The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40 — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we’re gonna talk about
2. 0:04the 1960s. Mr. Green, Mr. Green. Great. The decade made
3. 0:08famous by the narcissists who lived through it.
4. 0:10Hey, Me From the Past, finally you and I agree about something wholeheartedly.
5. 0:14But while I don’t wish to indulge the baby-boomers’ fantasies about their centrality to world
6. 0:20history, the sixties were an important time. I mean, there was the Cold War, Vietnam, a
7. 0:24rising tide of conservatism (despite Woodstock), racism.
8. 0:28There were the Kennedy’s and Camelot, John, Paul, George, and to a lesser extent, Ringo.
9. 0:32And of course, there was also Martin Luther King Jr.
10. 0:37intro So, the 1960s saw people organizing and actively
11. 0:47working for change both in the social order and in government. This included the student
12. 0:51movement, the women’s movement, movements for gay rights, and a push by the courts to
13. 0:55expand rights in general. But, by the end of the 1960s, the anti-war
14. 0:58movement seemed to have overshadowed all the rest.
15. 1:01So as you’ll no doubt remember from last week, the civil rights movement began in the
16. 1:041950s if not before, but many of its key moments happened in the sixties.
17. 1:09And this really began with sit-ins that took place in Greensboro North Carolina. Black
18. 1:13university students walked into Woolworths and waited at the lunch counters to be served,
19. 1:17or, more likely, arrested. After 5 months of that, those students eventually
20. 1:21got Woolworths to serve black customers. Then, in 1961 leaders from the Congress On
21. 1:25Racial Equality launched Freedom Rides to integrate interstate buses. Volunteers rode
22. 1:31the buses into the Deep South where they faced violence including beatings and a bombing
23. 1:35in Anniston AL. But despite that, those freedom rides also
24. 1:38proved successful and eventually the ICC desegregated interstate buses.
25. 1:42In fact, by the end of the 60s over 70,000 people had taken part in demonstrations, from
26. 1:47sit-ins, to teach-ins, to marches. But they weren’t all successful. Martin
27. 1:51Luther King’s year-long protests in Albany, GA didn’t end discrimination in the city.
28. 1:56And it took JFK ordering federal troops to escort James Meredith to class for him to
29. 2:01attend the University of Mississippi. The University of Mississippi: America’s
30. 2:05fallback college. Sorry, I’m from Alabama. So, the Civil Rights movement reached its
31. 2:09greatest national prominence in 1963 when Martin Luther King came to my hometown of
32. 2:14Birmingham, Alabama, where there had been more than 50 racially-motivated bombings since
33. 2:19WWII. Television brought the reality of the Jim
34. 2:21Crow South into people’s homes as images of Bull Connor’s police dogs and water cannons
35. 2:26being turned on peaceful marchers, many of them children, horrified viewers and eventually
36. 2:31led Kennedy to endorse the movement’s goals. Probably should mention that John F. Kennedy
37. 2:34was president of the United States at the time, having been elected in 1960. He was
38. 2:38assassinated in 1963 leading to Lyndon Johnson. Alright, politics over.
39. 2:42Anyway, in response to these peaceful protests, Birmingham jailed Martin Luther King where
40. 2:46he wrote one of the great letters in American history (doesn’t have a great name): Letter
41. 2:50from Birmingham Jail. 1963 also saw the March on Washington, the
42. 2:54largest public demonstration in American history up to that time where King gave his famous
43. 2:59speech, “I have a Dream.” King and the other organizers called for a
44. 3:02civil rights bill and help for the poor, demanding public works, a higher minimum wage, and an
45. 3:08end to discrimination in employment. Which eventually, in one of the great bright
46. 3:12spots in American history, did sort of happen with the Civil Rights Act.
47. 3:16So, one reason American history teachers focus on the Civil Rights Movement so much is that
48. 3:20it successfully brought actual legislative change.
49. 3:24After being elected president, John F. Kennedy was initially cool to civil rights, but to
50. 3:28be fair, the Cold War occupied a lot of his time, what with the Cuban Missile Crisis and
51. 3:32the Bay of Pigs and whatnot. But the demonstrations of 1963 pushed John
52. 3:36F. Kennedy to support civil rights more actively. According to our dear friend, the historian
53. 3:41Eric Foner, “Kennedy realized that the United States simply could not declare itself the
54. 3:45champion of freedom throughout the world while maintaining a system of racial inequality
55. 3:51at home.”[1] So that June he appeared on TV and called
56. 3:54on Congress to pass a law that would ban discrimination in all public accommodations.
57. 3:58And then he was assassinated. Thanks, Lee Harvey Oswald. Or possibly someone else. But
58. 4:04probably Lee Harvey Oswald. So then, Lyndon Johnson became president and
59. 4:07he pushed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
60. 4:10The law prohibited discrimination in employment, schools, hospitals, and privately owned public
61. 4:16places like restaurants, and hotels and theaters, and it also banned discrimination on the basis
62. 4:21of sex. The Civil Rights Act was a major moment in
63. 4:23American legislative history, but it hardly made the United States a haven of equality.
64. 4:28So, Civil Rights leaders continued to push for the enfranchisement of African Americans.
65. 4:32After Freedom Summer workers registered people in Mississippi to vote, King launched a march
66. 4:36for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in January, 1965.
67. 4:41And television swayed public opinion in favor of the demonstrators. Thank you, TV, for your
68. 4:46one and only gift to humanity. Just kidding. Battlestar Galactica.
69. 4:50So, in 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which gave the federal government the
70. 4:54power to oversee voting in places where discrimination was practiced.
71. 4:59In 1965, Congress also passed the Hart-Cellar Act, which got rid of national origin quotas
72. 5:04and allowed Asian immigrants to immigrate to the United States. Unfortunately the law
73. 5:08also introduced quotas on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.
74. 5:11Lyndon Johnson’s domestic initiatives from 1965 through 1967 are known as the Great Society,
75. 5:17and it’s possible that if he hadn’t been responsible for America escalating the war
76. 5:21in Vietnam, he might have been remembered, at least by liberals, as one of America’s
77. 5:25greatest presidents. Because the Great Society expanded a lot of
78. 5:27the promises of the New Deal, especially in the creation of health insurance programs,
79. 5:31like Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.
80. 5:34He also went to War on Poverty. Never go to war with a noun. You will always lose.
81. 5:39Johnson treated poverty as a social problem, rather than an economic one. So instead of
82. 5:43focusing on jobs or guaranteed income, his initiatives stressed things like training.
83. 5:48That unfortunately failed to take into account shifts in the economy away from high wage
84. 5:53union manufacturing jobs toward more lower-wage service jobs. [2]
85. 5:57Here’s what Eric Foner had to say about Johnson’s domestic accomplishments: “By
86. 6:00the 1990s […] the historic gap between whites and blacks in education, income, and access
87. 6:06to skilled employment narrowed considerably. But with deindustrialization and urban decay
88. 6:11affecting numerous families and most suburbs still being off limits to non-white people,
89. 6:17the median wealth of white households remained ten times greater than that of African Americans,
90. 6:22and nearly a quarter of all black children lived in poverty.”
91. 6:25While Congress was busy enacting Johnson’s Great Society programs, the movement for African
92. 6:30American freedom was changing. Let’s go to the ThoughtBubble.
93. 6:34Persistent poverty and continued discrimination in the workplace, housing, education, and
94. 6:38criminal justice system might explain the shift away from integration and toward black
95. 6:43power, a celebration of African American culture and criticism of whites’ oppression. 1964
96. 6:49saw the beginnings of riots in city ghettoes, for instance, mostly in Northern cities.
97. 6:53The worst riots were in 1965 in Watts, in southern California. These left 35 people
98. 6:58dead, 900 injured, and $30 million in damage. Newark and Detroit also saw devastating riots
99. 7:05in 1967. In 1968 the Kerner Report blamed the cause of the rioting on segregation, poverty,
100. 7:11and white racism. Then there’s Malcolm X, who many white people
101. 7:15regarded as an advocate for violence, but who also called for self-reliance. It’s
102. 7:19tempting to see leadership shifting from King to X as the civil rights movement became more
103. 7:24militant, but Malcolm X was active in the early 1960s and he was killed in 1965, three
104. 7:30years before Martin Luther King was assassinated and before all the major shifts in emphasis
105. 7:35towards black power. Older Civil Rights groups like CORE abandoned
106. 7:39integration as a goal after 1965 and started to call for black power. The rhetoric of Black
107. 7:44Power could be strident, but its message of black empowerment was deeply resonant for
108. 7:49many. Oakland’s Black Panther Party did carry guns in self-defense but they also offered
109. 7:54a lot of neighborhood services. But the Black Power turned many white people away from the
110. 7:58struggle for African American freedom, and by the end of the 1960s, many Americans’
111. 8:03attention had shifted to anti-war movement. Thanks, ThoughtBubble. So it was Vietnam that
112. 8:07really galvanized students even though many didn’t have to go to Vietnam because they
113. 8:12had student deferments. They just really, really didn’t want their friends to go.
114. 8:17The anti-war movement and the civil rights movement inspired other groups to seek an
115. 8:21end to oppression. Like, Latinos organized to celebrate their heritage and end discrimination.
116. 8:26Latino activism was like black power, but much more explicitly linked to labor justice,
117. 8:31especially the strike efforts led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
118. 8:35The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968, took over Alcatraz to symbolize the land that
119. 8:40had been taken from Native Americans. And they won greater tribal control over education,
120. 8:45economic development, and they also filed suits for restitution.
121. 8:48And in June of 1969, after police raided a gay bar, called the Stonewall Inn, members
122. 8:53of the gay community began a series of demonstrations in New York City, which touched off the modern
123. 8:57gay liberation movement. Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document?
124. 9:02The rules here are pretty simple. I read the Mystery Document, guess the author,
125. 9:05I’m either right or I get shocked. Alright, what have we got here.
126. 9:09If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal
127. 9:13poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials [I already know it!],
128. 9:18it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight,
129. 9:23could conceive of no such problem.
130. 9:25Rachel Carson! Silent Spring. YES. I am on such a roll.
131. 9:30Silent Spring was a massively important book because it was the first time that anyone
132. 9:33really described all of the astonishingly poisonous things we were putting into the
133. 9:38air and the ground and the water. Fortunately, that’s all been straightened
134. 9:41out now and everything that we do and make as human beings is now sustainable. What’s
135. 9:46that? Oh god. The environmental movement gained huge bipartisan
136. 9:50support and it resulted in important legislation during the Nixon era, including the Clean
137. 9:54Air and Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act. And yes, I said that environmental legislation
138. 10:00was passed during the Nixon administration. But perhaps the most significant freedom movement
139. 10:05in terms of number of people involved and long-lasting effects was the American Feminist
140. 10:10movement. This is usually said to have begun with the
141. 10:12publication of Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, which set out to describe
142. 10:16“the problem that has no name.” Turns out the name is “misogyny.” [3]
143. 10:21Friedan described a constricting social and economic system that affected mostly middle
144. 10:25class women, but it resonated with the educated classes and led to the foundation of the National
145. 10:30Organization of Women in 1966. Participation in student and civil rights
146. 10:34movements led many women to identify themselves as members of a group that was systematically
147. 10:39discriminated against. And by “systemic,” I mean that in 1963,
148. 10:445.8% of doctors were women and 3.7% of lawyers were women and fewer than 10% of doctoral
149. 10:51degrees went to women. They are more than half of the population.
150. 10:55While Congress responded with the Equal Pay Act in 1963, younger women sought greater
151. 11:00power and autonomy in addition to legislation. Crucially, 60s-era feminists opened America
152. 11:05to the idea that the “personal is political,” especially when it came to equal pay, childcare,
153. 11:11and abortion. Weirdly, the branch of government that provided
154. 11:13most support to the expansion of personal freedom in the 1960s was the most conservative
155. 11:18one, the Supreme Court. The Warren Court handed down so many decisions expanding civil rights
156. 11:24that the era has sometimes been called a rights revolution.
157. 11:26The Warren court expanded the protections of free speech and assembly under the First
158. 11:31Amendment and freedom of the press in the New York Times v. Sullivan decision. It struck
159. 11:35down a law banning interracial marriage in the most appropriately named case ever, Loving
160. 11:40v. Virginia. And although this would become a lightning
161. 11:42rod for many conservatives, Supreme Court decisions greatly expanded the protections
162. 11:47of people accused of crimes. Gideon v. Wainwright secured the right to
163. 11:51attorney, Mapp v. Ohio established the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment, and Miranda
164. 11:56v. Arizona provided fodder for Channing Tatum in his great movie, 21 Jump Street, insuring
165. 12:01that he would always have to say to every perp, “You have the right to remain silent.”
166. 12:05But you can’t silence my heart, Channing Tatum. It beats only for thee.
167. 12:09But, the most innovative and controversial decisions actually established a new right
168. 12:13where none had existed in the constitution. Griswold v. Connecticut, dealt with contraception,
169. 12:18and Roe v. Wade, guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion (at least in the first trimester).
170. 12:23And those two decisions formed the basis of a new right, the right to privacy.
171. 12:28Protests, the counter culture, and the liberation movements continued well into the early 1970s,
172. 12:32losing steam with the end of the Vietnam war and America’s economy plunging into the
173. 12:37toilet. For many, though, the year 1968 sums up the decade.
174. 12:411968 began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which stirred up the anti-war protests. Then
175. 12:46racial violence erupted after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.
176. 12:51Then, anti-war demonstrators as well as some counter culture types arrived in large numbers
177. 12:56at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where they were set upon by police and beaten
178. 13:01in what was later described as a “police riot.”
179. 13:041968 also saw the Prague Spring uprising in Czechoslovakia crushed by the Soviets. And
180. 13:09student demonstrators were killed by the police in Mexico City where the Olympics were held
181. 13:13and Parisian students took to the streets in widespread protests against, you know,
182. 13:18France. All this unrest scared a lot of people who
183. 13:20ended up voting for Richard Nixon and his promises to return to law and order.
184. 13:25Ultimately, like any decade or arbitrary historical “age,” the 60s defies easy categorization.
185. 13:31Yes, there were hippies and liberation movements, but there were also reactions to those movements.
186. 13:36On this one, I’m just gonna leave it up to Eric Foner to summarize the decade’s
187. 13:39legacy: “[The 1960s] made possible the entrance
188. 13:42of numerous members of racial minorities into the mainstream of American life, while leaving
189. 13:46unsolved the problem of urban poverty. It set in motion a transformation of the status
190. 13:51of women. It changed what Americans expected from government – from clean air and water
191. 13:57to medical coverage in old age. And at the same time, it undermined confidence
192. 14:01in national leaders. Relations between young and old, men and women, and white and non-white,
193. 14:07along with every institution in society, changed as a result.”
194. 14:11But there’s one last thing I want to emphasize. All of this wasn’t really the result of,
195. 14:15like, a radical revolution. It was the result of a process that had been going on for decades.
196. 14:20I mean, arguably a process that had been going on for hundreds of years. Thanks for watching,
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