A copy of the Security Handbook given to participants in the "Freedom Summer" campaign in Mississippi in 1964 highlights the dangers that young civil rights workers were exposed to. Tragically, the precautions suggested by the handbook proved…

On April 22, 1971, John Kerry, representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), testified before the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate. The following day, April 23, 1971, Kerry and hundreds of other VVAW veterans threw medals,…

Under Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) was aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political groups within the United States. In the 1960's, COINTELPRO's targets frequently included civil rights…

In 1959, at the age of seventeen, Joe McDonald joined the Navy. After his discharge three years later, he enrolled in a Los Angeles college where he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, McDonald moved to Berkeley, California just as…

Todd Gitlin was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which by the late 1960s was the largest radical student organization in the country. Originally concerned with the problem of poverty and racism in the United States,…

After serving in the Navy, Joe McDonald moved to Berkeley, California, as the anti-Vietnam War movement was beginning to pick up momentum. He recorded "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag" under the name "Country Joe and the Fish"; the song gradually…

A Vietnam-era photograph shows a standoff between antiwar protesters and military police. The demonstration, which took place on October 21, 1967, included a march to the Pentagon, where "Yippies" Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin led a mock "exorcism"…

In 1960, four African-American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, began "sitting in" at the local Woolworth store’s lunch counter, which, like virtually all such lunch counters at the time, did not serve black customers. The protesters…

In this photograph taken at the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, women marchers carry signs supporting a variety of demands.

American college students in the early 1930s increasingly protested U.S. involvement in the war in Europe. They organized campus strikes around the nation and encouraged students to pledge non-cooperation in any war. This flyer is from the National…