In the article below, Sam Smith, the editor of Progressive Review makes the important point that the revolutionary decade of the 60s has its rood in what seemed like the very dull and restricted 50s. These pre-revolutionary moments are important to understand. In The Movement Action Plan: 8 Stages of Successful Social Movements, Bill Moyer points out that it takes years for a social movement to reach the “Take-Off” stage. The preconditions for Take-Off are seen in the “Normal Times” when injustices exist and people have some awareness of them but they are not in the spotlight. In the second stage, “Prove the Failure of Social Institutions” people begin to see and openly discuss the failure of social institutions. For example, during the McCarthy era of the 50s the Communist witch hunts began to bring that issue into the public eye. When major celebrities and leaders of various political movements were called before McCarthy and testified — or refused to testify — on television it showed how the Red Scare was actually undermining cherished American values of freedom of speech, freedom of association and the right to your political beliefs.
The final stage before Take-Off is ripening conditions. The Civil Rights Movement, which had been going through the pre-Take-Off stage for several decades before the mid-50s had a major ripening moment in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the white section of the bus. This led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a political leader. It was also the decade of Brown v. Board of Education which began the process of school desegregation. The Take-Off phase is a more national moment, not a local Montgomery event, it would seem the Freedom Rides and lunch counter sit-ins that occurred in the 60s was the Take-Off with its roots in the 50s and before.
No doubt in the repressive era of the 50s when patriarchy and unfair treatment of women was accepted, where the criminalization of gays was not questions,where Beatniks were seen as outcasts and conformity seemed en vogue must have made people feel like nothing was happening; nothing would change. But, by the mid-1960s revolts on the environment, Vietnam War, Civil Rights, women’s rights and the unfair economy were exploding. What were the roots?
The 1950s weren’t as dull as we think
Ira Chernus, History News Network – “The ’60s” as a real political-cultural phenomenon was not evident to most Americans until 1967 or maybe even 1968. It’s only in retrospect that so many events of 1964 seem so obviously intertwined.
That’s what historians do: look back and see things that people at the time couldn’t see. It’s a job well worth doing. But it’s equally important that we don’t confuse the early seeds of a major political, social, and cultural change with the substance of the change itself.
… Historians face a methodological problem here. If you’re going to decide that the key to understanding any historical era is to track down its roots — as ’60s scholars so often do — where do you stop? Everything that happened in 1964 — or any other year, for that matter — was the fruit of things that happened earlier. It’s well known by now that the roots of “the ’60s” really lie in the supposedly so opposite era of “the ’50s.”
In fact, just out of curiosity, I took a look at the year 1950, to see whether I could build a case for it as the year “the ’60s” really began. It turned out to be a quick easy job. In 1950:
· Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a crusade against domestic communism at home, sounding the death knell of the Old Left, paving the way for the New Left and (arguably) for the Goldwater-Reaganite New Right.
… Soon after the Korean war began, over a quarter of new Army enlistees were African-Americans, and for the first time U.S. fighting units were integrated; those African-Americans would come home with a very new view of what was possible.
· The Mattachine Society, the first gay liberation organization, was founded.
· Jack Kerouac published his first novel (The Town and the City) and told Neal Cassady about a “spontaneous prose” technique he was using to write another book, based on experiences they and other Beats like Alan Ginsberg were having “on the road.”
· Professor Longhair, often called the first rock ‘n roll musician, had his only national hit, “Bald Head.”
· Alan Watts left the Christian ministry to devote himself full-time to the study and practice of Eastern religions and published The Supreme Identity.
· Herbert Marcuse gave lectures that would later be published as Eros and Civilization, his radical critique of the erotic repression demanded by capitalism.
· Charles Schulz began publishing “Peanuts,” showing young people as the true fount of all wisdom.
· Volkswagen made its first VW camper van.
I wouldn’t seriously argue that 1950 was the beginning of “the ’60s.” I would seriously argue that seeds of change are being planted all around us all the time. Some grow underground, unseen, for a long, long time before they come to fruition. We shouldn’t confuse the seeds with the full-flowering plant.