- A decade of stark contrasts
- Great hope and great turbulence
- John F. Kennedy elected president in 1960
- Young and energetic
- Passionate about grand ideas for America's future
- Presented a model for American youth, giving them a new sense of cultural identity
- His assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, brought on a multitude of changes in attitude
- Conspiracy theories
- Suspicion of government, social, religious, and economic institutions
- General attitudes of youth culture became magnified
- Youth culture presented itself more forcefully than ever
- Social movements became more vigorous
- More critical
- More violent
- America was divided by several major issues
- The civil rights movement
- Rights for African Americans
- Struggle began in 1619 when blacks were first brought to America
- Landmark desegregation case in 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
- Movement gained momentum and organization during the 1960s
- In 1960 four black students "sat-in" at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina
- Woolworth's (the sit-in occurred in one store) eventually integrated their lunch counters
- This process of civil disobedience spread to other cities and states rapidly
- The "March on Washington"
- August 28, 1963, 250,000 Americans—black and white—took part in a civil rights demonstration
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "1 Have a Dream" speech
- He vocalized the civil rights movement's goals and spirit
- In March of 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act
- Racial tensions built and erupted in a serious of riots
- Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965
- Newark and Detroit in 1967
- King was assassinated in 1968, triggering many more riots
- The Vietnam war
- American combat troops were sent to become involved in a civil war in Vietnam
- An antiwar movement began and gradually became more organized and intense
- Americans questioned the need for involvement in that war
- Students held demonstrations against the war
- They burned draft cards
- They escaped the draft by moving to Canada
- Demonstrations began to grow more violent in the late 1960s
- Riots broke out during an antiwar demonstration in Chicago at the Democratic Convention
- In 1970 four students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio
- Two more were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi
- The Feminist movement began in 1963
- A best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan made claims about women's role in society
- The book stated that women were constrained by the traditional role of homemaker
- National Organization of Women (NOW) was founded in 1966
- Author Freidan was the first president of NOW
- The environmental movement
- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) discussed the dangers resulting from use of pesticides such as DDT
- Ralph Nader's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed
- Accused automobile companies of placing profits and style ahead of safety
- Launched the consumer protection movement
- Nader became a consumer rights advocate and battled numerous industries
- brought about changes in laws and people's attitudes toward large corporations
- The entertainment industry went through revolutionary changes
- The radio industry began in the 1960s with AM as the main source of popular music
- By the end of the 1960s FM had evolved
- Originally FM was reserved for programming other than commercial popular music
- Classical music
- Jazz
- Information
- In 1967 it shifted to music appropriate for the new youth movement: hippies
- Television moved toward shows that made fun of 1950s-style "normalcy"
- More focus on situations that were either surreal or just plain fantasy
- Beverly Hillbillies
- My Favorite Martian
- Bewitched
- I Dream of Jeannie
- These shows were about the need to conceal one's nonconformist or "abnormal" traits
- The Beverly Hillbillies was an exception
- The twist was that the hillbillies were put forth as the normal ones
- The surrounding Beverly Hills characters were made out to be abnormal
- This was all done with gentle humor that was clearly not meant to offend anyone
- The film industry presented new themes that resonated with the public's growing awareness of global situations
- James Bond movies began as being focused on the Cold War and spies
- He was the hero and always foiled the Cold War enemies
- The enemies progressively became more surreal in each new release
- Bond had marvelous technological gadgets to aid him in his missions
- The James Bond movies were optimistic about the West's role in global politics
- Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Parodies a best-selling suspense novel about fictitious accidental nuclear war
- Social comment on the perceived madness of the Cold War arms buildup
- Kubrick's 1968 science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Celebrated space travel one year before a man had landed on the moon
- Raised questions as to how much mankind should rely on technology
- America wins the race to the moon
- July 20, 1969 Americans landed on the moon and safely returned to Earth
- This fulfilled President Kennedy's promise that America would work together to accomplish this feat
- It did not subdue the anger over the continually escalating war in Vietnam
- All of the other issues that divided America remained as well
