Possibility, a lot of opportunity, and the postwar era. In 1961, jfk had been elected president. He is young, charismatic, a and he had a platform on a number of promises, so this should give context for where the Womens Movement is coming into play as we work through these overview issues. Now the 1960s, as much promise as there was, we also know there were a lot of issues, particularly racial issues, but it was a period of great change. Warfare. And for those who did find promise in the 1960s, there were those who did not get access to that. So there are a number of individuals and groups fighting for that access. You have the 1967 detroit riots, a series of political assassinations. Jfk in 1963. 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther king jr. And bobby kennedy, so there is fear about what this change means and people are reacting to that. Focusing on jfk, because we will be talking mostly about women in the Civil Rights Movement today, focusing on other womens experiences on wednesday, but to give you an idea, jfk was initially hesitant. We have a legacy now of him as a major shaker in the Civil Rights Movement. But he was hesitant and cautious about the Civil Rights Movement in the initial year or so of his presidency. He was very concerned about alienating southern politicians and voters, because we are still in a period of deep segregation in the south. But in 1963, he issues the report to the American People on civil rights. This is his response to black americans who argued with him that youve made these promises for civil rights and you are not making much progress on them. He realized that civil rights was not just a general issue, but a moral issue for the nation, so he moves beyond some of that initial hesitation. It signified to people that there was change happening, at least at the administrative level, but after kennedys assassination later that year, the question is will that progress continue . Will the promises that jfk offered come to fruition . There are concerns about lbj, his Vice President who takes over in 1963, but johnson was shrewd as far as politics go and he takes the legislation and content of the earlier speech and incorporates that into what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act was part of the Great Society legislation, this domestic policy platform that lbj adopts after becoming president. Prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin. It was designed to prohibit unequal application of Voter Registration requirements, racial segregation in schools , employment, public accommodations, et cetera. This act was significant, but it still takes time to implement those pieces, particularly in areas where people were not as keen on this legislation. Johnson also puts forth the Voting Rights act of 1965, which some say is the most significant piece of the Civil Rights Era legislation, but it prohibited Racial Discrimination in voting. Now, this is all well and good, but during jfks and lbjs presidencies, we also see a significant increase in our involvement in the vietnam war. It is also caught the second indochina war. In vietnam, it is known as the american war. It started in 1955, lasted until 1975, but it is the 60s we see that increase, from fewer than 1000 troops in 1959, by 1963, 16,000 troops involved. At the start of 1964, 23000 troops. By the end of 1964 with the gulf of tonkin resolution, lbj has increased true presence to 184,000 troops. You can see that rapid increase in the 1960s. This also is a period where we see the deployment of Ground Troops for the first time, so americans are becoming more conscious of what our involvement in vietnam means. You will see a rise in antiwar protest movements in particular. Fatalities in the vietnam war, the more troops you put in, the more lives that will be lost. At the end of the vietnam war, 58,000 americans are killed. That is a significant number and a reason for protests in the u. S. , but protesters were also keenly aware of the fatalities happening in vietnam, not just soldiers, but civilian casualties. Estimates range from 966,000 vietnamese soldiers and civilians to upwards of 3. 8 million, depending on which records you are looking at. There are also hundreds of thousands of laos and cambodians killed. And women are playing a very Important Role in these antiwar protests. Part of it, you see the increase in draft issues. Women are not being drafted, but their husbands, their sons, the men in their life are, so they are home trying to get involved in this movement. We are also in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. It is a movement that has a long history. Some have argued we need to refer to the 1950s and 1960s as the modern Civil Rights Movement, because it did not just pop up in the 1950s, but we will see significant strides in the 1950s and 1960s as the Movement Fights for constitutional and legal rights and protections granted to americans everywhere. The Civil Rights Movement will inspire a series of other movements during this time period, some more wellknown than others. The womens Rights Movement, what we will be talking about as the second wave of feminism. We will define what that means in a minute. Mexican americans are fighting for bilingual Education Programs in schools, worker protections, the unionization of farmworkers. Indigenous americans demanding the federal government recognized land rights and indigenous sovereignty. They are seeking control over Indigenous Lands and resources in attempting to preserve indigenous cultures and indigenous women, who we will talk about on wednesday, will take a key role as well. This is also the era of the lgbt movement. This is where gay and lesbians individuals at the time are focusing on ending legal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This will pick up with the end of the 1960s with the stonewall incident in 1969, but we will see how that movement is taking shape in response to the Civil Rights Movement. So this is our context in which women are operating, women are recognizing the roles, and the ways in which they can affect change locally and nationally. So if we think about second wave feminism, this idea of feminism as a wave is the result of martha wyman lears New York Times article, the second feminist wave. Prior to this, people were not thinking about feminism in those terms, but she argues feminism, which one might have supposed is dead as a pollish question, is again an issue. As she is writing about it but she is making the case this is a new, that women had a history of activism and fighting, and it is just now becoming a National Issue once again. She said proponents call it the second feminist wave, the first having ebbed and having disappeared into the sandbar of togetherness. There are issues with the terminology, this idea as it the wave as a metaphor. One historian argues this can be a useful term in terms of reminding people that the Current Movement had a past, but it can be reductive. It suggests whether explicitly or implicitly that each wave of feminism is a monolith with a unified agenda. That women of all types are fighting together for the same common causes. It implies also that feminism peaks at certain times and receces at others, and so it can ultimately ignore the conflicting ideals, goals, agendas of these different women, different groups of women. For example, the women we would talk about today in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, black womens experiences in activism will not be the same as white womens experiences, and their goals will not necessarily be the same. Women in the workforce, for example, equal pay for equal work. I mean on its head that sounds like it would apply to all women, but the issue is that, despite the fact that women of color and white women might be fighting for that, it ignores the fact that women of color, black women especially, made less than their white female counterparts. So there is a race issue along with that gender issue that is not affecting white womens activism. Women are fighting for things like contraception and Birth Control. We will see a series of Landmark Supreme Court cases through the 1960s and 1970s which gave married and unmarried women the right to use Birth Control. We have griswold versus connecticut in 1965, which struck down a law stating that married couples could not use Birth Control or inform themselves about it, going all the way back to the comstock law era. So this particular court case allowed married couples to access contraception and contraceptive information. It will not be until 1972 that a Supreme Court case argues that unmarried people, unmarried women, should have the same access to contraceptives and information as well. By the end of the 1960s, 80 of married women of childbearing age were using contraception. Part of this is made possible because in 1960, the federal government approved the production of the Birth Control pill. This made it easier and more effective, despite many of the numerous side effects. Easier for women to access contraceptives and take personal control over their bodies, as opposed to other contraceptive methods. Women are fighting for the end of Sexual Harassment and domestic violence. For example, the criminalization of marital rape. That doesnt start into the mid1970s, so throughout this this time period we are talking about, women are fighting for control of their lives and bodies. Marital rape is not a crime in any state. Women are fighting for equality. The feminist mystique comes out during this time period, and she argues women are fighting for a thing that has no name, this systemic issue, this systemic sexism the taught women that their place is in the home comic they should find enjoyment and fulfillment in caring for that home and raising up their husbands, rearing their children, having children but if you couldnt have children, there is another issue as a woman. If women could not find enjoyment or fulfillment in their roles as housewives, it was only because they were broken and perverse. It is their problem. Friedan argues, i thought there was something wrong with me, because i did not have an orgasmic waxing the floor. She is putting it out there. She is unafraid. But she is also working in a context, the National Organization for women, were fighting for the equal rights amendment. It is formed in 1966. In 1968, series of women protests the miss America Pageant as sexist, paternalistic, argues women are being judged purely on the physical appearance despite the fact that organizers of the pageant were like, but they are also talking about their plans for the world and what they know. The protesters were like, absolutely not. This is a huge issue. Contrary to popular belief, it is not like all of the women out there are going to dumpsters and throwing their bras in and burning everything. Thats not how it works. There no bra burning. There might have been as they one. Protest the pageant, however, and other protests against the sexist ideals, they are taking tokens, symbols, or items they feel represent oppression, so the bra might be one of those, but they are also running around and collecting playboys and setting those on fire. You dont hear about that. That is far more interesting than setting a bra on fire. There taking items from the home. Mops, brooms, whatever. They are destroying these ideals in a physical form, but frameworks like friedans the feminine mystique, they are really specific if you get down to it to white middleclass women. Despite the demands of equal pay for equal work, it is one thing if youre being denied the opportunity to work because you want to work, but it is another thing to be denied the opportunity to work when you need to work. When it came down to the families in the 1960s, far more women of color needed to work to supplement Household Incomes because even men of color are making less than than their white counterparts. And so, again, they are fighting for different things. Another example is the right to contraception and contraceptive knowledge. While black and white women are fighting for that information, that right, fighting for access to abortions, there is something that black women have to put up with that is not part of the mainstream in his movement, and that is to stop the forced sterilization of people of color in people with disabilities. Because that had not been a lived experience of most white women at the time, it was not part of that mainstream feminist movement. So there are a lot of different examples of how race and nationality, ethnicity, can play a role in the different lived experiences of women in the 1960s, and we have talked quite a bit about how that operated in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. But despite the changes of the 1960s, we are still seeing some of those same issues playing out. We know, for example, that black women specifically are playing an important and prominent role and Important Role in the civil rights move. Yet, how often do you hear their names . Who are you most likely to hear about or think of when you hear the phrase, Civil Rights Movement . Student most likely Martin Luther king, malcolm x, mostly all men, not the women. Prof. Goodall exactly. The first name that probably come to mind is Martin Luther king jr. He is the face we associated with the movement. Malcolm x is a prominent figure. You might also think about john lewis or stokely carmichael. If you think do of a woman, you might think of rosa parks. But when i have asked my history students in the past if they can name another woman aside from rosa parks, it is often difficult for them to do so. Many women in the Civil Rights Movement are facing gendered discrimination and Sexual Harassment from within the movement. So they are facing external and internal pressures and harassment. According to the National Museum of africanamerican history and culture, the 1963 march on washington provides us a clear and concrete example of this. While the march pushed for equality, while women were instrumental in helping to organize and put the march together, the event was purely dominated by men. The formal program excluded women from speaking. No women were invited to be part of the delegation for meeting president kennedy later in the day. But, as we will talk about some key individuals, i could go on and on all day about different women involved in the movement, but today we will focus on those who took the stance of either education or who were student activists. Because for this class with each of you being students, you can make some personal connection with their experiences. But black women are serving a strategists, advocates, activists, organizers, and leaders in the Civil Rights Movement despite the dangers of participating in the movement. Not only do they have to fear the same physical violence that their male counterparts were subject to, they had an added component they had to fear, and that was Sexual Violence perpetrated against them. But these women participated anyway. So i will start by introducing you to one person born to a formerly enslaved man and his wife. Septima Poinsette Clark is the second of eight children, and she fought, spent her life fighting for Educational Rights for black individuals. She graduated from the avery normal institute, the first accredited secondary school for africanamericans in charleston where she grew up. After graduating, she taught in segregated schools throughout South Carolina. While doing so, she earned a bachelors degree from Benedict College in 1942, a historically black college. And she also a few years later in 1946 earned a masters degree from hampton is institute now hampton , university. During that entire period, she recognized that, despite her best efforts, these segregated schools, no matter what she did come if they didnt have the same resources, the same funding as allwhite schools, her efforts to educate could only go so far. And so she continued to fight for equal Educational Opportunities and rights. In 1956, she lost her job as an educator because South Carolina banned membership in the naacp, and she refused to comply. She had been a longstanding member of the naacp. And because of her work with the organization, she was alternate ultimately hired to become the director of workshops at Highlander School in tennessee, which was ultimately absorbed into the southern leadership conference. The sclc. During that time period, she and her cousin, Bernice Robinson another prominent female figure in the movement, created the first Citizenship School to educate blacks in