The 1960s • In examining 1960s student organizing, we see the clear impacts of the civil rights movement and anti-war movements on postwar adolescents. Students worked with civil rights organizations to organize sit-ins at lunch counters in the South and to raise funds for voter registration. As students became increasingly impacted by the draft, they engaged in broader anti-war campaigns. While students were historically involved in organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality and the War Resisters League, the 1960s saw the birth of student-led groups including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society. As the decade progressed, tensions grew and organizing work intensified. The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley paved the way for broader demands of students’ right to protest, and the research skills imparted by the university were turned back on the institutions themselves as students examined academia’s ties to the military industrial complex.
Students in the United States were not alone. The nonpartisan International Union of Students, while largely disconnected from growing movements in the United States, played a key role in organizing student unions in the developing world and in providing resources and mechanisms for student groups to communicate. 1968 brought a rush of international student activism. Mexican students took action in support of political change and broader civil liberties, and against authoritarianism, police repression, and massive spending on the Olympics. Throughout the months leading up to the Olympics, the student movement grew larger, organizing various strikes and marches across Mexico City. Ten days before the opening of the games, a peaceful protest of students convened at La Plaza de los Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco neighborhood, which was the home to the olympic village. Army troops opened fire on the protestors, killing hundreds. Meanwhile, French students protested imperialism and capitalism by allying with wildcat workers strikes that shut down the whole country for several weeks and almost overthrew the government. Students in Brazil fought against the poor quality of education, entrance exams, imposition of tuition, and above all, the military regime that had seized power from the democratically elected president via a coup in 1964. Many students and professors were killed and tortured for their suspected involvement. In late 1968 over 700 student protest leaders were arrested, effectively ending the protests. At the same time, Japanese students mobilized for university reform and against renewal of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty, which allowed military bases in Japan.
