The beginning of the 1970’s brought emerging social movements. The largest of these was the Women’s Liberation Movement which fought for equal pay, better education, birth control and abortion rights for women. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, legalized abortion., allowing women more options for dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Divorce laws were amended in many states, allowing women the ability to seek divorces and obtain spousal support. Women joined the workforce in huge numbers and  outnumbered men on college campuses.

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

 “Just what was the problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say “I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.” Or she would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes…. “A tired feeling … I get so angry with the children it scares me. … I feel like crying without any reason.”

The quote shows that women were not satisfied with their role in society anymore and wanted more in life.  Women had a new life plan including not viewing housework as a career; not trying to find total fulfillment through marriage and motherhood alone; and finding meaningful work that uses the woman’s full mental capacity. Betty Friedman was among the women who took a step to bring about these changes to society. She wanted to give women the right to do anything they desired. She spoke for the whole female population and influenced them to change, therefore Howard Zinn included her in his writings.

American Indian Movement

The most surprising uprising of the 1970’s was the American Indian Movement(AIM). At the turn of the 20th century, American Indians organized in large numbers in the 70’s to address the wrongs done to them since the time of Columbus. In dramatic fashion, members of AIM occupied the former island prison of Alcatraz in 1969 to draw attention to their grievances against the American government.

Chief Luther Standing Bear, in his 1933 autobiography, From the Land of the Spotted Eagle, wrote:

 True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting- the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization… .

For many Americans in the early twentieth century, the problems of Native Americans too often seemed distant. Luther Standing Bear was an advocate for reform in the United States government’s often neglectful policies toward Native Americans. Much of his writing addresses the inequities and injustices of a system that consigned Indians to life on reservations without adequate schools, housing, or medicine. A year after the publication of The Land of the Spotted Eagle, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), legislation designed to return to Native Americans control of reservation resources, reduce disproportionately high unemployment rates, and restore the administrative authority of individual tribes. Thus, Howard Zinn included him in his writings.

Betty Friedan (Women’s Liberation)

The 1950’s were a period in United Stated where gender roles were strictly and narrowly defined and anyone who broke those set definitions was regarded as strange and different. Women in that era were supposed to take care of their children and husband, cook food, and look beautiful. However, in the 1960’s a number of movements began to emerge and a number of women took on the task to expand the gender roles and give women the opportunity to do more with their lives than just staying home and taking care of the house. Betty Friedan wrote a book called The Feminine Mystique in which she talks about the ‘problem’ that every middle class woman faces but can not do anything about. In a quote from her book, Friedan writes,

The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, -A sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slip-cover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night-she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question- “Is this all?”…

I think Zinn talks about Friedan because she served as a spokesperson for all the women that dreamt to achieve something in their lifetimes. She advocated that a woman’s role in society should not just be limited to making her family happy but she should be given the opportunity to discover herself and have a right to do “creative work of her own”.

Prisoners

The 1960’s were a time for change and as Women, Indians and Gay people fought for their rights, the prisoners too organized in an effort to bring change. Zinn includes prisoners because their story depicts how America treated its poor class during that time. Dostoevski once said: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” America’s prisons were a place where the prisoners were provided with unbearable living conditions. A Walpole prisoner recalled the food as unbearable “with hundreds of cockroaches running away from the trays”. The poor were also more likely to get prisoned because they could not afford to hire expensive lawyers or to get bailed and the judges who were mostly orthodox white males tended to show little or no sympathy to the poor, homosexuals and the blacks etc. This all created a sense of resentment and hatred within the prisoners and finally led to a number of furious protests and revolutions. Another Walpole prisoner stated that, “Every program that we get is used as a weapon against us. The right to go to school, to go to church, to have visitors, to write, to go to the movies. They all end up being weapons of punishment. None of the programs are ours, Everything is treated as a privilege that can be taken away from us. The result is insecurity-a frustration that keeps eating away at you”

Therefore, it was not long before that the prisoners realized that their condition could only be ameliorated if they took the task upon themselves and resisted to the injustices done to them.

Overall both the women’s liberation movement and the Prisoner’s movement are examples of the circumstances that led America to become the radical and rebellious country that it was in the 1970’s and people finally realized that in order to achieve equality, they needed to break the narrow mindedness of the society and finally start looking beyond one’s color, gender or class.

Sid Mills was a Native American who, for all intents and purposes to the U.S government was a protester first, and a Vietnam war veteran second.  Sid was arrested at Frank’s Landing in 1968 during a protest. He later made a statement in which he highlighted the lack of consideration and respect for Native American tribes, especially those which included veterans of the war. ‘we have already buried Indian fishermen returned dead from Vietnam, while Indian fishermen live here without protection and under steady attack…’ (493) He concluded his statement by saying that the indigenous people’s would fight for their rights. Zinn included this because this statement creates an opening for the topic of the Native American plight over the course of America’s short history. The native tribes have been fighting against the oppression of the white settlers for as long as the threat has posed itself. However, in more modern history, their fight has been a partially dormant conquest. The natives have been thought to be a nearly extinct peoples, without much claim left and a seemingly lost cause. This was not the case. The occupation of the village of Wounded Knee is but one example of the Native American resistance. Sid Mills brings light to the relentless disregard of Native Americans. Veteran’s of the war, whose ancestors homeland was invaded, have given their lives to this country are still left without protection. As Sid Mills stated ‘Just three years ago today, on October 13, 1965, 19 women and children were brutalized by more than 45 armed agents of the State of Washington at Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually river in a vicious, unwarranted attack. …’. The natives have made attempts to assimilate but they are still met without any real prominence in government standing. They are treated as outcasts, when they are factually more American, not less.

On the topic of women’s suffrage, a much more broad point was made through a woman named Adrienne Rich. Adrienne’s inclusion instills the argument that the control of women in society was not done directly by the state as with other oppressed people, but within the family, in their very homes. After women had gained the right to vote many years prior, there were no vital outstanding laws preventing women from proceeding as prominent members of society. Nearly any and all oppression was birthed within the walls of one’s own family. ‘the family was used-men to control women, women to control children, all to be preoccupied with one another, to turn to one another for help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when tidings weren’t going right.’ Adrienne was a housewife fulfilling the ‘traditional’ tasks as a woman, completing her role. She questioned her doings, but was met with the answer ‘this is what women have always done’. Women’s liberation began with the women themselves, within their own bodies, as women’s bodies are the very base of their exploitation. The largest part of women’s suffrage and perhaps the most difficult was within the boundaries of the home. ‘They could revolutionize thought and behavior in exactly that seclusion of family privacy which the system had counted on to do its work of control and indoctrination. And together, instead of at odds-male, female, parents, children-they could undertake the changing of society itself’

                In 60s, prisoners were treated badly and some of them were sent to a prison with unreasonable. The following is an interview with a young black man, who refused to register for the draft during the Vietnam War, by Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist.

“How was your hair then?” I asked.

“Afro.”

“And what were you wearing?”

“A dashiki.”

“Don’t you think that might have affected your sentence?”

“Of course.”

“Was it worth a year or two of your life?” I asked. “That’s all of my life,” he said, looking at me with a combination of dismay and confusion. “Man, don’t you know! That’s what it’s all about! Am I free to have my style, am I free to have my hair, am I free to have my skin?”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re right.” (516)

While others had received two-year sentences for the same prosecution, this black man received five-year sentences. This interview tells he received such a strict penalty because he was black. Zinn also mentions the statistics of people who were sent to a prison. Poor people were more likely to go to a prison than wealthy people. According to Zinn, not only poverty made people to commit crimes, but also wealthy people hired good lawyers to avoid prosecutions or to get better sentences. That is, prejudice about race and social class affected sentences. Zinn implies that these socially oppressed people were sent to a prison and it made the way to treat prisoners worse.

The Indians were also people who had been oppressed in the U.S. for a long time. Since the Pilgrims arrived at Americas, they attacked and took away the land and the culture from the Indians. The Indians were placed in the Indian reservations and had suffered for poverty. Although the Indians finally protested against the government and well-educated Indians led the protest and negotiation to improve the Indians’ right, the oppression against the Indians continued in a different form.

“Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear these statements (526).”

            Vine Deloria, Jr., made ironic remarks in his book about President Johnson talked about commitments of the U.S. and President Nixon talked that Russia failed to respect treaties. Zinn explains, “the United States government had signed more than four hundred treaties with Indians and violated every single one.” To ease the Indian’s protest, the government just pretended to make a compromise with the Indians. This dishonest attitude increased the incredibility against the government.

In the American history women had been treated unequally. They don’t have right to vote and couldn’t get same pay as men got. Therefore, they stared feminism for their right. Therefore, they went out to protest for their right. In the chapter the author wrote” Women were 50 percent of the voters-but (even by 1967) they held 4 percent of the state legislative seats, and 2 percent of the judgeships”. This shows that even after feminism, women still been treated unequally. Although half of voters were women, they only held a few seats in state legislative and judgeships. In additional, the state legislative is the government branch to create laws, if they don’t have enough seats, they will not have any chance to pass the law for women. Moreover, if there are a few women in judgeships, they will not get fair adjudge. As the result, they still didn’t have the same right as men had. Therefore, I think they are important in the chapter because it forces people to change their views, that the women are equal as the men.

In the chapter Zinn also includes the Native Americans because they were persecuted in the past. In the American history, the Native American had signed many treaties with white people. Some of the treaties were signed is voluntary, but some of the treaties were forced to sign by the white people, such as gave up their home land and moved to the wild west. “When it was over between 200 and 300 of the original 350 men, women, and children were dead. The twenty-five soldiers who died were mostly hit by their own shrapnel or bullets, since the Indians had only a few guns”. This shows when the Indians refused to do what the white people ordered them to do; they would be attacked by the militaries. Moreover, even most of them were women and children, and without weapons, soldier still cold-bloodedly killed all of them. Some of the soldiers were killed by their own bullets when they butchered the Indians. In conclusion, since the Indians were been treated unequally, I think they also important in the chapter because it force people to know whoever has the same right as we have, even they are the Native Americans, they are American too.

George Jackson was a “political prisoner” of the United States of America by Howard Zinn’s standards. He died after 10 years in jail, serving an inhumane: “indeterminate sentence for a $70 robbery” (519). Jackson, spoke out against his oppressors and died at their hands: “August 17 he was shot in the back by guards at San Quentin prison” (519). Jackson’s life candidly captures the plight of a people. A population who has been exiled into a mass solitary confinement. The criminal has been stripped of his humanity and deemed unfit for life within society. Perhaps rightfully so, the materialistic consumer nation that America has become has little space for dissidents. Zinn’s point in including Jackson can be perceived from several perspectives. It can be seen as an attack on the fairness of the American judicial system, why has George Jackson been locked away for over a decade while President Nixon is pardoned for crimes against the country. Jackson’s inclusion could play the role of bait in attracting sympathy for yet another oppressed and marginalized people. Not to mention the possibility of viewing George Jackson as the simple archetype of the complex criminal; educated and isolated, dangerous yet invisible.

Sid Mills is also included in Howard Zinn’s 19th chapter: Surprises. However, Mills’ role is to illuminate a different, arguably more thoroughly eradicated, population. The Native Americans have been at war with the United States of America for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, the popular consensus is the  ignorant assumption that these people have completely seceded to the regime of colonization in the 1600s: “It was thought that the Indians . . . . annihilated by the white invaders, would not be heard from again” (524). This is obviously a misconception upon the necessary inquiry. The Native American presence in the United States has retained a level of militancy and resistance through the 1900s: “By 1960 there were 800,000 Indians, half on reservations, half in town all over the country” (524). “Resistance was taking shape in various parts of the country” (526). While this point is true, many Native Americans did indeed venture in American society in hopes of conforming and finding some brand of normalcy. I believe herein lies the significance of Sid Mills’ mention. Mills served a foreign nation in the United States through  a false war in Vietnam. He realized that he was working for his oppressors for the acquisition of yet another colony and repeating the atrocities that his people endured so many years ago. Nevertheless, Mills’ major point, in a statement made in October of 1968, was to shed light upon the continued assault on the indigenous people of the continent: “Indian fishermen returned dead from Vietnam, while Indian fishermen live here without protection and under steady attack” (527). Sid Mills complete the tormented archetype of a perpetual victim. He has been disenfranchised from his environment by force and his response is to surrender by compliance. Contrary to moral instinct the tyrants he fought for have discharged him after expended used: “until critically wounded.” and resumed the destruction of him and his people.

   During 1960s to 1970s, strive to promote equality of blacks began to spread to other minority ethnic groups. People in the United States asked their equal rights, specifically the group of women and the group of Native Americans.

   World War II had brought more women than ever before out of the home into work. Women treated as men in the army. They helped to fight enemies, they helped to maintain homelands, and they helped to prepare for battles. However, women did not have the same equal rights as men after World War II. In the book, A People’s History of The United States, in Chapter 19 showed ” A few years ago I was suspended for three days from work because my children were still young and I had to take time off when they were sick…They want people who keep quiet, squeal on one another, and are very good little robots. The fact that many have to take nerve pills before starting their day, and a week doesn’t go by that there aren’t two or three people who break down and cry, doesn’t mean a thing to them.” According to this quote, women have no rights in workplace, at home, or public places. Men treat them very harsh, even though women work harder than men. Seems these happened for a long time or seems women helped to fight for the World War II, high educational women came out and led others to fight for women’s rights. These led the Feminist Movement, and women successfully earned their rights at the end. They had equal rights as men do.

  After the end of World War II, many group were out and fought for their rights. Native Americans was one group of them, because the government rules treated them very harsh. Their homelands were getting smaller, and they forced by white men. Even though they were the first group arrived in the United States, they still did not have equal rights as white men’s do. In the same book showed, “1.It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of teansportation. 2.It has no fresh running water. 3.It has inadequate sanitation facilitiees. 4.There are no oil or mineral rights. 5.There is no industry and so unemployment is very great. 6.There are no health care facilities. 7.The soil is rocky and non-productive; and the land does not support game. 8.There are no educational facilities. 9.The populartion has always exceeded the land base. 10.The population has always been held as prisoners and dependent upon others.” These quote showed Native Americans had no rights to use or to enjoy public facilities. Their living environments were bad, no fresh water, no oil or mineral rights. Everything for life, they had to find by themselves. Seems blacks earned their rights, Native Americans started to fight for their rights like women.

   These two movement were important for American histories. Feminist Movement and Native Americans Movement are helped to make American Laws more completely. Rights expressed more equally. Discrimination and prejudice were decreased, and human rights were more normal. Human rights were not only service for adult men, but women and some Minorities.

“Times indeed were changing”

Early 19^th century in the U.S, women’s housework was not considered real work because work consisted of getting a profit. Times were changing between 1960s and 1970s. Around the period, most women began to speak up. One of them is Betty Friedan. She wrote “The Feminine Mystique.” According to her, she spoke “The ‘mystique’ that Friedan spoke of was the image of the woman as mother, as wife, living through her husband, through her children, giving up her own dreams for that.”(505). And she mentioned that women should have a creative work of her own for the women. In the 60s’ women did not have choice to work outside, and give up their dreams for their families. However, the end of 60s the society changed that women had 40% of entire employee.

Moreover, “more important, people were beginning to speak of ‘Women’s Liberation.’” This movement represented by organizations. Witch was an organization for radical women. They said “There is no joining WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.”(508) Women became strong and learned self-defense to protect them from sexual discrimination. Because, the law and government did not do anything for women, the only way they got rights was took action and protest themselves. This movement occurred in 1967. Women’s group had lobby President Johnson to banned sex discrimination in federally connected employment.

As feminist movements occurred, other movements also occurred by the Native Americans. Native Americans were attacked and subdued by the white invaders. They were forced to become a part of civilization but they never forget their root and culture. Moreover, the government violates every single treaty between them and the Indians. Indians wants their land back and their rights. This represents the movements that Indians resist both physical resistance and the artifacts of white culture. Also, “Indians were already gathering their energy for resistance, thinking about how to change their situation, beginning to organize.”(525) They already take action for their rights. Consequently, Indians were trying to take their rights and their land from white invaders. This represent as occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969. They want to show they could rebuild the land and make it a Native American Studies for Ecology. And the change was happening in the schools, teachers began throwing away textbooks that did not include or ignore Indians. There was a general rejection against oppressive and artifact.

“The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes…. We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action…”

Shirley Chisholm was a black Congresswoman during the 1970s, when she decided gender inequality could no longer be tolerated. It was no longer acceptable for women to be treated merely as housewives, trophies or human beings without the ability to decide what she can do. If men were able to do whatever they desired, then why shouldn’t women do the same? Due to the unequal treatment, many women fought for laws to be written in order to equalize the playing field for both genders. But, Chisholm believed that actions speak louder than words and that in order to change how women are treated, women must defy the stereotype that society has created for them and create a new view for women.

To further the push for female equality, English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst said:

“Remember the dignity
of your womanhood.
Do not appeal,
do not beg,
do not grovel.
Take courage
join hands,
stand beside us.
Fight with us. …”

Before women could fight for equal treatment, Pankhurst believed that they should start by fighting for their bodies. Men would view young women as “sex plaything”, pregnant women as “helpless”, and middle aged and old women as discardable items that were no longer beautiful. In order to change this view, Pankhurst believed that women should stand up for themselves and have confidence in themselves no matter what situation they face. By doing so, they will be able to break free from the “biological prison” that had been created by men and society in order to keep women as caged helpless creatures that were reliant on men.

Zinn includes these individuals because like the others, they demonstrate that it was time for the inequality that women had to face to be abolished. Zinn includes these women because they come from different ethnic backgrounds and yet they both fought for the same belief; the belief that although women were biologically different from men, their thoughts and actions were just as powerful as those from a man. If they were just as capable as a man, then they should be treated the same and so they demanded change.