Assessment- Student Protest

• Success?

  Some protesters achieved their aims
• Student Civil Rights activists


  • Played an important part in dismantling the Jim Crow Law
  • Establishment of Black History and Culture in universities
• Students' complaints about university authorities were redressed
• Anti-war protests


  Helped persuade Johnson to halt escalation and Nixon to end the war
• Some protesters failed to achieve their aims
• Opposition of the SDS and New Left of American materialism proved ineffective
• Veterans of SDS and the New Left complained that their ideas about consumer culture were discredited by the counter-cultures selfishness and excess
• Protests


  • Improved the quality of American life particularly for ethnic minorities
  • Ensured the US withdrawal from Vietnam
• Others believe that protests promoted violence and offered little that was constructive and damaged the great American liberal tradition
• Many contemporary Americans disliked protesters and the counterculture
• Dislike of protesters and counterculture

  Contributed to a Conservative reaction that helped gain the Republican Richard Nixon the White House in the election- November 1968