The 1960's was a decade that forever changed the culture and society of America. The 1960's were widely known as the decade of peace .
and love, not because the world had become a utopia but, in my opinion, .
because of the heavy use of the popular hallucinogenic drugs by the .
American youth. In reality minorities were struggling to gain freedom .
from segregation and thousands of American soldiers and Vietnamese.
civilians were being killed in the highly disputed war in Vietnam. .
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On February 20, 1960 four black college freshmen from the Negro .
Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina quietly .
walked into a restaurant and sat down at the lunch counter. They were .
protesting the Jim Crow custom that blacks could be served while .
standing up but not while they were sitting at the lunch counter. The .
students quietly sat there politely asking for service until closing time. .
The next morning they showed up again accompanied by twenty five fellow .
students. By the next week their sit down had been repeated in fourteen .
cities in five deep south states. In the weeks to follow many new .
protests arose. After a black woman was beaten with a baseball bat in .
Montgomery, Alabama, 1,000 blacks silently marched into the first capital .
of the Confederate states to sing and pray. Six hundred students from two.
colleges walked through the streets of Orangeburg, South Carolina with .
placards that exhibited phrases like "We Want Liberty" and "Segregation .
is Dead." By late June some kind of public place in over one hundred and .
fifty different cities across America had been desegregated.
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John F. Kennedy was never able to gain enough support to pass a civil .
rights bill during his short time in office, but Lyndon Johnson drawing on .
the Kennedy legacy and the support of the nation succeeded in passing the .
bill. The bill passed 71 to 19, four more votes than required.
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By early 1965 a new black leader had arose, whose name was .