РефератыИностранный языкUnUntitled Essay Research Paper Massive black rebellions

Untitled Essay Research Paper Massive black rebellions

Untitled Essay, Research Paper


Massive black rebellions, constant strikes, gigantic anti-war demonstrations,


draft resistance, Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, a cultural revolution of seven


hundred million Chinese, occupations, red power, the rising of women,


disobedience and sabotage, communes & marijuana: amongst this chaos,


there was a generation of youths looking to set their own standard – to fight


against the establishment, which was oppressing them, and leave their mark


on history. These kids were known as the hippies. There were many stereotypes


concerning hippies; they were thought of as being pot smoking, freeloading


vagabonds, who were trying to save the world. As this small pocket of teenage


rebellion rose out of the suburbs, inner cities, and countryside’s,


there was a general feeling that the hippies were a product of drugs, and


rock music; this generalization could have never been more wrong. The hippie


counterculture was more than just a product of drugs and music, but a result


of the change that was sweeping the entire western world. These changes were


brought about by various events in both the fifties and the sixties, such


as: the end of the “Golden Years” of the fifties, the changing economical


state from the fifties to the sixties, the Black Panther Party, women moving


into the work force, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and John


F. Kennedy Jr., the war in Vietnam, the Kent State protest, and finally the


Woodstock festival.


The electric subcurrent of the fifties was, above all, rock’n’roll,


the live wire that linked bedazzled teenagers around the nation, and quickly


around the world, into the common enterprise of being young. Rock was rough,


raw, insistent, especially by comparison with the music it replaced; it whooped


and groaned, shook, rattled, and rolled. Rock was clamor, the noise of youth


submerged by order and prosperity, now frantically clawing their way out.


The winds of change began to sweep across America in the late fifties. The


political unrest came with fear of thermo-nuclear war and the shadow that


had been cast by Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The civil rights leaders were unhappy


with President Eisenhower’s reluctance to use his powers for their cause,


in spite of the fact that the nation was becoming more receptive to civil


rights reforms. With black organizations becoming more militant, Eisenhower


needed to acknowledge the growing movement, and govern accordingly.


World politics were still dominated by the conflict between the capitalist


nations, led by the USA, and the Communist countries, led by the USSR. The


bonds that were keeping people loyal to their leaders were breaking down.


In 1960 there was a major split between Russia and China. The Chinese decided


that the Russians were betraying Communism and set off on what they hoped


would be the world revolution against capitalism.


During the fifties, the economic situation was in a constant state of growth.


The United States were prospering and the government was clinging to the


“golden years.” The rise of the giant corporations had a profound effect


on American life. A few hundred corporations controlled much of the


nation’s industrial and commercial assets and enjoyed a near monopoly


in some areas. The mega corporations dominated the seats of economic and


political power. They employed millions of workers, a large percentage of


whom populated the suburbs that were growing across the country.


The changing American economy also experienced dramatic shifts in the composition


of the work force. Fewer workers went into traditional fields such as


manufacturing, agriculture, and mining, and more went into clerical, managerial,


professional, and service fields. In 1956, for the first time in the


nation’s history, white collar workers outnumbered blue collar ones,


“and by the end of the decade blue collar workers constituted only 45 percent


of the work force.” The sexual composition of the work force also changed


as more and more women entered the labor market. The influx of women into


the work world that had been accelerated by the Second World War continued


in the postwar period.


The political groups, and the negative feelings that they harbored towards


the present administration, only kindled the flames of revolution. The previous


generation was clinging to the “good times” of the fifties, and the youth


were looking for a niche to call their own. With the drastic change in child


population after the Second World War, divorce became less taboo. As a result,


single mothers were forced into the labor market, and with these jobs came


independence. The 50’s and all its political, and social change, was


only the breeding ground for the free thinking generation that was to follow.


In America, a group of militant blacks called the “Black Panther Party” had


been dubbed “American’s Vietcong.” They were tired with the roadblocks


and discrimination that were plaguing the civil rights leaders, like Dr.


Martin Luther King. They decided to get equality by whatever means necessary.


Their members had been involved in shoot-outs with the police, which were,


by the radical community, dress rehearsals for the coming Armageddon.


The hippie movement was new in the early 60’s, the men only beginning


to grow their hair long and some of them still wearing suits, the women as


yet uncertain about fitting in. The introduction of the television in the


50’s brought a new information medium to the general public. With


television, people became more informed, and developed individual opinions,


instead of the bias opinions that were “spoon fed” to them by newspapers,


radio etc.. The youth began to break free of the shackles that were the fifties.


They considered their parents conformists , and they wanted a way to break


free of the molds cast for them.


As a reaction to the growing violence of the 1960’s, many people turned


to the ideals of peace and love. Ironically, many of those who were seen


to be in favor of peace – including President John Kennedy, his brother Bobby,


the black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and many unarmed civil


rights workers – were themselves murdered. The horrors of the war in Vietnam


dramatized what many saw as drift towards destruction, and their reaction


was to seek a genuinely peaceful way of life. Across the world, youth took


up the slogan “Make Love not War”, and the Love Generation emerged. Many


of these were hippies – people who dropped out of conventional society to


take up a lifestyle based on peace, loving relationships and often mystical


religions. Many more who were not fully hippies were influenced by their


ideas and fashions, especially using the soft drug cannabis and the


hallucinogenic drug LSD.


“The New Era” referred to Kennedy promising vigorous attempt to manage a


world whose old stabilities had broken down. Kennedy received credit for


recognizing that international and domestic crises required an active response,


even if that response was “mediating, rationalizing, and managerial,” a policy


of “aggressive tokenism.” Abroad, the new frontier had the virtue of working


towards “political stabilization” with the Russians; it was deeply committed


to avoiding nuclear war – although Kennedy showed no interested in general


disarmament.


Meanwhile Black Americans took President Kennedy at his word and pressed


for civil rights against racial discrimination. On 20 May, 1963 , “400 federal


marshals (government policemen) had to be sent to Montgomery, Alabama, after


a peaceful demonstration by black people had been attacked by a mob of 1500


whites.” Local police had refused to act, even though this was the third


attack on blacks in a week. “On 21 May, 1963, 100 whites attacked the church


where the black leader, Martin Luther King, was preaching. The demonstrators


continued despite this when black Freedom Riders, calling for civil rights


for blacks, marched through Alabama and Mississippi to New Orleans. 27 Black


freedom Riders were arrested when they arrived in Jackson Mississippi.”


On 12 June 1964, the President Kennedy sent a Civil Rights Bill to Congress,


which, if passed, would make equality a legal right. “On 28 August, 1964,


between 100,000 and 200,000 black people, led by Martin Luther King,” marched


in Washington in support of the Civil Rights Bill. But the violence still


did not stop. In September, 1964, a black man was shot dead in Alabama, four


blacks were killed when a church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed, Medger


Evers of the Advancement of Colored People was murdered, and six black children


were killed when a house was burnt down.


Kennedy had been a controversial President. Many Americans opposed his support


for black people, while others were angry at his failure to kick the Communists


out of Cuba. The extreme right wing had threatened to kill him, but no one


took these threats seriously. Kennedy had been warned it was a dangerous


to drive through the streets of Dallas in an open car. The President felt


that he should be able to drive openly anywhere in the country, and few people


expected trouble.


On 22 November, 1963 as Kennedy drove slowly through crowd-lined streets


of Dallas in an open car, together with his wife, Jackie, and Governor Connally


of Texas, three or more shots were fired at the car. Kennedy was shot through


the throat and head, and Governor Connally was also hit. The President’s


driver immediately raced for the Parkland Hospital, with Jackie Kennedy covered


in her husbands blood cradling her husband’s head. With those fatal


shots, came the end of “Camelot” as his administration was referred to as.


On April 4 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. That night,


eighty riots broke out. Federal troops were dispatched into Baltimore, Chicago,


Washington, and Wilmington. “Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, ordered police


to shoot to kill arsonists and the main looters.” The actions by Richard


J. D

aley, were a sign of respect of King. Ironically, a year before, Daley


was against having King speak in the city of Chicago.


King’s following had fallen off in the years leading up to his death.


His moment had passed. Since the triumph of his Slema campaign, which climaxed


in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, he had turned to the urban poor, but his strategy


of nonviolence, national publicity, and coalition-building seemed unavailing.


Just a week before his death, his hopes for a non violence march in Memphis,


in support of striking garbage workers, had been dashed by the window-smashing


of a few dozen black teenagers. King had become a hero without a strategy,


but a hero he undeniably was at a moment when the larger movement craved


heroes and disowned them with equal passion. For liberals, even for many


black militants and radicals, he was the last black hope. When he was murdered,


it seemed that nonviolence went to the grave with him, and the movement was


“free at last” from restraint.


There are times when an entire culture takes the shape of a single event,


like rows of iron fillings lined up by the force of a magnet. What is


assassination, after all, if not the ultimate reminder of the citizen’s


helplessness – or even repressed murderousness? Instantly the killing creates


an abrupt contest between Good and Evil, albeit with a wrong ending. With


the enlightened establishment’s great men gunned down, a self-proclaimed


black revolutionary gunned down, there was an eerie feeling among the common


people, a democracy of sudden death. The southern civil rights movement had


been deeply bloodied, of course. Dozens of blacks were killed in the urban


riots of the North from 1964 on, and, as we have already seen, the riots


of the North inspired the white radicals to start a movement of their own.


These radicals would take the form of the “Hippy.”


In 1954 Vietnam had been divided into the Communist North, under Ho Chi Minh,


and capitalist South, under Ngo Dinh Diem, after the Communists had forced


the French to abandon Vietnam. Since 1954 a guerrilla force, the National


Liberation Front (know as the Vietcong), backed by the North, had been gradually


gaining strength. The United States had been sending arms to Diem since 1954,


and in 1960 President Kennedy decided to send American military advisors


to South Vietnam to train Diem’s army.


Just as the black movement was fighting for equality and civil rights, the


hippie movement took on the fight against the drafting of young men to Vietnam.


Many protests were staged throughout the 60’s to end the war, especially


the “March to End the War in Vietnam” held at the Independence memorial in


Washington, 1965.


During 1965, the Vietnam War intensified. The USA put more and more effort


into it, and the South Vietnamese government’s lack of control became


apparent. In August it was estimated that the Vietcong controlled a quarter


of the country, the government about half and the rest was not controlled


by anyone. In the Vietcong area, the Communists had taken land from the few


rich landowners and given it to the many poor peasants. This obviously made


them more popular with the peasants. The south Vietnamese army was now too


weak to fight the Communists, and the US decided it would take over the fighting


leaving the Vietnamese to defend the land they controlled.


The war in Vietnam increased trouble in America. Blacks pointed out that


black soldiers in Vietnam suffered unfairly: “10% of the population of the


United States was Black, 12.5% of the American army was black, 14.6% of the


battle dead was black. On 23 April 1967, Muhammad Ali called the war “a race


war. Black men are being cut up by white men.” On 28 April 1967, Muhammad


refused the call-up to the US army. The World Boxing Association stripped


him of his world title, and on 21 June 1967, he was found guilty of avoiding


the draft. Muhammad Ali was given a five year jail sentence, and appealed.


By the first of August 1967, so many black uprisings had taken place during


the ‘Long Hot Summer’ that a map had to be produced to show where


they had taken place.


1967 had been the year of the hippies, peace and love. 1968 was a year dominated


by violence and ideas of revolution and change. It was the year of New Left


- socialists who rejected both capitalism and communism – whose ideas inspired


students revolt throughout the world. The New Left argued that violence was


caused by capitalism, and the continuing, escalating war in Vietnam, where


the most powerful capitalist force was waging war on a small Asian country.


As the Students moved to the Left, and the youth movement grew, so did the


idea of fighting back against the State. The idea of a single world revolution,


grew. On April 30, 1970, President Nixon ordered the “incursion” of Cambodia,


with this announcement the students went into action. By May 4, 1970, a hundred


student strikes were in progress across the country. At Kent State University


in Ohio, students burned down the ROTC building. On the same day, National


Guardsman at Kent State responded to taunts and a few rocks by firing their


M-1 rifles into a crowd of students, killing four, wounding nine others.


Kent State was a heartland school, far from elite, the very type of campus


where Nixons “silent majority” was supposed to be training.


After these and many other violent incidents at protests, the intensity of


the movement began to dwindle. The great changes that they were fighting


for were not coming about. The protests were not getting any sympathy or


support, and greater numbers of hippies left the protests and adopted a “peace


and love” side of things. The climax of the hippie movement was in Woodstock,


1969. It was where all of the violence and aggression of protesting was laid


aside and the true ambiance of the 60’s was expressed.


Woodstock, in June, had been the long-deferred Festival of Life. So said


not only Time and Newsweek but world-weary friends who had navigated the


traffic-blocked thruway and felt the new society emerging, half a million


strong, stoned and happy on that muddy farm north of New York City.


Both critics and fans concede that Woodstock has become part of the mythology


of the 1960s, even if the actual event did not necessarily represent the


musical or political taste of most young Americans at the time. Some say


it symbolized the freedom and idealism of the 1960s. Critics argue that Woodstock


represented much of what was wrong with the 60’s: a glorification of


drugs, a loosening of sexual morality and a socially corrosive disrespect


for authority.


Whether one is a supporter or a critic, it is undeniable that Woodstock was


one of the major climaxes of the hippie movement: a culmination of all of


the peace and love ideals in one place. After Woodstock, the movement was


on the downswing. One could argue that Woodstock was the grand finale, with


the seventies arriving soon after it and there was a general “been there,


done that”(interview) mentality which created the seventies, a decade of


disco, and doom, never quite living up to the intensity of the sixties.


The 1960’s, then, did more than just “swing”. Many of the values and


conventions of the immediate post- war world were called into question, and


although many of the questions had not been satisfactorily answered by the


end of the decade, society would never be the same again.


In conclusion, the hippy culture arose as a result of vast political changes


occurring in North America and beyond and not as a result of drugs and music.


The drugs and music were a by-product of the hippy culture, but by no means


a reason for it’s occurrence. The previous pages cite the more relevant


political and social milestones, which, I believe were directly responsible


for the evolution of the hippy culture. These milestones affected everyone,


one way or another, either directly or indirectly. They changed the way people


thought. You would be hard pressed to find someone over the age of about


forty-five who, to this day, cannot remember what they were doing the day


Kennedy was shot, and how they were affected by it. The sixties simply evolved;


a microcosm of numerous political and social change that swept the then current


generation. The hippies were simply reacting to changes in society and, in


reacting to these changes, left an indelible mark on the history books of


our time.


Bibliography


Archer, Jales. The Incredible Sixties. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,


1987.


Benson, Kathleen, and Haskins, James. The Sixties Reader. New York: Viking


Kestrel, 1988.


Collier, Peter, Horowitz, David. Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts


About the’60s. New York: Summit, 1989.


Dickstein, Morris. Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. New York:


Basic Books, 1977.


Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam,


1987.


Ingham, John. Sex’N’Drugs’N’Rock’N’Roll. Toronto:


Canadian Scholars Press, 1988.


Kostash, Myrna. Long Way From Home:The Story of the Sixties Generation in


Canada. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1980.


Martin, Elizabeth. 57 Edgemore Dr., Etobicoke, Ontario. Interview, 12 February


1997.


Oakley, Ronald. God’s Country: America in the Fifties. New York: Red


Dembner, 1986.


Rosen, Obst. The Sixties: The Decade Remembered Now, by the People Who Lived


Them. Toronto: Random House Publisher, 1977.


Roy, Andy. Great Assassinations. New York: Independent Publishing, 1994.


Stern, Jane, and Micheal. Sixties People. New York: Knopf, 1990.


Tucker, Ken, and Stokes, Geoffrey, and Ward, Ed. Rock of Ages: The Rolling


Stone History of Rock and Roll. New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986.


Weiss, Bill. King And His Struggles. New York: Penny Publishing, 1987.


Yinger, Milton. Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a world Turned


Upside Down. New York:


Macmillan Publishing, 1982.

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