Examining the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement, and the conservative movement, which would you argue was most successful at achieving its aims, and why?

Abstract

At the end of World War II, many movements in the United States gave rise to important changes in society. Of major importance were progressive movements for Civil Rights, against the war, or for women and gay rights. Some movements, though, were not progressive as claimed in their aims, like the conservative movement. Historians have engaged in spirited debates over how successful each of those movements was, but measuring the success of a struggle for political and social change remains quite difficult. To achieve the former, it was very important to define success. To measure success, we need an objective criterion; it will be the ability, or disability, of a given movement to modify the legislation, the mentalities and the reality of everyday life according to its initial aims. For each movement, success will therefore be defined as the achievement of substantial changes not only in laws and the constitution, but also in people's lives and mentalities. Using this precise criterion, the most successful of all those different movements arguably was the women's movement.