Books in Brief.Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels: Student Revolt in the 1960s, by Kenneth J. Heineman (Ivan R. Dee, 251 pp., $26) In February 1960, four black students sat down at a Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter; by April 1970, the U.S. would be experiencing 5,000 terrorist bombings in a mere 15 months. How did a just civil rights struggle end in the Weathermen Weathermen: see Students for a Democratic Society. Weathermen American terrorist group against the “Establishment.” [Am. Hist.: Facts (1972), 384] See : Terrorism and Kent State? Kenneth J. Heineman's study closely follows student activism from its religious and pacifist beginnings to its takeover by a militant, anti-American New Left. Of particular interest are the book's hard figures, which afford a much- needed reminder that the history of that decade was rewritten by its winners. Flower-powered sexual "liberation," for instance, was accompanied by an unsurprising spike in rape. And the antiwar an·ti·war adj. Opposed to war or to a particular war: antiwar protests; an antiwar candidate. movement was never the juggernaut Hollywood portrays: In 1967, a majority of UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX students favored marijuana legalization LEGALIZATION. The act of making lawful. 2. By legalization, is also understood the act by which a judge or competent officer authenticates a record, or other matter, in order that the same may be lawfully read in evidence. Vide Authentication. ; only a minority opposed the Vietnam War Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, primarily fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerrilla forces aided by North Vietnam. . Unfortunately, Heineman's conclusion-that "we will continue to feel the effects of the 1960s shock waves until the last Boomers are retired from campus, the newsroom, and political office"- vastly underestimates that era's legacy. By way of the universities, the Sixties poisoned the groundwater of American cultural life. Its teachings now live not just in politically correct politically correct Politically sensitive adjective Referring to language reflecting awareness and sensitivity to another person's physical, mental, cultural, or other disadvantages or deviations from a norm; a person is not mentally retarded, but fads, as Heineman suggests, but as the merely normal, the expected. Today, what used to be called "radical chic" is neither. -Emmy Chang |
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