In this segment, I'm going to be talking about change in the 1970's
but
of a cultural nature. In the last segment I talked a bit about
the economics of the 70's and the travails that Americans were
beginning to experience in the 1970's
that led them to a certain amount of doubt about
the ability of the United States to sustain its position
in the world, to sustain the lifestyle to which people had grown accustomed.
On the cultural side, you have a situation where
the themes of the 1960's
continue, they persist, but at the same time
they will be transformed so that
perhaps the best way to put it is that some of the idealism
of the 60's is transferred in
new avenues, in new directions, but overall
reform, what you might call the
sort of march toward greater freedom,
in many people's minds, it persists.
At the same time, in the 1970's, we
really begin to see the outlines of the larger
reaction to the
campaigns, to the protests
of the 1960's and so the 1970's is really a very important decade full
of tension
and a tension about the definition
of American culture. To start out,
understand that the protest over Vietnam persists
into the 1970's. When Richard Nixon took office there were protests
that occurred early in his first administration at Cornell,
at Berkeley, Wisconsin, and scores of other college campuses.
There were bloody demonstrations and sit-ins.
In October of 1969,
there was the Student Democratic Society Riot in Chicago
that occurred. November; half a million people
gathered at the Washington Monument to call for an
end to American involvement in Vietnam,
and an end to the war. This was a day known as Moratorium Day.
The point being it's not as if this simply goes away.
There would be some extraordinarily severe
incidents as well. One of them of course is Kent State.
April 30th, 1970, President Nixon announced the expansion
of the war into Cambodia. On May the 4th,
there were student protests at Kent State over the expansion of the war
and during those protests, National Guardsmen
who had been supplied with live ammunition fired into the crowd killing four
students and wounding others.
This is on a college campus where parents were sending their children
expecting a certain level of safety, but
the incident suggests the level of tension
and what could potentially go wrong as it did on May 14th
at Jackson State
in Mississippi. Jackson State, an all black college at the time,
two students killed, nine wounded during protests.
What we see in part
is not merely a sort of growing tendency toward
violence on college campuses but a growing radicalization
in the streets. One of the groups to emerge
in the late 60's and early 70's out of SDS and out of the
larger campus protests was a more radical
sub-unit of SDS known as the Weather Underground,
and the participants were often called the weathermen.
This group was organized in 1969 in Ann Arbor Michigan
mostly in response to what had happened at the Democratic Convention in 1968 and
arrests that followed.
This was an effort to protest the arrest and trial of the so-called
Chicago Seven who were the
anointed ring-leaders, certainly by
police officials, the ringleaders of the unrest in Chicago
and the Weather Underground would become involved in bombings.
The last time we talked about that of course we were talking really about
the Red Scare of the post-WWI era and we talked about
the Haymarket Riot and anarchists. It's not as if this
kind of activity is entirely new in American history but
for sort of mainstream America in the 1970's
it was certainly troubling
that it should appear when it did. In terms of civil rights,
the campaign, the effort continues as well.
The effects of the downturn in the American
economic situation were to be hardest felt
by those least able really to accommodate the changes.
The people who are already struggling in American society
were the people who would be hurt first and hardest.
But the campaign for civil rights persists.
One area of great importance is feminism.
The focus by the late 1960's in feminism
in some ways is becoming more radical,
calling for greater change, more systemic change, not merely
limited reforms, not merely focused on the workplace.
But we began to talk about things like language itself,
and language is extraordinarily important. It has cultural value.
Words matter. What you call someone,
what they call themselves,
it matters, and so we begin to see
gradually the adoption in language
in America of terms like chairperson
over chairman. Traditionally,
the gender bias there had been toward the male to be in a position of
authority,
but this little subtle change is a reflection
of the effort of feminists
to begin changing the system itself, not
merely the decorations, but the system itself
in terms of how women were thought about.
So fireman becomes fireperson,
women becomes acceptable. It becomes less acceptable to use the oft used term of
the 1950's shows like Mad Men...
girls... right... what are the girls doing tonight
would be far less acceptable. Another aspect of the change
is the claim of control over the body particularly when it comes
to sexual reproduction which is an outgrowth of the larger sexual revolution,
and then there are going to be workplace and very practical gains
for women
in terms of acceptance. In 1970, we see the women's strike for equality which is
the largest demonstration
to date at that that time over women's rights,
to celebrate the 50th anniversary of suffrage.
Fifty years on, women are reconsidering
what change the vote in particular had really meant
for them, and it was an effort then
to really bring to the fore
those issues at the heart of modern feminism.
In practical terms... in practical terms,
we would see these
changes as far as regard for gender
in American society being played out
in court cases like 1971's Reed
v. Reed in which the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th
Amendment
was determined by the Supreme Court to apply in matters
of sex. In fact, in this particular case
the question was whether a woman could act to probate a will
and traditionally that had not been the case. The suit went to the Supreme Court
and the Supreme Court said that sex,
gender, could not be used as a basis for denying a citizen
access to that position of authority. 1972,
the Equal Rights Amendment
is sent to the states for ratification.
This amendment was an effort to
make part of the constitution... to embed in the constitution
the freedoms that women had won
over the years.
Something we don't think as much about perhaps but it's very important on
college campuses of course is Title IX.
College campuses, high school, and athletics. The idea that there should be
equality for women's teams.
That's a very practical outgrowth of
the protests and the campaigns for recognition of women's rights.
But perhaps one of the most important pieces
of legislation, I shouldn't even say legislation, one of the most important court
cases
to come out of the women's rights movement
in the early 1970's is well-known to most people
and that's 1973's Roe versus Wade.
This is a court case in which the Supreme Court declared
a right to privacy, that
women have a right to access
abortion certainly in the first trimester and that that right
is protected under the Constitution.
This goes back to the question of whether or not women
have control over their own bodies. Whether they have
the final say so in what's done to them or by them,
as citizens. Now,
the thing is, this court case,
Roe versus Wade, would become
a key touchpoint in the cultural struggles to follow.
When I say a key touchpoint I mean that
in terms of women's rights but also in terms of reaction,
this case, Roe v. Wade,
would continue to fuel the so-called culture wars
for decades to come.