E-Seminar Summary

In Cultural Revolutions, the eighth of ten e-seminars in the series America Since 1945, Alan Brinkley discusses the 1960s, a turbulent decade marked by broad cultural change that affected both the individual and culture. Professor Brinkley refers to the death of what sociologist Richard Sennett calls "the public world," of the idea of a civic community in which individuals act according to accepted norms. The sixties, marked by "the rising public visibility of the private self," as Professor Brinkley put it, "by a redefinition of the self and its relationship to society," saw increasing numbers of Americans reject traditional standards of behavior, language, and dress. The definition of youth, women, and racial and ethnic minorities as distinct classes was heightened even as increased emphasis on the individual led many to cultivate their inner selves and to renegotiate their relationship to the public world.

The Lesson

The Goals of the Lesson

This exercise will prepare students to analyze the primary sources in the related document-based question (DBQ) Sixties Radicalism and Conservatism. Students will compare two different kinds of primary sources: the Port Huron Statement (1962), a proclamation issued by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and images from the sixties.

This teaching activity will teach students how to

• pose questions about a document's author, date, and publication
• identify the author's point of view
• determine the author's intended audience
• understand the author's purpose or agenda
• recognize the author's style and tone

Primary Sources to be Examined

• Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement
• Images from The Psychedelic '60s: Literary Tradition and Social Change

Step 1: Document Analysis

The preparatory phase is suggested as homework. Ask your students to read the full text of the Port Huron Statement. It is too long for them to read during class, but they can glean a great deal about the spirit of the sixties from reading the introduction, "Agenda for a Generation." First, they should review the Written Document Analysis Worksheet, created by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Questions 3 through 6 will help students identify the author, perspective, and agenda of the Port Huron Statement. Its main author was Tom Hayden, a social activist who later entered politics. It served as the mission statement of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which established branches at college campuses across the nation. In the Port Huron Statement, the discontents of many college and university students find expression.

Guiding Questions: The Port Huron Statement

In addition to the NARA questionnaire, you can use the questions below that are specific to the Port Huron Statement. Tell your students that, as they read the document, they should look for evidence that helps answer the questions.

1. What factors do the authors of the Port Huron Statement identify and blame for their feeling alienated from American society? What do they mean by "American society"?
2. The authors discuss the troubling "paradoxes" of American society. What obstacles stand in the way of their solving them?
3. Would Richard Sennett consider that the statements made at the very beginning of this document contribute to the "death of the public world?" Or is the meaning of the statements more complicated than anything that could be captured in Sennett's formulation?

For homework, your students can write responses to these questions, in preparation for a class discussion.

Step 2: In-Class Discussion

Here you have two options for class discussion. One is to discuss the Port Huron Statement and the specific points raised in the guiding questions about student alienation, the paradoxes of American society, and the relationship between the private self and public world.

Step 3: Image Analysis

The second option is to add an examination of images and writings that, in part, shaped or reflected the sixties. Background material for this second exercise is available in Professor Brinkley's discussion of the ideas that drove the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. During an in-class period, ask your students to examine The Psychedelic '60s: Literary Tradition and Social Change, an online exhibit published by the University of Virginia at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/index.html. The site is divided into different thematic sections on the sixties, each of which includes annotated album covers, book covers, photographs, and posters.

Divide your students into small groups of three or four, and assign a different section to each group. Sections include

• Civil Rights http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/civil.html
• Vietnam War http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/viet.html
• Rock Music http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/rock.html
• Hippies http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/hippies.html.
• Radical Groups http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/radical.html
• Posters http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/posters.html

Ask your students to examine the images within their assigned section using the Photo Analysis Worksheet, and identify examples that represent (or do not represent) a challenge to the "public world" of the time, to the constellation of norms and widely accepted values. Specific examples that students will discover in the section "Hippies" include the covers of two books, The Great Hippie Hoax and The Hippie Handbook. The first book cover shows examples of pins worn on clothing, each representing a position on issues ranging from sexual liberation to criticism of the police. The second book cover shows a "typical" male and female hippie, which will doubtlessly engage students, especially the diagrams explaining hippie fashion.

Guiding Questions: The Sixties Images

Before students examine the images in their respective sections, ask them to review the following questions in order:

1. What are the government policies, the institutions, or the traditions of American society that these images are used to criticize or ridicule?
2. What symbols are used to express how the beliefs of the individuals or groups represented in your section differ from the beliefs underpinning traditional American values?
3. What is the tone of the criticism in your section? Is it angry, or is it humorous? How do you account for the tone of your specific group?
4. To what segments of American society—segments defined by age, gender, ethnicity, and race—do the images appeal?

Conclusion

So that all the students can share their findings with each other, the teacher may select from each group a representative to discuss one or two images. As an alternative, the teacher may project images and artifacts (one from each section) to stimulate classwide discussion. Ask your students to consider again the following DBQ prompt "To what extent did political, ideological, and/or social tensions play out among conservatives and radicals in American society during the 1960s?" Ask them to begin making arguments whereby they link evidence from the Port Huron Statement to evidence gleaned from other primary sources related to the 1960s. As this activity is focused specifically on radicalism, you should ask your students to consider what they would look for in their analysis of primary sources in which the views and opinions of Americans from different ideological backgrounds are represented.

Sources Used

• Students for a Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society (New York: Students for a Democratic Society, 1962), reprinted as The Port Huron Statement, 1962, Sixties series, no. 1 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1990). You can view an excerpt from this document in the Primary Sources Directory
• The Psychedelic '60s: Literary Tradition and Social Change, University of Virginia, http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/index.html.