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1960s Essay examples

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The 1960’s – an Era of Discord

A young black man is brutally murdered for a harmless comment to a white woman. A mother distresses over the discovery of her son’s rock and roll collection. A United States soldier sits in a trench in Vietnam contemplating the reason for his sitting knee-deep in mud. The 1960’s was marked with confusion, insecurity and rebellion. It was a period of time when Americans stood up and took full advantage of liberalism in America and their God-given right to freedom of speech to create a decade bursting with social revolutions. The Civil Rights Movement, Counter Culture and the War in Vietnam were three of the most prominent events during this era and helped to define the 1960’s as …show more content…

At rest stops, whites would go in Black’s only areas and vice versa. Hostility was faced along the way, as in Montgomery, Alabama, where an uprising occurred and President Kennedy felt it necessary to enforce Martial Law. Although the “ride” never made it to New Orleans, they forced the Kennedy Administration to take a stand against civil rights and segregation was outlawed in interstate bus travel. Arguably the most significant victory for the Civil Rights Movement occurred in Birmingham, Alabama. Martin Luther King led sit-ins and protests against segregation beginning on April 3, 1963. Bull Connor, mayor of Birmingham attempted to stop these protests by jailing MLK. In solitary confinement, King wrote the highly influential, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” further encouraging protests. Children refused to attend school and stayed in parks. Connor sent in firefighters to hose them away but they remained insistent. When all jails were filled and the administration had it’s back to the wall, business communities agreed to integrate lunch counters and hire more black workers; a huge victory for Martin Luther King. After events like these and a considerable amount of bloodshed, the segregation problem took an upward swing and differences began to be reconciled, eventually leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1954.
Counterculture in the 1960’s sprung from a desire of primarily young people to rebel against the conformities of the

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