Start Date
4-10-2021 9:00 AM
End Date
4-10-2021 10:15 AM
Disciplines
Civil Rights and Discrimination | History | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Subjects
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities, Subversive activities -- United States -- History -- 20th century, New left -- United States -- History
Description
After the degradation of union power throughout the McCarthy era, a new politics took hold among young Americans, and its academic roots and appeal to young leftists established the university as the new institutional mediator for left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, allowing college students to promote antiwar, civil rights, and civil liberties campaigns both on and off campus. Years before the major events that are tied to the New Left in American collective memory, however, Bay Area college students’ protests against the House Un-American Activities Commission garnered national media attention for their perceived radicalism in the face of the federal government. Student protesters’ altercation with police at San Francisco City Hall in May of 1960 became a turning point at which the Old Left, New Left, and McCarthyism converged, providing valuable insight into the transition of broad leftist activism from union-based to direct action protest. Student protesters' adaptation of the nonviolent tactics associated with the Civil Rights Movement prompted outrage from the public and the federal government, and students across the nation soon adopted not only their protest strategy, but also the structure of the student organizations that promoted the demonstration. These protests, the first of their kind and a major precedent for what would become the student New Left movement, problematize the university as the postwar institutional mediator for left-wing protest and radicalism, revealing the disparities and power relations between students, professors, and administrators in the pursuit of their respective political agendas.
PART OF SESSION 5C. PARTISAN POLITICS:
Comment: Dale E. Soden, Whitworth University
Chair: Susan Larrabee, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Sophie C. Carter, University of Washington, undergraduate student
“Days of Decision: San Francisco’s 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee Protest as a Turning Point of the New Left”
Audrey J. Hanson, Seattle University, undergraduate student
“Testing the Framework: How the Trump Administration Violated the Principles of Government Established by the Framers”
Nick Schofield, University of Idaho, undergraduate student
“Moses Alexander: Idaho’s Prohibition Politician”
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/35218
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, History Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
Days of Decision: San Francisco’s 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee Protest as a Turning Point of the New Left
After the degradation of union power throughout the McCarthy era, a new politics took hold among young Americans, and its academic roots and appeal to young leftists established the university as the new institutional mediator for left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, allowing college students to promote antiwar, civil rights, and civil liberties campaigns both on and off campus. Years before the major events that are tied to the New Left in American collective memory, however, Bay Area college students’ protests against the House Un-American Activities Commission garnered national media attention for their perceived radicalism in the face of the federal government. Student protesters’ altercation with police at San Francisco City Hall in May of 1960 became a turning point at which the Old Left, New Left, and McCarthyism converged, providing valuable insight into the transition of broad leftist activism from union-based to direct action protest. Student protesters' adaptation of the nonviolent tactics associated with the Civil Rights Movement prompted outrage from the public and the federal government, and students across the nation soon adopted not only their protest strategy, but also the structure of the student organizations that promoted the demonstration. These protests, the first of their kind and a major precedent for what would become the student New Left movement, problematize the university as the postwar institutional mediator for left-wing protest and radicalism, revealing the disparities and power relations between students, professors, and administrators in the pursuit of their respective political agendas.
PART OF SESSION 5C. PARTISAN POLITICS:
Comment: Dale E. Soden, Whitworth University
Chair: Susan Larrabee, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Sophie C. Carter, University of Washington, undergraduate student
“Days of Decision: San Francisco’s 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee Protest as a Turning Point of the New Left”
Audrey J. Hanson, Seattle University, undergraduate student
“Testing the Framework: How the Trump Administration Violated the Principles of Government Established by the Framers”
Nick Schofield, University of Idaho, undergraduate student
“Moses Alexander: Idaho’s Prohibition Politician”