25 Facts People Forget About The 70s

You know about discos, bell-bottoms, the end of the Vietnam War, Three's Company, the Rubik's Cube, and Pet Rocks, but how much more do you know about the '70s politics, trends, and identities that shaped the world we live in today? Whether you're writing an academic paper, fiction, or you just want to add to your knowledge bank, settle in for this long read on forgotten 70s history and facts!

In a rush to get 70s Facts? You can navigate this list with the Table of Contents below!

1. The North and South Were at Odds

The 'sunbelt' was first coined by the same man, Kevin Phillips, who wrote the book The Emerging Republican Majority (1969), which inspired and informed Richard Nixon. Phillips studied the trends and attitudes of the South, noticing that white Democrats fleeing the party in the wake of civil rights would make excellent members of the changing Republican party— and that they had a lot in common with disgruntled white voters in the Southwest and suburbs.

The Great Migration of black Americans occurred between 1916 and 1970, with roughly 6 million of us moving from the South to northern, usually urban locations. But during the last decade of the Great Migration, for the first time, the South was experiencing a large influx of new residents that outnumbered the amount of people leaving. Leaders of the South, who wanted to attract as many businesses and residents as possible, realized that if they wanted investment dollars and talent in the region, they had to erase the South’s old reputation of backwardness and bigotry. Southern politicians, though no longer embarrassed over the segregation wars that exploded in the 60s, publicly acted as moderates when it came to race. Black southern voters grew in number, black politicians gained more power within the political bureaucracy, and outward displays of racism were traded in for microaggressions and dog whistles. Southern leaders also rolled out the red carpet for businesses by enacting right-to-work laws that restricted labor organizations and limited union fundraising, and offered long-term tax abatements, free land, and facilities. In 1970, half of the annual foreign investment in America was in the South. Between 1970 and 1990, the South’s population grew by 40%. A good chunk of these newcomers were luxury car-driving retirees, who purchased freshly built condos with retirement income their forefathers could have never dreamed of. 

Leaders of the Frostbelt (the industrial regions of the Northeast and Midwest) weren’t really feeling the Sunbelt. They complained that their states paid the most taxes and that most of the money went to the Sunbelt. The governor of New York, Hugh Carey, was the leader of such criticism. He and his fellow frostbelt governors formed the “Coalition of Northeast Governors” in 1976 to lobby Congress for more aid packages. Keep in mind that this was a period of economic crisis and stagflation. One dramatic New Yorker claimed that “Like blacks, Latinos, women, and homosexuals, northeasterners are an oppressed minority. We are only beginning to realize how badly the federal government discriminates against us.” Sunbelt leaders insisted that the Frostbelt’s decline was due to bad policies and leadership, and then organized counter-lobbying groups to ensure they’d keep getting generous aid and things like federal agricultural programs. Such programs helped grow agricultural businesses in the South.

It wasn’t just factories and agriculture that brought new wealth and influence to the sunbelt. Aerospace and defense industries built headquarters in sunbelt locations like LA, Houston, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and North Carolina, which created more modern industries and jobs. During the 60s, NASA brought huge money to the southeast with its multibillion-dollar Project Apollo moon program, erecting the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center in Houston. Then there were the tax breaks involved with the lucrative and burgeoning southern oil industry, bringing massive wealth to Sunbelt areas like Texas. Isn’t it funny how many Southerners are supposedly anti-government and self-reliant, but much of the South’s late-20th-century growth came from federal programs and dare I say it… handouts? The South’s lack of unions, along with its job growth, meant union decline in the North and Midwest. This coincided perfectly with the growth in service industry jobs like fast food and retail, where any potential for new union organizing was weak. This pivot away from union jobs in the seventies set the tone for a country increasingly hostile towards unions and workers' rights.

The South was also influential thanks to music, showcased by the popularity of acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd and hits like Loretta Lynn’s Coal Miner's Daughter in 1970, John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy in 1975, and Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You in 1974.

Country radio stations grew across the country in the decades following the 70s, and the music had cultural currency. Newspapers documented the rising influence. One 1971 paper stated, “Country music, once generally dismissed as the doleful mauderings of illiterate hillbillies, is attracting an ever-widening audience and has spread from its base in the south-central states to become a programming staple on a majority of the nation’s radio stations.” Richard Nixon attended the unveiling of the 15 million dollar Grand Ol Opry auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 1974. He played the piano and also played with a yoyo. This was at the same time that he was facing mounting pressure of the Watergate scandal, demonstrating that even in a time of crisis Nixon had time for country fans— those most likely to be his core constituency. Country lyrics documented and sometimes romanticized the lives of poor whites, criticized the government, and generally encompassed the full span of populist and conservative beliefs that come to mind when we think of “the South.”

The culture that came along with country music, aka redneck culture— pick up trucks, cowboy boots and hats, the Confederate flag — became trendy to northerners and midwesterners who had never ventured below the Mason-Dixon. Redneck, once an epithet for poor landless white southerners, became a source of pride and working-class patriotism in which even Northerners and Midwesterners could share southern sentiments about survival, government interference, liberals, and welfare loving negroes. 

2. The U.S. Was Punished for Supporting Israel

On October 6th, 1973, (Yom Kippur in the Hebrew calendar), many Israeli soldiers were not on duty when Egyptians and Syrians attacked. The countries wanted to reclaim land that had been lost during the 6-Day-War of 1967, when Israelis encroached on their territory. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, (OPEC), put an embargo on oil sales to punish the United States for supporting Israel. OPEC nations-- Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela-- announced they would reduce oil exports by 5% every month until Israel left the Arab territories they occupied. As oil prices surged by 70%, the primary concern for the average American in late 1973 was obtaining fuel. To conserve the precious resource, Nixon signed into law a national speed limit of 55MPH. The 'Yom Kippur' War was over by the end of October, but the continued embargo caused gas rations and long, agonizing, and desperate lines for fuel. The embargo was lifted in March 1974, but the severe outages that occurred as a result would reveal American dependence on foreign oil importsand embarrass us on an international level. Because oil prices would permanently increase by the end of the decade, engineers and scientists began looking for alternative sources of energy.

3. The Theme of The Early 70s Was Recession

Inflation doubled between 1969 and 1974, and continued increasing slowly for the rest of the decade. The unemployment rate nearly doubled in 1974 alone.  Unionized jobs became scarcer, as available employment shifted from mostly manufacturing to mostly service-based positions. Jobs in banking, health care, department stores, food, entertainment, and travel constituted 70% of all the positions created in the private sector. Tons of fast food restaurants popped up in Black neighborhoods because Nixon’s Commerce Department “facilitated federally subsidized loans for fast food franchisees in the name of promoting African American entrepreneurship and job creation.” Too bad those jobs earned workers $1.90-2.60 an hour. American car makers were competing with Japan and West Germany in the 70s, and the competition was so fierce that the United Auto Workers labor union launched an unsuccessful “Buy American” campaign in an attempt to secure their jobs and lush benefits.

But cars like the Volkswagen Beetle were too attractive to Americans. The value of imported goods from Japan and Western Europe grew from less than 14% of America’s domestic economy in 1970, to nearly 40% in 1979. Adding to the economic woes was the decline of Big Steel in cities like Youngstown and Pittsburgh. Companies noticed that southern regions had fewer regulations requiring them to pay workers fairly or to provide benefits, so they packed up and headed south. This was a primary cause of the decline of the New England Textile Industry. Other major employers sought international opportunities where taxes and labor were cheaper, environmental laws not hostile, and where labor unions were weak or non-existent. This led to vast deindustrialization. Massive military spending had increased the national deficit to 40 billion by 1972, and redirected funds from roads, schools, and industries. 

4. Black People Joined The Military in Droves

The racial wage gap increased, and the number of black homes without male wage earners rose from 22% in 1960 to 35% in 1975. Many black youth, facing fewer job options and without access to college, chose the military. This was a major development as in 1973 the military had begun moved from involuntary drafting to creating a completely voluntary force. The percentage of Black people in the military rose from 18% in 1972 to 33% in 1979.

5. The Evangelical Impact on The Sexual Revolution

Though they obsessed over family values and rejected a growing acceptance of non-marital sex, evangelicals actually left their mark on the sexual revolution in their own way, as observed by historian Gillian Frank. A lot of sex advice literature was produced by and for evangelical women in the 70s, a part of a larger evangelical publishing boom. According to Frances Fitzgerald, “evangelical women published a spate of books arguing that women were by nature different from men and could achieve fulfillment and true femininity only by surrendering their lives to their husbands.” Part of surrendering meant being really skilled at sex. Quipped Anita Bryant in 1972, “Christian sex is everything. Married sex, as with all else God has created, is beautiful.”  There were more no-fault divorce laws and divorce rates climbed. Single women out in the workplace. Casual sex became more accepted. In the face of all of this, evangelical messaging towards women about sex became a lot more encouraging and permissive. Beverly and Tim LaHaye wrote a 1976 bestseller that emphasized that the “ultimate objective of sex” is orgasm for both the husband and wife, a quite revolutionary idea for many evangelicals who believed the primary role of sex to be procreation. 

A key feature of these books was the looming threat of homewreckers, a fear intensified by the rise of women in the workplace. Beverly LaHaye wrote that men’s secretaries were “desperately lonely and will pay any price for a period of tenderness.” Texts like Marabel Morgan’s 1974 bestseller The Total Woman told women to prepare for sexual intercourse every night for a week, reminding them that “All day long your husband is surrounded at the office by dazzling secretaries who emit clouds of perfume.” Mable offered Total Woman courses, which by 1975, over 15,000 evangelical women signed up for.  One testimonial claimed, “My husband wasn’t even speaking to me when I began, but I did all my assignments. He has never bought me a gift before, but this week he bought me two nighties, two rose bushes, and a can opener!” The assignments were, of course, sexual acts, lots of new positions, indulging your husband’s sexual fantasies, and not being scared to try things, and naughty activities like donning lingerie. Isn’t it pretty ironic that these evangelical texts encouraged women to have sex with their husbands in exchange for gifts, money, and ultimately security? I think there’s a word for that! 

Evangelical sex writers also emphasized that men were stressed out at their jobs (just a healthy feature of capitalism), and that it was the wife’s duty to provide sexual comfort. As Morgan put it, “At the end of a long day, your husband especially needs your compliments! Put your husband’s tattered ego back together again. He needs to be pampered, loved, and restored through food and sex.” After all, good Christian women were competing with more readily available porn and sexually liberated women! A 1970 article detailed, “Five years ago, about 90 theaters around the country showed 'sexploitation' movies or 'skin flicks'. Now there are more than 600, and the number is growing weekly. Some have abandoned seedy downtown areas for the suburbs; many are clean and respectable looking, with admission prices as high as $5 in big cities.” But pornography became even more available to men when VHS debuted in 1977. A typical VHS player was around 5,445 in today’s money. A 1979 article detailed the phenomenon of VHS tapes, with salesmen saying the biggest sellers were porn films. Said one man, “A lot of people don’t want to see the same movie twice. For those who are interested in pornography, that’s not a problem. They seem to like to see the same film again and again.” Enthusiasm for pornography and it’s rapidly growing industry also drove up anti-pornography movements, usually headed by women, including radical feminists and evangelicals. 

6. Ronald Reagan Legitimized The Welfare Queen Stereotype

The National Welfare Rights Organization, established in 1966, was headed by a poor black mother of six, Johnnie Tillmon. Back when she met with Martin Luther King in 1968 to hear his plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, she and the other welfare mothers in attendance were upset that he didn’t include their concerns. She asked him questions about welfare that he couldn’t answer, and quipped “You know, Dr. King, if you don’t know about these questions, you should say you don’t know, and then we can go on the meeting.”

Johnnie went on to explain, “I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country if you are any one of those things, you count as less of a human being. If you’re all of those things, you don’t count at all.” Future Atlanta mayor and MLK confidant Andrew Young confirmed how welfare and class issues were swept aside in the sixties, saying, “I guess in the back of our minds we thought asking for welfare was tactically unsound… if you ask for welfare, you might not get anything.” The NWRO spent the early 70s delivering testimony to Congress and storming public areas with picket signs. The NWRO opposed Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, noticing that the proposed welfare allowance would be less than the various allowances already available at the time.

Their publicity even inspired thousands of eligible black mothers who had been discouraged from receiving benefits to finally apply. Local NWRO chapters helped them apply. The welfare mothers weren't well-received in Congress, with conservative Senator Russell Long remarking, “If they can find time to testify and march, they can find time to do some useful work, like picking up litter.” The NWRO fizzled in 1975, but their efforts, along with those of other grassroots welfare organizations, did change things. More black women than ever before became eligible for welfare and many states got rid of the requirement that welfare recipients not have male companions. More importantly, the existence of NWRO helped humanize the women receiving welfare, at least for a while.  But Ronald Reagan helped publicize the myth of the Welfare Queen. He said in 1976, “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” Linda Taylor, a mixed-race fraud re-offender and criminal, was the source of Reagan's generalization.

In 1979, a study revealed that 70% of all unemployed Black people never received unemployment benefits, and that more than 1/2 of black households received no general assistance or food stamps.

7. How Carter Defeated Gerald Ford in 1976

Gerald Ford’s first move, pardoning Nixon, was done because he believed that it would quickly resolve the national crisis and mistrust. As a result, many Americans came to see Ford as a part of the cover-up, furthering questions about the legitimacy of the government. Ford, a moderate, spent his time as president being cheap, living under Nixon’s shadow and increasing a public desire for the pendulum to swing left. As much as Americans love the self-reliant bootstrap narrative, in times of hardship, like the 70s economic crisis, those same folks crave government help Ford’s approval rating was 74% in August 1974, and by the end of the year, that percentage had plummeted to 42. The support Ford DID have came from republicans, who accepted Nixon’s crimes and thought him far from perfect, but who also believed the Watergate scandal was a partisan attack on the GOP. When Ford set out to run for president in 1976, he wasn’t enthusiastic. He still defeated the conservative Ronald Reagan in the republican primary, but he was no match for Jimmy Carter. 

Carter and his campaign team understood the early 70s reforms in the Democratic Party that gave more power to black people and Latinos. They also understood the importance of local political organizations, which is why he went after the Iowa caucus and won. It also helped that he was characterized as an outsider, a shiny new penny not coated in the grimy politics of Washington, and this worked well for him when he used television ads to reach potential voters. This election was the first in which candidates needed to be television-ready, and Ford didn’t have the charm that Carter did. Carter was also a noted evangelical Christian, though not one of the intolerant fundamentalists who were enjoying more press coverage. In an infamous Playboy interview, he admitted to lusting after women who weren't his wife, saying “Ive committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something God recognizes I will do-and I have done it— and God forgives me for it." The interviewer, skeptical of Carter’s religiosity, noted that Carter was “a guy who believes In his personal God and will let the rest of us believe whatever we want.” This mix of religiosity and tolerance won over both liberals and conservatives, who needed a trustworthy figure after the devastation of Nixon. His lack of commitment to a narrow political ideology also seemed appealing, as he prided himself on altruism rather than sticking to partisan perspectives. He was also seen as a positive figure of the New South. 

8. Watergate TOTALLY Altered The Way Average Americans Viewed Politics

The Watergate scandal, which unraveled in 1973, changed American journalism. The Watergate reporters became virtual celebrities, and the 1976 film All The Presidents Men glamorized reports. Time Magazine even need a surge in interest in journalism among teens and young adults, citing the rise in applications to journalism schools in 1974. Many wannabe writers wanted to get into investigative journalism and uncover something huge like Watergate. Small newspapers and magazines popped up in the early 70s, seeking to provide harder news stories that didn’t always require objectivity. One such magazine was New Times, which started in 1972 and reached roughly 350,000 subscribers at its peak before falling out of popularity because readers grew tired of all of the negative stories. One columnist wrote in the Washington Post, “The news is so heavy that picking up the paper is risking a hernia of the mind. If Ford’s Pintos or Firestone’s radials don’t get us, cancer-causing hamburgers or saccharin will. If it isn’t another congressman convicted of bribery, it’s another corporation.” 

It was also during this period that newspapers began competing against television more fiercely. ABC, NBC, and CBS were becoming the gatekeepers of mainstream news, and they could produce content a lot faster than newspapers. Numerous attempts to establish a fourth network failed, and there was a lot of negative chatter about the Big Three. The editor of the Rolling Stone wrote in 1976, “We should have a half dozen, or a dozen networks in which there will be aggressive competition for news, on which the interests, ideological and otherwise, of smaller population groups— such as young people, old people, black people, women, conservatives the intelligentsia, etc, are reflected.” That same year, the 1976 film Network reflected a growing concern with network television’s prioritization of ad revenue and how The Big Three watered down news. 

But of course, Watergate impacted more than journalism. It gave life to new ideas about big government. Was Watergate just dirty politics or an actual subversion of democracy? The supreme display of corruption and political scandal was unheard of for Americans, who, since at least the traumas of the Great Depression, had come to rely not just on big government but fully respect the presidential office. While black Americans, indigenous people, and other minorities had long shown mistrust in the government, this was a severe shake-up in values for white Americans. Polls revealed that the group of Americans who believed they could trust the federal government went from 75% in 1965, to 25% by the late 70s. Many of these observers said Nixon’s actions were the result of the office of the presidency becoming too strong, citing Lyndon B Johnson’s expansion of the Vietnam War as further proof. Congress reacted quickly to limit presidential power, its most significant change being the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to obtain congressional approval before sustained military operations. Of course, this rule would be easily circumvented by Presidents thanks to loopholes.

9. Reactions to Kermit Washington’s Infamous Punch

In 1977, the Black athlete Kermit Washington of the Los Angeles Lakers punched Houston Rockets player Rudy Tomjanovich after an unclear scuffle that Rudy was attempting to mediate. The punch fractured Rudy’s face, and he was left unconscious in a pool of blood. Rudy eventually sued the Lakers and Washington for $2.6 million in damages and the jury was so horrified that they awarded him $3.3 million. This punch earned Kermit a $10,000 fine and a 60-day no-pay suspension. This punishment equaled that for players who gambled on games or players caught using steroids. But fights? Previously, such fines ranged from $250 to $ 2,500. During the 1976 season for example, there were 41 fights and the highest fine was $2500. Shit, fan violence in the basketball stands had grown in the late 70s, and Peter Greenberg spoke with experts who found white working-class fans were usually at the center of such fights. But this punch of a white man of a working-class background by a black man, was heard around the world. It was played repeatedly on TV and featured in newspapers. Kermit received hundreds of racist letters and death threats, saying things like “all you black niggers are the same. Animals.” This spoke to a larger, long-held belief that black male violence was exceptional and pathological, and that white male violence is not. 

10. The Free Angela Movement

Angela Davis joined the Communist Party of the United States in 1969, the same year she was hired to teach philosophy at UCLA. She was fired, however, because of a state law banning communist teachers at state-funded universities. She challenged this in court, got the law overturned, and was eventually rehired, but was ultimately forced out of her position. In August 1970, Jonathan Jackson stole her legally registered guns to break the Soledad Brothers from prison. The Soledad Brothers were facing false murder charges, and Jackson was killed in his attempt to free them. The FBI issued a warrant for Angela’s arrest and put her on their Ten Most Wanted List, even though she wasn’t involved. Nixon denounced her as a terrorist. When she was arrested, Aretha Franklin tried to pay her bail, but wasn’t permitted. While Angela spent 18 months in jail, Free Angela buttons, posters, and t-shirts became a popular way for more radical black people to exhibit their personal beliefs. Angela was eventually released from jail in February 1972 on a $102,000 bail, and was eventually acquitted of all charges. Pictures of her afro would influence the broader culture, to her dismay.

11. The Rise in Black Electoral Power

The early 70s saw more emphasis on black activists and politicos winning local elections and attempting to work within the system, rather than pursuing complete system upheaval. For instance, the Black Panthers reconsolidated and began running for local elections around California. Back in 1969, the predecessor to the Congressional Black Caucus was formed, and by 1971 it had its official name. It was composed of a few black representatives on Capitol Hill. Nixon refused to meet with them, so they boycotted the 1971 State of the Union address and attracted major press coverage. During this same period, voter registration rates among black southerners doubled, increasing the number of Black politicians and elected officials, including the first black southerners elected to Congress since Reconstruction. The rise in black political representation came from the Voting Rights Act AND whites completely abandoning certain districts rather than integrating. By 1977, over 200 cities had black mayors. These mayors inherited budgets plagued by a drop in tax revenue, but they made attempts to level the racial playing field. For example, in Atlanta, the first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, gave greater shares of city contracts to black businesses and minorities as a whole.

In 1972, the National Black Political Assembly was held in Gary, Indiana, attracting thousands of black people interested in changing the political landscape. Throughout the Fall of 1970 and Winter of 1971, various black grassroots organizations elected delegates, raised money for transportation, and spread the word about the assembly. Radical black nationalists were the majority of the attendance, delivering the motto “It's Nation Time!” and advocating for an independent black political party,  while moderates supporting integration and democrats were in the minority. Unfortunately, the assembly didn’t change much. The radical grassroots activists didn’t have the national visibility to spark change, and the black elected officials in attendance who did have national visibility wanted to be re-elected and didn’t want to lose white allies so they distanced themselves shortly after. Plus, they believed real politics required compromise, not demands for revolution. Too bad a lot of folks didn’t trust the political system.

Those at the forefront of the 60s Civil Rights and Black Power movements were clergy, middle-class students, and later militant black men. In the 70s, there were political prisoners, feminists, lower-class blue-collar workers, and welfare activists in the spotlight. Mississippian Alfred Skip Robinson established the United League in 1978, saying he was “taking up where the movement of the 1960s took off”, and was careful to include "street people.” The United League had thousands of members in Northern Mississippi, many of whom were former Vietnam vets. It focused on standing up to the Ku Klux Klan, which was seeing a resurgence, fighting illegal land grabs at the local and state level, and boycotting white businesses that didn’t hire black people. Though short-lived, the United League was one of many grassroots organizations that focused on labor issues. That was the second major difference between the 60’s black organizers and those of the 70s— a lot more attention was paid to class issues.

12. Black People Clashed Over Feminism and Women’s Rights

Some black nationalists insisted that women should serve as the anchors and second-in-commands to Black men. Dara Abubakari, a pan-Africanist black separatist and Vice President of the Republic of New Africa, said in a 1970 interview: “I feel that the role of the Black woman at this point in history is to give sustenance to the black man. At one time, the Black woman was the only one who could say something and not get her head chopped off. But the law was strictly against the black man. He could not do anything. Now that he speaks, we speak together. We cannot separate, and this is what I say to the women’s lib movement. You cannot separate men from women when you're black.” This was one of the many opinions floating around during the growth of the feminist movement.

That same year, Ebony published an article titled The Black Woman and Women’s Lib, detailing how many black people did not find feminism necessary. Conservative psychologist Charles Thomas said, “The women's movement is a diversion in the same way that the environmental movement is a diversion. Like the environmental thing, the college kids are flocking into, feminism appeals to middle-class whites because in part, it is an activist way to ignore racism. It is avoidance behavior. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks said, “ Today’s black man, at last flamingly assertive and proud, need their black women beside them, not organizing against them.” The Ebony journalist even wrote “With all the new lovemaking, their is little room for women’s lib.” 

This turned out to be untrue and a lot more complicated, because black female activists were increasingly getting fed up with the male-dominated black power movement and the white-dominated women’s liberation movement. The same year that the article ran, Toni Cade Bambara published The Black Woman, an anthology of poetry, short stories, and essays by literary greats like Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker. Several black women’s groups were founded, including the short-lived National Black Feminist Organization in 1973. The Combahee River Collective, named after Harriet Tubman’s legendary military campaign, emerged in 1974 in Boston and developed a statement establishing black feminist theory and objectives, as well as the term “identity politics.” They became outspoken advocates for the Black women murdered in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston throughout 1979. Outspoken black feminist lawyer Florynce Kennedy, co-founder of the National Black Feminist Organization, was called "The biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground,” by Time Magazine. 

13. White Racists Organized

When Swann vs Charlotte ruled in 1971 that students would be bused to schools to achieve integration, hell broke loose. White parents in southern states increasingly established private schools that didn’t have to adhere to integration policies, earning the name segregation academies. This had been happening since Brown v. Board of Education, but the anti-busing sentiments of the 70s experienced an increased interest in these schools. 

The backlash to busing was particularly bad in Boston and Chicago. Boston school committee chairwoman Louise Day Hicks established Restore Our Alienated Rights, or ROAR, in 1974. Stealing tactics from the Civil Rights movement, they hosted sit-ins, protests, marches, and public prayers but ultimately disbanded two years later when busing went ahead anyway. These infamous pictures of Theodore Landmark being attacked by white teens in Boston fueled violence on both sides.

Parents were also angry about what they viewed as a subversive, anti-American curriculum that attempted to include minority experiences. A prominent example of this is the Kanawha County Textbook Wars of 1974, in which West Virginian parents bombed buildings and sent death threats to stop their children from learning about Malcolm X or other black people.  That same year, Milliken vs Bradley ruled that suburban segregation, or white people fleeing to areas where they refused to sell homes or land to black people and other minorities, was unintentional. The case struck down Detroit’s plans to integrate schools by busing in students across 53 district lines, ruling that the City of Detroit could use busing within city limits but had to leave the suburbs out of it. 

Racist universities like Bob Jones University struggled to hold onto their tax-exempt status in the face of mandatory integration policies. The IRS warned Bob Jones to integrate, so in 1975, they admitted black students only if they were married, to stop any potential for interracial dating. The IRS took away their tax-exempt status the next year, and this would be a rallying point for the New Right in the years to come. Parents also weren’t pleased that affirmative action was upheld in 1978’s Regents of the University of California. Parents also weren’t pleased that affirmative action was upheld in 1978’s Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, which allowed race to be considered in college admissions but struck down racial quotas.

Additionally, “Between 1975 and 1979, Klan membership jumped from 65000 to 10,000, with an estimated 75,000 active sympathizers who read Klan literature or attended rallies but weren’t card-carrying members.” This revival of the Klan’s image came through the good PR of David Duke, who appeared on tv in suits and appeared less threatening than the typical hooded grand wizard. He encouraged women and catholics to join and insisted that his organization was pro-white, pro-Christian, and non-violent, but not pro-black. KKK groups existed on numerous college campuses, and in some parts of the country, they joined in on protests involving busing, affirmative action, and textbooks.

14. From “Us” To ‘Me, Me, Me’

A 1977 motivational bestseller was named “Looking Out For #1: How To Get From Where You Are Now To Where You Want To Be In Life”, and encapsulated America’s atmosphere at the time. Self-help books were a growing genre, with historian Thomas Borstelmann noting, “In the 1960s, the New York Times best-seller list rarely had more than one self-help book on it, by May 1978, there were seven.” The term “Me Decade” was coined by writer Tom Wolfe, who argued in his lengthy 1976 essay that Americans, riding a post-WWII wave of prosperity, found themselves not with downtrodden proletariats but with a lower middle class. He described such Americans and their richer counterparts as newly individualistic and self-driven, breaking away from communalism and New Deal politics. A major theme of such politics and things like the Civil Rights movement was Liberal Universalism, or the belief in a fundamental sameness of all humanity, a la we all blend perfectly into an indistinguishable melting pot. This idea was, of course, informed by white Anglo-Saxon expectations of humanity and saw claims of racial, ethnic, or gender differences as slippery slopes that could embolden Jim Crow or lead to Nazi-style fascism. Liberal Universalism was often exploited by the northeastern elite who saw themselves as the antithesis of racist southerners, ironically, to silence marginalized voices— and this is why the ideology crumbled by the 70s.

15. Catching A Flight Became More Common

A 1978 act of Congress made airlines create more flights, which meant more seats, which meant lower prices. How low? Flight prices declined by 51% over the next three decades. In 1975, 55% of airline seats were filled. It would be 60% in 1980. The service was no longer lush and luxurious like in the 60s, when only super-wealthy white Americans could afford tickets. Back then, there were extravagant meals, lots of space, endless smoking, and bottomless drinks. While such service was abandoned in later decades for the grubby plebes flying economy, the cost of tickets continued to explode. The rise of commercial air travel even caused a surge in people conquering their fear of flying in the late 70s. There were courses people could pay to take for such a fear.

16. The Texas Tejano Community Organized Against Police Brutality

In 1973, after a Dallas police officer murdered 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez, the Chicano community formed a self-defense unit and demanded that the city to create a police review board. Roughly 8% of Dallas’s population was Chicano, and organizers hosted a march that spun into a riot. More organizing and another riot occurred after the Houston police murdered a 23-year-old veteran named Jose Campos Torres. Houston had a population that was 12% Chicano.

17. The Indigenous Community Organized 

Indigenous people were organizing in the 1970s, and there was a constituency of young natives increasingly aligning themselves with traditionalist elders and views, disgusted by the moderate assimilationist leadership of tribal governments.  The vocal activism of natives is awe-inspiring because in decades previous, the American government had forced countless indigenous people to assimilate through kidnapping programs where children were snatched from parents and sent to boarding schools to be “civilized”. These boarding schools existed until the 70s, and never would have been stopped without the intervention of groups like AIM. Back in 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded, and they were quite radical. 

Like the black nationalist group Republic of New Afrika, the American Indian Movement “viewed land reclamation as essential to dismantling the U.S. empire from within its domestic colonial boundaries.” In 1972, AIM, along with seven other indigenous organizations, embarked on the Trail of Broken Treaties, a cross-country protest to bring attention to injustices like illegal land grabs, reneged treaties, and systemic poverty. After Nixon refused to be presented with a 20-point program, the protesters occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters for over a week, where “they organized themselves and formed a cooperative community while rifling through, reading, and copying government documents that revealed the corruption of the BIA— and downright fraudulent relations with indigenous governments.” In February 1973, Oglala Lakota and AIM supporters led an occupation protest at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, that was opposed by corrupt trial chairmen and led to a 71-day incident in which over 500,000 bullets were fired at the protesters, leading to two deaths. Over 1200 people were arrested. With these kinds of uprisings and protests, Nixon and other officials trotted out ineffective concessions to deflate indigenous radicalism. AIM was also infiltrated by the FBI, which hurt the movement.

18. White Priorities Splintered In The 70s

In addition to the white liberals who were appalled at black people refusing to assimilate and stop protesting or complaining, there were ethnic whites. For decades, they had assimilated into American culture, which meant assimilating into White Anglo Saxon Culture. But the early 70s saw a rise in anti-WASP literature and sentiments, along with white ethnic organizations that wanted to address their unique issues. For example, in 1970 an alleged mafia boss established the Italian American Civil Rights League, which came to have 25 chapters and over 50,000 members. They were so powerful they “convinced the producers of the television series The FBI to delete references to the mafia and successfully lobbied New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and U.S. Attorney John Mitchell to mute their references to the mob.” A polish -American writer named Michael Novak opined that a new concept had emerged where “individuals if they do not wish to, do not have to melt.” During this period, American Jewry noticeably turned inward, and more Jewish schools, summer camps, and programs were created. Some Jews lent their perspectives to broader social movements, like feminism. Some Jewish leaders called for stricter religious interpretations, as many were concerned about growing secularism among Jews and intermarriage rates. There was also a growth in Jewish-American Zionism that identified with and supported Israel's oppression of Palestinians and the occupation of their land. 

A few poor white people were also seeing the importance of class discourse and solidarity and took several cues from minority leftist radicals. In the first half of the 70s, three small organizations attempted to mobilize working-class white communities around issues like the Vietnam war, lead poisoning, slumlords, and police brutality. One organization was the Chicago-based Rising Up Angry, which published a newspaper that “targeted greaser youth with articles about cars, sports, and pool next to calls to resist the war, stop fighting with youth of color, and to “fight the real enemy”, I.e. capitalists, racists, and imperialists.” 

19. Average Circumstances For Women Changed In The 70s-- Like Having a Bank Account

Declining marriage and birth rates were just two of many signs that a significant number of women in the 70s were putting themselves first over patriarchal expectations of womanhood. The starkest drops in birth and marriage rates were among the white upper class, and people worried that the new generation of women wasn’t just delaying children but choosing to be childless forever. The rise of white single mothers was also a concern for conservative Americans. For the first time in American history, the majority of women worked outside of the home, not just the poor or the black. People also noticed that women were increasingly wearing pants. In 1971, girls were 7% of student-athletes, and by 1978, they made up 32%. This was due to Title IX, which prohibited sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal money, and the iconic defeat of misogynistic trash talker Bobby Riggs by Billie Jean King in 1973. Most Americans thought she would lose the match, but her victory shook various schools, and “institutions dropped planned court challenges [to Title IX because] they no longer felt comfortable claiming that women lacked the desire and the ability to compete in interscholastic athletics.” Women also increasingly entered professional fields like medicine and law. Interestingly, more women in the paid workforce reduced the amount of traditional volunteer work they had previously provided.

Roe v Wade was passed in 1973, and just the year before, the birth control pill was able to be legally purchased by non-married women. Service fields that were once considered women’s work rose in employment. Employers preferred hiring women, but in part-time positions at low wages, meaning more instances of unequal pay. This was a primary concern of feminist organizers, who successfully lobbied for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Before this 1974 amendment, women often found it hard to secure bank accounts, credit cards, and mortgages. By the late 70s, more single women than ever wanted to own their own homes.

20. More People Were Concerned About Abuse and Rape

A growing contingency of activists concerned themselves with battered spouses. In 1977 a study on Chicago’s Cook County Jail found that “40% of the women charged with murdering their partners had been physically attacked on several occasions by these men.” Each of the women had called police at least five times, and many had separated from their abusive partners to avoid abuse. Thankfully, battered women’s shelters grew in number at the beginning of the decade thanks to feminist groups, though many eventually came under non-feminist leadership by the late 70s. Other resources, like counseling services and support groups, emerged, which helped decrease female-male domestic homicide. “Between 1979 and 1984, the number of men killed by their female partners decreased by more than 25%, although the rate of men killing their female partners remained stable during this time.”  

A major victory for feminists in the 1970s was changing the attitude towards women and self-defense, especially when it came to rape. Armed self-defense literature for women surfaced in the mid-70s, and feminists rallied around women charged with murder for taking out perverts who threatened their own safety or their children’s. Three cases come to mind. In 1972, Yvonne Wanrow, a Colville Indian in Spokane, Washington, and mother of two, killed a known child molester who tried to violate her son.

At Wanrow's murder trial, the child molester's abuse record was not included in evidence, and his victim wasn’t allowed to testify. Wanrow was given 25 years. Feminists, along with organizations like the American Indian Movement, publicized her case and rallied around her. In 1977 the Washington Supreme Court ruled for a re-trial, saying, “Care must be taken to assure that our self-defense instructions afford women the right to have their conduct judged in light of the individual physical handicaps which are the product of sex discrimination.” At her 1979 retrial, Wanrow pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received probation and community service. 

In 1974 California, a Cuban-Puerto Rican woman named Inez Garcia was raped by a man in an alley while an accomplice kept watch. The men called her later and threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave town, so she took a gun and went looking for them. She managed to shoot and kill the accomplice but missed the rapist. At her trial, the unsympathetic judge said “I do not see what rape has to do with the case”, before instructing the jury to ignore Garcia’s allegations. Meanwhile, the judge allowed the prosecution to slut-shame Garcia and ask her if she enjoyed the rape. She was found guilty of second-degree murder, and afterward, a juror said: “You can’t kill someone for trying to give you a good time.” Feminists and local organizers who had been publicizing her story since the beginning, ramped up their activism while Garcia spent two years in prison. She was granted a retrial and acquitted, thanks to her lawyers making the jury understand rape from a victim's point of view and seeing why her act of self-defense was delayed. According to Victoria Law, “Garcia’s acquittal established a lego precedent that extended he interpretation of imminent danger beyond the immediate time period of the assault, laying the foundation for what would later become known as the ‘battered woman defense— that a woman who kills her abuser is acting in self-defense even if she is not under attack at the time of the killing.”

The case of Joan Little in 1974 further changed ideas about women, self-defense, and rape culture. While imprisoned in North Carolina’s Beaufort County Jail, 21-year-old Joan Little killed a 62-year-old white guard who tried to force her to perform oral sex under threat of an icepick. Her case attracted support from feminist groups, black and white, straight and lesbian, and, even the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. Joan’s defense expertly supplied jurors with background information on chronic sex use and harassment in prisons and discussed the white guard’s past violations. Jon Little was acquitted, setting a precedent for killing one’s potential rapist being justified. While many other women did not see such happy endings for taking direct action against their abusers, these three cases demonstrate the changes in ideas regarding gender and race in the 70s. In previous decades, these women would not have received such vast media coverage, nor would there have been groups to organize around them and help them adequately defend themselves.  

21. The Power of Phyllis Schlafly

No issue united feminists quite like the Equal Rights Amendment, which would add a gender equality guarantee in the Constitution, had been originally proposed in 1923. In 1972, Congress finally passed the ERA, sending it to the states for ratification— and it looked like a sure thing. All the ERA would do was ensure that “equality of rights under the law all not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on the account of sex,” Sure to be ratified by all 50 states, right? It looked that way. By 1977, 35 of the 38 required states ratified the amendment. The strongest symbol of overall negative reactions to the 1970s feminist movement were the housewives who organized against them for STOP ERA. Headed by the Catholic housewife and mother Phyllis Schlafly, anti-feminist housewives felt both left out and shamed by feminists. And to be clear, they were. Their choices were invalidated as patriarchal brainwashing by radical feminists. Schlafly was a potent and formidable organizer of housewives across the country, urging them to see that traditional family values were under attack. The effort to ratify the ERA lost all momentum, and it was never actually added to our Constitution.

22. Missing Children Became a Concern

Something contributing to the sense of fear among Americans in the 70s, especially those raising children, was the growing public interest in child abductions and missing teens. One 1975 study estimated that 1.7% of youth, or 519K to 635K ran away a year for varying periods of time. In the late 70s, roughly 1.8 million children a year were reported missing. Some disappearances were bizarre and far-fetched, like when In 1976 Chowchilla, California, a bus driver and 27 children were kidnapped by three men who wanted to hold them for ransom. This event ended in no fatalities, but was still wild for the time. In 1974, the far-left terrorist group Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped publishing heiress Patricia Hearst, who then participated in a bank robbery and later claimed it was the result of brainwashing. Between 1976 and 1977, four Michigan kids aged 10-12 were murdered, and the culprit was never identified.

But the child abduction case that generated national attention was that of six-year-old Etan Patz, who vanished in Manhattan one spring day in 1979. His body was never found and his killer wouldn’t be identified until 2017. This was the first high profile child abduction case, and its significant because the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children didn’t come around until the 1980s. Investigators had the idea of plastering Etan’s face on milk cartons, a practice that continued until the 1990s with the introduction of plastic bottles and amber alerts. A few weeks after Etan Patz disappeared, the Atlanta Child murders began, which sent chilly and fearful shockwaves through the black community. The murders would continue until 1981, taking at least 24 children before 23-year-old Wayne Williams was arrested. Wayne was actually only charged and convicted with the murders of two adult men believed to be associated with the child murders. Though he likely committed several or most of the child murders, numerous experts believe there is more to the story and potentially more culprits involved.

23. Parents Mobilized Against Weed

In 1970, weed was federally criminalized, and juvenile arrest rates for possession skyrocketed. These arrests weren’t just of black youth, either, and this is why by 1974, a Senate committee held hearings on federal decriminalization, and heard parents testify that the punishment for a little weed shouldn’t ruin a kid's life. The committee’s findings led to a drop in harsh sentences for marijuana possession and use. Even still, there were dissenting voices. Senator James Eastland (D-MS) held six days of hearings in 1974 on the "Marijuana Hashish Epidemic and Its Impact on United States Security". He said, “If the cannabis epidemic continues to spread at the rate of the post-Berkeley period, we may find ourselves saddled with a large population of semi-zombies – of young people acutely afflicted by the amotivational syndrome.” These adolescents could suffer from “irreversible brain damage” and could become “partial cripples,” resulting in a generation of teenagers “who have never matured, either intellectually or physically.”Few pro-weed reports or advocates discussed the different effects of pot on kids versus adults. The science behind the different effects would not be discussed publicly for many years. 

Headshops selling weed paraphernalia began popping up and magazines like High Times flourished. There was an increase in teen weed use because it was more easily accessible.

In 1976, an Atlanta mother named Marsha Schuchard caught her 13-year-old smoking weed and she decided to act. She and fellow parents she managed to rally were concerned with what they considered to be the normalization of pot culture and pro-drug messages in media. Pop culture phenoms like the comedy duo Cheech and Chong were the enemy. She and other parents were also angry at experts who claimed that marijuana use was just a phase for teens. She went on to launch Parents Recourse Institute For Drug Education (PRIDE).  Another parent activist group, Families in Action, contributed to the rise of anti-paraphernalia laws beginning in 1977. By 1979 there was a bestselling book, Parents, Peers, and Pot.

24. The New Right Rises

In 1971, a confidential memo titled the Attack on American Free Enterprise System was published by Lewis F. Powell, and it would serve as a rallying cry for the ultra-wealthy Americans who felt threatened by the rising interest in radical politics, consumer prioritization, and corporate regulations that had emerged in the 60s. In 1973, the Heritage Foundation was founded by Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner Jr. $250,000 was donated by beer empire heir Joseph Coors, whose family was long known for its conservative, anti-civil rights, anti-welfare, and anti-hippie stances. Coors’s own son had become a hippie while attending the University of Colorado, and he was the first investor convinced by Weyrich’s vision of “militant national institutions” that would maintain the American values that had long enabled his family’s wealth. The Heritage Foundation published materials and held conferences on pro-business and anti-government stances, and provided advice and assistance to Capitol Hill politicians.

They distributed “Heritage Backgrounders”, short op-ed style publications (instead of thick, wordy, objective policy papers) for politicians on the go. Though Coors was the first investor, millions more would be given by various wealthy conservatives who wanted to sway politics in their favor without sinking astronomical funds into single candidates. The Heritage Foundation was soon joined by others like the American Enterprise Institute, The Hoover Institution, and The Cato Institute. Weyrich also founded the American Legislation Exchange Council, a group that initiated legislative fights surrounding conservative issues in every state. Most of the lobby group’s financial support came from the billionaire oil tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife. On Capitol Hill, lobbying groups funded by ultra-rich conservatives like Scaife and the Kochs were joined by corporations hoping to end New Deal infrastructure and the expansion of workplace and environmental regulations. But these groups were not the people. No, the people, the folks who made up the silent majority and who were terrified of the increasingly secular and equal society, needed to be mobilized. This is how the ultra-rich could sway politics and save money at the same time- mobilizing and educating the group of Americans who best suited the job— religious fundamentalists.

Richard Viguerie was a conservative Goldwater Republican and activist who in the 60s began compiling a database of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace donors, organized by concerns and complaints. Operating under his belief that the mainstream media was biased against conservative issues, he began a direct mailing company. With his vast and ever-growing list of conservative voters, he sent targeted mail on behalf of various political action committees and groups like the Gun Owners of America. Though direct mailing would become a key feature of both parties during the 70s, it was Viguerie who introduced and mastered the concept. By 1975, he had over 10 million names on about 250 mailing lists. It was during this time that he became a senior member of a group of conservatives who wanted to expand the movement through think tanks, political action committees, and training institutes. They also encouraged homeschooling and private Christian schooling, which facilitated children fully growing up in the ideology machine.

The success of the New Right’s growth and consolidation of power lay in four key actions.

1. The New Right needed to identify single-issue voter groups and unite them against a common enemy. These single issue voters were STOP ERA housewives and mothers, the NRA gun toters, anti-abortion catholics, anti-busing racists, etc. Next, there needed to be multi-issue, broad spectrum conservative organizations, who served a number of functions despite having less mainstream appeal. As Paul Weyrich quipped, “Organization is our bag. We preach and teach nothing but organization.” These organizations had money to fund single issue voter groups and leaders who could pontificate well on such issues.

2. The second key to success was teaching single-issue groups how to lobby, fundraise, protest, qualify for ballot initiatives, and print their own newspapers. I cannot overstate the importance of organizations and think tanks like Heritage Foundation providing the capital and resources for single-issue voters to mobilize and be taken seriously on a national stage.

3. The third key to success was new forms of communication, namely direct mail. As Viguerie and associates believed that the media was controlled by liberals, they wanted to go around mainstream media to directly reach their audience. Because post-Watergate reforms limited individual donations to political candidates, it became imperative for political candidates to have huge databases of small donors instead of small rolodexes of a few key wealthy people. Viguerie had a database of over 15 million conservatives who had donated money to various politicians, who he could send fundraising solicitations, propaganda, and organization prompts directly through the mail. Sending mail to conservative voters could propel them into action, like asking them to send letters or make phone calls by the thousands to congressmen.  

4. The fourth key for the New Right was an emphasis on coalition politics. When Viguerie and his cohorts first assembled to become what would become known as the New Right in 1974, it was in response to Gerald Ford appointing the liberal conservative and 1964 Goldwater opponent Norman Rockefeller to the vice presidency. Viguerie, Weyrich, and others saw that they had common threats and needed to work together to defeat them and achieve their goals. 

25. The Legacy of the Tax Revolt

Despite the fact that Americans paid the lowest per-capita taxes than any industrialized nation apart from Japan, stagflation meant that small raises to keep up with cost of living bumped people up into higher tax brackets. Polls showed that Americans both wanted to cut taxes and maintain social programs. So California had been experiencing property tax rebellions since the post world war II era. During the 60s and early 70s, tax rebels wanted to shift the state’s budgetary burden to the wealthy and businesses, NOT shrink the government and taxes, aka tax equity. After louder radical black and brown voices and stagflation and other economic woes of the 70s, tax protesters demanded steep tax cuts across the board, not tax equity. Some of these tax rebels were also newly wealthy from their participation in the stock market, and wanted to hold onto as much as they could. But many, like in California, were landlords or homeowners dealing with soaring property values and higher incomes that did not keep up with cost of living.

From 1976 to 1977, new property assessments in the state led to protests and the political action of groups like Taxpayers United for Freedom and the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association. They sent over 200,000 letters to Governor Jerry Brown demanding a special session of the state legislature for tax relief, which he refused to organize. So these angry tax rebels collected 1.25 million signatures to put Prop 13 on the state ballot in June 1978. Proposition 13 would limit property tax increases based on inflation. Most of the outright opposition came from black Californians and public employees. Wrote the leader of the Progressive Democratic Club in San Pedro to the local paper, “If you are a homeowner, Prop 13 is going to put some money in your pocket. But is it really the miracle cure it claims to be? Check it out a little further and you will see that Proposition 13 is a scam, an enormous tax break for big business and apartment house owners under the cover of helping the individual homeowner.” He urged readers to vote just for proposition 8 instead, which would lower taxes for all homeowners by 30%, but not commercial property.   

Other opposition to Prop 13’s tax cuts claimed that California’s economy would be doomed and public services would end. They also played on people’s belief in law and order, theorizing that a loss in property tax revenue would lead to less police and firefighters. Most Californians were not concerned, especially since California’s budget surplus was nearly 6 billion dollars. Even worse, LA was preparing to increase property assessments by an average of 125%, doubling or tripling home values and further terrifying homeowners. Prop 13 passed by a two-to-one margin. Property owners saw taxes drop by 57%, and it was ensured that home values could not rise anymore than 2 percent a year unless they were sold and then reassessed at market value. Prop 13 also made sure that any increase in state taxes would require a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

The passage of Prop 13 stunned Americans who were paying attention. In the following decade, 37 states reduced property taxes and another 28 cut income taxes to avoid facing a similar backlash from voters. Tax cuts suddenly became a legitimate talking point for conservatives. Going into the 1980s, tax cuts now meant reducing public services and turning towards the private sector for desired amenities. Because ”desired amenities” could also mean immoral purposes, as often spun by new right politicians and activists critiquing the federal government, there were calls for such conservative taxpayers to not have to pay for them. Immoral purposes such as sex ed, birth control, radical curricula, and especially welfare for minorities.

This kind of anti-tax and anti-leftist rhetoric fused perfectly to attract different people to the conservative right, even if they weren’t religious. Appealing to those who desired lower taxes and/or no equity for minorities would become a key component of the Reagan campaign, and other politicians as well. The 1978 midterm elections saw many republican candidates running on tax cut plans based on a proposal by Representative Jack Kemp of New York and Senator William Roth of Delaware. The Kemp-Roth plan called for a reduction of all federal income taxes by 30% across the board. People were wary of the unsuccessful plan, but it would come back with a vengeance during the Regan administration. Though the plan failed to pass before Reagan, Republicans won 11 seats in the House and 3 in the Senate in 1978, elevating future political figures Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney. 

Tax revolts had another unforeseen effect: a boom in shopping malls, which would become a central cultural symbol of 1980s America. How? Because local governments were suddenly deprived of once-reliable property tax revenue, they needed to find alternative sources of income. Shopping malls were a source of astronomical sales tax revenue, and erecting the giant retail meccas was prioritized in city plans. Malls that had been built in the 60s were renovated and expanded to accommodate more businesses. Grocery stores, which in decades prior often operated in malls, moved out by the mid-70s because they couldn’t keep up with soaring rent. While clothing and accessories retailers could sell ridiculously priced things, grocery stores couldn’t sell food for higher profits.

Did you learn something new from this list? You may enjoy the full series, Lexual Does The 70s! Keep an eye out for more website updates on the 1970s in the months to come.

Major Sources For This List

• The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Bruce J Schulman)

• The 1970s: A New Global History From Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Thomas Borstelmann)

• Fault Lines: A History of The United States Since 1974 (Kevin Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer)

• The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (Edited by Dan Berger)

• Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession (Daniel Frick)

• A History of African Americans From 1880 (Robin D.G. Kelley and Earl Lewis)

• New York Times The Times of the Seventies: The Culture, Politics, and Personalities that Shaped the Decade

• Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (Jefferson Cowie)

• How We Got Here: The 70s (David Frum)

• The Evangelicals (Frances Fitzgerald)

More sources available on Patreon