Rebellious 60s Retrospective—
The Startling Sixties, A Dynamic Decade

The 1960s were an amazing time—amazingly inspiring and amazingly violent. As humanity soared to new heights, and landed a man on the moon, we also sunk to new depths, exploring the seafloor and making new discoveries there as well. During this divided decade, youth and the counterculture battled their elders and the establishment. The 1960s, as has no other decade, “changed the popular culture of the United States dramatically and permanently. The decade was a wild and heady ride, sometimes agonizingly sad, on occasion simply foolish, but seldom boring. Above all it was a time to be young" (Rielly, 2003, p. xiii)

JFK in a speech in July 1960 said: “we stand today on the edge of a new frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats” (Bowen, 1970b, p. 25). We were indeed on the edge, the question was: would we go down in flames, and if so, could we rise from the ashes? As Norman Mailer said of this period: “America’s need in those years was to take an existential turn, to walk into the nightmare, to face that terrible logic of history that demanded the country and its people must become extraordinary and more adventurous or else perish” (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 368). With this overview of the decade in mind let us tke a closer look at the 1960s.

Rebellious 60s Retrospective—The Startling Sixties, A Dynamic Decade

You Say You Want a Revolution
** Taking It to the Streets—A Very Violent Time
** Civil Rights and Wrongs

Science and Technology Take Off
** Space —The Final Frontier
** Meet the Man Behind the Other Mouse
***Doug’s Dream
***Doug’s Daring Demonstration
** Innovations, Discoveries, and New Views Illustrated

That’s Entertainment?! –From Baring It All on Broadway to What TV showed
** Broadway Au Natural
** The Silver Screen—Sexier and Shadowier
** Television’s Tamer Fare

Disney Does It All

Moving Music
** Many Modes of Expression
** Rock and Roll Reigns Supreme

Sex, Drugs . . .

Fads and Fashions From Funky to Just Plain Fun

You Say You Want a Revolution . . .

During the 1960s a revolutionary spirit seemed to sweep through the Zeitgeist. At the beginning of the decade, sensing a restlessness in the youth of the nation, President Kennedy sought to include young people in efforts such as the Peace Corps, where their emerging impatience and yearning for adventure could be harnessed to serve the greater good. Jennings and Brewster (1998) note that:

With King, Kennedy, shared the flame of idealism . . . . The torch he said had been passed to a new generation, born in this century . . . . His most famous utterance was the very essence of mid-century grass roots idealism, “Ask not,” he implored Americans, “what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” … “He gave the country back to its best self,” said historian Arthur Slessinger, “wiping away the world’s impression of an old nation of old men, weary, played out, fearful of ideas, change and the future.” (p. 362)

But with the assassination of JFK in November 1963, disillusionment occurred and the flame of idealism became a torch of revolutionary passion and the youthful yearnings took a countercultural turn instead. “Like no other divide in a decade of divides, the assassination split American life between what was and what came to be” (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 370); the younger generation embraced revolutionary ideas and rejected and repudiated the generation that nurtured them and universities that educated them (p. 370-371). Peter Coyote, in describing living in Haight-Ashbury district in the 1960s remarks:

“Revolution” was interpreted differently by different people. For some it meant political overthrow. For some it meant a change of consciousness . . . . a change of style . . . long hair and dope at the office… You would wake up every morning and you had no idea what the day would bring . . . there was a sense of adventure, random combinations. (Jennings & Brewster, p. 393)

The restlessness of the 1960s was evident on many fronts, from civil rights, to women’s rights, to gay liberation at the end of the decade. Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in 1963 and formed NOW (The National Organization for Women) in 1966. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlawed sexual discrimination; women became increasingly involved in the workforce and in higher education. Contraception became widely available in the 1960s due to the approval of “the Pill” by the Food and Drug Administration, which increased women’s choices over their reproductive lives and helped to fuel the sexual revolution. The “Summer of Love,” as the summer of 1967 was known, was ushered in at the Monterey International Pop Festival, and the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York in 1969 became one of the major icons of the decade. Over 400,000 people attended Woodstock that August and:

Images of nudity, sexual freedom and drug use at Woodstock struck Americans with horror or fascination, depending on their point of view or age. The festival earned a permanent place in American culture as one of the defining moments of the 1960s. It represented an open, classless society of music, sex, drugs, love, and peace, all the more so because the event remained largely free of violence and the tragic consequence one might expect for a gathering so large and so young. For many, it seemed to promise a new America. (Rielly, 2003, p. 171)

In 1964, the same year that the “British invasion” began with the Beatles's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, rebelliousness in other forms occurred as pirate radio stations began broadcasting from boats offshore of England, and Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity. It was not all sex, drugs, and rock and roll however. The environment also became a cause of concern, after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which showed the danger of pesticides. The first Clean Air Act was passed in the 1960s as well as the Wilderness act, which aimed at wilderness preservation. A limited test ban treaty was also signed by several nations, during the decade, which put restraints on nuclear testing.

Perhaps taking their cue from the civil rights movement, students on college campuses began to speak out, beginning with the Free Speech Movement at University of California at Berkeley in 1964, which became a massive student protest for free speech and academic freedom. This event was seen as the origin of other student protest movements. Even the Olympic medal ceremony became a place of protest, when in 1968 during the Summer Olympics in Mexico, two African-American winners stood silently with heads down and right fists raised, to focus attention on the Black Power movement.

As America's involvement in the Vietnam war grew, so did the antiwar sentiment. Antiwar activists protested in a variety of ways from teach-ins, starting at the University of Michigan in 1965, to sit-ins, demonstrations, draft-card burnings, and flag burnings. Renowned author and pediatrician Dr. Spock was tried and convicted for conspiracy to aid draft dodgers, although his conviction was later overturned. In 1967, Muhammed Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and convicted of draft evasion for asserting conscientious objector status due to his Black Muslim beliefs. His conviction was later overturned and his title was subsequently reinstated.

Antiwar sentiment grew as the decade progressed. In October 1967, 35,000 people marched on Washington D.C. to protest the war. In 1968, a massive antiwar protest in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention turned violent as police clashed with angry protestors. On October 15, 1969 hundreds of thousands of people took part in a National Moratorium against the war, while a month later, on November 15, over 250,000 people took part in massive peaceful demonstration in Washington D.C..

Taking It to the Streets—A Very Violent Time

The 1960s began with the building of the Berlin Wall, separating East and West Berlin, presaging what a divided decade the 1960s would be. “In America, parent fought with child over music, hair length, the war in Vietnam and the viability of the nations oldest principles and institutions” (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 369). The Cold War seemed to be heating up, and Communist Cuba became a cause for concern. In 1961, Kennedy agreed to the Bay of Pigs invasion, an attempt by US-backed Cubans to overthrow Fidel Castro, which turned out to be a fiasco. The following year, Kennedy was faced with photographic evidence of missile sites in Cuba, which led to the to the Cuban missile crisis, as Kennedy “quarantined” naval traffic into Cuba. The nation was on the brink and the Air Force went to DEFCON 2, one level short of war; this defining moment of the Cold War “brought humanity to the edge of Armageddon” (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 373). In 1966, the Chinese Cultural Revolution began and a wave of destruction was unleashed as the entire country of China was turned upside down by Mao and his Red Guard. The Vietnam War was escalating and the first US pilot was shot down and captured in 1964. The war was quickly becoming a quagmire. One of the emblematic atrocities of the war was the My Lai, Massacre where American soldiers killed over 300 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, including women and children.

Violence occurred within America as well. Perhaps the most impactful acts of violence were the assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The death of President Kennedy was a defining moment in the Twentieth Century, and almost everyone old enough to remember the event knows where they were and what they were doing at the time. 70 percent of Americans were watching their televisions by the time JFK’s body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base and 93 percent of the nation watched the funeral, while millions more around the world watched thanks to Telstar. Kennedy’s short presidency was known as “Camelot,” and on November 22, 1963, Camelot ended, and with it America's innocence.

Dr. King was gunned down on April 4, 1968 by James Earl Ray outside his Memphis hotel room and Robert F. Kennedy was slain on June 6th, just two months later by Sirhan Sirhan in a Los Angeles Hotel. There were church bombings and bus burnings across the south. Medger Evers was murdered in 1963 in Mississippi, as were three civil rights workers in 1964. Malcolm X was killed by a rival in 1965, and the Black Panthers, founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, had a shootout with the Oakland police in 1966. That same year, Texas Tower shooter, Charles Whitman killed 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin campus. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist at Baylor University at the time, studied Whitman and other violent criminals and found that play deprivation was a common theme among them. This led Brown to devote his life to the study of play. During the course of his work, Brown discovered the work of Joseph Campbell in 1972 and was instrumental in bringing Campbell's work to the world.

Ernest Hemmingway killed himself with a shotgun in 1961, and Sylvia Plath committed suicide that year as well. Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death in 1962, ruled a probable suicide at the time, continues to haunt her many admirers and she may indeed have been the victim of foul play—with a possible mob or Kennedy connection. At the end of the decade, On July 19, 1969, another tragedy hit the Kennedy clan, as Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, which resulted in the death of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopeckne. This happened the day before his brother John’s dream of putting a man on the moon became a reality.

Urban violence heated up during mid-decade, and it was not limited to Southern cities—Harlem erupted in 1964 and 1967, Watts in 1965, and Detroit in 1967. While some of the violence earlier in the decade ultimately led to civil rights legislation, one week after the voting rights act of 1965, Watts went up in flames—“the expression of a century of repressed rage and frustration” (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 401). Cities and spirits were inflamed:

Between 1964 and 1967, black frustration at the gap between the promise and performance in civil rights reached a flashpoint, and 58 cities exploded in riots that left 141 persons dead and 4,552 injured. These riots were generally spontaneous eruptions that began when minor incidents between police and blacks blew up into urban warfare. The result was shocking damage to life and property. In Watts . . . and in Newark, the fracases began initially over tickets for traffic violations. (Bowen, 1970b, p. 148)

Times had changed. Noting that Martin Luther King, walking through the litter of Watts, was greeted with hostility, William Manchester wrote that the torch had been passed to a new generation, only in this case the torch was no image it was a torch. (Jennings & Brewster, 1998, p. 401)

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