Summary: The events and consequences of the 1960s still have the ability to provide contentious debate. Many claim the changes that came out of the decade have had a positive long-term effect on American society; for example, women's rights and protection of the environment became popular causes during this decade. Others point to destructive consequences of the decade, including the loosening of moral and excessive drug use, as more emblematic of the 1960s. The election of John Kennedy as president in 1960 caused many in America to feel optimistic about the future. But for some, Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was a sign of the violence that would consume America later in the decade. The construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War were major foreign policy issues of the decade; opposition to the Vietnam War eventually drove President Lyndon Johnson from the White House. Blacks made many civil rights gains during the decade, but a number of younger blacks now called for "black power" rather than integration into white society. College and high school students became increasingly empowered in the decade; hundreds of thousands protested against the Vietnam War. While a number of students were increasingly involved in political affairs, other young people supported cultural instead of political revolution and became members of a widespread counterculture.
Keywords
New Frontier: Group of domestic policies proposed by John Kennedy that included Medicare and aid to education and urban renewal; many of these policies were not enacted until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
Great Society: Overarching plan by President Lyndon Johnson to assist the underprivileged in American society; it included the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Head Start and Medicare programs. Some Great Society programs were later reduced because of the cost of the Vietnam War.
Civil Rights Act of 1964: Major civil rights legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in public facilities, in employment, and in voter registration.
Black power: The philosophy of some younger blacks in the 1960s who were impatient with the slow pace of desegregation; its advocates believed that blacks should create and control their own political and cultural institutions rather than seeking integration into white-dominated society.
Roe v. Wade (1973): Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal (with some restrictions).
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Congressional resolution passed in August 1964 following reports that U.S. Navy ships had been fired on by North Vietnamese gunboats off the Vietnam coast; in essence it gave the president the power to fight the Vietnam War without approval from Congress. Many historians doubt if any attack on U.S. ships actually took place.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): radical, activist student organization created in 1960 that advocated a more democratic, participatory society. SDS was one of the major student organizations opposing the Vietnam War.
Counterculture: a movement by young people in the 1960s who rejected political involvement and emphasized the need for personal instead of political revolution. Many members of the counterculture wore long hair and experimented with various drugs, with sex, and with unconventional living arrangements.
Kent State University: campus in Ohio where four students who were part of a 1970 protest against U.S. involvement in Cambodia were shot and killed by National Guardsmen.
THE 1960 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Many Americans perceived the election of John Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960 as the beginning of a new age for America. His statement during his inauguration speech "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" is remembered by millions today. At age 43, Kennedy appeared young and vigorous (especially when flanked by his wife, Jacqueline). Kennedy was the son of a former ambassador to Britain and had served as a congressman and senator from Massachusetts. He was also a Roman Catholic.
Some voters considered Richard Nixon to be "too tied to the past"; as previously mentioned, he was the vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Historians note that this was the first election greatly affected by television; in four presidential debates, Nixon appeared nervous and tired. Ironically, those who heard the debates on the radio didn't feel that Nixon lost them. Some historians argue that the television image projected by Nixon actually cost him the election. The 1960 popular vote was one of the closest in history; Nixon lost by only 120,000 votes (out of nearly 34 million cast).
DOMESTIC POLICIES UNDER KENNEDY AND JOHNSON
Early in his administration, John Kennedy stated that America was on the brink of entering into a New Frontier. The press from this point on dubbed his domestic policies "New Frontier" policies. Kennedy had plans to stimulate the economy and to seriously attack poverty in America (The Other America by Michael Harrington was published in 1962; this book outlined the plight of America's poor and had a great effect on Kennedy and his circle). Kennedy supported several important domestic programs, including a Medicare program (later approved during the administration of Lyndon Johnson) and substantial federal aid to education and to urban renewal.
Very little of Kennedy's domestic agenda was adopted by Congress. His plan to cut taxes and to increase spending on education never even got out of congressional committee. One of Kennedy's domestic successes was to convince Congress to raise the minimum wage from $1.00 per hour to $1.25. Kennedy also established a Peace Corps program, in which young men and women volunteered to help residents in developing countries around the world.
One program that was considered a top priority by both Kennedy and Congress was the space program. Kennedy was barely in office when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space. In early May 1961, America put its first man in space (Alan Shepard), and in February 1962 John Glenn (later a United States senator) became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth. During this era, Kennedy also made the bold promise that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
The New Frontier programs ended permanently when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was in Texas to heal wounds in the local Democratic party and to rally support for the 1964 presidential election. Kennedy was riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas when he was killed. An ex-marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with Kennedy's death. Oswald never went to trial because he was shot and killed by a Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, two days later. The Warren Commission was formed to investigate the assassination; the report of this committee firmly supported those who said that Oswald acted alone. To this day, there are those who maintain that a conspiracy was responsible for Kennedy's death.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office shortly after Kennedy's assassination. In the year after Kennedy's death, Johnson was able to get much of Kennedy's domestic policy plans through Congress. Johnson had been the Senate majority leader before becoming vice president, and in early 1964 was easily able to maneuver the previously rejected Kennedy tax cut through Congress.
Johnson ran for re-election against Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater was a conservative from Arizona who was too far to the right for mainstream America to accept. He spoke of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam and famously stated that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Lyndon Johnson won nearly 62 percent of the popular vote and was able to institute his own economic plans in 1965; in a speech early in that year, Johnson stated that his goal was to create a Great Society in America.
In speech after speech, Johnson stated that it would be possible to truly end poverty in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs was created as a cabinet-level department. In 1964, Johnson had begun the VISTA program, which organized volunteers who worked in the poorest communities of the United States. In 1965, Congress passed Johnson's Housing and Urban Development Act, which organized the building of nearly 250,000 new housing units in America's cities and authorized over $3 billion for further urban development. Johnson's major initiatives in education authorized grants to help disadvantaged preschool students. In 1965, Johnson established a Medicare system, which provided hospital insurance and medical coverage for America's senior citizens, and Medicaid, which assisted Americans of any age who could not afford health insurance.
The Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson positively impacted the lives of thousands of Americans, but frustration set in when it appeared that, despite massive government efforts, a large number of Americans still lived in poverty. In addition, the cost of Great Society programs put a strain on American taxpayers. However, it should be noted that the number of those living in poverty was cut by at least 40 percent by Great Society programs. Many of these programs ended up being reduced or eliminated because of the expense of America's war in Vietnam.
THE STRUGGLE OF BLACK AMERICANS: FROM NONVIOLENCE TO BLACK POWER
As was noted in the previous chapter, Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a key leader of the civil rights movement during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. King and other Southern clergymen founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which taught that civil rights could be achieved through nonviolent protest. SCLC leaders taught that violence could never be fully utilized to achieve their goals, no matter what the circumstance.
Many younger blacks were eager for the fight for civil rights to develop at a quicker pace. In 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed; its leaders were not ministers, and they demanded immediate, not gradual, change. During the first years of its existence, SNCC attracted both black and white members; many of the whites were college students from Northern universities.
An effective technique utilized by the civil rights movement in the early 1960s was the sit-in. Blacks were not allowed to eat at the lunch counters of many Southern stores, even though blacks could buy merchandise at these stores. Black and white civil rights workers would sit down at these lunch counters; when they were denied service, they continued to sit there (preventing other paying customers from taking their spaces). Picketers would oftentimes march outside the store in question. Those participating in sit-ins received tremendous verbal and physical harassment from other whites, yet the tactic of the sit-in helped to integrate dozens of Southern establishments in the first several years of the 1960s.
In May 1961, the Congress for Racial Equality sponsored the Freedom Rides. During the previous year, the Supreme Court had ruled that bus stations and waiting rooms in these stations had to be integrated. On the Freedom Rides, both black and white volunteers started in Washington and were determined to ride through the South to see if cities had complied with the Supreme Court legislation. In Anniston, Alabama, a white mob greeted the bus, beating many of the freedom riders and burning the bus. Freedom rides continued throughout the summer; almost all riders experienced some violence or were arrested.
The Freedom Rides introduced an important influence into the civil rights struggle in the South: the public opinion of the rest of the country. Many Americans were horrified at the violence they witnessed; many called their representatives in Congress to urge that the federal government do more to support the freedom riders. By the end of the summer, marshals from the Justice Department were in every city the Freedom Ride buses passed through to ensure a lack of violence.
Under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the federal government became much more involved in enforcing federal civil rights guidelines and court rulings. In September 1962, President Kennedy nationalized the Alabama National Guard and sent in federal marshals to suppress protesters and allow James Meredith to be the first black to take classes at the University of Mississippi. In Birmingham, Alabama, city officials turned fire hoses and trained dogs on civil rights protesters; the broadcast of these events to the entire nation again created widespread outrage against those in the South who were opposing court-ordered integration.
President Kennedy went very slowly on civil rights issues, but in the summer of 1963, he presented to Congress a wide-ranging civil rights bill that would have withheld large amounts of federal funding from states that continued to practice segregation. To muster support for this bill, civil rights leaders organized the August 28, 1963, March on Washington. More than 200,000 people showed up to protest for civil rights legislation; it was at this rally that Martin Luther King made his very famous "I have a dream" speech.
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson presented to Congress the most wide-ranging civil rights bill since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stated that the same standards had to be used to register white and black voters, that racial discrimination could not be used by employers to hire workers, that discrimination was illegal in all public locations, and that an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would be created. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed measures such as literacy tests, which had been used to prevent blacks from voting. Passage of this bill was aided by the public sentiment that followed the revelation that three civil rights workers had been killed the previous summer while attempting to register voters in Mississippi. Television reports of violence against civil rights workers, such as was seen during Martin Luther King's march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, convinced many Americans that additional civil rights legislation was necessary.
Many blacks who lived in poverty in northern cities believed that the civil rights movement was doing little or nothing for them. In August 1965, riots broke out in the Watts section of Los Angeles; Chicago, Newark, and Detroit soon experienced similar riots. The Kerner Commission was authorized to investigate the cause of these riots, and stated that black poverty and the lack of hope in the black urban communities were the major causes of these disturbances. The Kerner Commission reported that two societies existed in America, one white and rich, and the other poor and black.
One group that preached opposition to integration was the Nation of Islam. This organization (also called Black Muslims) preached that it was to the benefit of white society to keep blacks poor and in the ghettoes, and that for blacks to improve their position they would have to do it themselves. Malcolm X would become the most famous representative of this group, preaching black nationalism. Eventually, Malcolm X rejected the more extreme concepts of the Nation of Islam, and he was killed in February 1965.
The idea od black nationalism exerted a great deal of influence on many of the young members of SNCC. One, Stokely Carmichael, began to urge blacks to take up arms to defend themselves against whites; Carmichael also orchestrated the removal of all whites from SNCC. In addition, Carmichael began to urge SNCC members to support black power; this concept stated that blacks should have pride in their history and their heritage, and that blacks should create their own society apart from the all-controlling white society.
The most visible group supporting black power were the Black Panthers. This San Francisco group, founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, had a militarist image. Several members died after vicious gun battles with police. At the same time, the Black Panthers set up programs that gave food to the poorest members of San Francisco's black population and established schools to teach black history and culture to the children in the community. However, the image of this organization was greatly damaged by its violent reputation.
THE RISE OF FEMINISM
Another group that fought for additional freedoms in the 1960s were women. As discussed in the previous chapter, many women felt extreme frustration with their lives in the 1950s. Some college-aged women were active in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, but often felt frustrated when they were always the ones asked to make the coffee or do the typing.
In the mid-1960s, even women in suburbia began to notice that the frustrations they had were shared by many of the women living around them. Women's support groups became common on both college campuses and in suburban communities. A pivotal book that helped bolster this growing feminist movement was The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
In 1966, NOW (National Organization for Women) was founded by Friedan. NOW was a decidedly middle-class organization and was dedicated to getting equal pay for women at work and to ending images in the media that objectified women. In 1972, Gloria Steinem founded the feminist magazine Ms. The key Supreme Court decision of the era concerning women was the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which, with some restrictions, legalized abortion. Many feminists pushed for the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, but this amendment was never ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution. Some opponents to the amendment stated that its passage would eventually lead to other "unacceptable" actions, such as gay marriage.
Other groups protested for equal rights during this period. The American Indian Movement (AIM) wanted Native Americans to be knowledgeable about their heritage, and also influenced various tribes to mount legal battles to get back land that had been illegally taken from them. A standoff between AIM members and government authorities took place at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973; as a result, legislation passed in the 1970s gave Native American more autonomy in tribal matters.
Latino groups also began to protest for rights in this era. A large number of Latinos were employed as migrant farm workers in California; Cesar Chavez organized the United Farm Workers against farmers (especially grape growers) in California. Environmental groups also became active in this era. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson came out in 1962 and warned about the dangers of DDT. Many also protested throughout the decade against the dangers of nuclear power.
THE COLD WAR IN THE 1960s
Cold War tensions and fears continued to dominate in the early 1960s. The fear of the bomb continued unabated; movies such as Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove explored a world in which an "accident" with the bomb might occur. Both the United States and the Soviet Union openly tested nuclear weapons during 1961 and 1962.
A plan to liberate Cuba from Castro had actually been formulated during the Eisenhower administration; by this plan, the CIA would train Cubans living in America to invade Cuba, and the United States would provide air cover. This operation, called the Bay of Pigs, took place in April 1961 and was a complete fiasco, with virtually the entire invasion force killed or captured by Castro's forces. The Bay of Pigs was a major embarrassment for the Kennedy administration in its first months in office.
In Berlin, refugees from the East continued to try to escape to West Berlin on a daily basis; in August 1961, the East Germans and the Soviets constructed the concrete Berlin Wall, dividing the two halves of the city. The issue that almost brought the world to World War III was not in Europe, however; it was in Cuba. In mid-October 1962, American reconnaissance flights over Cuba indicated Soviet-made missile sights under construction. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy established a naval blockade of Cuba and told Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to remove the missiles from Cuba. Khrushchev backed down and removed the missiles, averting the potential of world war. It is known now that if American forces had landed in Cuba, Soviet authorities were seriously contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons against them. Luckily, effective diplomacy prevented the outbreak of a potentially catastrophic crisis. Shortly afterward, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty, and a "hot line" was installed, connecting the White House and the Kremlin so that future crises could be dealt with quickly.
THE VIETNAM WAR AND ITS IMPACT ON AMERICAN SOCIETY
Since the 1950s, the United States had supported noncommunist South Vietnam against the North, led by communist and nationalist Ho Chi Minh. The South Vietnamese government also had to fight the Vietcong, communist guerillas who lived in South Vietnam but supported the North. During the Kennedy administration, the number of American advisors in Vietnam increased. American officials became increasingly suspicious of the effectiveness of South Vietnamese president Diem; in the fall of 1963, these officials supported (or orchestrated, depending on which historian you read) the assassination of Diem.
Shortly after becoming president, Lyndon Johnson decided that to achieve victory, the war in Vietnam had to be intensified. In August 1964, Johnson announced to the nation that light North Vietnamese gunboats had fired on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, which is in international waters. Some historians are skeptical that these events ever took place. Nevertheless, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the president the power to "prevent further aggression" in Vietnam; this resolution allowed the president to control the war without the necessity of consulting Congress.
Throughout 1965, 1966, and 1967, America continued to increase its commitment in Vietnam; by early 1968 nearly 540,000 American soldiers were stationed in Vietnam. Beginning in 1965, bombing campaigns against North Vietnam became commonplace. American soldiers in Vietnam became increasingly frustrated by the jungle tactics used by their enemies, by the fact that one's friend by day might be one's enemy by night, and by the seeming lack of effectiveness of the South Vietnamese army.
A key battle of the war was the Tet Offensive, which began on January 30, 1968. During the first day of the Vietnamese new year, the Vietcong initiated major offensives in cities across South Vietnam. Even Saigon, the capital, was attacked, and the Vietcong held the American embassy for several hours. In the end, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese suffered major losses as a result of the Tet Offensive. Nevertheless, this was the battle that began to conclusively turn American public opinion against the war. The sights on television of American forces trying to recapture their own embassy certainly made many question the idea that "victory was just around the corner," which is what was being told to the American people by military and civilian officials.
The Vietnam War drove Lyndon Johnson from the White House. Diaries of several in Johnson's inner circle show that he was consumed by the war. In February 1968, Johnson began his re-election bid by taking on Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who was running on a peace ticket, in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Johnson won, but got only 48 percent of the total votes to 42 percent for McCarthy. Johnson considered this a humiliation, and one month later pulled out of the presidential race. Johnson endorsed Vice President Hubert Humphrey for president. By this point, Robert Kennedy had also announced his candidacy.
Throughout 1968, support for the Vietnam War continued to fade in America. The Republican candidate for president, Richard Nixon, gained support when he proclaimed that he had a "secret plan" to end the war. Reports of brutality of the war also shocked many Americans. Many were disturbed to find that Americans were using napalm, a substance that sticks to the skin and burns, on civilian villages. The story of the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which more than 300 Vietnamese women, children, and elderly men were murdered by American soldiers, horrified many Americans. Some Americans began to wonder what the United States was doing in Vietnam, and what the war was doing to the United States.
The student protest movement also began to furiously campaign against the war. Student activists had previously been active in the civil rights movement. In 1960, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organization was formed. The Port Huron Statement was the founding document of this organization, and called for a less materialistic society that encouraged "participatory democracy." SDS would become one of the major student organizations opposing the war.
The Free Speech Movement had grown at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when school officials refused to allow political materials to be distributed on campus. Campus buildings were occupied, as students demanded college courses more relevant to their lives. Tactics used by Berkeley students were copied by students at colleges across the country.
The Vietnam War greatly expanded the student protest movement in America. Many students were passionately opposed to the war on moral grounds; to be fair, others were part of the movement because they didn't want to be drafted. Television pictures of young men burning their draft cards were commonplace. Antiwar demonstrations that had attracted a few hundred people in 1964 were now attracting thousands; a 1967 antiwar rally drew 500,000 people to Central Park in New York.
The year 1968 saw the protests grow, both in number and in intensity. Events of 1968 convinced many young people that getting involved in mainstream politics (as Eugene McCarthy had tried to get them to do) was fruitless. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed in the spring of that year; to many, that left the presidential race between two representatives of the old guard, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. What, many students asked, was the point of even getting involved in politics if the candidates that they could choose from all ended up being traditional politicians? In the spring of 1968, major protests broke out at Columbia University; in August, as protesters chanted "the whole world is watching," Chicago police officers brutally beat students and others who had shown up to protest at the Democratic National Convention. By 1969, disputes over how much violence is acceptable began to tear SDS apart as well.
Another group of revolutionaries in the 1960s rejected political involvement and supported cultural revolution instead. Members of the counterculture rejected America and its values as much as antiwar protesters did, but believed that personal revolution was most vital. These "hippies," or countercultural rebels, often had little to do with members of SDS; the revolution of the hippies consisted of growing one's hair long, listening to the "right" music, and partaking of psychedelic drugs. Timothy Leary and other proponents of LSD implored young people to "tune in, turn on, and drop out." Sexual freedom was also commonplace in the counterculture. A birth control pill had been approved by the federal government in 1960; a button worn by many in the 1960s stated "If It Feels Good, Do It!" The Mecca for many of these rebels in 1967 was San Francisco, where the music and lifestyle of groups such as the Grateful Dead personified the counterculture of the 1960s. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 was the most outward manifestation of the "peace and love" rebels of the 1960s. For members of the counterculture, personal rebellion was a much more valid form of rebellion than political rebellion; it should be remembered that Pete Townshend of The Who threw radical political organizer Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock.
Richard Nixon was elected in November 1968, and soon announced his policy of Vietnamization of the war, which consisted of training the South Vietnamese army and gradually pulling American forces out. By 1972, American forces in Vietnam only numbered 24,000 (as the numbers of soldiers in Vietnam decreased, so did the antiwar protests). In April of 1970, however, Nixon announced that to support the South Vietnamese government, massive bombing of the North was needed and that the war needed to be extended into Cambodia to wipe out communist bases there. College campuses across the country, for one last time, joined together in massive protest. At Kent State University four students were killed by National Guardsmen who opened fire on the protesters; two students were killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi. American public opinion at this point was deeply divided on the war; two days after Kent State, nearly 100,000 construction workers marched in New York City for the war.
In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were leaked by a former Department of Defense employee, Daniel Ellsburg. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the government had deceived the American public and Congress about Vietnam as early as 1964. By this point, most Americans awaited the end of American involvement in the war.
America was involved in negotiations with the North Vietnamese in Paris. Negotiations intensified in December 1972 when President Nixon ordered the heaviest bombing of the war against North Vietnam. In January 1973, it was announced that American forces would leave Vietnam in 60 days, that all American prisoners would be returned, and that the boundary between North and South Vietnam would be respected. On March 29, 1973, the last American soldiers left Vietnam; 60,000 Americans had died there. On April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, ending the Vietnam War. The last Americans had left the country one day earlier.
CHAPTER REVIEW
To achieve the perfect 5, you should be able to explain the following:
The events that dramatically altered America including protests and cultural rebellion in the 1960s are seen by some in a positive light and others in a negative light.
John Kennedy projected a new image of presidential leadership, although few of his domestic programs were actually passed by Congress.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the critical foreign policy crisis of the Kennedy administration, and may have brought the world close to world war.
After Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson was able to get Congress to pass his Great Society domestic programs, which included Head Start and Medicare.
Nonviolence remained the major tactic of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s, although some black leaders began to advocate "black power."
Women strove to achieve equal rights in the 1960s through the National Organization for Women (NOW) and consciousness-raising groups.
Lyndon Johnson determined early in his presidency that an escalation of the war in Vietnam would be necessary, and more materials and men went to Vietnam from 1965 to 1968.
The military in Vietnam was frustrated by the military tactics of the enemy and by faltering support at home.
The Tet Offensive did much to turn American public opinion against the war.
Student protesters held increasingly large demonstrations against the war; SDS was the main organization of student activists.
Members of the counterculture advocated a personal and not a political rebellion in this era.
Richard Nixon removed American troops from Vietnam through the policy of Vietnamization; the South Vietnamese government fell two years after American troops departed.
Time Line
1960: John Kennedy elected president / Sit-ins began / Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed / Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed
1961: Freedom Rides / Bay of Pigs invasion / Construction of Berlin Wall / First American travels in space
1962: James Merideth enters University of Mississippi / SDS issues Port Huron Statement / Silent Spring by Rachel Carson published / Cuban Missile Crisis / The Other America by Michael Harrington published
1963: John Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes president / Civil Rights march on Washington / The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan published / President Diem ousted in South Vietnam
1964: Beginning of Johnson's War on Poverty programs / Civil Rights Act enacted / Free Speech Movement at Berkeley begins / Tonkin Gulf Resolution / Johnson reelected
1965: Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed / Johnson sends more troops to Vietnam / Voting Rights Act passed / Murder of Malcolm X / Watts riots burn sections of Los Angeles
1966: Stokely Carmichael calls for "black power" / Formation of Black Panther party / Formation of National Organization for Women (NOW)
1967: Riots in many American cities / Antiwar demonstrations intensify
1968: Martin Luther King assassinated / Robert Kennedy assassinated / Student protests at Columbia University / Battle between police and protesters at Democratic National Convention / Richard Nixon elected president / American Indian Movement (AIM) founded / Tet Offensive / My Lai Massacre
1969: Woodstock Music Festival
1970: United States invades Cambodia / Killings at Kent State, Jackson State
1971: Pentagon Papers published by the New York Times
1972: Nixon reelected
1973: Vietnam cease-fire announced; American troops leave Vietnam / Roe v. Wade decision
1975: South Vietnam falls to North Vietnam, ending the Vietnam War