By the time the 50’s came to a close, the United States had been enjoying almost fifteen years of unparalleled prosperity, and a generation of baby-boom kids was growing up knowing nothing but the affluence with which they’d been surrounded.
It wasn’t always this way, however. Prior to the start of the post-war baby boom in 1946, the nation had endured more than a decade-and-a-half of sacrifice and struggle. Following the stock market crash in 1929, the country was mired in a crippling depression, with as many as 25% of the labor force out of work. The passage of landmark social welfare legislation during FDR’s legislation would blunt some of the worst hardships of the ‘30’s and give millions of struggling workers hope that they might indeed be the beneficiaries of a New Deal, even as others were wary of undue government involvement in the private sphere. (Depending upon one’s political persuasion, the New Deal either raises the specter of creeping socialism, or provided that not only provided needed relief to million, but also saved capitalism from its own excesses).
Either way, and despite some amelioration of the stubborn economic problems plaguing the country, the Great Depression really didn’t end until the advent of World War II when the nation’s factories were suddenly running on overtime to meet the industrial demands of a world at war. The full employment which the war brought didn’t mean an end to hardship however; in fact, far from it. By 1945, the last year of the war, more than 12 million Americans were in uniform; and more than 400,000 were killed. On the home front, more women were working outside the home, but every day goods from butter to silk stockings to rubber for automobile tires were in short supply because of rationing measures implemented to insure that enough materiel would be available to support the war effort.
For as much sacrifice as the war entailed for Americans, however – and it was enormous – the end of World War II also left the United States in a position of unprecedented advantage relative to the rest of the world. For all of the hardship brought on by the war’s hostilities, no bombs had fallen on American soil save those which rained down on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941; and no American factories, houses or highways had been destroyed by enemy bombs. Contrast this situation with that found in the Europe, where the war had wrought not only human casualties, but laid to waste much of the critical infrastructure in the homelands of Allied and Axis powers alike. Moreover, with the development and subsequent use of the atomic bomb, the U.S. emerged from the war as the world’s sole nuclear power. Military powers like France and England, with their far-flung empires, were greatly weakened by the war; while Axis powers Germany, Italy and Japan were defeated, with terms of reconstruction dictated mostly by the victors. For its part, in turning back Nazi Germany’ army on the eastern front, the Soviet Union demonstrated that it was a world power to be reckoned with militarily, and sought to establish a heavy-handed control over countries in eastern Europe. Less appreciated was the fact that after being invaded by European powers twice in the first half of the century – and with memories of Napoleon’s attempts at conquest in the 19th century fresh in the national memory, the Soviets sought to provide themselves a buffer against future incursions on their homeland. Their repressive measures raised the specter of future East-West clashes, but enduring the death of more 20,000,000 of it’s people during the war – more than 10% of the country’s population, the Soviet Union was at a profound disadvantage when it came to competing with the United States economically.
Add to these post-war advantages the U.S.’ vast reserves of cheap oil and other bountiful resources to propel a booming economy whose products were in demand not only on the domestic front, but abroad where other nations were still trying to rebuild, and America realized a peace-time dividend that included an unprecedented expansion of the middle class, along with a rapidly increasing demand for the plethora of new consumer goods needed to fill the countless households flocking to the growing suburbs ringing the nation’s urban areas.
Not that everyone was sharing equally in the prosperity, however. While millions of hardworking families might be reaping the peace dividend of higher wages and government supported home loans, these advantages were not so readily available to the nation’s African-American population. After risking their lives in military service abroad, countless thousands of African-Americans returned home to find themselves denied the kinds of freedom they’d supposedly been helping others win. They returned to their hometowns to find segregation, discrimination and limited opportunities in education and employment.
Not surprisingly, after long generations of discrimination, the simmering cauldron of frustration was poised to boil over. Despite legislation passed in 1947 integrating the armed forces, meaningful civil rights legislation stalled in a Senate dominated by Southern leaders armed with seniority and powerful committee chairmanships. And so frustration among the nation’s African-Americans grew, and as the frustration grew, so did efforts to organize and prompt overdue changes. Thus it was that the ‘50’s saw marches, boycotts and sit-ins throughout the South, even as segregationist opponents to change dug in and resisted with the kinds of violent and intimidating tactics they’d long been accustomed to employing to ‘keep the Negro in his place.’
The Fifties proved to be different in this regard, however. In addition to the higher expectations brought about by the military service of hundreds of thousands of black Americans and the nation’s increased affluence, the decade preceding the ‘60’s saw the spread of a new form of media – television. Whereas before tactics of bullying, lynching or other brands of intimidation might find their way into the back sections of a newspaper, the advent of a TV-oriented generation brought graphic images right into viewers’ homes. Just as televised hearings had eventually helped to expose the vicious excesses of Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts in the early 50’s, so too did this new form of media cast a brighter light on many of the nation’s uglier racist realities. In a similar vein, and not wanting to be outdone by the expanding television networks, newspapers began to show a greater willingness to carry stories once buried deep inside their insides pages, if they were carried at all. Thus it was that when tragedies like the grisly 1955 lynching of 14 year-old Emmitt Till occurred, hundreds of newspapers across the country carried the story and featured graphic pictures of his grotesquely distorted face; and an increasing numbers of Americans, when confronted with the hideous realities of racism lurking behind the veneer of public gentility, began to lose their appetite for the ugly disenfranchisement of more than 20 million of its citizens.
Not that kids growing up in the 1960’s were aware of all of the seamier aspects of hidden on the underbelly of American life as they went about their day-to day activities. Indeed, millions of kids, depending upon their age, would become pre-occupied with such childhood trappings as acquiring a new baseball mitt, Barbie doll, transistor radio, household TV or family station wagon. Coupled with school day narratives of the American Dream, featuring the nation’s determined march toward freedom, democracy and affluence left many kids blissfully unaware of the sacrifices their parents or grandparents had made, or of the hardships millions still faced.
While this level of privilege no doubt afforded many children innumerable happy childhood memories, it also set many an idealistic youth up for gnawing disenchantment when images of America’s festering flaws were beamed into their living rooms – and the resulting intrusion upon their consciousness assumed a more gut-wrenching realism when they realized their somewhat idyllic childhoods might culminate with a non-negotiable trip to a deadly war which critics had begun branding not as an exercise in the spread of democracy, but as a bloody imperialistic intrusion into the affairs of others.
As the new decade dawned, the U.S. population stood at approximately 180 million people. The U.S. President, first elected in 1952, was former World War II General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with Richard Nixon serving as Vice President. During the decade of the 1950’s the country’s population grew by approximately 28 million people, an increase mostly due to the post-war Baby Boom, which peaked in 1957, when census records showed 4.3 million births vs. just 1.63 million deaths among the population. The census bureau also classified over 88% of the population as “white,” and 10.5% as Negro. It was also a time when many urban areas began to see declines in their population even as their suburbs boomed; in Pittsburgh itself, the city proper lost 10.7% of its population during the 1950’s, while areas outside the city saw gains of 18%.
Non-violent sit-ins, which would continue for six months, begin at Woolworth lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in protest of the store’s policy of racial segregation.
A U.S. U-2 reconnaissance/spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union, and pilot Gary Powers captured, leading to cancellation of the Paris summit conference, and heightening Cold War tensions between U.S. and Soviet Union.
Harper Lee’s bestselling novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the moving story of a black man wrongfully charged with the murder of white woman in a small Southern town, is published.
Senator John F. Kennedy wins a first-ballot nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, defeating, among other candidates, rivals Lyndon Johnson, Stuart Symington, Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. In a move surprising to many, Kennedy offered the vice-presidential slot to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas.
The Republican National Convention is held in Chicago, where the GOP selects Vice-President Richard M. Nixon as their presidential nominee, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. of Massachusetts as the nominee for vice-President.
A group of rock musicians from Liverpool, England, once known as the Quarryman, change their name again to the Beatles. At this time, the band consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe, George Harrison and Pete Best. Sutcliffe would leave the band in 1961 before dying of a brain hemorrhage at age 21 the following year; while drummer Pete Best would be replaced by Ringo Starr during the summer of 1962.
Eighteen year-old boxer Cassius Clay of Louisville, KY won a Gold Medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, boxing in the light-heavyweight division. As a pro, Clay would go on to win the heavyweight boxing crown on three separate occasions. He would also gain further notoriety for his lyrical trash-talking; his decision to join the Nation of Islam and change his name to Muhammad Ali; and for his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. army during the early years of the Vietnam War, famously saying "No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slave masters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end." (Muhammad Ali The Measure of a Man.” (Spring, 1967) Freedom ways 7, (2), 101-102)
The first televised presidential debate in American history is held in Chicago. In this first in a series of four debates between the two candidates, radio listeners scored the debate as tie, or even gave the edge to Nixon; while those viewing the performance on television saw a relaxed and tan looking Kennedy square off against a more haggard looking Nixon, and gave the edge to Kennedy. In an interesting and fateful irony of history, Kennedy ran to the right of Nixon on Cuban foreign policy. Nixon, in his role as vice-President, was keenly aware of and even spearheading the Eisenhower administration’s covert plans to depose the increasingly left-leaning Castro government, but was unable to divulge this sensitive information. Thus, when Kennedy advocated a tougher stance toward Cuba, Nixon was left charging Kennedy with advocating a reckless brand of foreign policy (even as Kennedy inherited his predecessors’ plans for the intervention that eventually turned into the Bay of Pigs debacle).
Pittsburgh Pirates’ second baseman Bill Mazeroski hits a game winning home-run in the bottom of the ninth inning during the decisive seventh game of the World Series at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field to give the Pirates an unlikely victory over the American League’s dominant New York Yankees.
In a closely contested contest, John Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon to be elected 35th President of the United States. Amid a backdrop that would come to include allegations of voter fraud, Kennedy wins the electoral college with 303 votes to Nixon’s 219 (with 15 electors casting their votes for Virginia’s staunch segregationist Senator Harry Byrd). The popular vote was even closer, with Kennedy being credited with 49.72% of the vote to Nixon’s 49.55%. Though Nixon declined to contest the official results, historians have engaged in decades of research and debate as to whether allegations of voter fraud, particularly in Illinois and Texas, may have played a pivotal role in swinging the election to Kennedy.
The “Pill” is born. By 1965, as many as 5,000,000 American women are using the controversial contraceptive, a development which played its part in helping further the sexual revolution.
January 1, 1961:
John F. Kennedy is sworn in as the 35th President of the United States. In his inauguration speech, Kennedy declares that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to insure the survival and the success of liberty;” and exhorts Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
President Kennedy issues Executive Order 10924, authorized by Congress in September of that same year, creating the Peace Corps, as part of his stated effort to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of peoples in Third World countries seeking to throw off colonial rule.
Bay of Pigs. Plans for Cuban exiles, with covert assistance from the U.S. to invade Cuba and incite citizens to join them in overthrowing the Castro government go awry when President Kennedy declines to offer the air support necessary to make the invasion a success. For his part, Kennedy was interested in effecting regime change in Cuba, but did not want it to become known that the U.S. was supporting efforts to overthrow a foreign government. In the end, the invasion was repelled, with over 100 exiles killed and more than 1,000 captured. In the wake of the invasion was left scrambling to explain what was widely deemed as a foreign policy failure, even as the failed invasion pushed the Castro government into closer ties with the Soviet Union and laid the foundation for the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would push the world to the brink of full-scale nuclear war the following year.
New York Yankees right fielder Roger Maris hits his first home run of the 1961 season. With this home run, he joins teammate Mickey Mantle – who’d hit two that day to bring his season total to seven – in the quest to surpass Babe Ruth’s Major League record of 60 home runs in a single season.
The first group of Freedom Riders, organized by the Congress on Racial Equality and intent on integrating interstate bus transportation throughout the South, leave Washington, D.C. on a Greyhound Bus. Later that month, when the Freedom Riders, along with Martin Luther King and a congregation of 1,500 people meeting at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama are besieged by an angry mob of segregationists, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect them.
President Kennedy sends 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam as Special Advisors. Their ostensible mission is to train South Vietnamese soldiers in counter-insurgency methods against Viet Cong/National Liberation Front guerilla forces.
The first U.S. manned sub-orbital space flight is completed with Commander Alan B. Shepard Jr. inside a Mercury capsule launched 116.5 miles above the earth from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Twenty days later, President Kennedy announces his intention to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
President John F. Kennedy, amid fears the country had fallen behind the Soviets and the development of rocketry, announces the U.S. goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade, telling a joint session of Congress, “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
President Kennedy authorizes a raise in the nation’s minimum wage. The mandate calls for a hike in the minimum from the current $1.00 per hour to $1.25/hour by September 1963.
In the Yankees final game of the season, Roger Maris hits home run number 61, breaking the record of 60 established by legendary Yankee slugger Babe Ruth in 1927. Dogged by reporters and feeling the pressure of the chase, Maris’ hair had fallen out during the course of a season that scrutinized he and teammate Mickey Mantle’s pursuit of the record. Mantle, who missed a portion September with injuries and an infection, finished the season with 54 home runs. For his part, Maris was rewarded with an asterisk in the record books, as Babe Ruth had hit his 60 home runs in a 154 game season, while Maris’ 61st blast came in game #162.
In efforts to support the Diem government in South Vietnam, the number of U.S. military advisors in Vietnam grows to 3,200.
John Howard Griffin’s book "Black Like Me," his account of darkening his skin to pass as a Negro as he traveled through the segregated deep South by bus, is published.
The highly influential book "Silent Spring," by Rachel Carson is published. The work documents the detrimental effect on wildlife, especially birds, which the indiscriminate use of pesticides has, and accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation about the safety of its products.
Michael Harrington publishes the The Other America, a shocking exposé about poverty in the wealthiest nation in the world. President John Kennedy is among those influenced by the book; he and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, declare war on poverty and launch a decade-long political mission aimed at reducing unemployment, increasing federal support for schools and adult education, and expanding the network of government programs assisting the poor and elderly.
Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, piloting the Friendship 7 spacecraft around the earth three times. Glenn would resign from the space program in 1964, while NASA would continue its quest to land an American on the moon by the end of the decade, eventually doing so in 1969. John Glenn, after two unsuccessful bids for public office, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974 where he served until his retirement in 1999.
The not yet ‘Amazing Mets’ played their first Major League Baseball game, dropping an 11-4 decision to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mets would begin the season with a 0-9 record, before finishing their inaugural campaign with an anemic 40-120 record. Losing 100 or more games in four of their first five years, the Mets would struggle through losing seasons through 1968. Incredibly, in 1969 the ‘Miracle Mets’ went 100-62, posting the best record in the National League before going on to beat the Atlanta Braves in the NL playoffs, and then the 109-53 AL Champion Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.
An English band billed as “The Rolling Stones,” comprised of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, and Dick Taylor, played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London. The Stones, who would become known as the bad boys of rock & roll, went on to become one of the most popular groups of all time, featuring iconic mid-1960’s hits like “Satisfaction,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “Paint it Black,” “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together” (the suggestive lyrics in the latter song prompting variety show TV host Ed Sullivan to insist the band change song’s words before he would agree to allow them on the show).
Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis began after U-2 spy planes detected evidence of offensive Soviet missile launch sites in Cuba, installed in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. After long days and sleepless nights of tense deliberation and debate that included a military blockade and threats of war that experts agree brought the world closer to a full-scale nuclear exchange than at any time during the Cold War, Kennedy managed to resist the advice of his more hawkish National Security advisors and cut an eleventh-hour deal with his Soviet counterparts that called for the Soviets to withdraw their missiles from Cuba in exchange for a non-invasion pledge from the U.S., as well as a then-secret pledge by the U.S. to withdraw its Jupiter missiles from Turkey (missiles which the U.S., unbeknownst to the Soviets, already considered obsolete, insofar as they were being supplanted by submarine-based Polaris missiles).
Richard Nixon is defeated by Democrat Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial election, with Brown winning 52% of the vote to Nixon’s 47%. In his concession speech, a disgruntled Nixon famously told the press that “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
Birmingham’s Bull Connor orders police department to employ fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights demonstrators. The vicious tactics attracted national attention, helped spur the Kennedy administration to introduce a civil rights bill to Congress (one that would eventually be passed the following year, after Lyndon Johnson had assumed the presidency in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination), and inadvertently help turned national opinion against the segregationists.
President John F. Kennedy gives the keynote speech at the American University’s commencement exercises. Delivered in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy speaks at length about working toward peace in hot spots throughout the world, and announces plans for high level discussion with Soviet leaders that lead to the negotiation of the Partial Test Ban Treaty later that summer. After the address, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. Under-secretary of State Averill Harriman that it was the greatest speech given by an American president since FDR. In later years, the American University ‘Peace Speech’ would be cited by Kennedy supporters as evidence that erstwhile cold warrior JFK was making a decisive turn toward peace, and would have been unlikely to pursue the escalations in Vietnam that occurred during the administration of his successor following Kennedy’s assassination.
Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself to death in a Saigon street in protest of U.S.-backed South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his persecutory policies toward Vietnamese Buddhists, who were estimated to comprise 70%-90% of the country’s population. In his book “Making of a Quagmire,’ author and journalist David Halberstam described the immolation thus:
“Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.” (Halberstam, “Making of a Quagmire;” 1965; p. 210.)
After pictures of the self-immolation were published around the world, support for the increasingly unpopular Diem waned even further. (Diem himself, during the course of a coup, would be killed under murky circumstances in November, three weeks before the Kennedy’s assassination.)
Cardinal Montini, better known as Pope Paul VI, succeeds Pope John XXIII, who passed away on June 3. Under his papacy, Pope Paul VI continues the Second Vatican Council begun by his predecessor, attempting to steer a kind of middle course while bringing reform and modernization to the Church.
The United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain agree to a limited nuclear test-ban treaty, barring all nuclear testing above ground. For some, it is considered a tilt toward peace by Kennedy and Khrushchev, shaken as they were by events of the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous year when the two nations were at the brink of nuclear war.
A Quarter Million people participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and hear Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his historic ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. Organized by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and an alliance of civil rights, labor and religious organizations, the march is credited with helping pressure lawmakers into passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965, more than 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Remembered years later for the iconic speech King delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, there was widespread opposition to the march in its planning stages. Washington officials, as well as march organizers, were concerned about the possibility of violence; segregationists were opposed to the march on principle; and more radical black leaders thought it wasn’t ambitious enough, with Malcolm X calling it the ‘Farce on Washington.’
Nevertheless, march leaders were able to agree on a set of goals, including:
Passage of meaningful civil rights legislation;
Immediate elimination of school segregation;
A program of public works, including job training, for the unemployed;
A Federal law prohibiting discrimination in public or private hiring;
Also of note was a goal that the federal minimum wage be raised to $2.00/hour – in 1963, at $1.00/hour, the minimum wage was only half that amount. It wouldn’t be until 1974-75 that the minimum wage reached the $2.00 per hour level.
Though remembered mainly for King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, nine other ‘official’ speakers took to the podium before King came on, all of them male.
One of the scheduled speakers, James Farmer, president of the Congress on Racial Equality, was not able to be there in person, as he had been arrested in another protest, but wrote a speech delivered by Floyd McKissick, saying the protests would not stop "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and the rats stop biting us in the North." In a similar vein, John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, was pressured by other march leaders to cut parts of his speech, including a line about ‘marching through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did.”
In the end, organizers were pleased with the march’s high turnout, but unsure that it would help bring about lasting change. And, while King himself is remembered for his pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott (in 1954-55) and the stirring ‘I Have a Dream’ speech articulating a vision of racial integration and justice, fewer people are familiar with his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech delivered in 1967, condemning the U.S. War in Vietnam; or his efforts, prior to being assassinated, in organizing the Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968 as a way of promoting greater economic justice.
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, TX as his presidential motorcade wound its way through Dealey Plaza on its way to a scheduled luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Within hours of the shooting, vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One; and a 24 year-old former marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, is arrested in connection with the shooting of a Dallas Police officer and subsequently charged with assassinating the president. Oswald, who had once held high level security clearances while stationed in Japan as an analyst scrutinizing U-2 spy plane data – prior to his defecting to Russia and subsequently being allowed an unobstructed return to the United States – was himself shot to death two days after the Kennedy shooting in the basement garage of the Dallas Police Department by a mob-connected night club owner named Jack Ruby. In the wake of the two shocking assassinations – Oswald’s shooting occurred in front of TV cameras broadcasting his prison transfer to a national television audience – a hornet’s nest of competing, often contradictory theories abounded as to whether Oswald was a lone shooter operating from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building overlooking Dealey Plaza; or whether he was one player in a larger conspiracy orchestrated by pro-Castro or anti-Castro Cubans; renegade or high level CIA forces; Mafia members working alone or in tandem with CIA personnel; disgruntled Pentagon plotters; Russian conspirators; or hired French assassins. In September, 1964, the Warren Commission released its 800-page report pointing to Oswald as the lone assassin; yet the country abounded with skeptics, in large part due to shortcomings in the Commission’s conduct in interrogating and/or disregarding prospective witnesses or not pursuing possible lines of inquiry. Hundreds of books and countless articles were published in the half-century following the assassination, with thousands of classified documents unreleased, and countless others lost or destroyed.
The number of U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam stands at approximately 16,000. In October, 1963 (prior to the assassination of the increasingly unpopular South Vietnamese President Diem) U.S. President John Kennedy signed National Security Memorandum 263, authorizing the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. military personnel. It remains a hotly debated topic as to whether, in signing this memorandum, Kennedy was indeed initiating the first step in what he hoped would be a total withdrawal of U.S. personnel, or whether he would have presided over the same kind of escalation seen during the Johnson years.
The U.S. Surgeon General’s report, contradicting years of industry advertising, officially declares smoking to be hazardous to ones health. The following year, as part of a decades long regulatory battle, Congress would pass the first legislation requiring warning labels on cigarette products. Over time, cigarette ads would eventually be banned from TV; and smoking rates for U.S. adults aged 18 and over dropped from over 42% in 1965 (when more than 51% of adult makes smoked), to less than 18% in 2013.
The Beatles come to America, ushering in an era of Beatlemania. Between February and June, four of the six number one records in the country are by the Beatles, a feat that had only been accomplished by Elvis Presley in 1956. At year’s end, the Beatles would boast five of the top twenty songs on Billboard’s Top 100 list for the year; no other group would have more than one song among the top twenty.
Boxer Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, knocks out heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. Coming into the fight, the 2 year-old brash talking Clay was a heavy underdog, but stopped Liston after six rounds, when Liston didn’t come out at the bell to start the 7th round. Not long after the fight, Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and held the heavyweight title until 1967, when he was suspended from boxing and stripped of his title for refusing induction into the armed forces. In explaining his decision, Ali claimed that as a Muslim, he wasn’t interested in taking part in any Christian wars, and went on to famously say, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” and "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" In June 1967, Ali was found guilty, but he remained free on appeal, though he would not be allowed to fight again until 1970. While Ali’s guilty was initially upheld in the Court of Appeals, the case eventually went to the Supreme Court where the guilty verdict was overturned. Though he lost three years when he would have been in his rivalry, Ali would come back to claim the title two more times during a career which featured a bitter rivalry with the hard hitting champion Joe Frazier, and later with George Foreman.
The Ford Mustang is introduced to the public at the World’s Fair in New York. Also in April, the Beatles place five songs in the top ten music charts across the country, including Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Please Please Me."
In a speech at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson introduces the theme for his domestic agenda in stating that we must “set our course toward the Great Society."
17 year-old Jim Ryun becomes the first high schooler to run a mile in less than four minutes. Though he finished last in a race that saw all eight runners dip beneath the four minute mark, Ryun would go on to have other notable performances, including a 3:58.3 mile the following year, run at the Kansas state meet against a field that included only high school runners; and two world records in the event, including a 3:51.1 in June, 1967.
Freedom Summer, an effort to increase voter registration throughout the heavily segregated deep South, organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), begins with the disappearance of three activists, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. On August 4, the bodies of the three activists – victims of Ku Klux Klan violence – are found buried in an earthen dam.
As a kind of prelude to the 1967’s Summer of Love, best selling Ken Kesey and his counter-cultural band of pot-smoking, acid-taking ‘merry pranksters drive a converted, psychedelically painted school bus they have named ‘Further’ across the country in search of ecstasy and adventure. The bus became known for its wild party atmosphere, and for appearing at concerts like the Monterrey Pop Festival and other major ‘happenings’ during the period.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The new law, coming 99 years after the Civil War ended, was a landmark piece of legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Two weaker Civil Rights bills had been passed in 1957 and 1960, but a growing, organized and increasingly militant civil rights movement, helped a determined president, supported such government officials as Senators Huber Humphrey and Mike Mansfield, and Justice Department lawyers Robert Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach, use the political capital Johnson had accrued as Senate Majority Leader and Vice-President to ride a growing wave of public support for ending segregation (a wave which had grown far larger in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, as the late president had been urging the passage of civil rights legislation before being cut down in Dallas the previous year). In the end, proponents of the legislation were able to overcome the obstructionist tactics of staunch segregationist legislators from the formerly Solid South, including a two-month long filibuster in the Senate.
Tonkin Gulf Incident occurs. A U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox reported that while on routine patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin waters off the North Vietnamese coast, it was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Two days later, the U.S. destroyer Turner Joy and the Maddox both reported coming under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In the wake of these incidents, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the president, without the need of a formal declaration of war from Congress, to authorize military force throughout Southeast Asia. In the coming years, it would be the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that was used to justify the sharp escalations of American involvement in the Vietnam War. It would also subsequently be shown that on August 2 the USS Maddox was actually engaged in electronic surveillance in support of South Vietnamese military exercises against the North and was in disputed waters; and that the attacks reported by the two U.S. destroyers on August 4 may not have happened at all.
World Series. Once again, Major League Baseball’s fall classic featured the American League’s dynastic New York Yankees, who were pitted against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals from the National League. In retrospect, it would prove to be the end of an era for the Yankees, who had appeared 14 of the previous 17 Series and won 10 of those 14. The outcome of the 1964 Series was to be different, however, as Yankee stars Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford were approaching their twilight years; while the St. Louis Cardinals, unlike their mostly Caucasian counterparts from New York, had successfully pursued and signed a wealth of African-American and Latino talent, including the immensely talented Curt Flood and future Hall-of-Famers Bob Gibson and Lou Brock. In the end, the scrappy Cardinals would win the hard-fought best-of-seven series 4-3, and return to the fall classic in 1967 and 1968. For their part, the once powerful Yankees would be displaced by the Baltimore Orioles as the American League’s dominant team, and would not return to the World Series until 1976.
Less than twenty years earlier, World War II was raging across Europe and the Pacific, and it would have been hard to imagine Japan hosting the Olympic Games, but with the end of the war came the demilitarization of Japan and an era of reconstruction under American terms, and by May, 1959, Tokyo had been selected to host the XVIII Olympiad in the fall of 1964. Among the notable performances from an American team that would win a world leading 36 Gold Medals were those by Billy Mills in the 10,000-meter run, and sprinter Bob Hayes in the 100-meter dash.
In the 100 meters, Bob Hayes was among eight sprinters who advanced through two preliminary and a semi-final round. In the finals, the 21 year-old AAU and NCAA champion who would also help the U.S.A. win gold in the 4 X 100, won in a world record-tying 10.06 seconds. They would be his last track-and-field races, as he would switched careers, eventually being elected to the NFL Hall of Fame after playing with the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco ‘49ers.
In the 10,000 meter run, Billy Mills became the second Native American (the first being Jim Thorpe) to win an Olympic Gold Medal. In a race where Australian world record holder Ron Clarke was the favorite, Mills battled with Clarke, Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia, and Ethiopian runner Mamo Wolde. With two laps to go, it was just Clare, Mills and Gammoudi in contention, and of the three, Clarke had run more than 45 seconds faster in the event than either of the other two runners. On the final lap, Gammoudi pushed past Clarke and Mills to take the lead, while Clarke gave chase and Mills slipped back into third. Coming out of the final turn, Mills was briefly boxed in by other runners who were being lapped in the race, but managed to break through on the final straightaway and unleashed a ferocious sprint that saw him overtake both of his competitors in the final meters to win the gold medal in an Olympic record time of 28:24.4, almost 50 seconds faster than he’d ever run the event before. Mills’ 1964 Olympic Gold Medal in the 10,000 was the first time an American had ever won that event, and no American duplicated the feat since then.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
U.S. Presidential election. In one of the ironies of 20th century American history, Lyndon B. Johnson, who’d assumed the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November, 1963, ran as a moderate Democrat who trumpeted not only domestic social progress through Great Society programs, but the candidate more likely to keep the country at peace in the coming years. In so doing, Johnson defeated the Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party’s more conservative, hawkish nominee in a landslide victory that saw LBJ win over 61% of the popular vote, and garner 486 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College. Despite LBJ’s landslide victory, Republican observers could find a ray of hope in the fact that, of the six states won by the Goldwater, five were in the historically ‘Solid South,’ including Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. A Democratic stronghold in the nearly 100 years since the end of post Civil War Reconstruction (President Abraham Lincoln, signer of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, had been a Republican), more and more conservative southern voters began turning away from the Democratic Party following the signing of civil rights legislation by Johnson, while Republican strategists took advantage of this opportunity to woo the same voters with appeals to racially charged, socially conservative philosophies that would become known as the Southern Strategy.
As the year comes to an end, the number of U.S. military advisors in the growing war in Southeast Asia is 23,000. (1)
After taking the oath of office in January (following his election victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in November, 1964), President Lyndon Johnson approves the recommendation of his advisors for a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam at a time when 80% of the American public support their country’s military involvement in Vietnam. Later that month, Johnson approves General William Westmoreland’s request for two battalions of marines to protect the American air base at Da Nang. (1)
Black Nationalist and former Nation of Islam member Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little) is assassinated while speaking at a rally in New York City. Members of the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm X had become estranged, were held responsible for the murder. It would later be revealed that the FBI had infiltrated the NOI and worked to exacerbate the rift between Malcolm X on the one hand, and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad on the other. Later that same year, author Alex Haley would publish the bestselling “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” In 1992, the movie “Malcolm X,” starring Denzel Washington, and directed by Spike Lee, is released.
Operation "Rolling Thunder" Begins: LBJ approves Rolling Thunder in February, believing that a program of limited bombing in North Vietnam will deter support for Vietcong. Expected to last for eight weeks, Rolling Thunder continues for more than three years, involving 305,380 raids and 634,000 tons of bombs. Results include: 818 pilots killed and hundreds more captured; 182,000 civilians killed in North Vietnam. (1)
The first American combat troops, 3500 marines, arrive at Da Nang, Vietnam, joining the 23,000 military ‘advisors’ already stationed in the country. The following day, LBJ authorizes the use of napalm, a petroleum based anti-personnel bomb that showers hundreds of explosive pellets upon impact and which causes severe burns. (1)
Selma March
First Anti-Vietnam War Teach-In: Anti-war faculty members and the SDS publicize and protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. About 3,000 attend.
President Johnson authorizes two more marine battalions and as many as 20,000 additional ‘logistical personnel’ for the rapidly escalating war.
After meeting with to aides in Honolulu, Johnson authorizes another 40,000 combat troops for Vietnam. (1)
San Francisco Giants slugger Willie Mays hits the 512th home run of his career, surpassing the record held by Mel Ott for the most home runs by a player in the National League. For Mays, who had passed Mickey Mantle the previous year for most home runs by an active player, speculation was rampant as to whether he would challenge Babe Ruth’s all-time record of 714 home runs. In the end, Mays would finish with 660 round trippers. Just coming onto the career home run radar was the Hank Aaron, the Milwaukee Braves star right fielder who was three years younger than Mays. Aaron, who began the 1965 season with 368 home runs, would go on to pass Ruth at the start of the 1974 season, and finish his career with 755 home runs.
The Rolling Stones’ song ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ rises to the top of the pop music charts, and is the year’s #3 song, with top honors going to Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs’ ‘Wooly Bully’). Also in July, Barry McGuire records ‘Eve of Destruction,’ which reaches the top of the pop music charts in September.
During a noontime press conference, President Johnson announces he will send 44 combat battalions to Vietnam increasing the U.S. military presence to 125,000 men. Monthly draft calls are doubled to 35,000. "I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. And we will meet his needs. We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam." (1)
President Lyndon Johnson signs the bill creating Medicare, a national health insurance program for the elderly. Companion legislation creates Medicaid, providing health care for people on welfare. Later, Medicaid will be broadened into a more comprehensive program financing health care for low-income persons.
President Johnson asks Congress for an additional $1.7 billion for the growing war. (1)
President Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act abolishes literacy tests and other tests used by local and state governments to inhibit African-American voting.
Race riots break out in the heavily segregated Watts section of Los Angeles after the arrest of an African American on drunk driving charges triggers an altercation which quickly escalated into a full scale riot. result in the deaths of 34 people, as well as millions of dollars in property damage.
President Johnson signs a law criminalizing draft card burning. Although it may result in a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine, the burnings become common during anti-war rallies and often attract the attention of news media. (1)
The Ford Motor Company offers a factory-installed or dealer-installed eight-track tape player option on three of its 1966 models, the Mustang, Thunderbird and Lincoln. A popular feature that allowed people to choose any music they wanted, the eight-track would enjoy a popular run through the 1970’s before it was displaced by the smaller, more portable cassette tape, which would itself be replaced by compact discs (CD’s).
25,000 march in Washington in support of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The marchers are led by five Medal of Honor recipients. (1)
In Washington, 35,000 anti-war protesters circle the White House then march on to the Washington Monument for a rally. (1)
After visiting Vietnam, Defense Secretary McNamara privately warns that American casualty rates of up to 1000 dead per month could be expected. (1)
‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ the first Peanuts television special, debuts on CBS.
The second pause in the bombing of North Vietnam occurs. This will last for 37 days while the U.S. attempts to pressure North Vietnam into a negotiated peace. However, the North Vietnamese denounce the bombing halt as a "trick" and continue Viet Cong terrorist activities in the South. (1)
An estimated 90,000 South Vietnamese soldiers deserted in 1965, while an estimated 35,000 soldiers from North Vietnam infiltrated the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail. Up to 50 percent of the countryside in South Vietnam is now under some degree of Viet Cong control.
Reflective of a public sentiment still largely in favor of the war, Time Magazine chooses General William Westmoreland as 1965's 'Man of the Year.'
The Vince Lombardi–lead Green Bay Packers beat the Cleveland Browns 23-12 in the NFL Championship Game. The victory gave the Packers their third NFL championship under head coach Lombardi.
Citing Hanoi's failure to respond to his peace overtures during the 37-day bombing pause, President Johnson announces bombing of North Vietnam will resume. (1)
Senator Robert F. Kennedy criticizes President Johnson's decision to resume the bombing, stating that the U.S. may be headed "on a road from which there is no turning back, a road that leads to catastrophe for all mankind." His comments infuriate the President. (1)
Influential newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann lambastes President Johnson's strategy in Vietnam, stating, "Gestures, propaganda, public relations and bombing and more bombing will not work." Lippmann predicts Vietnam will divide America as combat causalities mount. (1)
Despite an increased articulation of doubts about the war in Vietnam, public opinion still favors U.S. engagement there. Indicative of the sentiment, Sgt. Barry Sadler’s ‘Ballad of the Green Berets’ reaches number one on the pop music charts, and at year’s end will be selected as the number one song of 1966.
The U.S. reveals that 20,000 acres of food crops have been destroyed in suspected Viet Cong villages. The admission generates harsh criticism from the American academic community. (1)
South Vietnamese Buddhists begin a violent campaign to oust Prime Minister Ky following his dismissal of a top Buddhist general. This marks the beginning of a period of extreme unrest in several cities in South Vietnam including Saigon, Da Nang and Hue as political squabbling spills out into the streets and interferes with U.S. military operations. (1)
Anti-war protests are held in New York, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco. (1)
B-52 bombers are used for the first time against North Vietnam. Each B-52 carries up to 100 bombs, dropped from an altitude of about six miles. Target selections are closely supervised by the White House. There are six main target categories; power facilities, war support facilities, transportation lines, military complexes, fuel storage, and air defense installations. (1)
The Boston Celtics, lead by head coach Red Auerbach, as well as Bill Russell, John Havlicek and K.C. Jones defeat the Jerry West and Elgin Baylor lead Los Angeles Lakers in Game 7 of the NBA Championships, 95-93. The win gave the Celtics their eighth consecutive NBA title. After the season, Celtics coach Red Auerbach retired, and Bill Russell became the team’s player coach for the next three seasons. In so doing, Russell became the first African-American to be a head coach for a major American sports team.
The British movie ‘Born Free,’ based on Joy Adamson’s 1960 non-fiction book of the same name, is released in the U.S. The film tells the moving story of a couple who rescues and raises three orphaned lion cubs in Africa before successfully releasing them back into the wild.
Medicare, the federal government’s medical program for citizens over the age of 65, begins.
University of Kansas runner Jim Ryun sets world record in the mile (3:51.3), a record he will subsequently break a year later.
The music group the Loving Spoonful’s ‘Summer in the City’ spends three weeks atop the pop charts top 100 songs. Also charting in the top ten is the Rolling Stones’ ‘Mother’s Little Helper,’ which famously opens with the line ‘What a drag it is getting older,’ before going on to chronicle the reliance on prescription pills by mothers lamenting how, "Kids are different today, I hear ev'ry mother say, Mother needs something today to calm her down, And though she's not really ill, There's a little yellow pill, She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper, And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.”
U.S. jets attack two South Vietnamese villages by mistake, killing 63 civilians and wounding over 100. (1)
Hanoi announces China will provide economic and technical assistance. (1)
During a visit to neighboring Cambodia, French President Charles de Gaulle calls for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. (1)
The Star Trek TV series debuts on NBC network television.
The minimum wage is raised in stages from its current $1.25 per hour to $1.60 by February 1968.
The Soviet Union announces it will provide military and economic assistance to North Vietnam. (1)
Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which would later publish its Ten Point Program for social change, is founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, CA. The Black Panther Party, a revolutionary socialist organization became known for its armed neighborhood patrols set up to monitor police practices – with members wearing black berets and leather jackets – as well as for instituting community social service initiatives, including a free breakfast program for children and community health clinics.
Defense Secretary McNamara is confronted by student protesters during a visit to Harvard University. (1)
U.S. Congressional mid-term elections. After Democrat Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in the 1964 presidential election, Republicans pick up three Senate seats and 47 seats in the House in the 1966 mid-terms. In Massachuetts, Republican Edward Brook becomes the first African-American elected to the Senate in 85 years.
The New York Times reports that 40 percent of U.S. economic aid sent to Saigon is stolen or winds up on the black market. (1)
‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas,’ narrated by Boris Karloff, is shown for the first time on CBS. It will become an annual Christmas tradition, and the best-loved film ever based on a Dr. Seuss book.
The U.S. mounts a large-scale air assault against suspected Viet Cong positions in the Mekong Delta using Napalm and hundreds of tons of bombs. (1)
Over half of the American causalities are caused by snipers and small-arms fire during Viet Cong ambushes, along with handmade booby traps and mines planted everywhere in the countryside by Viet Cong. American Allies fighting in Vietnam include 45,000 soldiers from South Korea and 7000 Australians. An estimated 89,000 soldiers from North Vietnam infiltrated the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1966. (1)
As the new year began, the pop-rock group The Monkees’ song “I’m A Believer” sits atop the pop music charts, a position it will occupy for six weeks. The band, formed in 1965 and the subject of a hit TV series “The Monkees,” had already had a top hit in “Take the Last Train to Clarksville.” Subsequent hits included “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You,” Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and “Daydream Believer.” Although the band was considered somewhat ‘manufactured’ and would see a decline in popularity after 1968, Rolling Stone Magazine claimed that in 1967, The Monkees outsold the Beatles and Rolling Stones combined.
U.N. Secretary-General U Thant expresses doubts that Vietnam is essential to the security of the West. On this same day, during his State of the Union address before Congress, President Johnson once again declares, "We will stand firm in Vietnam." (1)
In football, the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, later to be known as Super Bowl I, is played at Los Angeles’ Memorial Coliseum. The Vince Lombardi coached Green Bay Packers, who had just won their second consecutive NFL title, scored a convincing 35-10 victory over their AFL Kansas City Chiefs rivals.
Senator J. William Fulbright publishes "The Arrogance of Power," a book critical of American war policy in Vietnam advocating direct peace talks between the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong. By this time, Fulbright and President Johnson are no longer on speaking terms. Instead, the President uses the news media to deride Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, and a growing number of critics in Congress as "nervous Nellies" and "sunshine patriots." (1)
President Johnson states there are no "serious indications that the other side is ready to stop the war." (1)
American religious groups stage a nationwide "Fast for Peace." (1)
A truce occurs during Tet, the lunar New Year, a traditional Vietnamese holiday. (1)
Following the failure of diplomatic peace efforts, President Johnson announces the U.S. will resume full-scale bombing of North Vietnam. (1)
The formation of the American Basketball Association is announced. The league will feature a new red-white-and blue ball; an innovative (long distance) three-point; and will attract a number of stars including the likes of Rick Barry, Julius Erving and Connie Hawkins, all of whom will eventually play in the NBA as well.
Congress authorizes $4.5 billion for the war. (1)
UCLA wins its third NCAA Men’s basketball championship in four years. The Bruins, lead by head coach John Wooden, featured 7’2” sophomore Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who would go on to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer), playing in his first year of varsity eligibility. With the dominant Alcindor at center, the Bruins would win championships in each of the next two years as well, en route to their grabbing a total of seven consecutive NCAA basketball titles (1967-73).
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech at Riverside Church in New York. In the speech, King links government sponsored U.S. violence in Vietnam with violence at home; and declares that spending on the war funnels money away from domestic programs at home.
Richard M. Nixon visits Saigon and states that anti-war protests back in the U.S. are "prolonging the war." (1)
Anti-war demonstrations occur in New York and San Francisco involving nearly 200,000. Rev. Martin Luther King declares that the war is undermining President Johnson's Great Society social reform programs, "...the pursuit of this widened war has narrowed the promised dimensions of the domestic welfare programs, making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home." (1)
The 71st Boston Marathon is won by New Zealand’s Dave McKenzie. Also registered in the race was a K. Switzer, who turned out to be Katherine Switzer. Although Bobbi Gibb, sneaking in and running unofficially (women were not permitted to run in the Boston Marathon at the time, in conformance with prevalent attitudes that women weren’t cut out for such grueling endurance events), had become the first woman to run the full course the previous year, Switzer’s was the first time a woman had run the entire route with a racing bib, despite thwarted efforts by race officials to physically remove her from the course after the race was underway. In the event, the trailblazing Bobbi Gibb ran a second year in a row, albeit without a bib, finishing nearly an hour ahead of Switzer.
In the first NBA Championships in 11 years without the Boston Celtics, the Wilt Chamberlain lead Philadelphia ‘76ers, on the heels of a dominating 68-13 regular season record, defeat the Western Conference Champion San Francisco Warriors four games to two, closing out the series with a 125-122 victory in Game Six on the Warriors home court.
General Westmoreland condemns anti-war demonstrators saying they give the North Vietnamese soldier "hope that he can win politically that which he cannot accomplish militarily." Privately, he has already warned President Johnson "the war could go on indefinitely." (1)
Pop music group Tommy James & The Shondells score a top ten hit with Ritchie Cordell’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now.’ The single’s flip side, ‘Mirage,’ also reached top ten, and came about partly by accident when the music reel from ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ was accidentally played backwards. The group liked it, and with more lyrics from Ritchie Cordell, made it into a song. Other hits for the group included ‘Mony Mony,’ ‘Crimson and Clover,’ and ‘Sweet Cherry Wine,’ a quietly stated anti-war song released in 1969.
Making good on his earlier vow, heavyweight boxing champion refuses induction into the armed services, and is arrested and stripped of his boxing title. (See April 28, 1964 entry on Cassius Clay)
Aging New York Yankees star Mickey Mantle hits the 500th home run of his career. Mantle had outslugged his National League rival Willie Mays earlier in their careers, but a series of knee injuries and late-night carousing took their toll on the gifted Yankee player, who would finish his Hall-of-Fame career with 536 home runs, the second most by an American League player at the time, trailing only Babe Ruth.
In New York City, 70,000 march in support of the war, led by a New York City fire captain. (1)
The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is released in the U.K. and the U.S. amid great fanfare. The album would enjoy a three-month reign as the number one album on Billboard’s top album charts, and would go on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide. The album continued the Beatles’ successful forays in progressive rock, with individual cuts logging significant playing time on the radio. Among the songs on the album was ‘Lucy in the Skies with Diamond,’ which prompted speculation as to whether the song’s ‘LSD’ initials were a not-so-veiled reference to the psychedelic drug gaining popularity within the ‘60’s counter-culture (a speculation which the Beatles denied).
With the Six-Day War raging in the eastern Mediterranean, the U.S.S. Liberty, a naval intelligence ship (i.e., spy ship) was attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats while sailing just outside of Egyptian waters. During the attack, 34 sailors were killed and 171 wounded. Israeli claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity and apologized for the incident. Others claimed that based on the vessel’s clear markings and transcripts of intercepted signals, the Liberty’s identity was known to the Israeli attackers, and posit a deliberate attack with motives ranging from worries that the American ship was gathering intelligence information which could prove detrimental to Israel; to allegations that the ship’s attempted sinking was part of an operation conducted with a goal of blaming the attack on Egypt, thus providing justification for the U.S. to come to the aid of Israel. Decades after the incident, the official U.S. and Israeli positions have been to accept the attack as having been the result of the Liberty being mistaken by the Israelis for an Egyptian vessel, but numerous books and essays have been written challenging this claim.
Thurgood Marshall – who had been previously served as chief counsel for the NAACP and successfully argued the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka case – becomes the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court. After his appointment is approved by the Senate on August 30, 1967, Marshall serves 24 years on the bench, gaining a reputation as one of the high court’s reliably liberal justices.
Monterrey Pops Festival held in Monterrey, CA. Three-day long, pre-Woodstock concert kicking off the fabled Summer of Love, the festival was attended by as many as 100,000 people, and included performances by such bands as Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, Otis Redding, The Byrds, Moby Grape, Scott Mackenzie, The Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company (w/Janis Joplin), and Eric Burdon and the Animals.
Franki Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You’ hits the number one spot on the pop music charts. Not far behind, and sporting a title that could be a motto for that year’s ‘Summer of Love,’ was The Loving Spoonful’s ‘Let’s Live for Today.’
Name given to counter-culture event of social phenomenon when as many as 100,000 young people converged on San Francisco and the Bay Area during the summer of 1967, and especially in the Haight Ashbury area. Though many of the people gathering might be termed hippies, it was an eclectic grouping in many ways. While most of those identifying with the growing hippie subculture were opposed to the War in Vietnam, some were more informed and politically active, while others were opposed on the pragmatic grounds that they didn’t want to be sent to the war personally. Similarly, while many in the ‘movement’ were into the rock and psychedelic music scene, and used marijuana and other illicit, ‘mind-expanding’ drugs, the level of use varied greatly, with some finding appeal in drugs as a kind of be-all, end-all panacea for the world’s problems; while others partook more moderately; and still others found the use of drugs to be a distraction from the kind of intense personal and/or political work they felt needed to be undertaken to bring about a better world. In the event, the June, 1967 Monterrey Pops Festival served as a kind of kick-off for the summer – a summer that would be further popularized and immortalized in Scott McKenzie’s classic single ‘San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair).’
Jim Ryun breaks his own world record in the one-mile run, leading for the entire race has he completes the distance in 3:51.1, breaking the record of 3:51.3, which he’d set the previous year.
General Westmoreland requests an additional 200,000 reinforcements on top of the 475,000 soldiers already scheduled to be sent to Vietnam, which would bring the U.S. total in Vietnam to 675,000. President Johnson agrees only to an extra 45,000. (1)
Riots break out in Newark following the arrest and beating of a black cab driver by police. Long decades of high rates of poverty, unemployment, discrimination and lack of educational and job opportunities had brought the growing African-American community in Newark to a boiling point, and word of the arrest and beating of a black cab driver was the spark igniting the Powder keg. Six days of rioting left 26 people dead, hundreds more injured and arrested, and an estimated $10 million in property damage.
Widespread riots break out in Detroit. Sparked by a late-night police raid on an after-hours bar, the disturbance escalated a full-scale riot, with Michigan state police, and eventually the army and National Guard called in to restore order. In the end, 43 people were killed, more than a thousand injured, and over seven thousand arrested, with estimates of property damage caused by arson and looting ranging from $40-80 million – including over 400 building burned or damaged badly enough to be demolished. In addition, the rioting in Detroit helped spark other riots in Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac and Grand Rapids, Michigan; as well as Toledo and Lima, Ohio; and Rochester, New York City, Houston and Tucson.
California Governor Ronald Reagan says the U.S. should get out of Vietnam citing the difficulties of winning a war when "too many qualified targets have been put off limits to bombing." (1)
A public opinion poll indicates 46 percent of Americans now believe U.S. military involvement in Vietnam to be a "mistake." However, most Americans also believe that the U.S. should "win or get out" of Vietnam. Also in October, Life magazine renounces its earlier support of President Johnson's war policies. (1)
The National League’s St. Louis Cardinals beat the AL’s Boston Red Sox, 4 games to 3 in the 64th World Series as Cardinal Lou Brock steals a record 7 bases in one World Series. Coming into the series, Boston fans had hoped this would be the year when the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ would be broken – so named after the Red Sox disastrously traded away star pitcher/player Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919, after which the Red Sox had not won another World Series. It was not to be, however. The Red Sox would come tantalizingly close in 1975 and again in 1986, losing 4 games to 3 in the World Series both years; but it would not be until 2004 when the ‘curse’ was finally broken. The 1967 Series was also the first World Series since 1948 when at least one of the teams weren’t the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants (all New York based teams in 1948, though the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers had since relocated to Los Angeles, and the New York Giants had moved to San Francisco, reflecting the post World War II westward expansion of the country’s population).
March on Washington; demonstration at the Pentagon Demonstrators including radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans march on the Pentagon.
The rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully, though Dr. Benjamin Spock—baby specialist, author, and outspoken critic of the war—did call President Johnson “the enemy.” After the rally, the demonstrators, many waving the red, blue, and gold flag of the Viet Cong, began marching toward the Pentagon. Violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the Pentagon.
The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested. This protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe, the most violent of which occurred outside the U.S. Embassy in London when 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building. (2 – The History Channel, This Day in History, October 21, 1967; http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/100000-people-march-on-the-pentagon)
President Johnson reaffirms his commitment to maintain U.S. involvement in South Vietnam. (1)
An emotional Robert McNamara announces his resignation as Defense Secretary during a press briefing, stating, "Mr. President...I cannot find words to express what lies in my heart today..." Behind closed doors, he had begun regularly expressing doubts over Johnson's war strategy, angering the President. McNamara joins a growing list of Johnson's top aides who resigned over the war including Bill Moyers, McGeorge Bundy and George Ball. (1)
Anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy announces he will be a candidate for President opposing Lyndon Johnson, stating, "...we are involved in a very deep crisis of leadership, a crisis of direction and a crisis of national purpose...the entire history of this war in Vietnam, no matter what we call it, has been one of continued error and misjudgment." (1)
South African cardiac surgeon Dr. Christian Barnard successfully performs the first heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. Although the patient, Louis Washkansky would die of pneumonia eighteen days later, the nine-hour surgery was considered a breakthrough, with heart transplants – despite costing upwards of $1 million dollars for the surgery and first-year expenses – becoming more common in the decades ahead. By 2016, approximately 3500 heart transplants were being performed each year, with five-year survival rates exceeding 70%.
Four days of anti-war protests begin in New York. Among the 585 protesters arrested is renowned 'baby doctor' Dr. Benjamin Spock. (1)
Upon arrival at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, President Johnson declares "...all the challenges have been met. The enemy is not beaten, but he knows that he has met his master in the field." This is the President's second and final trip to Vietnam during his presidency. (1)
The film ‘The Graduate’ is released. 29 year-old Dustin Hoffman plays Ben, a recent college graduate who, unsure of what to do with his future, comes home to a graduation party, begins an affair with a close family friend old enough to be his mother, and jeopardizes the relationship he has with his girlfriend. With a soundtrack featuring classic hits by Simon & Garfunkel, the film is a box smashing success at the box office. In one memorably prescient line from the film, a confused Ben is offered a word of advice from a friend of his parents” ‘plastics.’ This just serves to confuse Ben even more, so the family friend elaborates, saying ‘there is a great future in plastics.’ At a time before bags and containers made of plastic had become ubiquitous, and milk and other products came in glass jars which, if dropped, resulted in not just cleaning up the spill, but in trying to get the last shards of broken glass lest someone in bare feet step on them and slice their foot. Hailed as a welcome advancement at the time, the spread of plastic for use as containers, in toys and even durable goods was revolutionary, but has more recently been criticized for not being bio-degradable and harmful to aquatic life.
The Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 to gain their third consecutive NFL title, and fifth in a seven year span under head coach Vince Lombardi. The game, which came to be known as the ‘Ice Bowl,’ was played in frigid conditions at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, where game time temperatures were 15 below zero, and with estimates of wind chills being -48. It was so cold that members of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse band members were unable to play their instruments because the mouthpieces froze to their mouths; several band members were taken to the hospital with hypothermia; and several players contracted frostbite. In addition, an elderly spectator in the stands died of exposure to the extreme cold, and TV announcer Frank Gifford remarked that he was going to have a bite of his coffee. The game itself proved to be so close that it wouldn’t be decided until the last minute of the game, when Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr, after engineering a 68-yard drive, followed the block of Jerry Kramer into the end zone for a touchdown from the two-foot line with just thirteen seconds remaining. Dallas was able to get two plays in after the ensuing kickoff, but was unable to move the ball, giving the Packers the win and a chance to meet the AFL’s Oakland Raiders in the second AFL-NFL World Championship Game (later known as Super Bowl II).
with 16,000 combat deaths to date. By this time, over a million American soldiers have rotated through Vietnam, with length of service for draftees being one year, and most Americans serving in support units. An estimated 90,000 soldiers from North Vietnam infiltrated into the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1967. Overall Viet Cong/NVA troop strength throughout South Vietnam is now estimated up to 300,000 men. (1)
The NFL Champion Green Bay Packers defeat the AFL Champion Oakland Raiders 33-14 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida in the second AFL-NFL World Championship Game (later known as Super Bowl II). It would be Vince Lombardi’s last game as head coach of the Packers; the following year the AFL-NFL championship would be known as the Super Bowl for the first time.
Vince Lombardi resigns as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.
TET Offensive in Vietnam – A coordinated series of attacks by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese armies against South Vietnamese and U.S. army posts in installations that was launched on January 30, 1968, at the beginning of TET, or the Vietnamese New Year. At the outset, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces had hoped the offensive might spark a larger uprising against the South Vietnamese troops and their American partners; while U.S. officials had expressed confidence that renewed escalations and continued military pressure on the enemy would allow the U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to gain the upper hand in the war. Though the offensive did not result in the military victory which the North had hoped for, it did signal that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were in no way on the brink of victory. As such, TET played a decisive role in prompting more people in the United States to question their support of the war on the grounds that too many Americans were dying in a distant war that may not be winnable. In the U.S., in the immediate wake of TET, respected TV news anchor Walter Cronkite opined in February newscast that the U.S. might be mired in a stalemate, a statement which prompted the increasingly unpopular President Johnson to remark that if he’d lost Cronkite, he’d lost middle America. Shortly thereafter, in quick succession, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy drew nearly even with the incumbent Johnson in the New Hampshire primary; Robert Kennedy declared his entry in the race; and Johnson announced that he would not seek his party’s nomination for re-election.
The turning point of the war occurs as 84,000 Viet Cong guerrillas aided by NVA troops launch the Tet Offensive attacking a hundred cities and towns throughout South Vietnam.
The surprise offensive is closely observed by American TV news crews in Vietnam which film the U.S. embassy in Saigon being attacked by 17 Viet Cong commandos, along with bloody scenes from battle areas showing American soldiers under fire, dead and wounded. The graphic color film footage is then quickly relayed back to the states for broadcast on nightly news programs. Americans at home thus have a front row seat in their living rooms to the Viet Cong/NVA assaults against their fathers, sons and brothers, ten thousand miles away. "The whole thing stinks, really," says a Marine under fire at Hue after more than 100 Marines are killed. (1)
In the Battle for Saigon during Tet, 35 NVA and Viet Cong battalions are defeated by 50 battalions of American and Allied troops that had been positioned to protect the city on a hunch by Lt. Gen. Fred C. Weyand, a veteran of World War II in the Pacific. Nicknamed the "savior of Saigon," Weyand had sensed the coming attack, prepared his troops, and on February 1 launched a decisive counter-attack against the Viet Cong at Tan Son Nhut airport thus protecting nearby MACV and South Vietnamese military headquarters from possible capture. (1)
In the Battle for Hue during Tet, 12,000 NVA and Viet Cong troops storm the lightly defended historical city, then begin systematic executions of over 3000 "enemies of the people" including South Vietnamese government officials, captured South Vietnamese officers, and Catholic priests. South Vietnamese troops and three U.S. Marine battalions counter-attack and engage in the heaviest fighting of the entire Tet Offensive. They retake the old imperial city, house by house, street by street, aided by American air and artillery strikes. On February 24, U.S. Marines occupy the Imperial Palace in the heart of the citadel and the battle soon ends with a North Vietnamese defeat. American losses are 142 Marines killed and 857 wounded, 74 U.S. Army killed and 507 wounded. South Vietnamese suffer 384 killed and 1830 wounded. NVA killed are put at over 5000. (1)
In Saigon during Tet, a suspected Viet Cong guerrilla is shot in the head by South Vietnam's police chief Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, in full view of an NBC news cameraman and an Associated Press still photographer. The haunting AP photo taken by Eddie Adams appears on the front page of most American newspapers the next morning. Americans also observe the filmed execution on NBC TV.
Another controversy during Tet, and one of the most controversial statements of the entire war, is made by an American officer who states, 'We had to destroy it, in order to save it,' referring to a small city near Saigon leveled by American bombs. His statement is later used by many as a metaphor for the American experience in Vietnam. (1)
President Johnson labels the Tet Offensive "a complete failure."
For the North Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive is both a military and political failure in Vietnam. The "general uprising" they had hoped to ignite among South Vietnamese peasants against the Saigon government never materialized. Viet Cong had also come out of hiding to do most of the actual fighting, suffered devastating losses, and never regained their former strength. As a result, most of the fighting will be taken over by North Vietnamese regulars fighting a conventional war. Tet's only success, and an unexpected one, was in eroding grassroots support among Americans and in Congress for continuing the war indefinitely. (1)
21 U.S. Marines are killed by NVA at Khe Sanh. (1)
American Major League Baseball announces a minimum annual salary of $10,000. By the start of the 2018 season, MLB’s minimum salary had skyrocketed to $545,000. (In contrast, minor league baseball players continued to make a small fraction of their major league counterparts. A first-year player at the AAA level, for example, made as little as $2,150 per month in 2016, plus modest per diem expense money, a situation sometimes justified by the prospect of minor league players being able to fall back on their signing bonus money.)
Influential CBS TV news anchorman Walter Cronkite, who just returned from Saigon, tells Americans during his CBS Evening News broadcast that he is certain "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." (1) Following Cronkite’s broadcast, Johnson is said to have told aides with whom he had been watching the telecast that, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Wheeler, at the behest of Gen. Westmoreland, asks President Johnson for an additional 206,000 soldiers and mobilization of reserve units in the U.S. The New York Times breaks the story on March 10; the story is initially denied by the White House.
New Hampshire primary. Dark horse anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy shocks the political world by securing 42% of the votes in the New Hampshire primary, the first of the 1968 election season. Early in his campaign, critics had been dismissive of the anti-war maverick’s prospects, suggesting he may not even poll in the double-digits.
Public opinion polls taken after the Tet Offensive revealed Johnson's overall approval rating has slipped to 36 percent, while approval of his Vietnam war policy slipped to 26 percent. (1)
Track and Field athlete Bob Beamon sets indoor long jump record (27 feet 2.75 inches). Later that year, on October 18 at the Mexico City Olympics, Beamon would jump an unheard of 29 feet 2.5 inches, a world record which would stand for more than 22 years.
My Lai Massacre occurs when Charlie Company’s 11th Brigade is on a "search and destroy" mission in the hamlet of My Lai, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. It is a year-and-a-half before the story is broken to larger public; eventually, Lt. William Calley, is brought up on murder charges. In March 1971, Calley is convicted and sentenced to life; he is later paroled in September 1975 after serving three and a half years. During the investigation, Colonel Oral Henderson, the brigade commander whose unit carried out the My Lai massacre, indicated that in his opinion the mass killing was no aberration, stating “every unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace,” adding that other atrocities remained unknown because “every unit doesn’t have Ridenhour.” (reference to whistle-blower Ron Ridenhour who, along with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was instrumental in helping to eventually break the story to the larger public).
A previously reluctant Robert Kennedy, 42 year-old brother of the late President, announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, the second candidate to challenge incumbent President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic party’s nomination.
In a nationally televised speech mostly devoted to the U.S. war effort in Vietnam, LBJ stuns the country by announcing at the end of the speech that he will not seek his party’s nomination for the presidency.
The futuristic movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” is released. With its depictions of space travel and extra-terrestrial life, the film is a critical and commercial success
Civil rights leader and anti-war spokesperson Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN while standing on a second floor hotel balcony with aids. King was in Memphis to support the city’s striking garbage workers, and had been organizing a march on Washington in support of civil rights, jobs and an end to the Vietnam War for later that summer.
The 72nd Boston Marathon is won by Amby Burfoot of Connecticut in 2:22:17, the first American to win since 1957. It is also the last day the Patriot’s Day event would be held on a day other than Monday, as state holiday would be moved to the third Monday in April. Bobbi Gibb, running unofficially again, finishes in three hours and thirty minutes, ahead of two other again who snuck into the event.
Anti-war activists at Columbia University seize five buildings. (1)
In New York, 200,000 students refuse to attend classes as a protest. (1)
After missing the NBA Finals the previous season for the first time in 11 years, the Boston Celtics, lead by player-coach Bill Russell and future Hall-of-Famer John Havlicek, defeat the Los Angeles Lakers, lead by future Hall-of-Famers Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Gail Goodrich, 4 games to 2. During the off-season, the Lakers would acquire center Wilt Chamberlain to become favorites to win the championship the next year.
Peace talks begin in Paris but soon stall as the U.S. insists that North Vietnamese troops withdraw from the South, while the North Vietnamese insist on Viet Cong participation in a coalition government in South Vietnam. This marks the beginning of five years of on-again off-again official talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam in Paris. (1)
U.S. release of the rock group Eric Burdon & The Animals’ popular anti-war song ‘Sky Pilot.’ The full-length version of the progressive rock song tells the story of an army chaplain – i.e. the ‘sky pilot’ – who proffers his blessing on a group of soldiers about to be sent into combat, then segues into a section where the music is interspersed with the sounds of a raging battle, before concluding on a somber note as the soldiers return with the smell of death on them, with one soldier looking toward the ‘sky pilot’ as he remembers the commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’
Nine anti-war activists who would collectively become known as the ‘Catonsville Nine’ burn over 300 draft records in a Maryland parking lot with a batch of homemade napalm to protest the escalating war in Vietnam.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale pitches a record-setting sixth straight shutout, blanking the Pittsburgh Pirates in an evening game played in Los Angeles.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot in the kitchen pantry of a Los Angeles hotel just after giving a victory speech following his win in the California primary. An unconscious Senator Kennedy is rushed to the hospital, where his condition is said to be critical.
Anti-war presidential candidate Robert Kennedy dies of gunshot wounds sustained the previous day. His death, coming two months after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and less than five years after the Dallas assassination of his brother President John F. Kennedy, brings grief to his family and yet another high-profile tragedy to a stunned nation.
Six-Day War. Also called the Arab-Israeli War, The Third Arab-Israeli War, or the June 1967 War. After the mobilization of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai, Israeli launched a series of preemptive strikes. In doing so, Israel succeeded in wiping out most of the Egyptian air force and gained air superiority from there on. Before it was clear that Israel had gained this air superiority, Egyptian president Nasser was able to persuade the leaders of Jordan and Syria to join the fight against Israel; Israeli counter-attacks resulted in Israel seizing not only the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, but also East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Taken together, these lands came to be known as the Occupied Territories, and though the war was over within a week, clashes over the status of the occupied territories would continue for years, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians in the region either attacked Israeli settlements or defended their land from illegal occupiers, depending upon one’s point of view. A half-century after the Six-Day War ended, disputes and armed clashes continue over such issues as the status of the Occupied Territories, water rights and the nature of a proposed two-state solution.
U.S.S. Liberty Incident. With the Six-Day War raging in the eastern Mediterranean, the U.S.S. Liberty, a naval intelligence ship (i.e., spy ship) was attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats while sailing just outside of Egyptian waters. During the attack, 34 sailors were killed and 171 wounded. Israeli claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity and apologized for the incident. Others claimed that based on the vessel’s clear markings and transcripts of intercepted signals, the Liberty’s identity was known to the Israeli attackers, and posit a deliberate attack with motives ranging from worries that the American ship was gathering intelligence information which could prove detrimental to Israel; to allegations that the ship’s attempted sinking was part of an operation conducted with a goal of blaming the attack on Egypt, thus providing justification for the U.S. to come to the aid of Israel. Decades after the incident, the official U.S. and Israeli positions have been to accept the attack as having been the result of the Liberty being mistaken by the Israelis for an Egyptian vessel, but numerous books and essays have been written challenging this claim.
The rock group Iron Butterfly’s ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ album, including the title cut, which features an epic drum solo, and at eighteen minutes long, occupies the album’s entire ‘B’ side. ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ became the number one selling album in 1969, and earned the distinction of being the first album to be awarded platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America when the award was first instituted in 1976.
Congress passes a ten percent income tax surcharge to defray the ballooning costs of the war. (1)
The Phoenix program is established to crush the secret Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI) in South Vietnam. The VCI, estimated at up to 70,000 Communist guerrillas, has been responsible for a long-standing campaign of terror against Americans, South Vietnamese government officials, village leaders and innocent civilians. (1) ‘The History Place: The Vietnam War” http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1965.html
Republican National Convention: Richard Nixon, former Congressman and vice-President during the Eisenhower administration, is nominated on the first ballot. Though Nixon had lost a close presidential contest to John F. Kennedy and the 1960 election, and was beaten by California Governor Pat Brown in the 1962 state gubernatorial election, Nixon resurrected his prospects following the Goldwater debacle of 1964, which had seen the LBJ, the then-popular incumbent president, win a landslide election against the Republicans’ ultra-conservative nominee.
Democratic National Convention. The city of Chicago gained notoriety as being the site of the Democrats’ riotous presidential convention. Earlier that spring, the increasingly unpopular President Lyndon B. Johnson – being pressured by the insurgent anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy, the surprise TET Offensive, and the announcement to Bobby Kennedy to seek the party’s nomination – announced his withdrawal from the race. Thereafter, the Democratic primaries featured an intense rivalry between McCarthy and Kennedy, even as Democratic insider Vice-President Hubert Humphrey belatedly threw his hat into the ring, seeking to secure the nomination not so much through the primaries (most of which he was too late to enter), but through securing the support of delegates appointed by party officials. Because he was closely associated with the Johnson administration’s increasingly unpopular policies of escalation in Vietnam, Humphrey was not viewed favorably by supporters of either anti-war candidate. After the June, 1968 assassination of Bobby Kennedy, Humphrey further solidified his support among party stalwarts, and the stage was set for a contentious affair at the party’s Chicago convention. Despite the fact that the anti-war candidates had won a majority of delegates chosen in the primaries, Humphrey entered the convention the odds on favorite to win the nomination by virtue of his stranglehold on a majority of non-primary delegates. Objecting to what was perceived as the non-democratic nature of the selection process, angry protestors gathered in Chicago, where they were met by a phalanx of policeman equipped in full-riot gear. While Humphrey was indeed nominated inside the convention hall, demonstrations escalated into riots in the streets outside, with police claiming it was the demonstrators who had turned the protests in riots, while protestors claimed that the police’ aggressive behaviors had transformed the demonstrations into what amounted to a series of police riots.
A term often used in American politics denoting an important event or bombshell revelation that, were it to occur shortly before a November election, could shift the outcome of the election one way or another. In 1968, allegations were made by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who was later credited for his pivotal role in breaking the story of the My Lai Massacre, that officials in the Nixon campaign had undertaken secretive negotiations with both South and North Vietnamese officials, urging them not to accept any proposed deals at the Paris Peace Negotiations in the days and weeks before the U.S. elections, as any such deal would help the Democratic candidate, and both sides prospects would be better served by waiting for an incoming Republican administration. The term again surfaced in the wake of the 1980 election, when it was alleged that representatives of the Reagan campaign urged Iranian officials not to agree to the release of any of the 52 U.S. hostages being held in that country before the election, lest any such release benefit the re-election prospects of President Jimmy Carter, whose administration had been on the defensive about that issue since the hostages had been taken the previous November during the Iranian Revolution that had deposed the U.S.-backed Shah.
Republican Richard M. Nixon narrowly defeats Democrat Hubert Humphrey to become the 37th President of the United States. (1)
President-elect Nixon asks Harvard professor Henry Kissinger to be his National Security Advisor. Kissinger accepts. (1)
with 30,000 American deaths to date. In 1968, over a thousand a month were killed. (1)
Richard M. Nixon sworn in as the 37th President of the United States.
The Boston Celtics, after finishing the regular season fourth in their division, upset the Western Conference Champion Los Angeles Lakers in the seventh and deciding game of the NBA Championships, 108-106 on the Lakers’ home court. For the Celtics, it marked the final game of his career for player-coach Bill Russell, who would retire after winning 5 MVP awards and 11 championships during his 13-year pro career. For the Lakers, who had acquired center Wilt Chamberlain during the previous off-season and seen All-Pro guard Jerry West average 38-points per game and earn MVP honors in a losing effort, the final outcome was a bitter disappointment. In 1970, the Lakers, with superstars Chamberlain, West and Elgin Baylor, would return to the NBA Finals, only to lose in seven games to a New York Knicks team lead by future Hall of Famers Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Phil Jackson (the latter of whom would be inducted as a coach). The following year, the Milwaukee Bucks, lead by center Lew Alcindor, swept the Baltimore Bullets four games to zero; but in 1972, the Chamberlain-West-Baylor lead Lakers would return to the Finals and defeat the Knicks four games to one.
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon, famously proclaiming, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong was soon followed 19 minutes later by fellow crew member Buzz Aldrin; together, the two would take photographs, run scientific tests and plant an American flag on the noon’s surface. The Apollo 11 had launched four days earlier, and it was estimated that more than 500 million people worldwide watched the moon landing. Estimated costs for the Apollo program, which ran until 1972, were over upwards of $20 billion (approximately $100 billion in 2010 dollars).
Woodstock Music Festival. Inspired by the Monterrey Pops Festival two years earlier, and billed as ‘An Aquarian Festival: 3 Days of Peace and Music,’ the epic concert, held on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre farm in upstate New York (after a desperate scramble to find a suitable venue for the 50,000-200,000 people promoters expected), featured 32 bands and attracted 400,000 fans, the biggest rock concert held to date. Despite problems with massive traffic jams, weather that included both blistering heat and a torrential downpour, food shortages and a number of drug overdoses, the concert was considered a smashing success, though Max Yasgur declined to rent his farm for an encore performance the following year.
St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood is traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, prompting Flood to sue Major League Baseball. He argues that the reserve clause in players’ contracts, which binds them to a club for life, violates the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the nation’s antitrust laws. As a result, Flood – despite hitting a very solid .295 the previous season – is essentially blackballed from Major League Baseball. In the years ahead, MLB players would enjoy dramatic salary increases, largely the result of the free agency era ushered in by Flood.
Vietnam Moratorium. Large, multi-city teach-in and demonstration against the War in Vietnam, in which over a million people participated worldwide, including 100,000 in Boston, where anti-war Senator George McGovern spoke.
Moratorium March on Washington. Over 500,000 people marched in Washington against the War in Vietnam. At the time, protestors were frustrated that Nixon hadn't done more to end the war, and hoped their efforts would increase the pressure to do so. For his part, Nixon publicly proclaimed that his policies would not be affected by those marching in the streets. Unknown to protestors and the public at large, Nixon and his advisors had been contemplating sharp escalations of the war, including the possible use of nuclear weapons as a way of bringing the North to the bargaining table, in a top-secret plan code named Operation Duck Hook. The operation was eventually scrapped, in part due to administration concerns about the potential backlash at home - if hundreds of thousands were marching against the war, and didn't even know nuclear weapons were being actively considered, what might be the reaction of protestors if such a plan were to be implemented? For his part, Nixon later lamented that domestic opposition to the war actually served to extend the very war the protestors sough to end, presumably by tying the presidents hands when it came to implementing operations such as Duck Hook. At the same time, it is possible that implementation of the kind of nuclear scenario included in Duck Hook may have sparked not only domestic backlash, but turned world opinion even further against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, potentially to the point of risking a further expanded or even nuclear war.