The 1960s

Some of the biases mentioned in the paper included an instance in which a veteran of two years’ work for the SNCC spent her days doing clerical work for others in her group. All these things gave the young people of the 1960’s a cause, a cause that was within reach, and a cause that they could, in some way, call their own. Thus the protest movements of the 1960’s were indeed rooted in the history and institutions of the 1950’s which were characterized by the threat of Cold War, conformity, and consumerism. Growing men in the family saw through their fathers that the roles they would play, in the idealized family, were not very fulfilling. Even with the victory, resistance to desegregation was very strong, in many cases the end result was even death for blacks. No longer was the focus on family, instead young people of the 1960’s focused on the problems of America and American society. This coupled with the newfound success of the NAACP led to groups like the SNCC, which attracted both whites and blacks and united them under one cause-civil rights. In 1954, the NAACP won its battle on school segregation in the Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. In essence the shows stressed the importance of family and family life, and what threatened the family-Communism, Cold War-the Communist that could be living next door! McCarthy and McCarthyism, in essence, gave the people of the 1950’s a cause, a cause of preservation characterized by scare tactics in which he (McCarthy) constantly accused others as being Communists who sell secrets to the Soviets and thus threaten the livelihood of Americana.

While white America did not wake up to social issues (on a large scale) until the 1960’s, many black Americans started to champion civil rights, with limited success, in the 1950’s. Furthermore, this led successful women in the

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(SNCC) group to challenge their roles in the movement and eventually paved the way for the women’s rights movement so prevalent in the 1960’s.

The sweeping changes that occurred in the 1960’s did not come out of the blue; they were a chain reaction that stemmed from the threat of the Cold War, conformity, and civil rights movements of the 1950’s. Young women too saw no bright future if they followed the female path so championed in the 1950’s.

Evidence of women’s efforts to liberate themselves from roles assigned to them by society comes from the “SNCC Position Paper”, which can be found in Breines’ Takin’ It to the Streets. The strong resistance of whites led to more and more protests by blacks including sit-ins and breaking of white/black rules of where one can sit, eat, or use the bathroom.