Adam Winikoff
12/18/15
Hist. 253
Prof. Koppes
The Women’s Movement, African-American Freedom Movement, and the Homophile Movement
The African American freedom movement, the women’s movement, and the queer movement were all extremely influential periods in American history. After World War II the U.S. was in the middle of a moral crisis. This was a nation that was supposed to be a beacon of light and hope for all of mankind, but that was only true if you were a heterosexual white male living in America. This was a time when men were still “likely to be the heads of families and the primary breadwinners in the family.”. Black Americans were treated as second-class citizens and subjected to racist legislation especially at the hands of many southern states, and the subject of both male and female homosexuality was as taboo a topic as ever. Although each of these movements had the ultimate goal of equality, specifically between their group and white heterosexual males, so even though there were some similarities the type of equality and the means they used to try and obtain it were vastly different. The women’s movement of the late 1960s and seventies was a focus on trying to bring equality to women in the workplace. Dating back to the Great Depression liberal economic policies were focused on getting men back to work and allowing them to be able to support a family through assistance programs under the New Deals. One of the main goals of this movement was not just to expand economic opportunities but also to “ease the double burden of paid work and family work,”. There was, however, varying perspectives of how women should be approaching the market. “For middle-class women, the problem was forced domesticity and denial of access to the market. For working-class women, the problem was forced market labor and the denial of full-time domesticity.”. This