8.11 The Civil Rights Movement Expands

First-wave feminism had won the vote in 1920. The second wave, starting in the 1960s, targeted inequality in jobs, education, law and family life. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) described 'the problem that has no name', the frustration of educated women confined to homemaking. The Equal Pay Act (1963) required equal pay for equal work, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned sex discrimination in employment.

When the government was slow to enforce Title VII, Friedan and others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. Younger 'women's liberation' activists used consciousness-raising groups and protests and argued that 'the personal is political'.

Victories followed. Title IX (1972) banned sex discrimination in federally funded education, transforming girls' and women's sports. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy covered a woman's decision to have an abortion, especially early in pregnancy, a ruling that became the center of a lasting national debate (8.14). The Court later overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), returning abortion law to the states.

The Equal Rights Amendment, stating that equality of rights could not be denied on account of sex, passed Congress in 1972 and won quick approval in many states. But conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly's STOP ERA campaign argued it would end protections for women, such as exemption from the draft, and undermine traditional families. The ERA stalled at 35 of the 38 states needed by its extended 1982 deadline.

César Chávez and Dolores Huerta organized farmworkers, mostly Mexican American and Filipino, in California's fields. In 1965 Filipino grape workers led by Larry Itliong began the Delano grape strike, and Chávez and Huerta's union joined them; the groups merged into the United Farm Workers. A national consumer boycott of grapes, combined with nonviolent tactics like marches and fasts, won union contracts in 1970.

The Chicano movement, a term young Mexican American activists embraced, fought for civil rights, bilingual education and political power. In 1968 thousands of students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools to protest poor conditions, and La Raza Unida Party ran candidates in the Southwest. Puerto Rican activists organized in New York and Chicago.

After the 1950s 'termination' policy tried to end federal recognition of tribes and relocate Native people to cities, activists demanded sovereignty and self-determination. Activists occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969–1971. The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded in Minneapolis in 1968, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in 1972 and held the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for 71 days in 1973. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975) gave tribes more control over federal programs.

In June 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, and patrons fought back over several nights. The Stonewall uprising became a symbol of a new, more open gay liberation movement. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness, and in 1977 Harvey Milk was elected to San Francisco's board of supervisors, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S.; he was assassinated in 1978.

Asian American activists also organized, joining student strikes in 1968–1969 that created ethnic studies programs, and disability rights activists won Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973).