One of the most striking and controversial political phenomena of the 1960s was the rise and decline of the New Left. It arose from the civil rights movement in 1960, played a central role in the Vietnam War protest movement, and then at the height of its influence it self-destructed. By late 1970 the New Left was essentially nonexistent.

Roots in the Civil Rights Movement.

The New Left was born with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Michigan in 1960. Though SDS was never a single-issue organization, many of its early members saw SDS as a means of organizing northern university students to participate in the black-voter-registration drives that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) started in the South in 1961.

C. Wright Mills, Godfather to the New Left.

Much of the impetus for the direction SDS took in its early...