| The student movements of the nineteen sixties bad a profound effect on American society in terms of changing racial and gender relations, educational institutions, political culture, form of popular entertainment and private lifestyles. The popular reaction against the excesses of the sixties began the period of political conservatism that the United States experienced in the following three decades.; The historical works an the sixties have regarded the South only as an important center of black student civil rights activism and have treated the North, Midwest and West as the significant areas of white radical activity. The main focus has been on the major student uprisings such as those at Berkeley and Columbia. The purpose of this dissertation is to correct the misconception that the South was merely a backwater of New Left activity.; In 1969, the South had chapters of the Southern Student Organizing Committee, a southern counterpart of SDS, and 67 chapters of the Students for a Democratic Society, cut of a total of 304. This study examines one of the most active southern campuses, Florida State University, sometimes nicknamed the "Berkeley of the South." The inquiry is based on newspaper accounts, interviews and archival material such as leaflets, pamphlets and radical newsletters.; The dissertation examines the actions of white FSU students in support of the civil rights movement, a student power struggle aver publications, a battle waged by SDS against the administration aver university recognition, and the May 1970 uprising in response to the invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State. The study also investigates the period after the June 1969 demise of SDS, when the student movement proliferated into a variety of groups including the Old Leftist Young Socialist Alliance and organizations concentrating on anti-war activity, environmentalism, veterans, opposition to the war and black, gay and women's liberation. The study further examines the conflicts surrounding the establishment of the Center for Participant Education, Florida State's free university, and the use by the local power structure of the state legislature, university, police and judicial systems to suppress what it considered a dangerous threat. |
