During the 1960s, Americans saw the rise of the counterculture. The counterculture, which was a group of movements focused on personal and cultural liberation, was embraced by young Americans of the decade. Because many Americans were members of different counterculture movements, it influenced American society. Thanks to the achievements of countercultural movements, the United States became a more open, tolerant, and free country in the 1960s. One of the most powerful countercultural movements of the sixties was the civil rights movement. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to end racial discrimination in employment, in institutions such as hospitals and schools, and in privately owned public places. In 1965, Congress returned voting rights to southern blacks by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Foner 926). In the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional (Foner 951). Thanks to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, minorities gained more rights than before the 1960s. If the 1960s was a period of progress for minorities, it was also a period of progress for women . In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on a person's sex (Foner 944). To ensure that women had equal opportunities as men in employment, education, and political participation, the National Organization for Women was established in 1966 (Foner 944). The sixties also marked the beginning of a public campaign to repeal state laws that banned abortion or left the decision to terminate a pregnancy up to doctors rather than the woman (Foner 945). Although the sixties were a decade in which the United States became an open, more tolerant and free country, in some ways it became less of these things. During the 1960s, America intervened in other countries and efforts were made to stop the progress of the civil rights movement. Due to American foreign policy and Americans' struggle against the civil rights movement, it is clear that the sixties in America were not simply a decade of openness, tolerance, and freedom in the United States. . In the 1960s, many Americans tried to stop progress. minorities were doing with the civil rights movement. In 1961, a group known as the Congress of Racial Equality was attacked by mobs while testing compliance with court orders prohibiting segregation on interstate buses and trains and at terminals (Foner 914).