The 1960's: Times of Hope, Cynicism, and Turmoil

THE 1960’S: TIMES OFHOPE, CYNICISM, AND

TURMOIL

10 de septiembre de 2014Plenitud de Gozo

J. Enrique Góngora Ramírez

The 1960’s: Times of Hope, Cynicism, and Turmoil | Jesus EnriqueGóngora Ramírez

1CONTENIDO

2 Years of Hope....................................................52.1 Kennedy....................................................52.1.1 Domestic Policy........................................52.1.2 Foreign Policy.........................................6

2.2 Space Race.................................................72.3 New Technologies...........................................8

3 Social Movements..............................................93.1 African-American Civil Rights Movements....................93.1.1 Brown v. Board of Education.................................103.1.2 Integration of Mississippi Universities, 1956–65......113.1.3 Achievements..........................................12

3.2 Changes for Women.........................................124 Cynicism And Rebellion.......................................144.1 Assassinations............................................144.1.1 John F. Kennedy.......................................144.1.2 The Last Black Hope...................................154.1.3 Robert Kennedy........................................16

4.2 Anti-War Protests.........................................164.3 Violence..................................................19

5 The Beatles and the Stones...................................215.1 Protests in Music.........................................215.2 Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll..............................235.3 Music and Religion........................................24

6 Nowadays.....................................................256.1 Racial Integration........................................256.2 Justice...................................................26

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7 The Only Hope................................................27

Baby boomers are people born during the Post-World War II baby

boom, between the years 1946 and 1964. The kids that born in the

40’s and 50’s grew up and came of age in the 1960’s, and

immediately began to rebel. This decade is said to be a “necessary

struggle for change” by liberalists and a “time of debauchery and

ungodly actions” by the conservatives. The thing that is a reality

is that those times carried with hope, cynicism, and turmoil. Hope

was represented by those great scientific discoveries and

inventions, the space race, and even the election of a young

president, but all time of hope was accompanied by cynicism and

turmoil. Social movements represented a great aspect of the life

in the 60’s. Black people wanted to be completely free from racial

prejudices and women desired to play a greater role in the modern

world. While these, and other, movements were carried peacefully

some other turned to make young people cynical and judge their own

parents and authorities. Anti-war protests began as peaceful

movement but turned into violence and terrorism with great speed.

Music also played an important role in the decade. The so well-

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called Rock n’ Roll was a mean in which the teens protested in

their own way. Lyrics tried to stop war, achieve racial

integration, and stop Communism. Nevertheless music had a negative

impact in the life of kids too. All this is a brief summary of the

events that occurred in the rebelling decade, and you’ll find a

broader sight up next.

2YEARS OF HOPE

2.1 KENNEDY

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can

do for you country.”1 This is a well-known phrase that still sounds in

the hearts of many Americans nowadays. J.F. Kennedy represented

one of the greatest hopes of the decade. The so called “Young

Hope” was elected in 1960, making him the youngest elected

President of history of the U.S. Despite his young age, 43 in the

beginning of his term, he never showed to be an inefficient

President. He asked the nations of the world to join together to

fight what he called the “common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease,

and war itself” He added, “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.

1 Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 19614


Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration,

nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

2.1.1 Domestic Policy

President Kennedy called his domestic program the New

Frontier, which included ambitious promises as the federal funding

of education, medical care for old people, economic aid to rural

regions, and government intervention to halt the recession.

Kennedy also made an important promise, which affected millions of

black Americans, the end to racial discrimination.

In the Kennedy term ended a period of tight fiscal policies,

loosening monetary policy to keep interest rates down and

encourage growth of the economy. The economy who had been in

recession during three years, and one was going through one when

Kennedy took the office, accelerated notably during his

presidency, and turned around and prospered. The Gross Domestic

Product grew 5.5% from 1961 to 1963. Inflation remained 1% and the

rate of unemployment eased. Industrial production rose 15% and

motor vehicle sales rose by 40%. This rate of growth continued

until 1969 and has never repeated in the history of the United

Sates.

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In his first State of the Union Address in January 1961,

President Kennedy said, “The denial of constitutional rights to some of our fellow

Americans on account of race – at the ballot box and elsewhere – disturbs the national

conscience, and subjects us to the charge of world opinion that our democracy is not

equal to the high promise of our heritage.”2 Kennedy showed trough several

speeches his support for civil rights. It is said that his Irish

background made J.F. the importance of desegregation, for his

family was seen as a family coming from vulgar backgrounds and his

wealth as a lack of class.

Now as a president he could act or ignore the evident facts

that showed how bad discrimination affected the life of black

people.

2.1.2 Foreign Policy

The foreign policy in the Kennedy term was characterized by a

great tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. The

Cold War was one of the primary concerns of his presidency.

Communism was trying to extend and take control of the whole

world, but the Unites States was the greatest adversary.

Fidel Castro took control of Cuba promising to establish a

democrat government, but when he gained the control of the country

2 John F. Kennedy", Urs Swharz, Paul Hamlyn, 19646


revealed his real political view as a Communist. Some rebels

escaped and reached the United States looking for a second chance

to change the political government of their country. The CIA

helped the rebels training them by the order of Kennedy. An

invasion in the Bay of Pigs was planned and performed but the

promised aid of Air Force never came. The rebels lost and were

captured and killed. Castro established a Communist government

that and asked help from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union

answered by sending missiles that became a threat to the United

States, but the department of intelligence of the U.S. noticed

their presence and informed the President. Kennedy answered, and

all the boats from the U.S.S.R. where confiscated and talks about

disarming were carried between the United States and the Soviet

Union. The plan worked properly and the missiles were retired from

Cuba, regaining some of the national security that the country had

enjoyed unto that moment.

2.2 SPACE RACE

The Space Race was a competition from 1955 to 1972, when two

Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States were

looking for Space control. They fought for supremacy in

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spaceflight capability and technological superiority was seen as

necessary for the national security. The Competition began when

the Soviet Union declared that they would be sending satellites to

the outer space as was announced by the United States Four days

before. The Space Race originated pioneering technology to launch

artificial satellites. The Russians beat the Americans by sending

the first satellite to outer space on October 4, 1957 when the

Sputnik 1 was launched. The Space Race reached its peak on July

20, 1969, when the American Apollo 11 took the first humans that

landed on the surface on the moon.

Some years later the Spacer Race ended when the United States

and the Soviet Union agreed to cooperate and work together and in

the year 1975 Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts orbited

the earth as a single crew.

2.3 NEW TECHNOLOGIES

The 60’s saw great technological advances aside from the

social movements that marked the decade. This advances changed the

lives of the people back in the age and changed the history of

many person ahead. The computers were in the first steps of their

development and the Space Race opened a new kind of enterprise.

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On April 6, 1966 the first commercial satellite was launched.

Commercial satellites are owned by individual companies rather

than non-profit entities like governments. They orbit the earth

and transmit signals for cellular phone companies, television

cable companies and Internet providers. This is a multi-billion

dollar industry that Americans have come to rely on daily. Many

Americans are forsaking their land line phones in favor of having

only a cell phone. Wireless Internet is now considered a necessity

by many who use it on their phones. Global Positioning Systems

(GPS) also rely on satellites and are very useful to help people

find their way without a bulky paper map.

In conjunction with the commercial satellites the computers

were developed and the technological advances of them marked the

beginning of the age of information. The inventions of integrated

circuits reduced the size of the computers from an entire room to

the size of a TV and the new programing languages made the

computers more powerful and accessible for normal people. With the

reduced of computers its handling also changed allowing the

creation of the first computer mouse and the Random Access Memory.

The advances in computer technologies helped to create a new

market of gadgets that would come to society and stay still unto

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our days. The first video game console was invented by Ralph Baer,

who conceived the idea in 1966 and 1967 he played the first two

player video game, which he lost. In 1968 the first prototype was

ready and saw the sunlight. This invention was improved through

the decades giving many generations great fun, and being

transformed unto the modern-day consoles we see today.

3 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

3.1 AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS

The African-American Civil Rights Movement encompasses social

movements in the United States whose goal was to end racial

segregation and discrimination against black Americans and enforce

constitutional voting rights to them.

The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil

resistance. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protests and

civil disobedience produced crisis between activists and

government authorities. Federal state, and local governments,

businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to

these situation that highlighted the inequities faced by African

Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included

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boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama;

marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama and a

wide range of other nonviolent activities.

3.1.1 Brown v. Board of Education

During centuries black students had to endure the inequality

of education, but in the spring of 1951 the things changed. The

black students of Topeka, Kansas, were tired of the segregation

that the very government had placed upon their backs with the

phrase “equal but separate.” The education was different, but it

never was equal, while the white students enjoyed the best schools

and technologies the black students had just a few tools for

education. The NAACP joined the students and a battle in Court

began. Five cases proceeded, challenging the school systems. The

five cases at last were united into a single case known today as

Brown v. Board of Education.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its

decision regarding the case. The verdict charged that the

education of black children in separate public schools from white

students was unconstitutional. The Court stated that: “segregation of

white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored

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children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of

separation the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.”

This verdict marked the pace of the next movements that

concluded in the decade of the 60’s. The Negros were at least

being completely freed from the slavery to which they were obliged

to carry.

3.1.2Integration of Mississippi Universities, 1956–65

Beginning in 1956, Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War-Veteran,

wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College. The college

president David McCain used the Mississippi State Sovereignty

Commission to prevent the enrollment of Kennard.

Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and

eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state

prison. After Three years at hard labor, Kennard was paroled by

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett because journalist had

investigated his case and publicized the state’s mistreatment.

In September 1962, James Meredith won a lawsuit to secure

admission to the previously segregated University of Mississippi.

He attempted to enter campus on September 20, 25, and 26, but he

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was blocked by the Governor Ross Barnett, who said, “No School

will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor.”

Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in a force of U.S.

Marshals. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus and

other whites began rioting that afternoon. They threw rocks and

fired on the Marshals guarding Meredith. Two people were killed,

28 marshals suffered gunshots wounds, and other 160 were injured.

President Kennedy sent regular U.S. Army forces to the campus to

quell the riot and Meredith began classes the day after the troops

arrived.

3.1.3Achievements

The most popular representations of the movement are centered

on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr, but he

was not the only figure of the civil rights movement. In fact

there was no singular civil rights movement. It was a coalition of

thousands of local efforts around the nation during several

decades.

The greatest legislative achievements of this movement were

the Civil Right Act of 19643, the Voting Rights Act of 19654, the Immigration and

3 This act banned discrimination based on “race, color, religion, or national origin.”4 This act restored and protected voting rights.

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Nationality Services Act of 19655, and the Housing Act of 19686. African-Americans

re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young

people were inspired to take action.

3.2 CHANGES FOR WOMEN

Deep cultural changes were altering the role of women in

American society in the 60’s. More women that ever were entering

the paid workforce, and this increased the inequality among men

and women in the workplace. The major problems were primarily

about pay and sexual harassment. By the end of the decade more

than 80 percent of wives in fertile years were taken birth control

medication after the approval of the federal government in 1960.

Women thought they were freed from unwanted pregnancy, getting

more freedom in their personal lives.

In 1964, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia proposed to

add a prohibition on gender discrimination into the Civil Rights

Act that was under consideration. He was greeted by laughter from

the other congressmen, but with leadership from Representative

Martha Griffiths of Michigan, the law passed with amendment

intact. However, it quickly became clear that the newly5 It dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups.6 It banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

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established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would not

enforce the law’s protection of women work a group of feminists

including Betty Friedan decided to found an organization that

would fight gender discrimination through the courts and

legislatures. In the summer of 1968 the National Organization for

Women was launched, which went to congress to fight for pro-

equality laws and assist women seeking legal aid as they battled

discrimination in the courts.

Betty Friedan’s generation thought that it was necessary to

open the system for women’s participation on a public and

political level, but a more radical movement appeared called the

“women’s liberation” that was determined to overthrow the whole

patriarchal system that they believed was oppressing every facet

of women’s lives. This led to the search of new laws that allowed

the abortion and the divorce.

Gradually, Americans came to accept some of the basic goals of

the 60’s feminists: equal pay for equal work, and end to domestic

violence, curtailment of severe limits on women in managerial

jobs, and end to sexual harassment, and sharing of responsibility

for housework and child learning.

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“Most young women, at least in the middle class, expected to

have access to the same careers and to receive the same

compensation as men.”7 It was no longer surprising to find women in

the fields were men were expected to be leaders as television,

diplomacy, or politics.

4CYNICISM AND REBELLION

4.1 ASSASSINATIONS

We, as humans, do not know where our time of departure from

this world will come. We tend to believe that we’ll live forever,

but the death comes in the most unexpected moment and don’t make

differences between poor and wealthy, famous or never-heard-about,

young or old. During this decade various political and public

figures were killed and the facts of death were demonstrated.

4.1.1John F. Kennedy

Friday, November 23, 1963 was tragic day in the life and

history America. The beloved President Kennedy was shot near

Dallas, Texas, while in a political trip to Texas to smooth over

frictions in the Democratic Party between some liberals and

7 The Civil War of the 1960’s by Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin16


conservatives. He was shot once in the throat, once in the upper

back, and the final shot hitting his head being fatal.

He was taken to Parkland Hospital, but was pronounced dead at

and hour later. He was only 46 at the time of his death, becoming

the youngest President to be elected and the youngest President to

die. Lee Harvey Oswald, was accused as guilty of the assassination

of the President. He denied to have shot somebody, but the truth

was never found because he was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24,

before he could be tried.

Media did not rest until Kennedy was buried. He was remembered

as one of the best Presidents of the history, being compared to

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He committed mistakes as

any human, but the good things that made as president left a

legacy for the Americans, giving to the 60’s some hope.

4.1.2The Last Black Hope

Martin Luther King Jr. has been called to be the “last black

hope.” He was a clergyman, activist, and prominent leader of the

African-American Civil Rights Movement and Nobel Peace Prize

winner who became known for his advancement of civil rights by

using civil disobedience.

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He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,

Tennessee on Thursday April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. King was

rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at

7:05 P.M. that evening. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the

Missouri State Penitentiary was arrested on June 8, 1968 in London

at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged

with the crime. On March 10, 1969, Ray entered a pleas of guilty

and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.

Ray later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and be

tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful. He died in prison on April

23, 1998, at the age of 70.

Martin Luther King Jr. will always be remembered as the most

prominent figure of the Civil Rights movement. He achieved the

integration of black men without the use of violence and always

respected the Word of God. He never let the environment nor

difficulties to stop his task and followed with integrity. Now,

thanks to his work many men can be called free and enjoy of the

protection of the law.

4.1.3 Robert Kennedy

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6,

1968), commonly known by his initials RFK, was an American

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politician from Massachusetts. He served as a Senator for New York

from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. He was previously the

64th U.S. Attorney General from 1961 to 1964, serving under his

older brother, President John F. Kennedy and his successor,

President Lyndon B. Johnson. An icon of modern American liberalism

and member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy was a leading

candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1968

election.

“Bobby” Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles,

while crossing a crowded kitchen passageway by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24

year old Palestinian on June 5, 1968. A 22 caliber revolver was

shot hitting the candidate for president three times and wounding

other five people. He was took to the Los Angeles’ Central

Receiving Hospital and then was translated to the city’s Good

Samaritan Hospital where he died the next morning.

4.2 ANTI-WAR PROTESTS

By 1965 a variety of people in the United States had become

active in a vocal movement to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam

War. The U.S. Government had become involved in the war because it

did not want South Vietnam to be defeated by Communist North19


Vietnam. The United States government feared that if South Vietnam

were defeated, Communism would spread through Southeast Asia.

Those who pretested the war argued that it was not, as government

leaders argued, a vital struggle against world Communism. Many

protesters believed that Vietnam War was the last stage of a long

struggle by the Vietnamese for Independence. They pointed out that

the Vietnamese had already, in 1954, defeated the France, which

had controlled Vietnam as a colony. Following their defeat France,

the Vietnamese had become engaged in a civil war in which,

protesters insisted, the United States had no right to interfere.

The antiwar movement became a mass crusade in which millions

of Americans participated. It involved people of all ages,

organized in hundreds of diverse local and national groups,

including the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam,

Clergy and Laymen Concern about Vietnam, Women Strike for Peace,

Resistance, American Friends Service Committee, and Business

Executives Move for a Vietnam Peace. Among students groups, the

SDS played a vital role. While antiwar activists came from all

elements of American society, most were white, middle class, and

well educated. Colleges and universities were among the most

important sites of antiwar activism.

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Protest against the war took many forms -– marches, boycotts,

rallies, and demonstration. A key event took place at the

University of Michigan in March 1965. Students and professors held

a teach-in on Vietnam, where people gathered to examine America’s

Vietnam policy and discuss what they might do to change that

policy. Within months, more than 120 schools held similar events.

This spirit of questioning authority and determining how common

citizens could affect policy makers was at the core of the antiwar

movement.

Between1965 and 1971, many protests against the war took

place. In April 1967 simultaneous marches in San Francisco,

California, and New York involved some 250,000 antiwar activists.

In October 1967 about 50,000 more militant protesters marched on

the Pentagon. As the war continued, more and more people began to

question U.S. involvement. For example, in 1967 Martin Luther

King, Jr., spoke out against U.S. government policy in Vietnam.

Previously, civil rights leaders had been cautious about

criticizing the war for fear of losing President Johnson’s support

of the Civil Rights movement. However, as the war continued, more

and more spole against it.

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In August 1968 around 15,00 Americans held demonstration in

Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic Party’s national

convention, resulting in a violent confrontation between police

and protesters. On OCTOBER 15, 1969, a national teach-in on

Vietnam involved millions of Americans. In April 1970 President

Richard Nixon, who had been elected in 1968, expanded the Vietnam

War into neighboring Cambodia. Millions of Americans staged

protests troops in response to a large student protest at Kent

State University. Panicky National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of

students, killing four and heightening tensions at campuses

throughout the country.

Between 1968 and 1971, militant campus-based protests against

the war were common. Students burnt their draft cards, picketed

Reserve Officers Training Corps buildings, and petitioned against

faculty research funded by the Pentagon and the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA), and attempted to close down local draft

boards. For many sixties-era students, protesting the Vietnam War

became a major part of their everyday lives.

There is debate about the extent to which the antiwar movement

influenced the Vietnam policies of Johnson and Nixon

administrations. Most scholars believe that the movement had

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little effect on presidential policies, but many other Americans

believe that U.S. policy was influenced by the protests movement.

Within the country, large number of Americans felt that public

protests against the war, while American soldiers were fighting

it, was unpatriotic. Nonetheless, the movement did greatly

increase skepticism about the morality of American foreign policy

and the purpose of sending American troops into combat. It also

taught millions of Americans to exercise greater oversight of

their nation’s foreign policy. At the height of the Cold War, from

the late 1940s to the early 1960’s, Americans accepted their

presidents’ foreign policy leadership almost unquestioningly.

After Vietnam, a far more skeptical citizenry expected – even

demanded – that Congress the mass media, and citizen groups openly

debate every important foreign policy decision.

4.3 VIOLENCE

Experts like James Q. Wilson blame United States present-day

violence on the breakdown of the traditional hierarchy of family,

church and community, and the expunging of individual

responsibility. These were replaced by a social ethic in which one

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was encouraged to "do your own thing" regardless of the

consequences.8

Under the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) law

enforcement agencies conducted raids and harassment campaigns

against the Black Panthers that left 28 Panthers dead. And

indicated serious governmental misconduct. After the December 4,

1969 raid by Chicago police against Black Panther headquarters

that resulted in the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the

FBI agreed to pay $2 million in compensation the families of the

two men. Randy Weaver was not the first to receive such payments.

The violence against the Civil Rights movement was part of a

continuum of white racism that had been around since slavery.

The police also reacted violently against peaceful anti-war

demonstrations — and they were peaceful for the most part. It was

the government, not the anti-war movement, which resorted to

clandestine break-ins, wiretaps, and assorted black bag jobs to

defeat a legitimate, if unruly, social and political movement. It

was one of the rare times our government acted in such a way, but

it happened — and with the support of much of society.

8 Opinion from http://www.howardsmead.com/60sviol.htm24


The race riots of the Long Hot Summers marked a turning point

in the nature of race riots. Up to that point race riots had been

white-fomented as a means of racial oppression. In the 60's the

riots became expressions of black discontent. Prior to the Long

Hot Summers, the twenty-five race riots of the Red Summer of 1919

had been the worst period of urban unrest in U.S. history. By

contrast the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the

Kerner Commission) reported 130 separate race riots in the summer

of 1967 alone — now initiated by blacks in response to police

brutality, poor housing, no jobs, and exclusion from the benefits

and promises of American life. It became a true revolution of

rising expectations.

This anti-establishment violence presaged the destructive

violence of the anti-war movement that moved steadily during the

latter 60's away from nonviolent direct action to acts of violent

civil disobedience. When coupled with the salient rise in drug use

among baby boomers in the counter-culture, the criminality of the

period skyrocketed. The era drove, or allowed, people who in other

times would never have committed anything worse than a traffic

offense to delve into felonious crimes on a scale the Prohibition

merely flirted with.

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The re-birth of social violence in the form of urban riots,

violent demonstrations, and violent police repression,

precipitated, for the first time in U.S. history, the emergence of

terrorist violence by groups such as the Weather Underground and,

according to some, the Black Panthers.

5 THE BEATLES AND THE STONES

5.1 PROTESTS IN MUSIC

Music has always played an important role on American Wars.

During the Revolutionary War. “Yankee Doodle” and many other songs

set to reels and dances were sung to keep spirits alive during

dark hours. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Lincoln’s favorite

song during the Civil War, was countered by “Dixie” in the

Confederate States.

But wars also created many antagonists who placed on paper

their thoughts, feelings, anger, concern and a lot of other

emotions. During the 1960’s those thoughts were not wrote as

poetry or prose, but were accompanied with music. The Vietnam War

was an unpopular war. The longest in which the United States had

ever involved and one of the most expensive. The number of

casualties was very high and the results were almost none. The

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society disagreed with it and raised in Anti-war protests as seen

before. However there was a different kind of protests raising in

America. The Rock n’ Roll that was developed in the 50’s had grown

up in popularity although the 60’s parents thought it was just

“noise.” Along with the Civil Rights Movements developed a new

generation of young people that no longer believed in segregation.

There were white people listening to black people’s music. Massive

shows of this music style gathered young men of every race

existing in the United States sharing the thought that “The

American equation of success with the big-times reveals an awful

disrespect for human life and human achievement.”9 Youth

“counterculture” carved out new spaces for experimentation and

alternative views about what constituted a good society.

The popular music became a tool to fight against the war. The

Vietnam War was accompanied in every step of the way with an

antiwar soundtrack that touched with every tone, the heart of

people. Sarcasm, rage, and melancholy were the prime ingredients

of almost all the antiwar songs. And like the Antiwar Movement

itself, it began without a significant audience in the early

sixties, but grew to a critical size by the end of the war with

9 James Baldwin’s Insight27


creative bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin,

Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and dozens of others, and poets as

Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and Neil Young.

5.2 SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK N’ ROLL

The Rock n’ Roll lifestyle was popularly associated with sex

and drugs. Many of Rock n’ Roll early stars were known as hard-

drinking, hard-living characters that had intercourse with the

called groupies. During the 1960’s the lifestyles of many stars

became more publicly known, aided by the growth of the underground

rock press.

As the stars’ lifestyles became more public, the popularity

and promotion of the so called recreational drugs that were used

by musicians, influenced the use of drugs and the perception of

acceptability of drug use among the youth of the period. In the

late 1960’s the Beatles, who had previously been marketed as

clean-cut youths, started publicly acknowledging using LSD; many

fans followed the action. “…Whatever the Beatles did was

acceptable, especially for young people.”10 ”For some people,

taking LSD and going to Grateful Dead show functions [was] like a

10 Journalist Al Aronowitz.28


rite of passage… we don’t have a product to sell, but we do have a

mechanism that works.”11

In the late 1960’s, much of the Rock n’ Roll cachet associated

with drug use dissipated as rock music suffered a series of drug-

related deaths, including the 27 Club-member12 deaths of Jimmy

Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Many rock musicians,

including Lemmy, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Buffy

Sainte Marie, Jerry Garcia, Stevie Nicks, Jimmy Page, Keith

Richards, Bon Scott, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Brian Wilson,

Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Steven Tyler, Scott Weiland, Jacoby

Shaddix, Sly Stone, Madonna, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Layne

Staley, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown,

Dave Matthews, David Crosby, Anthony Kiedis, Dave Mustaine, David

Bowie, Phil Rudd, Elton John, and others, have acknowledged

battling addictions to many substances including alcohol, cocaine

and heroin; many of these have successfully undergone drug

rehabilitation programs, but others have died.

5.3 MUSIC AND RELIGION

11 Jerry Garcia, of the rock band Grateful Dead.12 A group of talented musicians that died at age 27.

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Music is “my law and my religion”13 said the rock star Ozzy

Osbourne. Millions of young people followed the example of this

star and forgot the religion that their parents have taught them

and had new gods, new priests, and new bibles. The music changed

every aspect in the life of the youth and the true God was left

aside. John Lennon said “We’re more famous than Jesus Christ” and

unfortunately he wasn’t that wrong, for the Beatles represented

more in the lives of young people than the Redeemer that died for

them.

6 NOWADAYS

6.1 RACIAL INTEGRATION

Massive social change fueled a profound surge forward by the

civil rights movement in the 1960s, one of the most important

developments in American history. "World War II was a watershed in

African-American history, raising the hopes of people who, with

their children, would build the massive black freedom movement of

the 1960s," wrote historians Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin in

America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. "The urgent need for

soldiers to fight abroad and for wage earners to forge an 'arsenal13 Ozzy Osbourne

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of democracy' at home convinced a flood of African-Americans to

leave the South." Between 1940 and 1960, 4.5 million blacks moved

out of the South to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West,

including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. This migration

continued throughout the Sixties.

"The black freedom movement arose at different times and

unfolded at different paces in thousands of communities across the

South," wrote Isserman and Kazin. "Only a few of these could be

sighted, sporadically, on TV screens during the '60s. But its

remarkable local presence gave the movement the power to transform

the nation's law and politics—and to catalyze every other social

insurgency that followed it through that decade and into the

next."

Six months after the Greensboro, N.C., sit-in of February

1960, the Woolworth's lunch counter where the first protests had

occurred was desegregated. But the road toward equality would

remain difficult and dangerous as demonstrations increased and

tensions intensified. In 1963 alone, four black girls were

murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in

Birmingham, Ala., and civil-riots pioneer Medgar Evers was killed

in Jackson, Miss.

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On Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I

Have a Dream" speech to more than 200,000 people on the Washington

Mall to demand equal rights for African-Americans. "I have a dream

that my four little children will one day live in a nation where

they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the

content of their character," King declared in words that many find

inspirational today.

Under incessant pressure from President Lyndon Johnson,

Congress passed the Civil Right Act and the Economic Opportunity

Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Thurgood

Marshall was appointed by President Johnson as the first black

justice of the Supreme Court in 1967, the same year that Carl

Stokes of Cleveland was elected the first black mayor of a major

American city.

In fundamental ways, the gains of the decade made Barack

Obama's election to the presidency possible in 2008. He was born

in 1961.

6.2 JUSTICE

The 60’s were a time in which people wanted to be “free” and

fought to obtain social liberty, better life conditions, equal

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education and work opportunities, world peace, and many other

things. But in their look of the “Betters” they forgot the “Best.”

God was left aside and placed in a dusty corner of the minds and

hearts of Americans. New thoughts of superiority grew with the

Space Race, and people thought that God wasn’t necessary and was

forgot in the government that laid its foundations upon the Word

of God.

America believed that the only needed thing was human

conscience and this odd idea was reflected on every little aspect

of her life as a nation. The political system was different from

thence, and most important the justice was different. The Justice

System now was founded upon human thought and resolution ending

with the banning of prayer, Bible reading, and all trace of

Christianity from schools. Nowadays people sue based on nothing

else but its pure opinion making the task of justice even more

difficult. Judges think that they are intelligent enough to

replace the infinite wisdom of the LORD.

7 THE ONLY HOPE

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In the 60’s America laid their confidence on “hopes” just as

the “Young Hope” that was President Kennedy and the “Last Black

Hope” that was Martin Luther King, Jr. But all the hopes in which

America trusted failed and disappeared, died, and only some

aspects of their lives are remembered. America failed to trust in

the Only Hope, not just for America but for the whole humanity.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who

believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”14 God created the world and

knows best what is good for us, because his will is perfect, but

we failed to follow his will and followed our own corrupt and

mistaken will. In the Garden of Eden man wasn’t temped to

fornicate, drink, murder, or steel; he was tempted to live in

independence from God. And he fell.

Men is condemned to fail again and again because of our sinful

nature, even when he tries to be honorable and truthful. It is

impossible for him to stop sinning and failing unless he rises his

eyes to God and notices that he is not in control of the world and

accept that he has to be redeemed. The major problem of humanity

today is that people are not capable to recognize that they are

sinners and believe that they were made perfect and can achieve a

14 John 3:16 (NLT)34


complete understanding of the world by pure effort, but humanity

is wrong today as it was 4,000 year ago.

The 60’s were a decade of great changes and turmoil that

perhaps was necessary for men. But the world is never going to

achieve perfection in that way. We as Christians need to

effectively communicate the redemptive message that the world

needs. Because the world still is trying to redeem itself. We must

not fail to our Great Commission and share the Gospel to every

Creature, because they are looking desperately for truth, but look

for it in the wrong place.

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The 1960's: Times of Hope, Cynicism, and Turmoil

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