Politics and protest - OCR AStudent protest

Many young people who studied at college and university became increasingly involved in protest movements. Students were an important element of the growing support for the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Many were disgusted by racism in America and got involved in a number of ways to try to end discrimination. These included:

• taking part in sit-ins at segregated restaurants and lunch counters, which began in Greensboro in 1960
• getting involved in freedom rides in 1961
• marching as part of the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963
• travelling through the southern states, helping black Americans to register to vote as part of the Freedom Summer movement in 1964

Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society(SDS) was founded at the University of Michigan in 1959. It initially focused on enabling students to have more say in the courses they were studying. In 1964, members of the SDS were involved in setting up the Free Speech Movement(FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. The FSM was founded because students had been banned from protesting in support of the civil rights movement.

By the end of the 1960s, membership of the SDS had significantly increased due to public outrage about the Vietnam War. There were around 100,000 SDS members in over 400 colleges and universities across America

The SDS organised sit-ins, rallies, occupied university and college buildings and gave speeches in protest about a range of issues, such as:

• nuclear disarmament
• equal rights for women
• equal rights for African Americans
• America’s involvement in the Vietnam War
• the standard of education at universities and colleges
• free speech

The SDS’s leadership struggled to deal with the many factions that formed within the organisation. A faction that became well known was the Weathermen, who were in favour of militant and aggressive methods of protest. In 1970, the Weathermen attempted to bomb a building in New York that was being used by soldiers for a social occasion. The bomb exploded before it could be placed at the intended target and three Weathermen members died. Further bombings on government buildings took place over the next few years. However, they did not create the mass protest movement intended by the Weathermen.

As America’s involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end in 1975, the SDS broke up.