Jeremy Keeshin

--- ---- --- -- What is America? ---- --- --------- -------- --- --- -- - - -------- -

What is America?
To define the two hundred thirty something years that are this nation with one
event is to unfairly condense a history that is so deep and complex into something that
cannot even being to compare with it.
America is Woodstock.
Even Woodstock, which in itself is an intricate event, cannot measure up to the
magnitude of the history of the United States of America. Maybe the idea of Woodstock,
the idea that a generation’s tribulations and triumphs can be summed up into one concert
of love, freedom, and peace, can begin to represent America.
If America is an amalgamation of all parts of its history, then any one event
viewed objectively could theoretically represent it. Maybe Woodstock did not define all
of United States history; but it defined an era. Woodstock, the great rock concert from
Friday, August 15th, 1969, until the early hours of Monday, August 18th, demonstrated
how half of a million downtrodden hippies could bring out the greatest ideals of the
greatest nation. The ideals exposed at Woodstock were not all positive, but they were the
most prominent ideals this nation. Maybe the reason Woodstock was so powerful was not
because it only lasted a little more than three days, but because the ideals is showed
persist throughout American history. Those five hundred thousand hippies were the
Woodstock Nation, and simultaneously a small and large part of the American Nation.
Those five hundred thousand may not have made up a majority of the population, but
they represented the majority of the population. They represented it all. The good, the
bad, the ugly, the ideal, the appalling, the startling, the unusual, and everything else in
between.
America is shown in the continuing ideals of free speech, protest, and optimism
exposed at Woodstock.
However, American did not just happen at Woodstock.
America happened all the way back from the pre-Columbian era until the present,
and will keep happening in the future.
America was founded on the basis of protest and free speech. As British colonies
we issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, starting a nation full of free
thought and ideas. We protested our being controlled by Britain and issued a document
speaking to that. Even before that, protest was rampant. The Navigation Acts, and later
Stamp Acts and Townshend Acts, which put duties on American goods, caused unrest
within the colonies and caused a protest. British goods were boycotted and Congresses of
the people were created to address these concerns. We instigated the slogan of “no
taxation without representation,” a prime example of free speech in the early colonies.
Benjamin Franklin, an important political figure, published an early newspaper
promoting protest and influencing colonists. Thomas Paine, the writer of the pamphlet
“Common Sense,” invigorated the nation with a nationalist and rebellious feeling. The
Boston Tea Party was a crucial example of insurgency and ultimately the American
Revolution was a major example of uprising as well. The Constitution demonstrated the
importance of free speech, protest, and assembly, by guaranteeing them in the first
amendment in the Bill of Rights, and proving that free expression is the backbone of
 Jeremy Keeshin

America. Throughout all of this, there was optimism that America as a nation would
succeed.
As America progressed into the 19th century, ideas in the country swirled around
and protest and speech flourished. The Second Great Awakening and Enlightenment got
people around the country to begin thinking again, and with their newfound ideas they
started to vocalize abolition as well as other reform movements. Transcendentalists such
as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote and started to protest for the
bettering of the American society and increase in the intellectual facets of America. This
Enlightenment thinking, coupled with the debate on the hot topic of states rights
culminated in the protest called the Civil War. The Civil War was the peak of protest in
the 1800s. The North was embattled with the South and vice versa, and the strongest
ideals of the country were revealed at this time. Views on slavery were exposed and
written about and the media became more important than ever before. After the Civil
War, the country started to become ripe with yellow journalism. This was a new way for
the media to attract and influence its readers through sensationalist writing. Newspapers,
the key component in free speech, started to gain momentum and this time and become
more influential throughout the country.
The next great expression of free speech, protest, and an optimistic view for
change in the nation came in the 1950s with the actions of the Civil Rights Movement. As
discrimination against African Americans and injustice grew in the nation, the search and
protest for equality began to get publicity. With the influential speaking of Martin Luther
King, Jr., civil disobedience and organized protest started to become a means to gain a
voice. “Sit-ins” were held as well as bus boycotts to protest the unfair treatment against
blacks, and Jim Crow laws. The protests staged were catalysts to pass laws and get
Supreme Court cases arguing the segregation and unfair treatment of African Americans.
In 1954, the case Brown v. Board overturned the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson by saying
that “separate is inherently unequal.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968 banned
discrimination throughout in employment and sale of housing, respectively. This was how
the nation was changed by protest. Protest was at the root of all of the change in
American society. The ills were found, people spoke out and protested them, and that was
what made the change happen. These First Amendment rights that are guaranteed to all of
the citizens allow them to freely speak their mind and make a difference to the society.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and his “I Have a Dream” speech, was the ideal example of
speaking and protesting for reform. Near a million gathered to protest and express their
views for the change that should be America. The Civil Rights campaign had the
idealistic view that their goals could be accomplished, and that was what enabled them to
be. The 1950s and 1960s were changed by people who took their ideas of change to heart,
and through expression of speech and protest, revolutionized America.
Another major part of the 1950s was the resurgence of the media with the use of
the television. The radio had previously been the staple in the American home, but the
new product as its replacement was television. Now there was a new means for people to
express themselves and influence the country. Television sitcoms portraying the ideal
American family helped to cultivate the optimism and bolster the conformity of the 50s.
Talk shows and situations comedies were the new way for people to connect and view the
nation. The television media affected presidential debates, such as the one between Nixon
 Jeremy Keeshin

and Kennedy during the 1959 election. The media helped form the way that the country
would view Kennedy, and helped move him to his victory.
While all of these events shaped the United States of America, Woodstock did it
in a new way. Woodstock was about the youth expressing the ideals of the nation.
Woodstock was about taking the principles of free speech, free thought, protests, and
idealism to a level never seen before. The counterculture gathered to express their
discontent with the war, and their love for peace and music. The piercing anti-war lyrics
and songs about love and peace epitomized an era. Not only did it do that, it epitomized
the United States of America.
What is America?
It is how people can rally together, no matter what the time period, location, or
conditions, and prove a point and instigate change. It was done in the Revolutionary War,
it was done during the Civil War, it was done during the Civil Rights movement, and it
was done during Woodstock. With the First Amendment as their instrument for reform,
citizens of the United States have sought to make America what it is. They have made it
into a country that revolves around the idea of free speech, protest, and idealism.
America is Woodstock.