First Posted: 2/21/2015
It began with an innocent comment as we were reminiscing: “I remember the 1960s as a time of anger and war, with Americans dying far away,” said a former student. “Too many riots and too many drugs.”
Since that encounter I’ve asked a dozen or more friends, “What immediately comes to mind when I say, ‘The 1960s’?” Some responded with JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights protests, freedom riders, assassinations of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the war in Vietnam. Others honed in on different fare: Beatles music, miniskirts, hippies, Muhammad Ali, the Ford Mustang, and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Most Americans living today have no memories of those years, as they were not yet born. Their knowledge comes through movies, TV shows, and clips of newscasts, perhaps books and talking with their elders. I spent the 1960s completing graduate studies and teaching history, so my memories were laid down while the years unfolded.
The ‘60s had a dark side, to be sure. The war in Vietnam came to be seen as misguided long before it ended in American defeat and withdrawal. Tragic in lost lives and bitter feelings on the home front, the long war also muddled our focus and wasted dollars that could better have been spent elsewhere. Urban riots were predictable summer events, and the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. (within two months of each other in 1968), produced anxieties not felt since the early years of the Cold War.
Drugs helped to stain the decade. Frequently associated with irresponsible sex, especially among the young, they led to sad stories in places such as the Haight-Asbury district of San Francisco. This was one of several indicators of social breakdown, including rising violence, family break-ups and out-of-wedlock births.
Talk was tough, not only on the street but among leading intellectuals as well: Susan Sontag wrote that the white race is “the cancer of human history”; and James Baldwin said the U.S. was “the Fourth Reich.” Rhetorical overkill, with a vengeance – all of it.
Yet simply demonizing those anxious years closes the door to a fuller portrait. Though I was too square, or too put off, to participate in “hanging out in Haight-Asbury” happenings, I have a nostalgic fondness for the decade because they were also exciting and filled with hope.
As I recall it, in the midst of a society that at times seemed on the edge of cracking, hope emerged. The folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel caught the mood perfectly in the opening lines to “The Sound of Silence”:
“Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping….”
Protest was everywhere, in cities and on college campuses. At bottom, what protestors called for was a new society, a fundamental kind of cultural transformation that included an enlargement of democratic ideals and an increased sensitivity to the qualitative possibilities of life. National discourse reflected serious concern about the persistence of poverty, about environmental conditions and the visible inequality of sexes and races.
Overall, one could sense that the underlying theme was the pursuit of a fuller democracy by revolting against traditional authority, whether found in politics, government, science, or education. “Involvement,” “participation,” “equalitarianism,” and “Power to the People” were hailed as the gateways to liberation.
The heady goals of the dreamers were not fully realized, but those with poetic vision, whose aspirations were higher than to become cogs in a machine, raised relevant questions about democracy, privilege, reform, and war. In debates over such fundamental issues, feelings ran deep.
Government seemed to work, so unlike today. The array of domestic programs established takes one’s breath away. It’s hard to imagine our society without Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, Head Start, the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Act, Truth in Lending and Freedom of Information acts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and PBS.
Perhaps most important were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I find it particularly distressing to recall that before then, well within the lifetime of some who read these words, millions of American citizens literally did not have the right to vote, could not eat where they wanted or avail themselves of the nearest restrooms.
Those who draw a more positive portrait of the 1960s are supported by key statistical snapshots. Median family income increased by a third, while the percentage of Americans below the poverty line fell from approximately 22.5 percent in 1960 to 12.5 percent ten years later – a jaw-dropping improvement. Women in the work force increased by 40 percent. Statistics also reveal significant improvements in nutrition and an increase in the number of physicians visited.
Amid years of national discontent, these were strong positives. Though it’s not a popular sound bite these days, there once was a time when government was more than ‘the problem.’ It can, and in the ‘60s often did, bring solutions.
