The Civil Rights Movement, the space race, a continuing Cold War, assassinations, protests, the Vietnam War, hippies and the Beatles make the 1960s a decade of cultural and political change.
The first televised presidential debate took place Sept. 26, 1960. Democrat Sen. John F. Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election over incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. Kennedy’s achievements included the raising of the minimum wage and the establishment of the Peace Corps. Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became president.
In July 1963, N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford founded the North Carolina Fund as a non-profit organization to help fight poverty in North Carolina using community action programs and improving education. Johnson used the N.C. Fund as a template for his “War on Poverty.” In 1964, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, which provided young Americans with job training and created a volunteer network in social work and education. The 1965 Medical Care Act created Medicare and Medicaid.
In 1964, Johnson defeated Barry M. Goldwater in the presidential election.
On June 5, 1968, Presidential candidate and Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and dies one day later.
In 1968, Richard M. Nixon defeats Hubert H. Humphrey in the presidential election.
The first U.S. manned sub-orbital space flight occurred May 5, 1961. Twenty days later, President Kennedy announced his intention to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut in orbit. Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon July 20, 1969.
Civil Rights
Four black N.C. A&T College students in Greensboro, N.C., stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter Feb. 1, 1960. On Feb. 6, hundreds of students, including the A&T football team, descend on downtown Greensboro. More than 75,000 students will hold sit-ins across the nation during the next eight months.
In the spring of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality held a freedom ride through the Deep South to protest illegal segregation in interstate transportation. The freedom riders were assaulted in Alabama and President Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect them. In October 1962, Kennedy sent 3,000 troops to prevent violence in Mississippi and sent federal marshals to allow James Meredith to enter the University of Mississippi as the first black student.
In 1962 the Supreme Court decision in Engel v.Vitale prohibited prayer in public schools. The 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright required states to provide indigent defendants with public defenders.
On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, a field secretary with the NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C., in August 1963 ended with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited racial and sexual discrimination in jobs, voting and accommodations, gave the government broader powers to enforce desegregation in schools, and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1964 the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed the poll tax. Malcolm X, a Civil Rights activist, was assassinated Feb. 25, 1965.
In March 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a mass protest against black disenfranchisement in Birmingham, Ala. The Voting Rights Act outlawed a literacy test to vote and authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters where fewer than half of the minority population of voting age was registered. The number of registered black voters doubled in many areas. The Watts race riots in Los Angeles lasted five days in August 1965.
The National Organization for Women formed in 1966 to lobby Congress, file lawsuits, and publicize the feminist cause. By 1970, more than 40 percent of all women worked outside the home.
The 1966 Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona required police to make suspects aware of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present during questioning. The 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional.
In July 1967, there are black riots in several U.S. cities. National Guardsmen were sent to quell the riots. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn. Riots again occur throughout the nation.
Thurgood Marshall became the first black Supreme Court Justice in October 1967. In 1969 Howard Lee became the first black mayor elected in a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction when he is sworn into office in Chapel Hill.
Continuing Cold War and Wars
In 1961 the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is repulsed by Cuban forces and the Soviet Union constructed the Berlin Wall. The first sign of a looming war in Vietnam began in 1962 when President Kennedy stated that military advisors in Vietnam would engage the enemy if fired upon. The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted 38 days in the fall of 1962. The Panama Canal incident occurred in January 1964, leading to the deaths of Panama citizens and four U.S. troops.
In April 1965, President Johnson sent more than 22,000 U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic during a civil war in the nation. Forty-seven U.S. troops died in this action.
The Tonkin Resolution was passed by the U.S. Congress in August 1964, authorizing broad powers to the president to take action in Vietnam. In 1966, after a wave of military draft calls, mass protests erupted on college campuses. By December 1966, the U.S. had 385,300 troops stationed in South Vietnam with 60,000 additional troops offshore and 33,000 in Thailand. Anti-war protests continued in the U.S., sometimes with violence, as when protesters clashed with police outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968. In April 1969, U.S. troops in the war reached 543,400. U.S. troops begin a withdrawal in July. More than 250,000 anti-war protesters march on Washington, D.C., in November 1969.
The USS Pueblo incident occurred in January 1968 in the Sea of Japan when North Korea seized the ship and its crew. The prisoners were released in December 1969.
In world events, the Six Days War between Israel and the nations of Egypt, Jordan and Syria occurred in 1967. The Algerian War ended in 1962. Civil wars in Laos and the Sudan continue through the decade. And 32 nations in Africa will gain their independence between 1960 and 1968.
Other Events
In 1960 the female birth-control contraceptive, “the pill,” was given FDA approval. In November 1969, the Internet, called Arpanet, was invented by the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense.
In 1960 the Clean Water Act was passed by Congress. Rachel Carson’s publication of Silent Spring in 1962, which exposed the environmental hazards of the pesticide DDT, began a movement for more environmental measures. In 1963, the Clean Air Act was passed to regulate factory and automobile emissions.
The United States began to use Zip Codes in the 1960s.
The birth of the hippies was in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. In 1965, LSD spilled out of top-secret government laboratories and onto city streets.
The Charles Manson Murders took place in August 1969.
On Aug. 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille hit the U.S. Gulf Coast at Category 5.
The popular toys of the decade were anything space related, Barbie and GI Joe.
The Wide World of Sports first aired on television in 1961. In 1964, the 1960 Olympic champion Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) won the World Heavyweight Championship in boxing. The first NFL Super Bowl was played in January 1967. Football stars in the decade were Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown and Bart Starr.
The Boston Celtics won nine of 10 championships in the decade. Basketball stars were Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Bill Russell, who became the first black coach. Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, Don Drysdale, Yogi Berra and Bob Gibson were baseball stars.
Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three track and field Olympic gold medals.
Arnold Palmer was dominant in golf, Junior Johnson in NASCAR, Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe in ice hockey, and Rod Laver in tennis. Surfing became popular and skateboarding began.
Folk music reached its peak between 1963 and 1965 with musicians such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. The British invasion began in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” Other groups included the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five and the Who. By 1965, “beach music” entered the scene with the Beach Boys.
The Motown Sound was popular with Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five and the Temptations. Elvis Presley was still popular and Johnny Cash dominated country music.
Some other musicians of the decade included the Bee Gees, the Byrds, the Four Seasons, Aretha Franklin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Moody Blues, Jim Morrison and the Doors and Simon and Garfunkel.
In 1969, 500,000 people attended the Woodstock Music Festival in New York.
Some of the popular television shows included The Andy Griffith Show, the Beverly Hillbillies, the Wonderful World of Disney, Bonanza, Perry Mason, Star Trek, Batman, Route 66, the Flintstones, the Brady Bunch, Gunsmoke, Peyton Place, the Brady Bunch, the Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, Gilligan’s Island, Mr. Ed, the Twilight Zone, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart and Green Acres.
Variety shows included Laugh-In, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Dean Martin Show, the Andy Williams Show, the Danny Thomas Show, the Red Skelton Show and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show from Jack Paar in 1962.
Sesame Street broadcasts its first episode on PBS in 1969.
Some of the top movies of the decade were The Sound of Music, Doctor Zhivago, The Graduate, Doctor Strangelove, Goldfinger, Psycho, Disney’s the Jungle Book, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Man for All Seasons.
Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win “Best Actor” at the Academy Award s. Some other film stars of the decade were Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Paul Newman, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and John Wayne.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Catch-22, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, In Cold Blood and Valley of the Dolls are just some of the popular books of the decade.
The magazine Rolling Stone was launched in 1967.
Military Action in Dominican Republic