America in 1960 is the wealthiest country on Earth in every way. Industrially, in terms of national income, in terms of the well being of its people. The European countries destroyed by the war are beginning to be functioning again and being reconstructed as our East Asian countries. But America is still very much dominant. The prosperity of America really is shaping the American story in this period of time. In the 1960s we see the taking off of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle to end the American apartheid, and this is a substantial change. We get involved in yet another war to limit or stop communist expansion. We had fought one in Korea. We had fought one, we had been involved in coos through Latin America and in Central Asia. And then US invested heavily in preventing the communist expansion in Vietnam. And in the midst of all of that, the US government was drafting really hundreds of thousands of young Americans to go and fight in Vietnam. And so there was a huge row in the country about the draft and the war. The second women's movement is in its development, which is focusing primarily on access to employment. That women should have access to universities, they should have access to jobs, they should have access equal to jobs. Equal pay for equal work become a major slogan and control of fertility become also a major issue. The restrictions on a woman being able to make her decisions about having children be removed, and that decision be left to women themselves. And then towards the end of this period we have the expansion of the gay rights movement. Which had been moving on since the really repressive periods of the early 1950s and had been forming in the early 60s. But really coalesces in the Stone Wall Riots in New York in 1969. So the Civil Rights Movement set about to end separate but equal. States sponsored segregation that limited who went, where you went to school, how you travelled, whether you could sit in the same railcar and the same bus, whether you could stay in the same hotels. Whether you could live together in the same housing projects, the fights for open housing. These were major struggles of civil rights movements. There were major confrontations. At one point in Birmingham the entire Black population stopped using buses for almost six months in order to confront this segregation on the bus system. And ultimately, won and broke the segregationist policies. But the pushback was enormous, the Ku Klux Klan was fighting. We had huge fights across the south, but also in northern cities about this. And with Dr. Martin Luther King, and the southern Christian leadership movement, but also the NAACP and SNCC and other organizations. The country was really fighting to end the segregation apartheid system. And this included allowing people to vote. The constitutional amendments after the Civil War had guaranteed that African Americans had full rights as citizens. But organization lead through poll taxes and education tax, and just raw intimidation. It had become almost impossible in the part of the country that had the largest Black populations for people to vote. And so that fight for the Voter Rights Act the Federal Voters Right Act that enforce the right to vote was a major fight. And was won with Johnson signing this bill in 1965. And so we have the accommodation fights, the school segregation fights, the housing fights, and the voters rights fights. All of which culminate in a changed America that is no longer formally sponsoring apartheid. Although we're still a long way away from having an inclusive society. I think will be widely accepted. One of the solutions to all of this was affirmative action. It was a policy by the federal government that anybody who worked on any kind of federal dollars had to operate their business in such a way that people who had equal skills would have equal access to work. So that women, Blacks, Latin people, Asian people, eventually LGBT people would have access to jobs, and couldn't be kept out of jobs because of their category, if they had skills. And in matter of fact, affirmative action said that if you had two people with the same skill level you were to take the historically discriminated against group. And so this movement in civil rights really begins to restructure America. Part of this movement spreads into the special education movement so that kids with different learning styles would get full education in school. The federal government passed the IDA, The Special Education Act and funded special education programs. Also, slightly later, we pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. We'll talk about that in a little bit later. The seconds women's movement pushes to create access in universities, and access in schools, access in employment, and the fight for equal pay for equal work develops. And we see the beginnings of the fight for inclusion of LBGT people. And the issue of adoption, the issue of not harassing and arresting people for sexual behavior. So these parts of the civil rights movement really bring about a major change in America.
