Rebecca Pratt The Era Of Activism 1960 - 1975

  • Publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

    Publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
    he New Yorker started serializing Silent Spring in June 1962, and it was published in book form with illustrations by Lois and Louis Darling by Houghton Mifflin later that year. When the book Silent Spring was published, Rachel Carson was already a well-known writer on natural history, but had not previously been a social critic. The book was widely read especially after its selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the New York Times best-seller list.
  • Congress passes the Clean Air Act

    Congress passes the Clean Air Act
    his act dealt with reducing air pollution by setting emissions standards for stationary sources such as power plants and steel mills. It did not take into account mobile sources of air pollution which had become the largest source of many dangerous pollutants. Once these standards were set, the government also needed to determine deadlines for companies to comply with them. Amendments to the Clean Air Act were passed in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1969.
  • Publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique

    Publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique
    It is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. In 1957, Friedan was asked to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion; the results, in which she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, prompted her to begin research for The Feminine Mystique, conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising.
  • Publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed

    Publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed
    Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a book detailing resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety. It was a pioneering work, openly polemical but containing substantial references and material from industry insiders. It made Nader a household name.
  • NOW is founded

    NOW is founded
    the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.NOW was founded on June 30, 1966, in Washington, D.C., by 28 women and men attending the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.
  • UFW’s Nationwide Boycott of grapes picked on nonunion farms

    UFW’s Nationwide Boycott of grapes picked on nonunion farms
    The United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) Spanish: Unión de Campesinos is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez. This union changed from a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight
  • Woodstock

    Woodstock
    was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". hirty-two acts performed during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone’s 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.
  • First Earth Day celebration

    First Earth Day celebration
    Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this first Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations.
  • The EPA is established

    The EPA is established
    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA or sometimes USEPA is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 3, 1970, after Nixon submitted a reorganization plan to Congress and it was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.
  • Supreme Court rules to legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case

    Supreme Court rules to legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case
    oe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark, controversial decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests for regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother's health.
  • Protesters from the AIM take over the reservation at Wounded Knee

    Protesters from the AIM take over the reservation at Wounded Knee
    The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States. In October 1973 the American Indian Movement gathered its forces from across the country onto the Trail of Broken Treaties, championing Indian unity. The national AIM agenda focused on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty.