Looking back at this time in American history, we often only focus on the big movements of the 1960’s and of the 1970’s such as the Civil rights movement heading by individuals such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Student movements such as the Students for a Democratic Society and campus protests were on every front page and covered by every media outlet during those days. It’s not often that we look deep into thee time periods to see other important movements that continue to be important movements today. The Women’s Liberation Front and the Gay Liberation Front were smaller movements in size but not in heart. All of these movements affected the landscape of the United States and all had one thing in common, the suppression by the COINTELPRO program.
As the student protests were going on, the FBI took a stance against the liberal attitudes of the students, teachers and universities. They saw these attitudes as subversive to the goals of the United States and were heavily attacked by the COINTELPRO program to ensure a future without these subversive tendencies. One of their goals was to enrich the American people with “proper morals and habits” that according to John Drabble “implied adherence to the traditional gender codes” (Drabble 68). This was a want or better said a need, by the program to keep gender roles the same. The COINTELPRO program started spying on and tracking members of the Women’s Liberation front until 1970 in which they had documents on over 3,000 different women. Women activity participated in not only the Women’s Liberation front but in other woman’s groups such as Women Strike for Peace and the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom. These groups depicted above were made up of different demographics of women, but during the war the differences in age, race or social standing did not matter. What mattered was the coming together as women and as American citizens to fight a similar cause
The Gay Liberation Front found it much harder to spread their message and fight during this period of time due to the stigma of being homosexual at the time. Most people did not openly pronounce that they were gay and resorted to going to secret bars and places to meet people. The FBI repeatedly try to slander individuals in other organizations by saying they were doing homosexual actions. The FBI arrested homosexual individuals on numerous occasions, such as during the Stonewall marches in which they raided a bar that led to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front. Before the Gay Liberation Front was established, homosexual people were repeatedly abused and imprisoned by local police in what can only be called targeting.
Both of these groups were fighting for their civil rights in the late 1960’s and 70’s as well as advocating and helping in the anti-war movement. There is a history of the COINTELPRO program, government agencies and the local police force’s degrading and suppressing these two groups. As with the other groups that were suppressed during this period, the suppression did not stop them, but furthered their causes after COINTELPRO was discovered by the American people
Anti-War Suppression 
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