I wonder if the GOP figured women who are past their childbearing years

[wnylib]

42. I'm an older boomer.

I was 10 in 1960, graduated from high school in 1967, and was 20 in 1970. I was 13 when King gave his I Have A Dream speech in Washington, had just turned 14 when JFK was killed, was 15 when Johnson escalated troops in Vietnam, and was 18 when RFK and MLK were killed.
I grew up in a city of 130,000, more if you included the suburbs. It was in northwestern PA.

It's true that not all boomers were active in protests and demonstrations. Many who did not get involved were sympathetic to the various movements and were part of the counter culture in clothing, music, and ideas. But there were also many who ignored those things and went about their lives getting jobs, raising families, and living like their parents. Some were even Young Republicans.

In my high school (about 2400 students) a few kids wore peace symbol pendants to show their opposition to the Vietnam War. Quite a few were into weed, called pot then. All of us were very aware of anti war and civil rights movements. The majority favored civil rights. A smaller, but large group opposed the war. Most did not attend political demonstrations outside of school. We would have had to travel to do it. There were none in our city.

I remember 3 protests at school. One was a demand for the cafeteria to offer more variety besides a single hot meal. Students went on a cafeteria food strike until a la carte sandwiches, salads, and cookies were included. Another was when the girls went on strike in gym, refusing to get into the pool on pool days until it was drained, cleaned, and refilled. (It really needed the cleaning.) The third happened the year after I graduated, when my sister had just started high school. A male teacher refused to admit girls to class if they wore slacks when the dress code was changed to allow them. ALL his female students in every class, including homeroom, then deliberately wore slacks every day and stood in the hall. After a few days, the principal ordered him to admit the girls or face discipline.

In 10th grade English (1965), when we were assigned to write our own ballads, I wrote a tragic tale of death in war that clearly showed opposition to it. The teacher selected it among some other ones to read to the class. It got applause due to the topic.

But most of us were concerned with what to do after graduation - college, jobs, marriage, enlistment or how to avoid the draft. Boys who had not planned to go to college scrambled to get into one for a draft exemption. Some found girls to marry them soon after graduation for an exemption. Kids who were college bound were less concerned about it.

In my graduating class (600 kids) most were not politically active until they got to college. But there was a girl in my geometry class who was very active in the Young Republicans. That was not cool and she took a lot of ribbing from students and even from the teacher.

When I was a senior, there was a race riot at another school in town. One of my friends and her brother went to that school. He lifted her out through a first floor window and they ran home. Two students in my graduating class used the senior prom to make a political statement on social justice. The boy was black, from a working class family in a poor section of town. The girl was white, from a prominent, well off family in an old money part of town. They were the first interracial couple at the prom in the history of the school.

By the 70s, I did not know a single person my age who did not wear the bell bottom jeans, flowing tops (girls), long hair (boys and girls), beads, peace jewelry, etc. associated with the times, the politics, and hippie counterculture. They were not all active in marches, but they sympathized with them. I did not go to demonstrations, but argued the issues with adults. My boyfriend and I tutored disadvantaged kids, mostly Black, to prepare them for college.

My brother, the musician and artist in the family, went to Woodstock.

My sister's college experienced a few sit ins that blocked administration offices until student demands were at least heard. My friend who had escaped the race riot at her high school was later a student at Kent State. She went home on the weekend after campus demonstrations started getting too rough on Friday night. Her mother insisted that she stay home on Monday, too, so she was not there when the shootings took place. She knew 2 of the dead students. She transferred to another college.

On campuses, many students avoided demonstrations and concentrated on studies and getting good jobs after their degrees. So, many boomers were politically active, but many were not. The majority participated in the counter culture through music and clothes, even if they were not activists or hippie drop outs. A lot of younger boomers got into the counter culture movements as a social thing, without strong commitments to the issues or knowledge of them. They just liked having the power to rebel by joining protests.