The 1970s: Youth Movements and Politics

Jayne Anne Phillips graduated from high school in 1970. This means that her teen years coincided with the last years of the 1960s. During this decade, youth culture became a dominant social force due to such phenomena as pop music, recreational drug use among the young, and such anti-establishment, unconventional youth groups identifying themselves in various ways: as hippies, yippies, or "Greens" for example. A prominent political position taken by many young people, and by many Americans of all ages, was opposition to the Vietnam War. The American public was deeply ambivalent about sacrificing young Americans in this conflict.

President Richard Nixon officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973. That same year he was discovered to have engaged in illegal activities and in 1974 became the first president to resign from the office. This scandal, known as Watergate, undoubtedly produced a permanent...