By 1960, the United States was on the verge of a major
social change. American society had always been more open and
fluid than that of the nations in most of the rest of the world.
Still, it had been dominated primarily by old-stock, white
males. During the 1960s, groups that previously had been
submerged or subordinate began more forcefully and successfully
to assert themselves: African Americans, Native Americans,
women, the white ethnic offspring of the "new immigration," and
Latinos. Much of the support they received came from a young
population larger than ever, making its way through a college
and university system that was expanding at an unprecedented
pace. Frequently embracing "countercultural" life styles and
radical politics, many of the offspring of the World War II
generation emerged as advocates of a new America characterized
by a cultural and ethnic pluralism that their parents often
viewed with unease.
The struggle of African Americans for equality reached its peak
in the mid-1960s. After progressive victories in the 1950s,
African Americans became even more committed to nonviolent
direct action. Groups like the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), made up of African-American clergy, and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), composed of
younger activists, sought reform through peaceful confrontation.
In 1960 African-American college students sat down at a
segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in North Carolina and
refused to leave. Their sit-in captured media attention and led
to similar demonstrations throughout the South. The next year,
civil rights workers organized "freedom rides," in which African
Americans and whites boarded buses heading south toward
segregated terminals, where confrontations might capture media
attention and lead to change.
They also organized rallies, the largest of which was the "March
on Washington" in 1963. More than 200,000 people gathered in the
nation's capital to demonstrate their commitment to equality for
all. The high point of a day of songs and speeches came with the
address of Martin Luther King Jr., who had emerged as the
preeminent spokesman for civil rights. "I have a dream that one
day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood," King proclaimed. Each
time he used the refrain "I have a dream," the crowd roared.
The level of progress initially achieved did not match the
rhetoric of the civil rights movement. President Kennedy was
initially reluctant to press white Southerners for support on
civil rights because he needed their votes on other issues.
Events, driven by African Americans themselves, forced his hand.
When James Meredith was denied admission to the University of
Mississippi in 1962 because of his race, Kennedy sent federal
troops to uphold the law. After protests aimed at the
desegregation of Birmingham, Alabama, prompted a violent
response by the police, he sent Congress a new civil rights bill
mandating the integration of public places. Not even the March
on Washington, however, could extricate the measure from a
congressional committee, where it was still bottled up when
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
President Lyndon B. Johnson was more successful. Displaying
negotiating skills he had so frequently employed during his
years as Senate majority leader, Johnson persuaded the Senate to
limit delaying tactics preventing a final vote on the sweeping
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in all
public accommodations. The next year's Voting Rights Act of 1965
authorized the federal government to register voters where local
officials had prevented African Americans from doing so. By 1968
a million African Americans were registered in the deep South.
Nationwide, the number of African-American elected officials
increased substantially. In 1968, the Congress passed
legislation banning discrimination in housing.
Once unleashed, however, the civil rights revolution produced
leaders impatient with both the pace of change and the goal of
channeling African Americans into mainstream white society.
Malcolm X, an eloquent activist, was the most prominent figure
arguing for African-American separation from the white race.
Stokely Carmichael, a student leader, became similarly
disillusioned by the notions of nonviolence and interracial
cooperation. He popularized the slogan "black power," to be
achieved by "whatever means necessary," in the words of Malcolm
X.
Violence accompanied militant calls for reform. Riots broke out
in several big cities in 1966 and 1967. In the spring of 1968,
Martin Luther King Jr. fell before an assassin's bullet. Several
months later, Senator Robert Kennedy, a spokesman for the
disadvantaged, an opponent of the Vietnam War, and the brother
of the slain president, met the same fate. To many these two
assassinations marked the end of an era of innocence and
idealism. The growing militancy on the left, coupled with an
inevitable conservative backlash, opened a rift in the nation's
psyche that took years to heal.
By then, however, a civil rights movement supported by court
decisions, congressional enactments, and federal administrative
regulations was irreversibly woven into the fabric of American
life. The major issues were about implementation of equality and
access, not about the legality of segregation or
disenfranchisement. The arguments of the 1970s and thereafter
were over matters such as busing children out of their
neighborhoods to achieve racial balance in metropolitan schools
or about the use of "affirmative action." These policies and
programs were viewed by some as active measures to ensure equal
opportunity, as in education and employment, and by others as
reverse discrimination.
The courts worked their way through these problems with
decisions that were often inconsistent. In the meantime, the
steady march of African Americans into the ranks of the middle
class and once largely white suburbs quietly reflected a
profound demographic change. |
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