The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975 A Brief History with Documents

Movements of the New Left is a documentary history of the movements for fundamental social change and radical democracy that disrupted the United States from their emergence in the 1950s through their dispersion and institutionalization in the early 1970s. Using an inclusive definition of the New Left, Gosse tracks the development and commonalities of the civil rights and black power movements and other struggles of people of color, of the peace, antiwar, and student movements, and of feminism and gay liberation. The introduction presents a solid overview of the history of these movements, combining chronological and thematic approaches against the backdrop of Cold War liberalism. Forty-five documents follow, each with an informative headnote providing context and explanatory footnotes that help students make sense of manifestoes, testimonies, speeches, newspaper advertisements, letters, and book excerpts from the tumultuous era referred to as "the Sixties." A chronology of the New Left, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index provide further pedagogical support.

Van Gosse teaches history at Franklin and Marshall College and is a longtime member of the Radical History Review Editorial Collective. He is the author of Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left and editor, with Richard Moser, of The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America, as well as of numerous articles on 20th-century U.S. politics and political culture. He has served as director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas and organizing director of Peace Action, and has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.