I like your phrase "liberal rapture."

You probably need to start by defining exactly what you want to mean by "liberal."

My impression of counterculture music, and perhaps film, is that it preceded the antiwar movement.  You specify the white antiwar movement, but does that mean that you won't be dealing with black musical roots in the 1950s but focusing exclusively on a southern? folk tradition?

I don't really get what you mean by 2 or 3 generations of journalists who were self-hating toward liberalism.  This may get back to needing to define liberalism, which I tend to think has an element of being able to see more than one side to an issue.  In any case, you'll need to place the journalists/professors who came out of the Kennedy Administration and created a magical Camelot around JFK.  And the Watergate investigations.

And I haven't studied Carter's Administration closely, but I'm wondering about your basis for calling it a "failed" one.  I know at the time that I blamed all of the problems on the media, who insisted on opening each news program with "Day [fill in the blank] of the Hostage Crisis."  (This is actually about the time when I date the "liberal" media as turning, although I may have been too young earlier to see problems earlier.)

Your summary hits on many good points.  One suggestion I would offer is to distinguish more finely between "liberalism" and progressive or radical movements of the period as they grow out of the larger conditions of the cold war and US imperialism.  You use "liberal" in the large, vernacular sense, but the progressive movements of this period ranged over a wide spectrum and many rejected the laizzez-faire and individualisitic-consumer basis of liberalism.  To my ear, "new left" is a rejection of liberalism (democratic and republican parties, corporatism, etc.) and an attempt to renew strands of left thinking that were abandoned during WWII and the 1950s anti-communist hysteria.  

A good book that takes a global perspective on the period's upheavals and progressive movements is Antisystemic Movements by Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, Immanuel Wallerstein.  London:  Verso, 1989.  

Finally, I'd give corporate media consolidation and the rightwing takeover of the media even more attention than you have done in your summary.  It's a crucial element of the era that lays the groundwork for the Reagan-Bush era and its dismantling of the New Deal, etc.  I think the media were central in engineering the atmosphere of reaction in the early 1970s, etc.

Good luck on the project.  It's time to talk about these historical transformations again, and to educate people about them.

Ahem: "laissez"-faire, I meant to write.

I'm a "child of the 60s" and entered college in the fall of 1966 when the anti-war and counter culture movement was just getting underway. I would say the New Left of the 60s and early 70s was more of a cultural revolution than an actual political movement. The "Old Left" really achieved the big advances in civil rights and the Labor movement. As a cultural movement the New Left was a failure in that it only sparked a right wing reaction that overtook the country. You are right in saying there was no vision, no plan for building an ongoing progressive movement and the institutions, ideological base, and sustainable political movement. I should add however that the cultural aspects of it opened us to a radical critique of the social and economic order. And out of that has come an ecological consciousness of sustainability as a necessary and viable goal. Out of it has come a universalist understanding of a spiritual and philosophical globalism that may form the underpinnings of a new world order that really supplants both the Cold War and the Clash of Civilizations we are dealing with at present.

Matt,

Your description makes a lot of sense.  But let me make a couple of comments from the perspective of someone who remembers the 1960s as a child (I was born in 1954) and the 1970s as a college student and graduate student.  To me, the period of disillusionment and withdrawal that you describe stemmed mostly from the successive assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.  (We normally thought of the assassinations as a collective assault on us.  To get the flavor of what I'm saying, check out the song "Abraham Martin & John.")  The final blow was Nixon's defeat of McGovern, despite the fact that nearly everyone we knew in the North (including our professors!) supported McGovern.  Many of us dropped out of politics at that time, replacing politics with (even more) drugs, streaking (look it up! LOL) and almost anything else.  One other factor that must be mentioned is Nixon's inspired decision to end the draft.  Those of us of draft age who had submitted to the draft lottery and were nervous about our personal futures couldn't believe our good luck when the draft ended.  But in retrospect, it seems clear that ending the draft benefited the government even more.  Within weeks of the end of the draft, the massive anti-war demonstrations of 1969-1972 had disappeared, never to return.

Good luck on the project!

On the New Left, there's a good chapter and a half on New Left groups in Michael Kazin's The Populist Persuasion. A very good collection of essays from the era can be found in The Liberal Tradition in Crisis; American Politics in the Sixties edited by Jerome M. Mileur. A good memoir about some of the politics of the late New Left movement is Lanny Davis' The Emerging Democratic Majority, written in 1974. Judis and Teixeira's more contemporary book of the same name has a good discussion on the aftermath of 60s politics.

I'm sure there's more, but these are books I've personally found to be the most helpful. Politics in the 60s (especially the late 60s) is my thing. I'm working on a website to carry my senior thesis about Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez. Check it out.

Matt,

A couple of suggestions that might help you round out your project;  

Interview Todd Gitlin, who lived thru those decades, and is articulate about the politics of those times.

And check out David Zeiger's new movie, "Sir, No Sir," about the extraordinary amount of resistance to the Vietnam war within the military itself.

I'm going to try to offer up a more detailed post if I can (from my vantage point as a 51-year-old who was heavily active in the McGovern campaign, later in the early-to-mid 70s (in, believe it or not, the 1974 New York Ramsey Clark for U.S. Senate campaign against Jacob Javits -- Clark hadn't yet become a defender of Saddam's)... and has a pretty vivid teenager's memory of much of what came before and after all that.

But for now you might check out these two books for a real flavor of the times: The Sixties by Todd Gitlin, and Dreams Die Hard (on the assassination of Congressman Allard Lowenstein).

And good luck on your project!

A few quibbles--labor and liberals began to split in the 50s. People like Reuther moved somewhat toward the Center, revelations about the longshoremen (Commies and the Mob) and the Teamsters (the Mob) probably pushed many liberals away from seeking common cause with the labor movement. Some of the current labor leaders like those of the hospital workers and the service employees may have roots in the 60s, but much of Labor is run by people who are comfortable or timid in the face of marginalization from other progressive currents and the whipsaw of downsizing and outsourcing. I was a memeber of 1099 in the late 90s and would give it very mixed reviews, BTW; some of the organizers they sent around were doctrainaire idiots who couldn't connect with the career hospital workers or the "college boys" like myself.

Related to the above is the tendency for post-newleft groups to be "college boys (& girls)" in the worst sense of the term. Groups like the Sierra Club have failed miserably in connecting to the concerns of working people, minorities, and others who bear the greatest brunt of environmental degradation. For example, they made no effort to engage the concerns of loggers when trying to preserve the old growth forests, even though the loggers know that even if the forests can be logged they are in a declining line of work. This kind of rank ignorance and, often, frank snobbishness is part of what enabled the "Reagan Democrats" to emerge. It also made it possible for us to have an airport in our Capital named for someone who crushed a union.

I think Common Cause predated the antiwar left--if it didn't its insular, elitist leadership style did. I don't know that people who were strongly "political" in the 60s gravitated toward such a snobby group. They would have been more likely to join the owmen's movement or a Nader group, or sell-out and got into real estate. The Hollywood media is important in fundraising, but repesents an insignificant destination for the mass of 60s lefties. The post-60s world was more like "The Return of the Secaucus 7", than the inferior and better funded "Big Chill".

The single issue groups have become an albatros--most of them grind out the same rhetortic to the same audience and their lack of imagination has cost left wing causes dearly.

The more "realist" among us would argue that McGovern was a disaster as a candidate and that he failed to capitalize on the significant discontent in the country. Even without Nixon's dirty tricks, he would have been an embarrassing loser. Carter had great ideas, many of which lived beyond him (e.g., human rights as a tool of foreign policy), unfortunately, he was inept politician. I was for Udall in '76 and Teddy Kennedy in '80.

Some good reading: Gerald Nicosia's "Home to War",
Evan Thomas' bio of RFK, Tom Hayden's memoir, "Rebel", Jervis Anderson's bio of Bayard Rustin helps explains how old lefties failed to mesh with new lefties, Lichetenstein's bio of Reuther adds to this theme, while Thomas Geoghegan "Which Side are You On?" explains how liberals, among others have shafted labor.

A couple other thoughts--not all the movements that emerged post-antiwar were truly single issue. The women's movement began with very wide interest and support--its leadership emerged fairly directly from the civil rights and antiwar movements (the antiwar meovement included some who began life as civil rights activists). OTOH, it managed to capture the imagination of awide swath of women of all ages and social classes in the 1970s. The women's movement lost a lot of steam when the emphasis moved from economics to abortion (and this is coming from someone very pro-choice) and the rhetoric became more anti-male than pro-woman.

Gay rights owes less to these other movements than the women's movement, although some individuals like Harry Hay go back to the "old left".

This is a tall order. I've read all the books but one, that I am going to suggest. To understand those times, you have to know those times and history doesn't just happen in a vacuum. I was part of the first integrated classes in Mississippi. I had cousins joining the national guard to avoid the draft. I had friends whose fathers did tours of duty in Vietnam and they communicated by audio tapes. My older sister had a friend whose father was MIA and their last  hopes died when the POWS came home and he wasn't among them. I don't know that I could weave a coherent narrative on this subject in a single book.  

Try: The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin for a chronolgical account of the New Left by an insider.

For books to understand the politcs and culture of the times read:

On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to understand some the underpinnings of the Hippie Movement. Not so much a liberal rapture (although that is an interesting summation) as the mass marketing of bohemia. Try investigating the bohemian movements in the US beginning with Throueau through John Reed and later the Beats.

I'd also read Richard Dallek's bio of JFK, and Robert Caro's 3rd installment of his definitive series on LBJ- Master of the Senate.

David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest and The Children and possibly The Fifties.

Mark Kurlansky's 1968

Eyes on the Prize (the PBS documentary) for a tour of the Civil Rights movement. (Ok, not a book)

RFK and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made by Jim Newton (on my list to read). While you are at it, get a copy of  Unequal Justice by Jerome Auerbach.

Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams (written before he became a Fox stooge).

There are books on the major civil rights murders- Emmett Till, Schwner, Cheney and Goodman as well as Viola Liuzzo. Seek them out.

If you haven't read it, Diane McWhorter's book Carry Me Home which places the Birmingham church bombings in perspective of the city's labor history, power struggles and, of course Jim Crow, is a great book.

It was idealism married to bohemism. And of course, not everyone's motiviations were the same. Abbie Hoffman understood the Merry Pranksters and vice versa, but they were not on the same trip.  

Good luck.

Or "anti-war" for that matter?  The war was imposed on the New Left, not chosen by it--except in the sense that it proved a powder keg, and made it easy to draw crowds.  But even reacting powerfully to outrageous conditions doesn't necessarily set you up for long-term strategic advances.... and in exactly that sense, the war was a huge diversion.

On the one hand, you've said "the white antiwar New Left," and on the other hand, you've talked about all these other things--including the women's movement--which are far more diverse, and indicative of the breadth of concerns that the New Left saw before it.  (There's also the issue that every single aspect of these topics had more conventional liberals involved as well as true members of the New Left, and every shade in between.)

It bears mentioning that in 1967-68, the two most prominent opponents of the war, so far as the movement was concerned, were not Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. They were Martin Luther King and Benjamin Spock. There was even talk--never encouraged by King--of running an independent King/Spock ticket. Hard to reconcile with the whole "white antiwar New Left" frame.  It's a bit like the retrospective distortions involved in the creation of the "classic rock" genre.  On the ground, at the time, there were no clear lines saying, "white antiwar New Left ends here" and "feminist movement starts here" or "civil rights movement starts here" or, well, you get the picture.

Furthermore, there are two problems regarding origins and continuations.  First, this:

The 1950s intellectual protests at a neo-Victorian middle class culture spawned a wave of student organizations, most prominently but not exclusively Students for a Democratic Society.

is what uber physicist Wolfgang Pauli would call "not even wrong." Student activism came from much more radical roots, from a new generation unintimidated by McCarthyism.  Aside from notable exceptions like C. Wright Mills, they were massively tuned out to being influenced by "1950s intellectual protests."  What's more, such protests directed at "a neo-Victorian middle class culture"--particularly in offshoots such as The Uncommitted and The Lonely Crowd--were precisely the sort of analysis that convinced itself that the New Left couldn't happen!

As a matter of fact, SDS started out as SLID, or the Student League of Industrial Democracy, an arm of LID, or the League of Industrial Democracy.  SLID, in defiance of McCarthyism, and ignorance of how destructively Machiavellian the American Communist Party had been, removed the prohibition of allowing Communists to join. LID would't stand for that. This is what precipitated the split.  Nothing at all to do with hand-wrining academics.

Second, I doubt that much of the "left activist class," dissillusioned "towards the electoral process" withdrew "into good government groups like Common Cause, Public Citizen, as well as single issue groups like NARAL and the initial media reform movement."  The folks who went that route tended to be more mainstream--liberal, not left--from the very beginning.

The real left activists tended to stay outside the system as they saw it--congregating in academia, or moving into local, community organizing, or labor organizing (you definitely got that one right) where they could interact directly with people, not with the policy elite.  They also continued to organize along anti-imperialist lines--the Latin American Solidarity Movement of the 1980s, for example.  There was also some participation in anti-nuclear demonstrations of the 1970s, which escalated into the Freeze Movement of the early 1980s.  But most of this was probably from people who fairly peripheral to the organizational core of the New Left.

There is a very good history of the anti-war movement, I'm 99% sure it's Who spoke up?: American protest against the war in Vietnam, 1963-1975. I just spent 20+ minutes looking for my copy, which I haven't looked at in probably 10 years.  It has a detailed analysis of how different radical and liberal forces interacted, down to the level of specific organizing meetings when necessary.  I don't agree 100% with its analysis, but it is the best single source I can think of.  It makes quite clear that there were more liberals than leftists involved.

You might also want to check out this citation page from The Vietnam War On Campus.

And, of course, the definitive history of post-50s feminism is Ruth Rosen's The World Split Open, which could help you get that part of the story right.  The radical roots came through the Southern Civil Rights Movement well before the anti-war movement got off the ground.

As some one only slightly older than Phil (born 1951), what I saw was something a bit more complicated than Matt Stoller's post.  We really had at least two waves with the first wave, in large part feeding the second wave.  Wave One was the classic prostests against conformism and racism that were characterized by the Free Speech movement at Berkeley, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.  The culmination of this was the smashing victory of LBJ in 1964 and the passage of the Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Poll Tax Amendment and a generation of liberal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, day care, and a bunch of local anti-poverty agencies, the Job Corps, etc.

The second, and substantially weaker wave was the anti-war movement.  Both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were leading figures in this but so was Gene cCarthy who seems to have been pretty much eliminated from memory.  Every Friday, they'd roll the list of American dead on the evening news and 200 names would flash by.  Except for the week of Tet.  That week it was 500.  The "safe" areas of South Vietnam?  Nowhere.  The American Embassy was attacked.  There were the protests in 69 and 70.  Not only Kent State (4 dead in Ohio, white) but Jackson State (17 dead at a black school).  

The Democratic Party by 1972 was split into perhaps three wings:  the southern whites, pro-war liberals, and anti-war.  Nixon essentially fixed the election by choosing McGovern.  That was followed by watergate investigations moving towards (but not to) impeachment and Nixon's resignation.  Vietnam ended badly in 1975.  All 58,000 American deaths managed to do, it seemed, was to increase the number of Vietnamese casualties.  The oil price increases led to incredible, rampant inflation in the late 70s.  The Iran hostage crisis melded into "th misery index" (it turns out things were not so bad but who knew.

I'm not sure what book to recommend. Too many authors had too many axes to grind.

1) The New Left was the post FDR left. As noted by others, FDR had solved the economic problems, at least for most Americans. Now the left was addressing the problems of the other Americans. Read How to Argue With a Conservative and consider that it was a period piece in 1968. No one was arguing publicly about the New Deal in the 1960s, though there was the nascent "free enterprise" movement.

2) There was a big movement towards what we now call identity politics. Folks at my high school tended to parody this with a Chinese students, Jewish students, German students, Italian students and other students rights manifestos. I wound down with the Numerical Rights manifesto which argued that our present society's days are numbered. Now it has poisoned the Democratic party. I'm not sure if anyone has even addressed this since any serious discussion would surely offend quite a few.

3) There was a big disjoint social movement which revolved around the fact that young people want to get laid, a lot. Even now, George Bush cannot denounce Cheney's grandkid, even if he doesn't consider her mom a first class citizen. Read The Price of Salt aka Carol or anything on Stonewall or Lenny Bruce for more on this.
4) There were a number of articles back in the 1960s on how many in the antiwar movement were the children of earlier liberal generations, including many who fought earlier battles. Check the New York Times archives for a few of these. You might also try watching the pro-war 49th Parallel to get a feel for old fashioned liberal values, and see which ones have survived.

A few of my favorites that nobody has mentioned yet:

The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, by Tom Wells, is a pretty good overview of the anti-war movement, although it also explores the war from the perspective of the people administering it (esp. McNamara).

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, by Taylor Branch is good background material, as many of the organizers of the more active New Left groups were veterans of the civil rights struggles.

The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak is an exploration more of the intellectual left and the theoretical underpinnings of the counter cultural phenomenon.

One of the important movements of the 60s that tends to get lost in the Civil Rights and anti-war and countercultural movements was the Free Speech Movement.  You might want to check out "The Free Speech Movement:  Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s",  edited by Robert Cohen.

The "New Left" was basically SDS and similar groups and together they were only a fragment of the anti-war movement, which included a wide range of people from liberal Democrats to extreme nutcase communists.  The New Left was new because it wasn't tied to the Socialists or the Communist Party, the old left. SDS was not attracted to electoral politics and it had no real structure, with the loudest members getting the most attention.  Due to the loudest-person-is-in-charge approach, the group became more and more radicalized quickly and it collapsed around 1969 into Weatherman (bombers and rioters) and other tiny fragments, which was about the same time that the liberal anti-war movement got going (Vietnam moratorium and so on). There were really a bunch of movements going on simultaneously, with all of them having many different groups and most having liberal and radical wings, including, beyond the movement against the war, student or youth power, anti-draft, women's rights, black power, and environmenalism. Most of them had some success, even great success, and they became institutionalized.  For example, George Meanyism was greatly weakened in the labor movement and the unions are run by successors of the 1960s-70s liberal movements. The Democratic party today is the successor to the moderate wings of those movements and the modern Republican party is the successor to the right-most faction of the Repulican party, emphasizing the pro-war, anti-UN, pro-racism, clearcut-and-pave-everything, anti-labor side of politics in those days.  The outcomes of some the 1960s battles are so institutionalized that almost nobody would go back, for example women's rights, which is so well established that young women today have virtually no idea how women were treated in, say, 1970 and hardly anyone would advocate a return to the legal subordination of women (which existed nearly everywhere up to about 1972). While 1960s liberalism had major defeats, it has also been hugely successful, with much of its success spreading across the Western world.

While 1960s liberalism had major defeats, it has also been hugely successful, with much of its success spreading across the Western world.

Germany got universal health care in 1880.  The US got universal health care for seniors only, with loopholes, during the 1960s.

I have to chime in here.

First, James Miller's A Democracy is in the Streets - more or less a narrative history of SDS

Maurice Isserman's If I Had a Hammer - about the collapse of American Marxism after WWII and the intellectual roots of the New Left. It also has some good stuff about the origins of neoconservatism

Terry Anderson's The Movement and the Sixties - another narrative history, with a wider scope than Miller. Focuses basically on all the activist movements between 1960 and 1974

A sort of memoir/history that could be very useful is Todd Gitlin's Years of Hope, Days of Rage

It also might be worth your while to read Isserman and Kazin's America Divided - a narrative history of the "long 60s" - covers US history from 1958-1974, with a strong emphasis on the era's protest movements

There are a number of more esoteric slections I could suggest if you want me to - but I'll leave it at this for now.

Many great recommendations so far. As one poster noted above, it's worth considering what the Vietnam War was doing to American society.

So I'd suggest Winners and Losers by Gloria Emerson as something of a counter-weight to more academic tomes about the ins and outs of the New Left.

But speaking of tomes, Kirpatrick Sales' 700 and some page work SDS is a fairly exhaustive history of that organization. It was out of print about ten years ago, but you could probably find one somewhere on the inernet tubes.

I collect books on the period.

You might want to check out Prarie Fire, which is the major political testiment directly from the Weather Underground.  Kirkpatrick Sale's SDS is the definitive history of that organization.  Todd Gitlin's book on SDS (I forget the title now) is probably the most important on SDS.  I'm currently reading Dan Berger's Outlaws of America which is sort of a history of SDS and Weatherman written by a leftist of the next generation -- it's OK, but lacks the first hand depth of the Gitlin or Sale book.  Also, Tom Hayden's Reunion is very good and James Miller's Democracy is in the Sterrts, mentioned above, is excellent.  Those are just impressions off the top of my head -- my bookshelves are bulging, the floors are sagging.

I think Matt's general sketch makes sense but it really does not go very far.  I'd agree with those who really trace the political new left and the cultural new left from different sources.  The political new left had its roots in the civil rights & antiwar movements and became quite radical, born out of 1968 and the frustrations and stubbornness of the political ststem.  

In contrast, the cultural side of the so-called new left had roots in the beats and was less traumatized by the frustration of politics.  The cultural warriors of the 1960's won.  The political warriors went underground or became reformers.  The cultural revolution (NOT the Chinese one!) was successful.  The political revolutionaries lost.  I'm practically quoting from Allen Ginsberg above.

Carter is another topic...later...

I'm afraid I can't boast of being such an avid consumer of the writings that previous responders have cited. I did, however, live during that time. A couple of observations:

1. Colbert did one of his satires within the last week of how lacking the Iraq war is with respect to protests. His premise: What would be good for the Republican party today is to have protests a la Vietnam because the electoral center was so turned off by the hippies and the likes of Jane Fonda. No argument here. [If I may digress for a moment. Some of my co-workers are avid Rush devotees. When asked of my opinion on Rush, my response is that I didn't take advice from drug deranged people when I was in college and I sure as hell don't do it now!] In other words, it wasn't the message as much as it was the messenger.
   
2. The re-election of Nixon was not a repudiation of liberal thoughts and ideas. It was certainly a repudiation of George McGovern. Look -- McGovern was primarily a one issue candidate. He ran an effective primary. However, once the general campaign started, he looked as inept as, well, the guy who's in the WH today. Remember: HH Humphrey came within a whisker of besting Nixon in '68. Did the nature of the electorate really change that much in four years to give Nixon a landslide in '72? Doubt it. Also don't forget that we were still very much in the middle of the Cold War. Nixon negotiated the first missile reduction treaty with Brezhnev, and there was the opening with China. Yes, Vietnam was an open, bleeding sore. But it wasn't a sucking chest wound. And too many people had doubts about McGovern's ability to handle the USSR and China.

Two other factors to consider in writing the political story in the late 60s to early 70s: a) A government that actually got things done; b) True checks and balances.    

First, Matt, I'm delighted you are doing this since I think you are one of the most astute thinkers around. I also hope to learn something. I saw most of it but don't have a good view of it, even after all these years. I can say for myself, it was a terrible, discouraging and guilt ridden time.

I seem to be older than most other commenters here, and I was there for most of everything. My first march against the Vietnam War was in February 1962. I traveled from college in Madison to DC. I was at every major antiwar demonstration as a participant or organizer, founded a draft resistance group for medical students and doctors and was myself a resister, sued J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell, was jailed and had bones broken by police in non-violent demonstrations and spent five bloody days on the streets of Chicago in 1968. And I still couldn't give a better or different version than you did.

Not that I think it's all "correct." whatever that  means. Only that the New Left (of which I was a part but not a member of SDS) was a very complicated and disorganized thiing, more of an idea than a movement although it was also a movement. I am not sure that any one description would truly capture those really turbulent times. Many of us have remained politically active and committed throughout from then to now, and some of us, despite our age, are even moderately successful bloggers. It doesn't feel different today than it did then, although this is a far different time. But for many of us that lived through it, today remains an extension of then, not separated by a discontinuity.

It will be interesting to see what you make of it. There is no reason why your version should be any worse than the ones we who lived it might give and many reasons why it will be better and more clear eyed.

Good luck.

Evergreen Magazine
Berkeley Barb
The Realist
Rolling Stone
Dissent
Commentary

If you haven't read it, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a good description of the entirely apolitical crosscurrent. McGovern won the Arizona caucus by dragging honest-to-god dirty hippies out of communes with the promise of completely legal marijuana--an extremely generous interpretation of McGovern's real position. This was an important win because he crushed the very well-financed John Lindsay campaign in that caucus with a campaign budget consisting mostly of stems and seeds.

You've made quite a bit of mention of the Civil rights movement, and rightly so. There could be a lot more interesting stuff there about how the movement emerged, how it formed into organizations and such. An argument could be made that the anti-war movement benefited greatly from the organization and political momentum of the civil rights movement. An argument could also be made that civil rights orgs drove away their white supporters, leaving frustrated whites with no activistic outlet but the anti-war movement, even if a sbustantial amount of their political frustrations were the result of the civil rights situation.

This line of inquiry will, at times, be more informative about the CR movement than the white anti-war movement, so you can take it as far or not-far as you like. But any understanding of the white anti-war movement should nonetheless include comparisons with the black anti-war movement -- political inquiry should always consider race, especially a study of the civil-rights/anti-war era.

So if you're interested in that sort of thing, you can look at CORE, which alienated many white activists for not taking a stand on the Vietnam war; at SCLC which opposed the war because of their non-violence, but lost a lot of influence as resistance to the war escalated and and more militant groups rose in stature, and lost white activists because they began to segregate their workers (whites working white communities, blacks working black communities); and at SNCC which became very militant, very fast, began to exclude white activists, and opposed the war on the basis of a global struggle for civil rights. SNCC is probably the starkest contrast to the white anti-war movement at the time, and (one of) the founder(s) of SNCC happens to be a professor of history who's about to have a lot more free time on his hands as he retires from UVA.

The rest of what you've got sounds pretty good, but I don't know as much about all that. I do, however, think that you should explore each of your references to the civil-rights/black-anti-war movement a bit, and see what it tells you about the white anti-war movement and whence it drew its energy.

Matt--I salute your effort.  Also have to say it confirms fears I've had that much of the left blogosphere has little real information or knowledge about the New Left aside from the media stereotypes that have framed it for decades. For lots of reasons I think this is tragic and has helped progressivism fall into the same pits over and over again.  However, that's a subject for another day, and I would like to respond to your request.  First, go to SDS, by Kirkpatrick Sale, Vintage Books 1974.  It is the definitive log of the white new left in the US by a thoughtful and careful thinker who was in the middle of it.  Then, go to The Sixties, by Todd Gitlin, 1987.  Gitlin was a founder of SDS and is today one of the most cogent and independent minds on the left.  He is a regular contribtor to The American Prospect and elsewhere.  His articles, down through the decades, illuminate lots about the recent path of progressivism in the US.  You should also know there is a big fat reference book actually titled The Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo and Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas,1990, which would probably be useful in your research.  To really escape the cliches (there is no era in history more characatured than the late 60s--so much so that many of us who were there still lapse into the cliches ourselves once in awhile even though we know first hand they are nonsense) you can't take one person's memoire as representative of the whole; you have to go back to primary sources, journals and flyers and newsletters from the time.  Not sure where all this stuff is, but academic libraries will often have bound copies of publications like The Nation from decades (even centuries!) past.  The Library of Congress has much of it.  Call up Gitlin, he teaches journalism and soc. at NYU.  Talk to Tom Hayden about the Port Huron Statement.  Damnit, start just by reading the Port Huron Statement.    

'sds' by Kirkpatrick Sale for an outsiders view of the whole sorry history of the SDS.

Back issues of 'New Left Notes' is indispensible as that was the main means of national communication.

'Prairie Fire' by the WeatherCollective will give you the end point of the SDS->WeatherPeople trajectory.

The documentary "The Weather Underground" is a inside look at life inside the movement and the ultimate fate of some of the members.

While important, and the largest block, the SDS was only one part of the New Left.

If you look-up 'The Farm' on Google you will find one of the successful communes that was started during those days.  Their site has a brief history.

'Fraye Arbeter Shtime' was still being published during those days and has some interesting stuff -- if you read Yiddish.  

Fred Wordworth started publishing 'The Match' in 1969 and those eary issues will give some feel for the Anarchist Left.  

The early issues of WIN (= Workshop In Non-Violence) magazine will give you insights into the young Pacifist Movement.  Very important strand in the make-up of the New Left.  

The last chapter or two of Peter Carroll's 'The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade' will give some brief remarks by the Old Left about the New Left.

A few things to add to your analysis:

* The 60s youth movement -- The baby boomers came of age and the whole society revolved around these new consumers with a relatively large amount of spending power. This gave young people an unprecedented amount of power.

* The sexual revolution -- The countercultural beats in the 1950s had begun to pry open the staid Victorian values of the 1950s, but the development of the birth control pill meant that the negative consequences of free sex were dramatically reduced. Sex without babies was a big change.

* FM radio -- Suddenly a whole spectrum opened up and progressives (including college radio stations) snared a lot of the early bandwidth enabling folk music and rock and roll to flourish in a way that might have been impossible if controlled strictly by the big corporations. KPFA in Berkeley was a major support for the progressive movement in the SF Bay Area.

* The blacklists of the 1950s knocked a lot of progressives out of the news media so that in the 1960s, the mainstream news tended to be very conservative. The reality of the 60s is very different than that portrayed in the mainstream news -- then or now.

* The draft helped radicalize and mobilize massive numbers of young men and their families and friends. When the war and the draft ended, the motivation for many people decreased a lot.

* Liberation movements -- besides the Black Freedom movement and the women's movement, many other groups began pushing for their liberation including Hispanics, Native Americans, gays, and the disabled. These groups initiated major changes in our culture and instituions that now have become almost completely accepted and mainstream.

* The energy crisis of 1974 and the high unemployment and massive inflation that soon followed put a major damper on activists. Suddenly, college students could no longer count on a job when they graduated and everyone was hurting economically a lot more than they had during the expansive 60s.

* Though the intense drama of 1968-70 subsided, progressive activists continued working hard through the 70s -- building alternative institutions like food coops, women's health centers, and battered womens' centers and working for air and water pollution controls, for solar energy, and against nuclear power. Some activists moved to rural communes, others organized in labor unions, others moved into academia, but lots of people were doing lots of stuff -- it just was not as dramatic/violent as the late 60s and it got a whole lot less media coverage.

If you are interested in SDS, I found SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale and The Whole World is Watching by Todd Gitlin to be enlightening (though it has been 25 years since I've read them so I can't say how they stand up to the test of time).

One more that catches what happened in the transitiion between the hopeful advances of the 60s and the massive defeats of the 70s: Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air. It has just come out in paperback with a new and interesting preface.

As someone who lived through it all, and keeps on, I'll be curious what you come up with. From my vantage point, the radicalism of the period has been erased, not only by the right, but also by subsequent liberalism. It is worth remembering that the upheavals of 1968 were global -- the only subsequent eruption of similar size was February 15, 2003 in the lead up to the Iraq war. It ain't over. It is just different.

I second everyone who mentioned Todd Gitlin's Years of Hope, Days of Rage and David Halberstam's The Children (The Fifties by Halberstam may also be helpful here).

also "Takin' It To the Streets: a Sixties Reader", ed. Alexander Bloom is good

Your analysis is too superficial, which would be fine if you captured the right summary information, and had a better idea of how connected things were. Check in with Barbara O'Brian over at Mahablog.

They Should have Served that Cup of Coffee Edited by Dick Cluster. From the description at South End Press: This anthology collects engaging essays and interviews by activists in the civil rights, women's, anti-war, and GI movements; the Black Panther Party; and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers."

But, the book is mainly about the motivation and foundation of the New Left. I came of age much later (early 70s), and even by then it was easy to forget that the roots of the movement(s) dated back to the late 50s.

The other point is that the movement didn't really end, even if energies went in other directions, academia, specific issue organizing, family, career. Perhaps the New Left never went very far beyond the over-educated white middle class, but it is a slander that the radicals flipped to conservative. Almost everyone I know from those days continue to have very strong radical opinions, and continue to be involved... I'm sure right here in River City.

Markos criticizes the politics of single-issue groups, (with good arguments). But, at the time the Democratic Party and Big Labor were extraordinarily hostile to radical ideas. Issue organizing was one way to make a difference and to attempt some small steps forward.

The internicine theoretical battles aren't so interesting, but then you discover a really interesting detail like the influence of the Quakers or Friends and other peace churches at the beginning of almost everything. Also, the old left was surprisingly inluential. Not the CP itself, but I knew a ton of Red Diaper babies who were instrumental in the movement work.

To expand upon some of the themes in this thread, I think it's important to atempt an understanding of how the civil rights movement inspired young (mostly white) intellectual elites. For shorthand, I would call this "the Gitlin" interpretation. (As are many others, I'm a big fan of The Sixites.

PBS recently showed "Eyes on the Prize" (or part of it) for the first time in about 20 years. Imagine Virgil Goode being in charge of everything in every community in the South---that's what it was like. Virgil Goode with control of the National Guard, police, bus companies, business communities, everything. This was no blog war--it was a real war with real people being killed. The Freedom Riders would be met by angry mobs with lethal intentions.

It had to have been a searing time period that informed everything that came later, including whether to trust Democrats. It's not like the Kennedy administration was keen on moving civil rights forward. They hemmed and hawed, and while there were individuals who acted with courage, it wasn't until after JFK was killed that the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Sometimes we get hung up on "hippies" and the easy analysis that people "went too far." But there was a vicious, violent precursor to the anti-war movement in resistance to civil rights. The modern blog equal is LGF. Imagine those fucks in charge of your town.

Herbert Marcuse was father and theorist of the New Left, a term he disliked and rejected. I recommend

Douglas Kellner's Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism  

Herbert Marcuse's The New Left and the 1960s

I don't know about books, but I was there. I think the disillusionment with electoral politics came much earlier than you imply. After all, even though the Democratic president and congress did pass civil rights legislation, we were well aware that they only responded after violence was right in their face, and they spied on civil rights workers and were very entrenched in the status quo.
Many whites were involved in the civil rights movement and some died for it. It was a natural progression from civil rights to SDS.
Then it was Democrats who escalated the Vietnam War. We learned that the government lied to us. When thousands of us demonstrated in DC, we were demonstrating against the policies of a "liberal" Democratic Pres and Congress.
I think the civil rights movement was the inspiration. The existence of a massive generation of baby boomers rejecting the oppressive 50's was the vehicle, which included the women's movement and the cultural revolution. The war became the engine. The war was devastating. It went on for a long time and the casualties were 20 times what we have had in Iraq, and we saw the whole thing on television unlike now. Everyone was affected. The draft expanded the pool of radicalized young people far beyond what we have now in relation to Iraq.
"Liberal" and "Democrat" were pretty much synonymous as they are now. "Liberal" came to represent timid, amoral compromise with the moral values of the left and with war, although I think most of us stuck with the Democratic Party in the long run.
There was an awful lot happening in a short time. People were "dropping out" very literally. The country was split more than at any time since the civil war. Families were split. Young people were becoming so radicalized that I think the establishment became truly frightened of what might happen, and we had already been through a period of Northern Black protesters setting fire to cities, armed clashes with the police (43 deaths in three days in the city where I lived and whole city blocks burned down) and the assassinations of Malcolm X, JFK, King, and RFK. The Democratic national convention in Chicago was the scene of violence in the streets. People were blowing up banks and university buildings. President Johnson was forced to say he wouldn't run, which I think may have represented a sense that the establishment could truly no longer govern.
"The Movement", which included sort of all of the above, was pretty amorphous. There were those who tried to organize it and do long-term planning, tie it to radical political philosophy, and create a more sophisticated, disciplined movement, but they weren't very successful in any of that, and when the war ended, the movement pretty much ended. And many of the goals had been met. We also became somewhat disillusioned with politics and turned inward in what I think was ultimately a healthy way. Besides, by that time we had to work on getting over our substance addictions. :) The conservatives were rebelling against the dirty hippies and taking over. We looked for supportive communities where we could weather the backlash and sort out our lives. And you can't go on with that kind of intensity indefinitely. It was very stressful as well as rewarding.
I think a lasting effect of the whole thing has been a critical political awareness and no hesitation in engaging in resistance and protest. I saw that in myself when I instantly caught on to Bush's crap and protested the Iraq war before it began this time.
There is a lot more to this, but that's enough for now.
I read a great article of yours recently; keep up the good work.
DenOr in the United States of Amnesia

I would just add that a difference between then and now is that the churches were highly involved in both the civil rights and anti-war movements. The peace movement was far from being just college students. The churches, in particular, drew in a more middle-aged crowd, and as someone mentioned above the old Left was around too to provide some inspiration and leadership despite the "don't trust anyone over 30 stuff".
DeanOr in the United States of Amnesia

Most of the books I can think of have been mentioned but 2 others you may want to add are:

Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader.  It is an excellent book about the growth of the consumer movement and also will give you an idea of how Public Citizen came about.  FWIW  - I can't stand Nader but the books is worth reading.

How the Good Guys Won by Jimmy Breslin.  It is a look at the era Watergate and will give you a good idea of the inner workings of the Dem establishment in the late 60s/early 70s.

I think the part that you're missing so far is that the New Left was a really ideological movement. They argued about Marx and Marcuse and Mao and so on. Old Left didn't refer to labor as some have suggested, and definitely not to FDR and anyone in the government. The New Left was painting themselves in opposition to Khruschev and the CP-USA, arguing that the Communists had ignored most of the subtler structures of oppression.

I'd also second the sentiment that there's no way to talk about the white New Left. The New Left was working with the Panther Party and were supporting revolutionary movements in the Third World. I think you could talk about the white peace movement as separate from black peace movements (with the New Left somewhere between), but if you mean the New Left you're talking about a group that cuts across races.

There was a very strong anti-colonialist and internationalist emphasis within the New Left, so I'd recommend The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon to understand that. Marcuse's most important is Eros and Civilization. Brush up your Marxist history for the project. I'd add in Angela Davis' autobiography so you see how race fit into the New Left.

Good luck!

Matt, I can agree with most of the book recommendations above, but please don't miss the Academic history of the Anti-War Movement of that Era, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era by Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield.  Syracuse U Press.  It does it broadly and properly, beginning in the 50's with the Anti-Nuclear Testing campaigns -- and moves on till 1975, and includes the changing political strategies of the periods.  

The Anti-Nuclear Testing campaigns (SANE and Student Peace Union) flowed into support for the mass based Civil Rights Movement with non-violence at the core of the collaboration in 1960 -- but no one, and I mean no one can do this era without reading all three volumes of Taylor Branch's Social and Cultural Biography of Martin Luther King.  There are many many other histories of the Civil Rights movement noted in the Bibliography and in the text -- but you have to get the full measure of it to understand the late 50's and the early 60's.  So read -- and then work the bibliography.  

Tom Hayden's own biography, is highly significant because he deals with the founding of SDS in the late 1950's as a mostly white organization designed to support the Black Civil Rights Movement. (David Horowitz had fits with me on one of the History lists when I laid out the process by which SDS changed from a founding intent into something quite different.)   Read Hayden in conjunction with Isserman's bio of Michael Harrington, "The Other American" (Remember JFK got everyone to read Harrington's book, "The Other Americans") -- as JFK was beginning to move in the direction of some sort of Poverty Program. Gitlin is also critical -- all of his books on the 60's -- but he came along a bit after Hayden, and you need to comprehend these very short eras.  

No one has thus-far mentioned the fact that the 60's was quite international.  Movements in the US had a huge influence on France in 68, Germany in 68, and I would also add Czechoslovika in 1968 (and with Charter 77).  I would go so far as to say that some elements of the American 60's are there when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.  You are right about institution building, because if that had happened at all, some of those movements would have been useful in 1989.  Tony Judt's recent book, "Postwar" had a number of great chapters on the British, French and German movements that arose in Europe, both E & W in the 60's and afterwards.  Again -- a fantastic bibliography that can take you out to the specifics.

I highly recommend Tom Wells history of the Anti-Vietnam War movement, "The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam"  That's the big picture, but I would also recommend you read "Rads: The 1970 Bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin and the Aftermath."  By Tom Bates (1992).  It is the best book I know of that gets into disillusionment on the part of activists.  

I haven't begun to think what Feminist Lit I would recommend, but from about 1967 onward, a good part of the "liberal" movement is Feminist.  

Just last week when Jenne Kirkpatrick died I felt called upon on Firedoglake to do a negative Obit on the lady.  In 1968 my slate of precinct delegates beat her slate of precinct delegates in perhaps the most solid DFL precinct in Minneapolis.  (2-6 at that time).  Her Husband Evron Kirkpatrick was one of the Godfathers of Hubert Humphrey, but one cannot understand that era unless one comprehends how Gene McCarthy's slates beat him on his home ground, and why that was critical in Jenne running and joining the Neo-Con's.  Two books by David Lebedoff, "Ward Number Six" and "The 21st Ballot" (Schribners and U of Minn Press publications respectively) will get you down to the ground level fights in the political arena that were part of the larger fight.  

By the way, I agree that attention needs to be paid to Gene McCarthy's role in all this.  Hopefully someone is doing a decent biography. I would also point out that McGovern's campaign in 1972 in Minnesota, which while it did not win him the state electors, did move the most progressive DFL types into control of the State Legislature, which they kept for nearly 20 years.  (we just got it back).  

I also agree with the recommendation that you must read Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate" about Lyndon Johnson during the time he was Majority Leader in the 1950's.  In particular, focus on how he dealt with all the progressives elected in 1958 -- that was the core of the votes for change in the 60's.  

Warning! the term "Liberal" has a number of meanings in the context of the 1960's.  You will need to research this, and sort it out your own way -- but it doesn't mean the same thing it means today, and in Europe it has a very different and negative meaning, and among activists in the US during the 1960's it means mostly negative things. You have to conceptualize and not just lable.    

"After awhile and beginning in 1972, liberal activists basically gave up, first withdrawing from the electoral realm into process work, and then pulled out altogether into a mostly apolitical stance.

Does this sketch make sense?"

It kind of ignores Watergate and the wave election of 1974. I might even reverse it - after 1972 elements of the New Left embraced the electoral realm. Think of how many anti-war and civil rights activists ended up being elected officials: Tom Hayden and Julian Bond ended up mayors and legislators, and then we have Representative Bobby Rush whose bio includes this:

"During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, Congressman Rush worked to secure basic civil and human rights for African-Americans, women and other minorities. He was a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1966 to 1968. Congressman Rush was a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968.

While a Black Panther, he operated the Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program. "

When you have people who made the move from the SNCC to the Black Panthers ultimately to the US Congress you end up with a narrative diametrically opposed to the one you present. You can make a solid argument that in fact the New Left was coopted into the Democratic Party transforming it into the stereotypical "San Francisco Democrat" party.

In most ways the Democratic Party was pretty damn progressive in spirit from 1974 until its Third Way transformation. It had too many Old South holdovers and Big City machine politicians to be totally effective in actually moving a Progressive agenda but a lot of the leadership that is now moving to the fore were very active in what you are calling the "New Left" movement. As another example you could look at the biography of Congressman John Lewis http://www.house.gov/johnlewis/bio.html You have a guy that moved from bleeding on the Selma bridge to Atlanta City Council to Congress. Not a lot of "withdrawing from the electoral realm" there.

I don't think younger modern Progressives really understand how much the needle moved during the post 1972 period. Positions that are now considered moderate and mainstream: choice and environmentalism for example, were considered extremist, and at a political level most all of those advances occured after 1972. So I politely suggest you rework the narrative a little and examine the legislative record from 1972 to 1980 when if anything the New Left overpushed their way through the doors of power and to some degree led to the backlash that was the Reagan Revolution.

I'm not much of a cultural historian, I'll read a book like "The Seventies" and take that as good enough.

I focus on campaigns, and the '68 election is one of the most fascinating ones out there.  I'm not sure about an over-arching book about the whole election (anyone rec one?), but the three I have that give you a day-to-day perspective are:

The AP story of Election 1968", by Relman Morin, a good overview that grinds through how Nixon won.

85 Days, by Jules Witcover, which, if you are going to talk about Bobby Kennedy and think you know what you are talking about, you must read.

1968: McCarthy, New Hampshire, "I hear America Singing", by David Hoeh that is probably the best documented book by a campaign staffer for 1968.

I'll have to make a post here sometime about the best politcal campaign books from each presidential nomination/election of the past... I'm sure I'd come out with a reading list of 50 books.

    The left became discredited and detached from working class whites because of race. In 1972 George Wallace won the Democratic presidential primary in Michigan because of outright race-baiting. School busing, affirmative action, and race riots drove many working class whites into the Republican/Nixon camp. The dedication to civil rights cost the liberals support for all the other issues. Fortunately, the younger generations seem to be less racist. I grew up among suburban white union workers who loved Reagan. Why have only southern Democrats been acceptable as national candidates? Race wasn't the only reason liberal became a dirty word, but it was the most important.

Matt-great project and best of luck with it.

The anti war lefties in the 60's were largely based on the university campuses. The war began to fracture the New Deal coalition of labor, intellectuals, and especially southern whites who became increasingly disturbed at the pace and tone of civil rights legislation and enforcement. Blue collar types in the north did not subscribe to the anti war cause until much later. They were also appalled at the libertine excesses of this movement (sex, drugs, rock and roll). Yet, by 1972 this new, more narrowly comprised liberalism took over the leadership of the democratic party culminating in the nomination of McGovern and his calamitous defeat. At the same time, Nixon's southern strategy had peeled off the disaffected southern whites-as you know they are still republicans to this day. For some perspective on this it would be worth interviewing Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern's campaign manager and also close to Bobby Kennedy.

It is important to remember that the anti war movement was not just about the war-it was clearly "anti-establishment". Establishment elites (ie white guys in suits)pushed back hard against the "hippies" resulting in political isolation.
Progressives subsequently focused their efforts in specific causes: abortion rights (NARAL etc), the environment (Sierra club, Greenpeace, etc), and feminism (equal rights amendment-still yet to be ratified). This specialization further fractured the progressive cause-something only now beginning to be remedied.

The Reagan administration institutionized at the government level what had begun under Nixon-the formal implementation of corporatist policies. Anti union, lax corporate enforcement, and most importantly of all-looser regulation of communications. The wave of media consolidation began under Reagan as did the termination of the "fairness doctrine". The Wurlitzer of today was ushered into existence by these policies.

The demonization of "liberalism" has been a coordinated attack that had all of its key pieces in place in the early '80s. Progressives have been slogging through this mud ever since.

I was part of Berkeley in the 60's, from 63 through 71. A must see is the film by that name:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099121/

The following people can give you an excellent idea of what that time was about: Todd Gilin; Robert Scheer, Tom Hayden, Fred Branfman (all post at Huffingtonpost.com); Andrew Kopkind; Michale Lerner at tikkun.org.

The 60's were an liberation explosion in the midst of a deeply repressed America. From an extreme post-war stifling conformity, a new generation raised without those fears took on, all at once, a series of taboos:  race, sexual roles, sexuality, drugs, consciousness, environmentalism. All these movements cross-fertilized, first among students at many campuses, and then throughout America.

Interestingly, political reform per se was not one of core themes: there was huge interest and participation in politics, mainly because of the war and the draft, but very little interest in evolving the political system. We were far more interested in transcending conventional societal structures and creating new ones (now the stuff of legend as "dirty fucking hippies").   The Carter presidency gave a wonderful reception to thousands of idealists who put their ideas to work in Washington, within the establishment, in those years.

The ideas of the 60's were way ahead of their time, as we well knew.  The inevitable backlash took its toll, and it wasn't until Clinton that there was an opportunity for progressive thinking to take a seat at the table.

Today, the new progressive movement embeds some of the best 60's ideals with an appropriate pragmatism.  IMHO, Digby and Billmon represent this blend best.

The 60's idealists never went away. With the exception of a handful who chose to reject the error of their ways, they became mainstream citizens, and a huge number of them (if my friends are any guide) continue to be active in politics and culture in the areas in which they prefer.

Interestingly, Nancy Pelosi through her roots in the San Francisco Bay Area has always been attuned to these trends. Nancy is a poster child of that ferment expressed in a most mature way.

Matt- Please don't underestimate or overlook the free speech/free-to-assemble movement in your research (as was mentioned earlier). A person who continues the movement today would be Barry A. Adams, of Rainbow Family fame. His family name is Plunker. Link to unofficial web page and contact info for Adams can be found at this link: Welcome Home-Rainbow Family. I happened to meet him at the family gathering in Steamboat Springs, CO in summer 2006. I would suggest you contact him for an interview. He has a long history of the movement and is a man of wisdom. I think he currently lives in Montana.

Secondly, Cesar Chavez was a mover and there are many today who started their activists' careers because of Chavez.

And then there is Corky Gonzales and La Raza Unidos.

I agree with much of what's suggested above. Focus on the 'splinter' movements is necessary to capture a total picture.

Me, I was influenced by many movements and consider myself a 'pro-peace-hippie-flower-power-Chicana-f eminist-pro-labor-environmentalist-no-nu ke-idealist-liberal'. Which is why I say that a big picture look at the 60's defines today's New Left more than any one event or movement. That's both the beauty and the curse of growing up with so many influences. Beautiful because we continue to desire a world of peace and harmony; a curse because we expected it to happen in our lifetime. I know of many like myself who are active today.

Matt, in addition to all the great recommendations you also need to factor in how the music from 1965 - 1970, which enveloped and embedded key messages of the liberal movement, was a significant catalyst for  ultimate success.

And this will most likely never be replicated.

Lots of really good books suggested.

Here's a video worth watching: The Psychedelic 60s Literary Tradition and Social Change": Ken Kesey speaking at the University of Virginia in 2000, shortly before he left us.

From the transcript:

I feel like there are warriors, and that we know, and have known, a number of warriors...wonderful, powerful warriors. And there is a way that you can see which is the warrior and which isn't. And I have done this by making, arbitrarily, two categories - one of them is "shit floats" and the other one is "cream rises."
.....
How do we know we're warriors? How do we know who we are? We do, we do. Go ahead and brighten up that little spark in your life. Brighten it up and when you see each other there, don't turn away from each other. When some guy on the street needs money, give him some damn money. We can afford it. Lay a couple of bucks on him and then meet his eyes; deal with him. This is what most of them want is just to have that human touch. And we don't have to have master's degrees or big houses. We can do it with funny clothes on. We look at each other and say, "Have a nice day," and mean it, fucking mean it right down from where you are say, "Have a nice day." The person looks back and your face lights up and then already you are having a better day. This is where it's gonna run from.

I've got a good black friend. I've known him for 30 years. He's a jazz player, he talks a lot of jazz stuff. And often we will get into this argument and people will come out and say, "Yeah but look how many people are doing it. Look how many voted for it." But that has to do with numbers. We are never going to win by numbers. There are not enough of us. We are strong, but there are not enough for us to win a huge popular election. We are losers. Face it from the beginning, you don't have to deal with it later. We are dead ass losers, and yet it's a wonderful game to be in there fighting for that place on the block. And so my friend says, "You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed." We are the seeds.

Good comments all. It's been touched on a couple of times above, but as another who came of age at that time I can't emphasize enough the impact of the draft. It was a looming presence in every male's life from about 11th grade on. It engendered real fear, waking a generation from their sleep with nightmares, and was constantly in our waking thoughts. What's my number? What will I do? Where will I go? My heart's beating faster just thinking back on it...

The New Student Left: An Anthology edited by Mitchell Cohen & Dennis Hale, Beacon Press: The Unitarian Universalist Association, 1967.

The Feminist Memoir Project is an essential read.
It will situate all the activist women you've met who are in their Sixties now and began in the New Left.  Repelled by the casual sexism of men in the movement, yet still wanting to participate, they created separate radical experiments.

Those women have been the central actors, largely unacknowledged, behind all the social movements that lasted beyond the sixties: the movement to help battered women, defend clinics, create women's studies, protect the earth, stop nuclear weapons, etc.  It's the great overlooked story (or one of them).

The institutions people now see as feminism were always the moderate wing of this movement (ie NARAL, NOW), akin to the DLC v. the grassroots.
The activists worked through mimeographing, small group organizing, leadership in their communities.

Unfortunately, the misogyny of our society has rendered this community invisible: its newspapers are out of print and its bookstores shuttered.
Thus women like Condi or Hilary become the symbol of the "new woman," and are (or should be) widely, and justifiably, distrusted.

Several books and movies I would add:

Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals.

Abby Hoffman: Steal this Book

Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique

Erica Jong: Fear of Flying

Movies: The Weather Underground and Conspiracy: Trial of the Chicago 8

READ HOWARD ZINN - HE IS THE BEST.
ESPECIALLY A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Two recommendations:

First, I recommend "Generations: The History of America's future From 1584 to 2069" by Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, published in October, 1990, by Quill Press.  It originally sold for $12.95 in paperback.  Personally, I think it is the best book on American history ever written.  However, only sections of it cover the 1960s.  Nevertheless, in taking the long view of history, it (correctly, I think) portrays the 1960s as the beginnings of a religious awakening that ended in 1980.

Second, try "Coming Apart:  An Informal History of America in the 1960s" by William L. O'Neill.  It was published by Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co, New York, around 1971.  (Library of Congress Control Number:  79152098; International Standard Book Number:  0812962230)  Disclaimer:  This book was recommended to me some time ago, But I have not read it.

Enjoy.