in the age of social media activism, it can sometimes be difficult to imagine how protests and social movements even worked before facebook. but work they did! in this blog post, i will be giving you an overview of social movements in the united states.<\/p>\n
the purpose of these “themes across apush” blog posts are for you to see how to practice the skill of change over time that will be necessary for the apush exam. it is also important to note that this is not an exhaustive list of social movements in the united states; that is, i won\u2019t be detailing each and every event that could be classified as a social movement. however, i will be giving you enough of an overview for you to feel comfortable approaching the topic on the apush exam. ready to dive in? let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n
in many ways, you can view the history of the united states through the lens of social movements. the country had a decidedly \u201canti-establishment\u201d start, even as it developed its own institutions and governments later on.<\/p>\n
so, for this post, we will be starting with the ways in which colonists had to form a social movement \u2013 although inextricably tied to economic and political interests, as most social movements are \u2013 in order to form a collective surrounding a single idea: that the thirteen colonies, who had more in common with england than with each other, should become a nation. we will close with the suffragist movement.<\/p>\n
of course, this blog post could have ended with the civil rights movement or the women\u2019s rights movement or the lgbtq rights movement (all of which are continuing into the present day). however, by closing off with the suffragist movement and the passage of the 19th amendment<\/a>, you will have a solid grounding to incorporate other movements as you see fit. <\/p>\n it\u2019s hard to recognize how unlikely the revolutionary war actually was sitting from the vantage point of 2018; the united states has been a thing for some time now. perhaps john adams summed it up most eloquently when he said in 1818<\/a> that the revolution was, \u201cperhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. thirteen clocks had been made to strike together \u2013 a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.\u201d<\/p>\n why did these diverse colonies decide to rebel against their common source? what did they gain by going out on their own? if you\u2019ve ever seen the musical hamilton<\/em><\/a>, it\u2019ll seem like the revolution was an inevitable outcome. but this is not so.<\/p>\n historian thomas breen<\/a> has argued that it was only through the boycotts<\/a> and popular pressure leading up to the revolution that the events were even possible. it was through the non consumption of imported british tea and the supporting of patriot businesses that colonists became americans. of course, as breen also shows us, there is sometimes a downside to social movements: all that peer pressure can lead us to situations where tarring and feathering<\/a> seems like a good idea. <\/p>\n to get more of an understanding about who the various parties were in the revolution, see this open course video from yale university<\/a>.<\/p>\napush themes: social movements<\/h3>\n
1. revolutionary war<\/h4>\n