Historically, why were the US 1960s suddently a good time for the civil rights movement and counterculture?

Question

Please speak as to the major overriding societal factors. Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was a skilled leader, but what about the times allowed for such ideas.
Sure, the kids were afraid of going to Vietnam, but why was Vietnam the first American war to cause some outrage? It certainly was not the only pointless one.
Granted, the new generation had just been supressed by the 1950s, but is that really reason for such a radical shift in American culture?
I understand that blacks were mistreated under the Jim Crow laws, but they had been mistreated for centuries!

What was it about the 1960s that made is so conducive to radicalism?

Answer 1

I would have to say that from the day that Television broadcast the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald live, the stage was set for openness by the media and "instant" news reporting. More and more households were becoming "tuned in". During the 50's television was still somewhat of a novelty.
The 60's brought a great improvement in communication.

Many families now had both parents working due to women taking a more active role in the workplace, the stage having been set for that movement during WWII. Women were now demanding more rights and therefore sympathized with other groups that were struggling for equality or recognition. The children were many times becoming what was known as "latch key children". They were becoming unsupervised and more readily influenced by circumstances outside of the home. The new "baby sitter" was television.

The assassinations of so many people important to so many causes had the effect of fueling suspicion of the government and desire for change. It was reflected in music, dress, social acceptance and popularity. If a person didn't belong to a cause they were considered to be out of touch with the times.

The war that was being fought in Vietnam was a focal point that gave common ground for the many movements to join together in. Celebrities were becoming more critical and more vocal, plus they had huge audiences that could be addressed over the air waves. The movies and music of the day reflected the feelings of disenchantment of American youth.

The enactment of the draft became a further rallying point, because it went against the new ideology of individualism. The right of the individual over the body whole. Young people were no longer willing to be a spoke in the wheel so to speak. Girls no longer wanted to be "Betty Crockered" in school. Boys no longer wanted to be a tool to be used by the system. They saw the wealthy peoples kids staying home, and the poor kids going to war. It became a class war. The message of the day was "What if you held a war......and nobody came?"

What made the 60's so conductive was the calumniation of so many movements that had been started years before, now being given a voice and a common cause. Television ushered in the age of communication. People no longer just read or heard about events that happened, now they could actually see and witness things that happened, even as they unfolded. Freedom of the press had opened their eyes and many were outraged by what they saw.

Answer 2

If the media divided time into segments from 1955- 1965 and 1965 -1975 , it would put the civil rights movement in the former and the counterculture and the anti war movement in the latter
The civil rights movement wasn't sudden, and it didn't start in the 60's. Blacks had been working for equal rights since the civil war and even before. The reaction to Hitlers Germany and WWII had made the public more receptive to equal rights. The military was integrated by Truman in part because of Black lobbying. The courts decision on school desegregation was 1954, and Rose Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in 1955. With the passage of the civil rights law in 1964 it began to lose steam as a national mass movement and began to splinter.
The counter culture revolution started with and was probably the result of the first baby boomers coming of age about 1963. The early boomers had gotten a bad deal in life, because the schools and other institutions that served children were overcrowded and inadequately staffed. Black boomers were more militant, like their white counterparts, than the previous generation, but they accomplish very little.
The counter culture had started before the Vietnam war was an issue and continued after the draft was ended. The connections you are making are due to an accident in time What would happen now if college students were being drafted by the hundreds of thousands to go fight in Iraq?

Answer 3

Seriously, if you want to point to something that made the 60s more receptive to Civil Rights and Counterculture, you can look at two defining items:

1. The rise of television: This connected everyone to a world that extended beyond the county line, made it possible for people to decide between Nixon and Kennedy on a rather base level (I'm not defending Nixon here) because Kennedy looked better than Nixon during the debate, also allowed the minorty to see that there were others that had the same beliefs. It gave MLK and Malcolm X a much larger platform to preach from as opposed to W.E.B. DuBoise and Booker T. Washington. The HUAC hearings of the 50s made the electorate realize the danger of branding everyone a traitor to America. Regardless of what the Rosenburg's were convicted of (I don't believe they were guilty of anything other than reading Russian literature).

2. The integration of the Armed Services by Harry Truman in 1948. Allowed for the open questioning of Jim Crow laws because if the military was going to stamp out discrimination, why couldn't the states follow the lead of the same government that stamped out genocide in Germany less than a generation ago?

About as simple as you can get it.

Answer 4

Hi Chronic,

Great question.

(1). I agree with those who've posted about the importance of Television. It would be impossible to overestimate its importance. For the first time in history, people were able to overcome the restrictions of time and space, and vicariously be anywhere at anytime. The effect of this was twofold...

{a} -- it allowed minorites to have a much clearer glimpse of how the more affluent in society lived, thereby increasing a sense of resentment; and,

{b} -- it conversely allowed the more affluent to see the effects of discrimination in an up-close and personal way. People could now see with their own eyes how racism was harming minorities. (beatings, lynchings, etc).

If pictures are worth a thousand words -- MOVING pictures are worth whole libraries.

2. After WW !!, another generation of minorities who had fought to preserve their country came back to discover that once again they were second class citizens in their own country. And this time they were not going to stand for it. Thus the Civil Rights movement began in the 1950s.

3. Aiding the rise of the Civil Rights movement and general activism was a rising economy and post-war optimism. To borrow a term from the social theorist Ted Robert Gurr, what we saw was a "Revolution of rising expectations." After the defeat of fascism, and as the economy perked up after the war, the general affluence and optimism made people believe that anything was possible. By this time, we had harnessed the atom, helped organize the world at the UN, and were even conquering space itself.

The growing consciousness of problems and inequities provided by television, combined with a spirit of optimism and unparalleled prosperity combined to create this "Revolution of Rising Expectations" in the 1960s.

The attitude was -- "These are the problems, and we know that we can achieve anything we set our minds to; therefore we must act -- NOW!"

Hence -- the 1960s.

Hope this helps. Cheers, mate.

Answer 5

Like the song goes: "It's the age of Aquarius"... College students took things seriously instead of how they laugh at being such failures today. The Draft cause a lot of the unhappiness. AND... not EVERYONE was for Civil Rights... that is something the people who rewrite history would have you believe today, but THAT WAS NOT TRUE.

I remember passing a bus load of "Freedom Riders" and heard the locals playing loud music on their PA systems... songs like NAACP Flight 101 and Send them ****ers North" by a singer called "Johnny Reb".

Answer 6

on no account! The Civil Rights circulate strengthen into approximately getting honest scientific look after persons who were mistreated via the government. The unlawful immigrant rights circulate is approximately people, who're breaking the regulation, that desire to be taken care of like they at the instant are not breaking the regulation.

Answer 7

The 60's sucked.