During the sixties Americans saw the rise of the counterculture. The counterculture was a group of movements focused on achieving personal and cultural liberation, was embraced by the decade’s young Americans. It included rejection of conventional social norms, reaction to political conservatism of the Cold War period and to extensive Military intervention in Vietnam, and the rejection of racial segregation (lect.,”Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll”, week 6). Because many Americans were members of the different movements in the counterculture, the counterculture influenced American society. As a result of the achievements the counterculture movements made, the United States in the 1960s became a more open, more tolerant, and a freer country.
One of the most powerful counterculture movements in the sixties was the civil rights movement. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to end racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations. In 1965, congress returned suffrage to black southerners, by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Foner 2009). In the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional(Foner 2009) . Because of the civil rights movement in the sixties, minorities gained more rights than they had prior to the 1960s.
During this time, a group of writers became known for jump-starting the rebellion of the youth culture. They were called the Beats and symbolized underground non-conformist youth. Parts of this group were a group of writers who became prominent in the late 1950s and early 60s. Obscenity trials were brought against some of the publicized works that were written. The trials helped to liberate the kinds of books that could be legally published in the U.S (lect., “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and