The Civil Rights Movement In The 1960's

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In the 1960s, minorities, women, and the youth sought change in American culture and the Establishment, wealthy, white men who dominated America. In this search for equality and the defeat the tyranny of the Establishment, activists led movements for social and political change. The civil rights movement nonviolently worked for the advancement of black people, but later turned violent in the black power movement. The New Left moved for the government to devote itself to the demands of the people. La Causa moved for equal rights for Hispanic Americans, and women pushed for equal rights in the feminist movement. The hippie movement rebelled against the Establishment and the War in Vietnam. While activists from other movements called on the government for new laws granting and protecting the rights of the people, the hippies aspired for a distinct counterculture based community, free love, music, and drugs. …show more content…
Much like the beatniks of the 1950s, young people during the 1960s resented the materialism and depravity that was espoused by their parents’ generation and the establishment. Hippies, mostly middle or upper-middle class, white youths, championed personal freedom and morality for many reasons: the growing post-World War II middle class, which they claimed to be materialistic, increased availability of contraception, which furthered their idea of freedom and free love, wider use of hallucinogenic drug, which inspired a disconnection with mainstream culture and self-reflection, and the Vietnam War, which symbolized the brutality and immorality of the American government. These rebelling young people moved to poorer communities, like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, to escape luxurious society and pursue their new ideal of