ABSTRACT
The 1960s was a time of great turmoil and political activism in the United States as well as in its schools. The 1970s, however, marked both a retreat from the conflict and activism of the 1960s and a period of reassessment and redirection for the nation, setting the scene for the conservative backlash to the era’s liberal reforms that would come in the 1980s. The 1960 presidential election, in one sense, marked a clear turning point in American political life. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was elected to the presidency in 1960, was the first Roman Catholic chosen to hold the nation’s highest office. Political protest by various youth, minority, and feminist groups reached radical proportions by the late 1960s and triggered a reactionary movement on the part of many conservative Americans. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was originally proposed by the Kennedy administration in 1963, when prospects for passage of meaningful civil rights legislation were mixed at best.
