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