The Growth Of The Counterculture: The Civil Rights Movement

The growth of the "counterculture" was actually sparked by the civil rights movement, where the "radical student activism began to spread across American campuses in the 1960's" and developed by the Students for a Democratic Society in 1959 (Schultz 2014). By the late 1960's the activism had turned deadly in some instances when protests became violent all in the name of social justice. Originally, the SDS wanted to change the older political movement going on in America, even the older radical views were no longer acceptable. Accordingly, they called their group's ideas the "New Left" movement and what they were rejecting was the Old Left theories and agendas. The SDS encouraged college students to take action by expressing themselves in the form of protests and by educating others concerning important issues.
Some well known historical protests were the Free Speech movement in 1964, the Black Power movement in the late 1960's, and the Women's movement which split into two directions. The famous leader Malcolm X founded the Nation of Islam which was against integration but was in favor of an independent black nation. Furthermore, his concern was that protestors were much too
In the first place, the antiwar protestors were primarily students who had avoided the war because they exempt because of their student status. In the second place, the anti-antiwar individuals were the men believed the students were being treasonous by protesting (Schultz 2014). In August of 1968, a protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which was organized by the New Left, group turned ugly. The scene played out on national television as fighting between the police and protestors which ended with hundreds of injuries (Schultz 2014). Finally, in 1975, the nation saw an end to the war that had changed so many lives