1960s
In the United States
The movement for civil and political rights for
African Americans (in the early '60s usually called Negroes and in the later '60s Blacks), initially a non-violent movement led by
Martin Luther King, Jr. and other
Gandhian figures but later producing radical offshoots such as the
Black Power movement and competing with the
Black Panther Party and the
Black Muslims for primacy in the African-American community.
The beginning of what was generally seen as a new political era with the election of President
John F. Kennedy in
1960, and its ending in tragedy and disillusionment with
Kennedy's assassination in
1963, the assassinations of King and
Robert F. Kennedy in
1968, and the collapse of
Lyndon Johnson's presidency.
The rise of a mass movement in opposition to the
Vietnam War, ending in the massive
Moratorium protests in
1969, and also the movement of resistance to conscription ("the Draft") for the war. The
antiwar movement was initially based on the older 1950s "Peace movement" controlled by the
Communist Party USA, but by the mid '60s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centered on the universities and churches.
Stimulated by this movement, but growing beyond it, the large numbers of student-age youth, beginning with the
Free Speech Movement at the
University of California, Berkeley in
1964, peaking in the riots at the
1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago, Illinois and reaching a climax with the shootings at
Kent State University in
1970.
The rapid rise of a "
New Left," employing the rhetoric of
Marxism but having little organizational connection with older Marxist organizations such as the
Communist Party, and even less connection with the supposed focus of Marxist politics, the organized labor movement, and consisting of ephemeral campus-based
Trotskyist,
Maoist and
anarchist groups, some of which by the end of the 1960s had turned to
terrorism.
The overlapping, but somewhat different, movement of youth cultural radicalism manifested by the
hippies and the
counter-culture, whose emblematic moments were the
Summer of Love in
San Francisco in
1967 and the
Woodstock Festival in
1969.
The rapid spread, associated with this movement, of the recreational use of
cannabis and other drugs, particularly new semi-synthetic
psychedelic drugs such as
LSD.
The breakdown among young people of conventional
sexual morality and the flourishing of the
sexual revolution. Initially geared mostly to heterosexual male gratification, it soon gave rise to contrary trends, Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation.
The rise of an
alternative culture among affluent youth, creating a huge market for
rock and
blues music produced by drug-culture influenced bands such as
The Beatles,
the Rolling Stones,
Jefferson Airplane,
Jimi Hendrix Experience and
The Doors, and also for radical music in the
folk tradition pioneered by
Bob Dylan.
In other Western countries
The peak of the student and New Left protests in
1968 coincided with political upheavals in a number of other countries. Although these events often sprang from completely different causes, they were influenced by reports and images of what was happening in the United States and France. Students in
Mexico City, for example, protested against the corrupt regime of
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz: in the resulting
Tlatelolco massacre hundreds were killed.
The influence of American culture and politics in Western Europe,
Japan and
Australia was already so great by the early 1960s that most of the trends described above soon spawned counterparts in most Western countries. University students rioted in
London,
Paris,
Berlin and
Rome, huge crowds protested against the Vietnam War in
Australia and
New Zealand (both of which had committed troops to the war), and politicians such as
Harold Wilson and
Pierre Trudeau modeled themselves on John F. Kennedy.
An important difference between the United States and Western Europe, however, was the existence of a mass socialist and/or Communist movement in most European countries (particularly France and Italy), with which the student-based new left was able to forge a connection. The most spectacular manifestation of this was the
May 1968 student revolt in Paris, which linked up with a general strike called by the Communist-controlled trade unions and for a few days seemed capable of overthrowing the government of
Charles de Gaulle.
In non-Western countries
In Eastern Europe, students also drew inspiration from the protests in the West. In
Poland and
Yugoslavia they protested against restrictions on free speech by Communist regimes. In
Czechoslovakia,
1968 was the year of
Alexander Dubček's
Prague Spring, a source of inspiration to many Western leftists who admired Dubček's "socialism with a human face." The
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August ended these hopes, and also fatally damaged the chances of the orthodox Communist Parties drawing many recruits from the student protest movement.
In the
People's Republic of China the mid 1960s were also a time of massive upheaval, and the
Red Guard rampages of
Mao Zedong's
Cultural Revolution had some superficial resemblances to the student protests in the West. The Maoist groups that briefly flourished in the West in this period saw in Chinese Communism a more revolutionary, less bureaucratic model of socialism. Most of them were rapidly disillusioned when Mao welcomed
Richard Nixon to China in
1972. People in China, however, saw the
Nixon visit as a victory in that they believed the United States would concede that Mao Zedong thought was superior to capitalism (this was the Party stance on the visit in late 1971 and early 1972). The
Cuban revolutionary
Ernesto "Che" Guevara also became an iconic figure for the student left.
World leaders
* Prime Minister
Robert Menzies (
Australia)
* Prime Minister
Harold Holt (
Australia)
* Prime Minister
John McEwen (
Australia)
* Prime Minister
John Gorton (
Australia)
* Prime Minister
John Diefenbaker (
Canada)
* Prime Minister
Lester B. Pearson (
Canada)
* Prime Minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (
Canada)
* Chairman
Mao Zedong (
People's Republic of China)
* President
Chiang Kai-shek (
Republic of China on Taiwan)
* President
Gamal Abdel Nasser (
Egypt)
* President
Urho Kekkonen (
Finland)
* President
Charles de Gaulle (
France)
* Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru (
India)
* Prime Minister
Lal Bahadur Shastri (
India)
* Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi (
India)
* Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion (
Israel)
* Prime Minister
Levi Eshkol (
Israel)
* Emperor
Hirohito (
Japan)
*
Pope John XXIII*
Pope Paul VI* Prime Minister
Basil Brooke (
Northern Ireland)
* Prime Minister
Terence O'Neill (
Northern Ireland)
* Prime Minister
James Chichester-Clark (
Northern Ireland)
* Governor
Luis A. Ferré (
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico)
* Taoiseach
Sean Lemass (
Republic of Ireland)
* Taoiseach
Jack Lynch (
Republic of Ireland)
*
Nikita Khrushchev (
Soviet Union)
*
Leonid Brezhnev (
Soviet Union)
*Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel (Turkey)
*Queen
Elizabeth II (
United Kingdom)
* Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan (
United Kingdom)
* Prime Minister
Harold Wilson (
United Kingdom)
* President
Dwight D. Eisenhower (
United States)
* President
John F. Kennedy (
United States)
* President
Lyndon Johnson (
United States)
* President
Richard Nixon (
United States)
* Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer (
West Germany)
* Chancellor
Ludwig Erhard (
West Germany)
* Chancellor
Kurt Georg Kiesinger (
West Germany)
* President for Life
Josip Broz Tito (
Yugoslavia)
Writers and intellectuals
*
Isaac Asimov*
J. G. Ballard*
Basil Bunting*
Amiri Baraka*
William S. Burroughs*
Truman Capote*
Andy Capp*
Rachel Carson*
Noam Chomsky*
Arthur C. Clarke*
R. Crumb*
Philip K. Dick*
Jim Morrison*
Bob Dylan*
Irving Fiske*
Louise Fitzhugh*
Milton Friedman*
Allen Ginsberg*
Seamus Heaney*
Robert A. Heinlein*
Frank Herbert*
Abbie Hoffman*
Jane Jacobs*
Ken Kesey*
Philip Larkin*
Timothy Leary*
John Lennon*
Norman Mailer*
Marshall McLuhan*
Bertrand Russell*
Carl Sagan*
Jean-Paul Sartre*
Charles Schulz*
Dr. Seuss*
Jean Shepherd*
John Steinbeck*
Hunter S. Thompson*
Joseph Heller*
Gore Vidal*
Kurt Vonnegut*
Alan Watts*
Brian Wilson*
Tom Wolfe*
Paul McCartney*
The 1960s Week-By-Week - comprehensive 1960s coverage. Includes news, trends, pop culture*
The 1960s: A Bibliography*
h2g2 article on the 1960s*
A selection of texts from and about the radical and counterculture aspects of the '60s*
Pop Charts, information about the songs and acts of the 1960s*
Pop Culture Madness 1960s Music Lists*
Artists and song hits from 1960 - 1969 in the UK*
American Cultural History 1960 - 1969*
CBC Digital Archives - 1960s a GoGo
