Product Description

It began in 1960 with the Greensboro sit-ins. By 1973, when a few Native Americans rebelled at Wounded Knee and the U.S. Army came home from Vietnam, it was over. In between came Freedom Rides, Port Huron, the Mississippi Summer, Berkeley, Selma, Vietnam, the Summer of Love, Black Power, the Chicago Convention, hippies, Brown Power, and Women's Liberation--The Movement--in an era that became known as The Sixties. Why did millions of Americans become activists; why did they take to the streets?

These are questions Terry Anderson explores in The Movement and The Sixties, a searching history of the social activism that defined a generation of young Americans and that called into question the very nature of "America." Drawing on interviews, "underground" manuscripts collected at campuses and archives throughout the nation, and many popular accounts, Anderson begins with Greensboro and reveals how one event built upon another and exploded into the kaleidoscope of activism by the early 1970s. Civil rights, student power, and the crusade against the Vietnam War composed the first wave of the movement, and during and after the rip tides of 1968, the movement changed and expanded, flowing into new currents of counterculture, minority empowerment, and women's liberation. The parades of protesters, along with schocking events--from the Kennedy assassination to My Lai--encouraged other citizens to question their nation. Was America racist, imperialist, sexist?

Unlike other books on this tumultuous decade, The Movement and The Sixties is neither a personal memoir, nor a treatise on New Left ideology, nor a chronicle of the so-called leaders of the movement. Instead, it is a national history, a compelling and fascinating account of a defining era that remains a significant part of our lives today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119335 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Amazon.com
"We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong--and we were right. I regret nothing!" So spoke Abbie Hoffman, recalling the '60s 20 years later. Anderson memorializes Hoffman's words, along with quotations from rock lyrics, SDS slogans, and official pronouncements from the likes of Spiro Agnew, Richard Daley, and George Wallace. He tracks the boomer generation's progress from the civil rights and free speech movements to, after the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, what approached civil war. He does so with passion, arguing that the kids were right to protest a national policy that enriched Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist and war criminal, while imprisoning conscientious objectors for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Anderson's masterful treatment brings those difficult times to life.

From Publishers Weekly
Anderson defines the 1960s' "movement" as a loose, ever-shifting coalition of social activists including civil rights and Vietnam War protesters, feminists, students, ecologists and hippies. In his analysis, the movement was generally leaderless and was not defined by new-left philosophy; rather, its members were motivated by the old-fashioned American pragmatism that drove protesters during other reform eras?the Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, the populist and progressive era and the New Deal. Far from being a failure, as critics contend, the movement, in Anderson's estimate, cracked a rigid Cold War culture, forced campus and educational reform, sped the passage of civil rights legislation, revolutionized the status of women and influenced mainstream politics, which co-opted many of its ideas about citizen and community empowerment. Professor of history at Texas A&M University, Anderson draws heavily on interviews, underground newspapers, leaflets and participants' memoirs to create a vivid newsreel. His sweeping study is a valuable, refreshingly unbiased reassessment of the '60s legacy.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The Sixties, Texas A & M historian Anderson argues in this meticulously researched account, sought to answer what he considers the "central question" of U.S. history: "What is the meaning of America?" He follows the protests and demonstrations of the groups challenging or defending the status quo in the Sixties and describes how the politics of the period turned abruptly from hope and peaceful change to despair and violence. He also demonstrates how the Sixties counterculture, once intent on changing the political and social structure, fragmented in the Seventies into groups focused on themselves. Anderson generally emphasizes the positive contributions of "the movement"?freedom to live alternative lifestyles and empowerment of ethnics, women, gays, youth, and senior citizens. But he glosses over the downside of the legacy: disintegration of the family unit, fragmentation of national politics, and increased drug use. David Farber's The Sixties: From Memory to History (Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1994) has a broader scope, but Anderson's generally evenhanded study adds rich detail missing from the earlier work. [For an in-depth view of the Sixties from those who helped create the revolution, see Ron Chepesiuk's Sixties Radicals, Then and Now, reviewed on p. 85.?Ed.]?Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Dieg.
-?Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Excellent look at the 1960's
This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

Terry H. Anderson did an exceptional job in his book delineating how a myriad of causes and movements got started and were conducted throughout the 1960's. Politically, the sixties were the most turbulent decade in America's history. Anderson took eight years to meticulously research and write a most informative book, explaining the chain of events that took place beginning in 1960 with a lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and ending with the end of the Vietnam War. This was not an easy task, considering many of the different movement organizations were not well organized, had no membership lists, and relied on small underground newspapers that were not published on a regularly scheduled basis. Anderson wisely noted that one can look back on the decade and glean from it much good for society that is still with us today; such as, the improvement in civil rights for minorities in America, and an awareness to improve the environment. One can also find social ills spawned by the decade that still plague American society today such as, the pernicious use of illegal drugs, and the sharp rise in teen-age pregnancy rates. Anderson took a different approach than most other historians who researched the sixties. He did not look at the decade from the standpoint of the leaders of the various movements, nor did he focus his attention on movement organizational history. Instead, Anderson's book is more of a national study of the sixties. In his approach, Anderson actually traced the chronological development of activism as it swept across the country, and how different movements allied with one another and/or became outgrowths of preceding struggles. In addition, he explained how activism spawned a completely new counter culture near the end of the decade. Thus, Anderson's book is an extremely useful social and political historical guide to the 1960's.

Anderson astutely traced how activism started with the struggle for civil rights that college students joined in the South. The sixties was also an age of television, and students were disgusted by the injustices and bloody violence against Blacks that they witnessed in news stories on television. Anderson noted that this was the catalyst that caused many White students to leave the safety of their college campuses, and travel down south on Freedom Rides to help Blacks fight the inequities of the Jim Crow laws. This activist desire to change America's status quo swept up both coasts, taking hold at elite universities where students created and joined liberal organizations. Once men started to go off to fight in Vietnam in 1965, activism started to change in two ways. First, besides just being involved in the civil rights struggle, activists took on the new cause of also demonstrating against the war. Secondly, activism spread to all the liberal cities across the country with large universities, including America's heartland. Although Anderson found that the New Left ideology came from many different influences, it was the ideas espoused in the Port Huron Statement, which typified many activists' dreams for how they wanted to transform American society.

In December of 1961, Robert Haber a University of Michigan student and president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), along with other members of a steering committee, understood that the organization needed a manifesto to express its political and social ideals. In June of 1962 at a campsite in Port Huron Michigan, 43 SDS members and a few other activists spent five days debating a draft manifesto written by Tom Hayden, a student at the University of Michigan and editor of its newspaper. What eventually emerged was the Port Huron Statement, which examined "American politics, economics, racism, and foreign policy; the nuclear issue; the role of students; communism; and the themes and values of SDS" (62). The first line in the statement embodied the reason why students in the sixties took to becoming activist. "We are people of this generation bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." Anderson's research indicated that many activists believed the manifesto's significance was far reaching. The Port Huron Statement repudiated all the socio-economic and political values of the 1950's. It also proposed a new idealism that Hayden claimed was a bit to the left of the Democratic party for the sixties such as, advocating "social programs to fight poverty, establish national health care, help family farmers, and develop equal educational opportunities" (63). By the 1972 Democratic Party convention, many of the ideals of the Port Huron Statement found their way into the party platform. They were placed there by a plethora of minority delegates from various movement streams that had finally attained recognition in a major American political party. "Compared with 1968, the ratio of female delegates at the 1972 convention tripled to almost 40 percent, blacks tripled to 15 percent, and those under the age of 30 soared from 2 to over 20 percent" (397). They nominated the most liberal candidate in the party's, Senator George McGovern, who was soundly defeated by President Richard Nixon in the election.

In conclusion, although many movement activists took the loss of the 1972 election as a bitter defeat of their sixties idealism, Anderson astutely proved that activism did not die in 1972--it took a slower more peaceful pace. New activist movements, more recently termed "pressure groups," owe their birthright to the movements and activists of the sixties such as, Gray Power, a movement of senior citizens that was formed to advocate for their demands. The recent and intense focus on "global warming" is certainly an outgrowth of the sixties activists' concerns for the protection of the environment. Finally, Anderson's book showed that although various sixties movements such as the SDS, Hippies and Yippies may have disappeared, activism is a part of the lifeblood of both of America's political parties. Since the sixties, Americans have been more receptive to questioning socio-economic, political, and religious institutions.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, Civil Rights history.

Excellent look at the 1960's
This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

Terry H. Anderson did an exceptional job in his book delineating how a myriad of causes and movements got started and were conducted throughout the 1960's. Politically, the sixties were the most turbulent decade in America's history. Anderson took eight years to meticulously research and write a most informative book, explaining the chain of events that took place beginning in 1960 with a lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and ending with the end of the Vietnam War. This was not an easy task, considering many of the different movement organizations were not well organized, had no membership lists, and relied on small underground newspapers that were not published on a regularly scheduled basis. Anderson wisely noted that one can look back on the decade and glean from it much good for society that is still with us today; such as, the improvement in civil rights for minorities in America, and an awareness to improve the environment. One can also find social ills spawned by the decade that still plague American society today such as, the pernicious use of illegal drugs, and the sharp rise in teen-age pregnancy rates. Anderson took a different approach than most other historians who researched the sixties. He did not look at the decade from the standpoint of the leaders of the various movements, nor did he focus his attention on movement organizational history. Instead, Anderson's book is more of a national study of the sixties. In his approach, Anderson actually traced the chronological development of activism as it swept across the country, and how different movements allied with one another and/or became outgrowths of preceding struggles. In addition, he explained how activism spawned a completely new counter culture near the end of the decade. Thus, Anderson's book is an extremely useful social and political historical guide to the 1960's.

Anderson astutely traced how activism started with the struggle for civil rights that college students joined in the South. The sixties was also an age of television, and students were disgusted by the injustices and bloody violence against Blacks that they witnessed in news stories on television. Anderson noted that this was the catalyst that caused many White students to leave the safety of their college campuses, and travel down south on Freedom Rides to help Blacks fight the inequities of the Jim Crow laws. This activist desire to change America's status quo swept up both coasts, taking hold at elite universities where students created and joined liberal organizations. Once men started to go off to fight in Vietnam in 1965, activism started to change in two ways. First, besides just being involved in the civil rights struggle, activists took on the new cause of also demonstrating against the war. Secondly, activism spread to all the liberal cities across the country with large universities, including America's heartland. Although Anderson found that the New Left ideology came from many different influences, it was the ideas espoused in the Port Huron Statement, which typified many activists' dreams for how they wanted to transform American society.

In December of 1961, Robert Haber a University of Michigan student and president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), along with other members of a steering committee, understood that the organization needed a manifesto to express its political and social ideals. In June of 1962 at a campsite in Port Huron Michigan, 43 SDS members and a few other activists spent five days debating a draft manifesto written by Tom Hayden, a student at the University of Michigan and editor of its newspaper. What eventually emerged was the Port Huron Statement, which examined "American politics, economics, racism, and foreign policy; the nuclear issue; the role of students; communism; and the themes and values of SDS" (62). The first line in the statement embodied the reason why students in the sixties took to becoming activist. "We are people of this generation bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." Anderson's research indicated that many activists believed the manifesto's significance was far reaching. The Port Huron Statement repudiated all the socio-economic and political values of the 1950's. It also proposed a new idealism that Hayden claimed was a bit to the left of the Democratic party for the sixties such as, advocating "social programs to fight poverty, establish national health care, help family farmers, and develop equal educational opportunities" (63). By the 1972 Democratic Party convention, many of the ideals of the Port Huron Statement found their way into the party platform. They were placed there by a plethora of minority delegates from various movement streams that had finally attained recognition in a major American political party. "Compared with 1968, the ratio of female delegates at the 1972 convention tripled to almost 40 percent, blacks tripled to 15 percent, and those under the age of 30 soared from 2 to over 20 percent" (397). They nominated the most liberal candidate in the party's, Senator George McGovern, who was soundly defeated by President Richard Nixon in the election.

In conclusion, although many movement activists took the loss of the 1972 election as a bitter defeat of their sixties idealism, Anderson astutely proved that activism did not die in 1972--it took a slower more peaceful pace. New activist movements, more recently termed "pressure groups," owe their birthright to the movements and activists of the sixties such as, Gray Power, a movement of senior citizens that was formed to advocate for their demands. The recent and intense focus on "global warming" is certainly an outgrowth of the sixties activists' concerns for the protection of the environment. Finally, Anderson's book showed that although various sixties movements such as the SDS, Hippies and Yippies may have disappeared, activism is a part of the lifeblood of both of America's political parties. Since the sixties, Americans have been more receptive to questioning socio-economic, political, and religious institutions.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, Civil Rights history.

Disappointing results from a brillant start
Anderson, takes on a monolith topic, and in doing so sheds much light on the agitation of race relations and the anti-war movement that swept the campuses of America in the Sixties. Unfortunately, he is depended all too often on establishment sources, and his interpretation of movement frenzy is something short of the realism we would expect from such a book. His attempt to span the pre-Kent State with post Kent State aftermath is unique and insightful though, and worth the effort for the benefit of this arguement alone.
Timothy Fitzgerald