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382 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1969)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0382 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION As the 1960's draw to a close, it is apparent that historians will look back upon this decade as one of protest. After the quiescence of the Eisenhower years, American society in the 1960's has been stirred and then wracked by the social and political actions of dissenting individuals and groups. From the relatively peace- ful days of sit-ins and freedom rides, protest has spread and become more militant to the point where university buildings have been occupied, sections of major cities have been burned to the ground, and a national political convention had to be held behind barbed wire. At the same time that confrontations were erupting in the streets, quieter but still significant manifestations of protest were to be found among youths, in the drug and hippie subcultures, and even in such a commercial art form as popular music. Indeed, protest has come in so many varieties and has been so widespread that some intellectuals who in the 1950's bemoaned the lack of social conscience of Americans have retreated behind closed doors to bewail the fact that people do not understand how well off they are in the United States. There is nothing new about protest in America. Despite a fagade of consensus that one group of social scientists has posited as the American tradition, protest against social, political, and economic inequities has a long history in the United States. Since the War of Independence, there have been major eras of protest comparable to the 1960's: the 1830's and 1840's, the 1880's and 1890's, and the 1930's, to name the most significant. Yet, despite these roots, protest in the 1960's has a number of characteristics which set it apart from earlier eras: (1) The current protest has occurred in a period of prolonged prosperity. (2) It has reflected the increasingly pluralistic nature of society, including not only ethnic groups, but also emerging subcultures centering around school, youth, and dropouts from society. (3) It has been essentially activist rather than ideological in orientation. (4) It has seen the emergence of nationwide black organizations which have excluded white membership. (5) It has been led by the younger generation, which has set the tone and direction of the movements. Though none of these five points is unique to the 1960's, taken together they do seem to set current protest off from past periods of social and political activism. While the aims of the various dissident groups in this decade have differed, it is obvious that they have fed on each other's experiences. If the early civil rights movement, the freedom rides and sit-ins by blacks and whites, helped to sensitize the black community to its plight and led to militancy, riots, and the exclusion of whites, so it also helped to foster the New Left, with its concern for not only the black ghetto but also the white poor. Similarly, the war in Vietnam not only aligned black moderates and militants, the New Left, and students in a united front, but it also sensitized students to the relationship between the miiltary- industrial complex and academia, and then brought them face to face with unresponsive bureaucracy on many campuses. This same bureaucracy and the ix

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