The Student MovementThe Student Movement

Getting Involved - Student Radicalism

• Students for Democratic Society– One of main student protest orgs– Founded in 1959– Original goal was to gain more say in

course selection & university gov’t– By mid-’60s over 100,000 students on

over 150 campuses were involved, expanded goals

• Student movements join CRM & WM– Idealistic youth appalled at injustices– Encouraged by strength found in unity– By 1964 student movements radicalized

(remember SNCC?)

Alice Cooper’s School’s Out

1960s• 1964: student CRM marches organized

– Tried to expose racism on campus– Some schools tried to ban protests– Students responded w/ ‘free speech’ protests

and sit-ins demanding right to protest– 1/2 of Berkeley’s 27,500 students involved

• Campuses across USA erupt– Values & society of parents rejected – Any individual/group seen as victim of society

could count on student support– Sexism, racism, nuclear weapons, draft,

involvement in South America’s politics, Vietnam War all protested

– Society called ‘the system’ or ‘the machine’– Critics claimed students were ‘rebels without a

cause’, protesting for radical causes w/o really understanding them

– One issue united all student protestors: Vietnam WarBob Dylan’s The Times They Are Changin’

The Vietnam War• Vietnam War very unpopular w/

students– Protests reached height from 1968-70– First six months of ’68 over 100

demonstrations w/ 40,000 students– Often burned the American flag

• Often ended in clashes w/ police– Berkeley, Yale, Stanford: bombs were set

off

• May 4, 1970: Kent State, Ohio– Students protested Nixon’s invasion of

Cambodia– Panicked National guard troops fired– 4 killed, 11 wounded– Press in US & abroad horrified– 400 colleges closed– 2,000,000 students went on strike to protest

Neil Young’s Ohio, a salute to the students slain at Kent State

• Hippies ‘dropped out’ of society– Rejected society parents had created– Chose to not work or study– Let their hair grow long– Traveled country in flower-painted vans– Spoke of peace and love– Experimented w/ sex, drugs, rock & roll– Woodstock was all three rolled into one

• Hippies disturbed most Americans more than student radicalism– Parents of hippies were mostly middle-class– Brought children up to believe in virtues of

education, hard work, home ownership (American dream)

– Had fought in WWII to preserve way of life– Their children rejected all this– In many ways, people thought USA was in crisis

Dropping Out – The Hippie Movement

Doors … People Are Strange

Links• Too easy to see history in isolated patches• Movements in history are often linked• 1960s protests a good example• People were not just members of one

group• A radical student might at different times

have taken part in:– CRM freedom ride– Feminist consciousness-raising group– Free speech sit-in– Anti-Vietnam War march– Woodstock music festival

Youngbloods, Get Together

Focus Task: Student Protest Sound Bite

• In 1966 Ronald Reagan, running for Governor of California, described the student protest movement as all about ‘sex, drugs and treason’.

• Write your own phrase to sum up the student movement. It should be no more than five words long. Explain fully why you think your phrase effectively sums up the movement (100 words)

Fin

• Come mothers and fathers throughout the land. And don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand, for the times they are a-changin’.– From the Song ‘The Times They Are A-changin’ by Bob Dylan, written in 1963

• And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam. And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates. Well, I ain’t got time to wonder why. Whoopie! We all gonna die!– Country Jo and the Fish singing at the Woodstock Festival in 1968

PSDs on Student Movement• There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,

makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop.– Mario Savio, a Berkeley student radical in the 1960s. Berkeley University,

California, was one of the centers of student radicalism