The 1960s: A Decade of Turmoil
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage
John F. Kennedy as President
The decade of the 1960s began chronologically in January 1961, a month that saw John F. Kennedy inaugurated as president of the United States. Kennedy's inaugural address was highlighted by the memorable call to arms, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” In those early days of the Kennedy administration the world seemed relatively calm, although the shooting down of the U2 aircraft over Russia, the continuing threat of nuclear war, and the Cold War environment that saw the United States, Russia, and Communist China, along with their allies, balanced against each other, kept people on edge. But French Indochina, a portion of which was the nation of Vietnam, rioting in the streets, and all the turmoil that has come to characterize the 60s was hardly a whisper on the horizon.
Tensions remained high through the early years of Kennedy's presidency, but there was hope that the civil rights movement might move forward, and economically the country continued its progress. The Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and Kennedy's confrontations with Premier Khrushchev kept people nervous, but the storm has not yet struck. the 60s really began a November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. President Johnson marked time until his overwhelming reelection over Barry Goldwater in 1964, and then all hell began to break loose. As American troops were sent to Vietnam in ever-increasing numbers, as the civil rights demonstrations grew ever more bloody and violent, and as protests seem to erupt almost on a daily basis, the 60s turned into a time of turmoil and trouble.
The focus of much of the turmoil in the 60s was the college campus. For years colleges and universities had operated in loco parentis—in the place of a parent, knowingly accepting the responsibility not only for students education, but for their moral behavior. Dormitories were segregated by sex, use of alcohol and drugs was at least officially frowned upon, and male students were allowed to visit females in their dormitories only under controlled conditions. Students were expected to behave in class and obey the college rules as well as the laws of the city and state where they were located, and generally to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen. By 1966 or 1967 all that had begun to change. Although the memory of the student protests seems retroactively to have centered around the Vietnam War, the students were angry about many more things. The free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, set the stage for further demonstrations as students demanded the right to voice their opinions against the university administration.
The focus of much unrest on the campuses also dealt with civil rights. For example, in the spring of 1968, Columbia University in New York City erupted over plans by the University to build a facility in a housing area in neighboring Harlem. The students soon took over the college, occupying administration offices, eventually causing the university authorities to call for the assistance of the New York City police. Although today, in the aftermath of September 11, policemen and firemen are generally viewed favorably by most Americans, but during the sixties they were seen by student protesters as the enemy. During an uproar at Boston University, the Boston tactical police were called in and blood was shed as the students resisted the police and the police reacted strongly, even excessively, as some claimed. At the University of Maryland in College Park, a campus generally not known for political activism, students shut down the main traffic artery of US Route 1 during rush hour. Actions against ROTC units, draft boards, and marches on the Pentagon became part of the culture of the sixties.
The year 1968 was the peak of the turmoil as violence broke out in Chicago during the Democratic national convention. The Chicago police under Mayor Daley carried out what came to be known as a “police riot,” and more blood was shed by demonstrators and occasional innocent bystanders. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in 196, and it seemed to many that the country had not only lost its moral compass, but was rapidly running amok. The year 1969 saw the inauguration of President Richard Nixon, and as he seemed to be working to try to end the war, the turmoil seemed to abate for a year. But with the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio, and the frustratingly slow end to the American involvement in Vietnam, the protests continued. When the Watergate scandal erupted following the election of 1972, it seemed that things were as bad as ever.
In 1973 the American POWs came back from Vietnam, Senator John McCain among them, and the escalating Watergate crisis led to Richard Nixon's resignation in August of 1974. Although South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975, and the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, most Americans viewed it from a distance. In 1976 the country rallied from its depondency in order to celebrate the bicentennial of American independence, and it seemed that by then the 60s were well over. But the nation didn't go back to the way it had been in the 1950s—too much had changed. Civil rights legislation opened doors that had been closed for a century. Women had begun to assert themselves and move into areas previously unheard of for the “gentle sex.” Coed dormitories were common on college campuses, thus indicating that the sexual revolution had been, in effect, rubber stamped by university authorities. If parents were distressed, there wasn't much they could do about it; and, in fact, they had lived through the 60s themselves and had been changed by the experience, as had all Americans.
Events:
History 122 Part 4 | Updated September 28, 2006