Chicano Movement In The 1960s

The 1960s is known as a turbulent political decade in the United States. The advent of the Vietnam War gave rise to the wave of anti-war protests that challenged policies of the President Johnson administration and opposed a mandatory draft instituted at the time. The anti-war protests, in turn, fueled the student movement with teachers and students alike staging “teach-ins” to show their opposition to the war. At the same time, this decade saw the emergence of the civil rights movement with African-American activists leading the struggle against segregation and Jim Crow laws still prevalent in southern states at the time. After years of legal challenges and peaceful protests, the civil rights movement culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Giving the tremendous achievements of African-American activists during the 1960s, the civil rights movement of this period is …show more content…
Facing disenfranchisement and exclusion from the mainstream American society as well as political Chicano movements, Chicana activists nonetheless stood up for their rights and mobilized to create their own organizations such as the Comisión Feminil Mexicana Nacional in 1970. Activists such as Martha Cotera also called on LRUP to make room for feminists and helped organize pioneering Chicana feminist meetings in Houston during 1971 and 1972. The efforts of Chicana activists brought to light different strains of oppositional politics within the Chicano civil rights movement. In addition to cultural and political nationalism that dominated the official ideology of LRUP, one could also discern feminist voices as well as voices of Marxist