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McKenzie's NOTEWORTHY EVENTS FROM THE "ERA OF ACTIVISM"
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NOTEWORTHY EVENTS FROM THE "ERA OF ACTIVISM"
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Publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.The New Yorker started serializing Silent Spring in June 1962, and it was published in book form (with illustrations by Lois and Louis Darling) by Houghton Mifflin later that year. When the book Silent Spring was published, It dealt with public concerns with pesticides and pollution of the environment. -
First Earth Day celebration
Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. -
Publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique
A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century. -
UFW’s Nationwide Boycott of grapes picked on nonunion farms
The mostly Filipino American members of another union, the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), walk out on strike against Delano-area grape growers on Sept. 8, and ask Cesar's largely Latino NFWA to join the walkouts. -
Publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a book detailing resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety. It was a pioneering work, openly polemical but containing substantial references and material from industry insiders -
NOW is founded
NOW was founded on June 30, 1966, in Washington, D.C., by 28 women and men attending the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. -
Woodstock
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York. -
Congress passes the Clean Air Act
Although important legislative precedents had been set, the existing laws were deemed inadequate. Although technically an amendment, the Clean Air Act of 1970 was a major revision and set much more demanding standards. -
The EPA is established
It was in this atmosphere that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970. EPA was not a carefully crafted well integrated organization in the beginning. -
Supreme Court rules to legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case
The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests for regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother's health. -
Protesters from the AIM take over the reservation at Wounded Knee
In October 1973 the American Indian Movement gathered its forces from across the country onto the Trail of Broken Treaties, championing Indian unity. The national AIM agenda focused on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty.AIM gained international press when it seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and in 1973 had a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.