Chicago Seven Videos

Ask Steve: Campus Unrest in the 60s

(2) tv-pg

Ask Steve: Campus Unrest in the 60s

(2 min) tv-pg

Why were college campuses seed-beds of revolution during the 1960's? Steve Gillon explains how the Baby Boom generation is the answer to this question, in his Ask Steve segment. So many young Americans were entering college in the 1960's because of the Baby Boom. In fact, 41% of the American public in the 1960's was under the age of twenty. At the start of the 1960's, 3 million people were in college, and by the end of the decade that number skyrocketed to 8.6 million. Now there were a lot of young, radical people, all in the same place, who were afraid of such things as the draft. However, not all college campuses were scenes of protests. Most protests took place on the campuses of elite, private, and major research universities. This all boils down to the fact that this generation was divided then on issues like the Vietnam War and still remain divided today.