<P> Kennedy was on stage to claim victory over McCarthy in the California primary when he was assassinated; McCarthy was unable to overcome Humphrey's support within the party elite . The Democratic national convention in Chicago was in a continuous uproar, with police confronting antiwar demonstrators in the streets and parks, and the bitter divisions of the Democratic Party revealing themselves inside the arena . Humphrey, with a coalition of state organizations, city bosses such as Mayor Richard Daley, and labor unions, won the nomination and ran against Republican Richard Nixon and independent George Wallace in the general election . Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the "silent majority" of moderate Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture . Nixon also promised "peace with honor" in ending the Vietnam War . He proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish the strategy to turn over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese, which he called "Vietnamization ." Nixon won the presidency, but the Democrats continued to control Congress . The profound splits in the Democratic Party lasted for decades . </P> <P> A new consciousness of the inequality of American women began sweeping the nation, starting with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's best - seller, The Feminine Mystique, which explained how many housewives felt trapped and unfulfilled, assaulted American culture for its creation of the notion that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives, mothers, and keepers of the home, and argued that women were just as able as men to do every type of job . In 1966 Friedan and others established the National Organization for Women, or NOW, to act as an NAACP for women . </P> <P> Protests began, and the new "Women's Liberation Movement" grew in size and power, gained much media attention, and, by 1968, had replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the U.S.'s main social revolution . Marches, parades, rallies, boycotts, and pickets brought out thousands, sometimes millions; Friedan's Women's Strike for Equality (1970) was a nationwide success . The movement was split into factions by political ideology early on, however (NOW on the left, the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) on the right, the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in the center, and more radical groups formed by younger women on the far left). </P> <P> Along with Friedan, Gloria Steinem was an important feminist leader, co-founding the NWPC, the Women's Action Alliance, and editing the movement's magazine, Ms. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1972 and favored by about seventy percent of the American public, failed to be ratified in 1982, with only three more states needed to make it law . The nation's conservative women, led by activist Phyllis Schlafly, defeated the ERA by arguing that it degraded the position of the housewife, and made young women susceptible to the military draft . There was also a disconnect between the older, relatively conservative Betty Friedan and the younger feminists, many of whom favored left - wing politics and radical ideas such as forced redistribution of jobs and income from men to women . Friedan's primary interest was also in workplace and income inequality, and she was largely unmoved by the abortion and sexual rights activists, feeling in particular that abortion was an unimportant issue . In addition, the feminist movement remained dominated by relatively affluent white women . It failed to attract many African - American females, who tended to be of the opinion that they were victims of their race rather than their gender and that many of the feminists came from comfortable middle - class backgrounds who had seldom experienced serious hardship in their lives . The failure of the ERA effectively marked the end of the women's liberation movement . </P>

Who were the presidents of the united states in the 1970s