Strike at San Fransisco State College
In the meantime at San Francisco State College, students in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American student groups, began demanding reforms that addressed the concerns of students of color and the surrounding community. After more than a year of negotiating with the school and organizing students, they called a strike on November 6, 1968, that became the longest student strikein United States history. When it was finally settled in March 1969, many of the students' demands were met, including the establishment of a School of Ethnic Studies.
San Francisco State College
The 1960s were turbulent years. The United States was unpopularly involved in the war in Vietnam, and political unrest ran high at colleges and universities across the country.
At the time, San Francisco State College had an enrollment of approximately 18,000 students. Characterized as an open campus, San Francisco State was known for its innovative approaches to teaching and the development of courses in conjunction with students.
Political turmoil on campus began in 1968 when a Black Panther member, George Murray, was dismissed from school, and student militants called a strike. Using terrorist tactics, these groups intimidated and physically threatened students and professors if they crossed the picket line. Some of their demands included the formulation of an autonomous black studies department, promotion to full professor of a faculty member who had one year's experience, the firing of a white administrator, and the admission of all black students who applied for the next academic year.
While sympathetic to student needs, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa felt a...
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...co police department to maintain peace.
In March 1969, after two months of negotiations, an agreement was reached with the teacher's union. Hayakawa again conceded some demands but held firm on others. At the same time, militant student leaders relinquished some of their original demands and worked out a settlement. The cooperation Hayakawa had sought was finally being realized.
With the media coverage of San Francisco State, Hayakawa launched himself into the public eye. A Gallup poll conducted during the student uprising found S. I. Hayakawa to be the most admired educator in the United States. Among civic clubs and the lay public, Hayakawa represented a no-nonsense position that people identified with. Invited to deliver speeches throughout the country, he used this opportunity to launch a political career that would eventually lead him to the U.S. Senate.
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An individual who was developed from the black power movements, was Richard Aoki, a third generation Japanese American. He had spent time living in the internment camps as a child during the second world war. When he grew up, he became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party, and the only Asian American to have held a formal leadership position as "Field Marshall". He worked in the Black Panther party by arming them with weapons and training them in firearm usage. He continued his work by helping lead the Third World Liberation Front strike at Berkeley in 1969. This demonstration was to draw together the experiences of the oppression that third world minorities had experienced throughout their colonization period, from the United States. Experiences such as genocide of native Americans, enslavement of Africans, colonization of Chicanos, and the Asian immigration exclusion acts. The movements were created in order to achieve independence and demanded political power for those third world minorities who were had been, and were still being oppressed. They employed tactics such as, "informational picketing, blocking of campus entrances, mass rallies and teach-ins. Popular support was often met with repression in the form of police arrests, teargas and campus disciplinary actions." This impactful demonstration led to a large number of Asian American students, to become involved in community based organizing efforts, to increase awareness and strength for the Asian American movements. These students worked to produce vital means in which they were able to attain more information on their roots and the struggles that their ancestors had gone through. By fighting to create college curriculums that represented their histori...
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The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil rights struggle, and the liberation movements. From the lunch counter sit-in of Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Power movement at the decade's end, Anderson illustrates the brutality involved in the reaction against civil rights, the radicalization of some of the movement's youth, and the eventual triumphs that would change America forever. He also discusses women's liberation and the feminist movement, as well as the students' rights, gay rights, and environmental movements.
Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
At the beginning of school days in September 2015, teachers in Seattle public schools went on strike. It is the second time that teachers went on strike in the U.S. in recent years since 2012, when Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was negotiating for a new contract that improves teachers’ salary, and evaluates teachers’ performance fairly. CTU has reached an agreement after a long negotiation period with the city. The pattern and goal of the Seattle teachers strike matched perfectly with what had happened in Chicago. Teachers in Seattle also went on strike because they were not satisfied with their contract.
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The 1950s was a time when conformity held supreme in the culture at large. Issues such as women 's rights were thrown to the back as people tried to remain in the popular form of a family. These issues being put off only caused the prolonging of the tumultuous 1960s that would soon
The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and the Vietnam War seemed to blend together to form a new counterculture in America, the hippie.