Discuss the connections between the antiwar movement, hippies, the counterculture, and the Black Power movement. What were the successes and failures of the New Left?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
1. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) set the tone for most of these movements, but each movement had its own audience.
2. The antiwar movement opposed the war and tried both to avoid the draft and end the war.
3. As part of the growing counterculture, millions of young people in the second half of the 1960s expressed their alienation from American society by sampling drugs or chasing the rainbow of a youth culture.
4. The hippies were a subset of the counterculture and used large amounts of drugs and sometimes even believed that they could reach an alternate consciousness through those drugs.
5. The Black Power movement took many forms: control of one's own community through the voting machine, celebration of the African American heritage, creation of a parallel society that shunned white institutions. Some expressed interest in the Nation of Islam, but fractures within the movement and government repression ended their efforts.
6. The New Left succeeded in creating a new grassroots movement of militancy and interest in the wider world, but failed in bringing about any permanent change.