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6. Apr. 2024 · The 1970s were a dynamic transformation era, with cultural, political, and technological shifts influencing the global landscape. As you explore the timeline of the 1970s, you’ll find a decade marked by significant events such as the Beatles’ end and the start of personal computing.
In Cambodia, the communist leader Pol Pot led a revolution against the American-backed government of Lon Nol. On April 17, 1975, Pot's forces captured Phnom Penh, the capital, two years after America had halted the bombings of their positions.
The decade after the “Swinging Sixties” was marked by unrest and upheaval. Although the Vietnam War effectively ended with the Fall of Saigon, other conflicts arose, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
- Overview
- Key points
- Identity politics in a fractured society
- Native American protest
- Gay rights
- Women's liberation in the 1970s
- What do you think?
Learn about the emergence of the American Indian Movement, the gay rights movement, and second-wave feminism.
•In the late 1960s and 1970s, Native Americans, gay men, lesbians, and women organized to change discriminatory laws and pursue government support for their interests, a strategy known as identity politics.
•These groups, whose aims and tactics posed a challenge to the existing state of affairs, often met with hostility from individuals, local officials, and the US government.
The political divisions that plagued the United States in the 1960s were reflected in the rise of identity politics in the 1970s. As people lost hope of reuniting as a society with common interests and goals, many focused on issues of significance to the subgroups to which they belonged, based on culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and ...
During this period, many Native Americans were seeking to maintain their culture or retrieve cultural elements that had been lost. In 1968, a group of Native American activists, including Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, and Clyde Bellecourt, convened a gathering of two hundred people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and formed the American Indian Movement, or AIM.
The organizers were urban dwellers frustrated by decades of poverty and discrimination. In 1970, the average life expectancy for a Native American person was 46 years compared to the national average of 69. The Native American suicide rate was twice that of the general population, and the infant mortality rate was the highest in the country. Half of all Native Americans lived on reservations, where unemployment reached 50 percent. Of Native Americans living in cities, 20 percent lived below the poverty line.
On November 20, 1969, a small group of Native American activists landed on Alcatraz Island—the former site of a notorious federal prison—in San Francisco Bay. They announced plans to build a Native American cultural center, including a history museum, an ecology center, and a spiritual sanctuary. People on the mainland provided supplies by boat, and celebrities visited Alcatraz to publicize the cause. More people joined the protestors until they numbered about four hundred.
From the beginning, the federal government negotiated with them to persuade them to leave. They were reluctant to give in, but over time, they began to drift away of their own accord. Government forces removed the final holdouts on June 11, 1971, 19 months after the occupation began.
[Read the proclamation issued by Native Americans occupying Alcatraz Island]
The next major demonstration came in 1972 when AIM members and others marched on Washington, DC—a journey they called the Trail of Broken Treaties—and occupied the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The group presented a list of demands, which included improved housing, education, and economic opportunities in Native American communities; the drafting of new treaties; the return of Native American lands; and protections for native religions and culture.
During this era, the struggle for gay and lesbian rights intensified as well. Many gay rights groups were founded in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The first postwar organization for gay civil rights, the Mattachine Society, was launched in Los Angeles in 1950. The first national organization for lesbians, the Daughters of Bilitis, was founded in San Francisco five years later. In 1966, the city became home to the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the world’s first organization for transgender people (transsexual is an older term that was used by doctors and psychologists to describe transgender people). In 1967, the Sexual Freedom League of San Francisco was born.
Through these organizations and others, gay, lesbian and transgender activists fought against the criminalization of and discrimination against their sexual and gender identities on a number of occasions throughout the 1960s. They employed strategies of both protests and litigation.
The most famous event in the gay rights movement, however, took place not in San Francisco but in New York City. Early in the morning of June 28, 1969, police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. Although such raids were common, the response of the Stonewall patrons was anything but. As the police prepared to arrest many of the customers, especially transgender people and cross-dressers—who were particular targets for police harassment—a crowd began to gather. Angered by the brutal treatment of the prisoners, the crowd attacked. Beer bottles and bricks were thrown. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar and waited for reinforcements. The riot continued for several hours and resumed the following night. Shortly thereafter, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists’ Alliance were formed; these organizations began to protest discrimination, homophobia, and violence against gay people, and promoted gay liberation and gay pride.
As advocacy organizations called for gay men and lesbians to come out—reveal their sexual orientation—gay and lesbian communities moved from the urban underground into the political sphere. Gay rights activists protested strongly against the official position of the American Psychiatric Association, which categorized homosexuality as a mental illness. This classification often resulted in job loss, loss of custody, and other serious personal consequences for people in the LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender—community. By 1974, the APA had ceased to classify homosexuality as a form of mental illness but continued to consider it a “sexual orientation disturbance.”
The feminist push for greater rights continued through the 1970s. Feminists opened battered women’s shelters and successfully fought for protection from employment discrimination for pregnant women, reform of rape laws—such as the abolition of laws requiring a witness to corroborate a woman’s report of rape—criminalization of domestic violence, and funding for schools that sought to counter sexist stereotypes of women. In 1973, the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade affirmed a number of state laws under which abortions obtained during the first three months of pregnancy were legal. This made nontherapeutic abortion a legal medical procedure nationwide.
Many advances in women’s rights were the result of women’s greater engagement in politics. For example, Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, was the coauthor of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX of which prohibits sex discrimination in education. Mink had been interested in fighting discrimination in education since her youth, when she opposed racial segregation in campus housing while a student at the University of Nebraska. She went to law school after being denied admission to medical school because of her gender. Like Mink, a number of other women sought and won political office, many with the help of the National Women’s Political Caucus, or NWPC. In 1971, the NWPC was formed by Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and other leading feminists to encourage women’s participation in political parties, elect women to office, and raise money for their campaigns.
Read Richard Oakes's proclamation from Alcatraz Island. Why did he believe that Alcatraz was a fitting place for protest? What did he see as the major problems facing the Native American community?
How were the American Indian Movement and the gay rights movement similar to the Civil Rights Movement? How were they different?
Why do you think the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified?
[Notes and attributions]
30. Juli 2010 · Bell bottom pants, flowing maxi dresses, ponchos, leisure suits, frayed jeans and earth tones dominated 1970s fashion. Tie-dye inspired by the 1960s “hippie” style continued to be worn, while...
Initially the history of the openings revolution of the 1970-1980s and of the battles with Karpov was conceived as the final part of the project My Great Predecessors, but the chapter about the 12th world champion brought this to a natural conclusion. What will now be described are events in which I took a direct part.
The 1970s was an era when the women's rights, gay rights and environmental movements gained momentum.
