues that grassroots critics transformed the business elite’s language of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.

Centring The Yard: Student Protest on Campus in 1968

The campus became the quintessential space of protest in the late 1960s. This was a transnational phenomenon, but it exploded into life at campuses like the University of California, Berkeley and at Columbia University, New York, and often with mixed agendas. Race was a key element of these campus protests, suggesting that the activism had a strong socially-progressive trajectory. However, in 1968 schisms could be detected in the until-recently unified SDS, in which a belief in participatory democracy clashed with more radical and separatist agendas. The university campus thus became a site of confrontation between students and authority figures, but also between student factions with different agendas. This chapter examines the historical, sociological and racial factors that shaped these demonstrations and considers the ways in which the campus continued to be the stage for confrontation.

Life Writing, Protest and The Idea of 1968

In the past half-decade the idea of 1968 has taken on a set of diverse and contradictory political meanings. This chapter interrogates the important function played by the memory of the year’s social upheavals within the work of a range of activists and intellectuals: Paul Berman, Angela Davis, Tom Hayden, Todd Gitlin, Bill Ayers, Robert Stone and Susan Brownmiller. All of these figures participated in the events of 1968 as New Left activists in one form or another. In the intervening period, however, they have used memories of 1968 to explain both mutations and continuities in their historical and political thinking. In assessing these developments, the chapter argues that these comparable reconfigurations of the idea of 1968 highlight both the significance and the ambiguity of the year’s events for contemporary political thinking, and suggest that the binary division between New Left and New Right needs to be reconfigured into order to understand the political legacy of 1968 in and beyond the United States.

The Memory of 1968

The conclusion to Reframing 1968, by one of the leading historians of the twentieth-century United States, Stephen J. Whitfield, re-examines the historical experiences and cultural myths of the 1968. The chapter argues that many of the defining features of this tumultuous year – from electoral politics, to anti-war protests, to civil rights activism, and other forms of grassroots protest – are often misremembered. The conclusion focuses on how the experience of 1968 is sometimes in tension with how the historical record characterises its key moments and protest activities.

Women’s Movements in 1968 and beyond

This chapter discusses the formation and achievements of feminist organizations in the late 1960s and beyond, including the National Organization for Women and emerging local women’s liberation organizations. It focuses particularly on the ideological and political intersections that link second-wave feminism to other activist causes. It highlights the importance of coalitions and alliances and looks at the raft of ideological stances that separated distinct strands of feminism and separated feminist organizing from other causes. Focusing on specific issues in feminist activism, including campaigns against sexual violence, the movement for abortion rights, and the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment, the chapter examines the distinctions activists made between liberal, radical and cultural feminism, and charts the intellectual shifts from second-wave to third-wave feminism.