Again, like others, you make the ridiculous and ahistorical error of conflating the political protest movements with the “hippie-types.” Sure, there was overlap between the groups in many cases, but the fact that you are ignorant enough to believe that political protesters were simply about free love and weed, man, says more about you than about them. Not only that, but you make the error of assuming that protests were a purely late-1960s phenomenon, when they had, in fact, been going for decades by the late 1960s. Of course, focusing on the late 1960s serves your ignorant cause, because it helps you feel (incorrectly) justified in arguing that protesters were just pathetic hippies who effected no change at all.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that improvements in the American social and political landscape since World War II are purely and simply a direct product of protests; nor is anyone arguing that progress only came about after the late 1960s. But to point to a few conveniently-placed (for your diatribe) legal developments and argue that this negates any effect the protest movements might have had is asinine.
First, as **dropzone **notes, the incidents you discuss did not magically change American attitudes. The passing of Brown v. Board, and of various federal and state legal measures designed to offer a modicum of equality, may have changed the law and the regulations in many instances, but they by no means guaranteed that those laws or regulations would be honored anywhere except in the breach.
Many American cities saw massive fights against desegregation, battles that began specifically because of decisions like Brown v. Board. One could argue, in fact, that the Supreme Court decision was really the beginning, not the end, of the on-the-ground fight for desegregation in America. Read urban histories of cities like Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and plenty of others, and you’ll find stories of city governments as well as school boards and everyday citizens doing everything they could to maintain segregation even in the face of federal pressures to change their ways.
And while i would never argue that things are now perfect, or that the history of women in America is one unbroken arc of empowerment and equality, the rise of the feminist movement in the 1960s and early 1970s did much to change many American’s attitudes regarding gender issues.
Actually, many modern history books, even school texts, do a pretty good job of tracing the arc of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam protests, and other cases of civil disobedience and social conflict. And even the mediocre ones makes clear that i9t was about more than just Brown v. Board and a couple of other well-known incidents.
I’m willing to bet that NinjaChick’s version of events is a product of poor reading skills, or selective interpretation designed to buttress some dearly-held preconceptions.