Why did protests increase dramatically in the 1960s?
* The growth of pop music focused more attention on the younger generation. * Increased education meant that teenagers did not have to earn their livings. * The death of Kennedy raised questions about US society and Civil Rights encouraged civil disobedience and Kennedy himself backed the Freedom Riders. * The bombing of North Vietnam in 1965 lead to many student protests. 3,000,000 Americans served in the war and their average age was nineteen. Many resorted to drugs to help themselves survive the horrors of the war. * By the later 1960s the tactics adopted by the USA to try to win the war clearly involved killing civilians and brutalising soldiers. * The slogan ‘Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?’ became widespread. The two issues of Civil Rights and Vietnam joined together, as blacks pointed out the disproportionate numbers of black soldiers in the Vietnam War. * Protests reached a peak in 1968, when ‘Flower Power’, with its slogan ‘make love not war’ became the rag
