1960s

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The sixties,known as the "countercultural decade"in the United States and other Western countries, is noted for its counterculture. There was a revolution in social norms, including clothing, music (such as theAltamont Free Concert), drugs, dress,sexuality,formalities,civil rights,precepts of military duty, and schooling. Others denounce the decade as one of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, the decay of social order, and the fall or relaxation of social taboos. A wide range of music emerged; from popular music inspired by and including theBeatles(in the United States known as theBritish Invasion), thefolk music revival,to the poetic lyrics ofBob Dylan.In the United States the Sixties were also called the "cultural decade" while in the United Kingdom (especially London) it was called theSwinging Sixties.

Quotes

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  • We werethereduring the legendary sixties, with visions and insights and lava lamps and black lights and sitar music and reallydynamitehome-grownweedthat would get you high in only 178 tokes. We lit candles and sat around listening toJohn Lennonsing, with genuine passion in his voice, about how he was the egg man, andtheywere the egg men, andhewas the walrus, and by God we knewexactly what he meant.That was the level of hipness that we attained, in My Generation. Oh sure, people tried to put us down, just because we got around. Our parents would come into our bedroom, where we were listening to the opening guitar lick of "Purple Haze" with the stereo cranked up loud enough to be audible onMars(which is whereJimi Hendrixoriginated) and they'd hold their hands over their ears and make a face as though they were passing a kidney stone the size of a volleyball and they'd shout: "You call thatmusic?That sounds like somebody strangling acat.Our parents' idea of swinging music wasFrank Sinatrasnapping his fingers in front of sixty-seven guys who looked like yourdentistplaying the trombone. They were totally Out Of It, our parents. Hopeless. They were so square they though that people, other tan Maynard G. Krebs, actuallyusedwords like "square." AsBob Dylan,who as so hip that sometimes evenhedidn't understand what he meant, put it: "Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" That was our parents: Mr. and Mrs. Jones. But not us. Wedefinedhip. We set all kinds of world hipness records, and we were sure they'd never be broken.
    • Dave Barry,Dave Barry Turns 40(1990). New York: Crown Publishers, p. 57-58
  • By theeighties,a lot ofradiostations, realizing the size of the market out there, had started playing sixties music again. They called it "classic rock,"because they knew we'd be upset if they came right out and called it what it is, namely" middle-aged-person-nostalgia-music. "It's a very popular format now. You drive through a major urban area and push the" scan "button on your car radio, and you'll probably hear a dozen" classic rock "stations, ten of which will be playing" Doo-wah-diddy-diddy. "(The other two will be playingcommercialsfeaturing "Doo-wah-diddy-diddy." We hear "classic rock" being played constantly inelevators,department stores,offices,churches,operating rooms,thespace shuttle,etc. Almost every sixties group with at least one remaining non-dead member has reunited and bought new dentures and gone on tour, sometimes using special guitars equipped with walkers. And so, because we get to represent the world's largest summer horde, we get to hear Our Music all the time. We're wrapped in a snug, warm coccoon of sixtiesness, and we actually think that we're still With It. Whereas in fact we are nowhere near It. The light leaving from It right now will not reach us for several years.
    • Dave Barry,Dave Barry Turns 40(1990). New York: Crown Publishers, p. 59
  • Another area in which my son makes me feel old isfashion.Especially hair fashion. I've always considered myself extremelyliberalwhen it came to hair, because I remember how much I hated the ahir hassles I went through back in the sixties when I had long hair. I'd be walking past a clot of geezers who were sitting in front of a volunteer fire department, hoping somebody's house would catch fire so they could watch the trucks pull out, and one of them would inevitably look at me and say in a tone of voice suggesting that this was the cleverest and most original remark ever thought up by anybody with the possible exception ofMark Twain,"Hey, is that a BOY or a GIRL??" This awesome display of wit never failed to absolutely slay the other geezers, who'd laugh themselves into various stages of coronary seizure ( "har har har har hack hack hack hack hawk hawk HAWK SPIT" ), and I, being a Flower Child Peace Person in the Summer of Love, would give them the finger. But I would also vow to myself that no matter how old I got, I would never, ever, hassle anybody about his haircut. Of course, back then there was no such thing as "punk."
    • Dave Barry,Dave Barry Turns 40(1990). New York: Crown Publishers, p. 61
  • The current generation [1965] ofstudentsis unique and very different in outlook from itsteachers.I am referring to the good students in the bettercolleges and universities,those to whom a liberal education is primarily directed and who are the objects of a training which presupposes the best possible material. These young people have never experienced the anxieties about simple physical well-being that their parents experienced during thedepression.They have been raised incomfortand with the expectation of ever increasing comfort. Hence they are largely indifferent to it; they are not proud of having acquired it and have not occupied themselves with the petty and sometimes deforming concerns necessary to its acquisition. And, because they do not particularly care about it, they are more willing to give it up in the name of grand ideals; as a matter of fact, they are eager to do so in the hope of proving that they are not attached to it and are open to higher callings. In short, these students are a kind ofdemocraticversion of anaristocracy.
  • In the early sixties that what was wanted was aliberal educationto give such students the wherewithal to examine their lives and survey their potential. This was the one thing theuniversitieswere unequipped and unwilling to offer them. The students’ wandering and way-ward energies finally found a political outlet. By the mid-sixties universities were offering them every concession other thaneducation,but appeasement failed and soon the whole experiment in excellence was washed away, leaving not a trace. The various liberations wasted that marvelous energy and tension, leaving the students’ souls exhausted and flaccid, capable of calculating, but not of passionate insight.
  • Alexander W. Astin’s research tells us that in the mid-1960s, more than 80 percent of entering college freshmen reported that nothing was more important than “developing a meaningful philosophy of life.” Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute atUCLA,reports that “being very well off financially” was only an afterthought, one that fewer than 45 percent of those freshmen thought to be an essential goal. As the years went on, however, and as tuition shot up, the two traded places; by 1977, financial goals had surged past philosophical ones, and by the year 2001 more than 70 percent of undergraduate students had their eyes trained on financial realities, while only 40 percent were still wrestling with meaningfulphilosophies.
    • William M. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department,”American Scholar,Vol. 78, Issue 4, Autumn 2009
  • I thought inside “I must really be crazy, now—becausecrazinessis where everybody agrees about something—except you!” And yet I feltsanerthan I had ever felt, so I knew this was a new kind of craziness or perhaps a new kind of saneness.
  • The mid-1960s witnessed the climax of thepostwar global economic expansion.Whether measured by mounting raw-material,agricultural,andmanufacturingproduction,or by highemploymentandconsumptionlevels, the growth between 1945 and 1965 had been nearly universal. Primary-producer countries had also shared in thisprosperity,increasing their annualgross domestic productby at least 4 percent in the 1950s. In the 1960s—which theUnited Nationsdesignated the First Development Decade—this figure rose to 5 percent and was even higher in the oil-producing countries. TheGreen Revolutionin agriculture (the application oftechnology,includingirrigation,fertilizers,pesticides,and disease-resistant, high-yield crop varieties) increased the world’s food supply. But the new global landscape also had darker sides. Increased food yields and improved transportation networks led to steeppopulation growthbut also an alarming drop in local production. There were the first warnings of a “Silent Spring” — the threat of industrial chemicals to the natural environment, made vivid inRachel Carson’s 1962 book by that name.Scientistsfeared the reduction inbiodiversityas a result of applyingtechnologytoagriculture.There were also significant economic and social consequences, including a rise inclass disparitiesin thecountryside(wealthier farmers were better able to acquireloansandinformation,andmenhad easier access tocreditthanwomen), the delay or cancellation of land-distribution programs, and the mass migrations of rural people toThird Worldcities that lackedhouses,jobs,schools,medical facilities,andsocial servicesfor the new arrivals. By the mid-1960s the Superpowers were experiencing the limits of their economic strength. The vastUSandSovietexpenditures on their conventional and nuclear forces, ambitiousspace programs,and expandingweaponrydeliveries to their allies and overseas clients increasingly divertedcapitalfrom civilian investment—particularly fromeducation,social services, public health, and infrastructure projects such as masstransportation—and promotedinflation(which the Soviets were better able to hide), leading to the erosion of the quality of public life in both the West and the East.
    • Carole C. Fink,The Cold War: An International History(2017)
  • Allthe Sixties werecomplicated,youknow.On the onehandit wasfunnytoo, you know; on the other hand it wascruel,you know.Thecommunistsare so cruel, because they impose onetasteon everybody, on everything, and who doesn't comply with their teachings and with theirideology,is very soon labeledpervert,you know, or whatever they want you call it, orcounterrevolutionaryor whatever. And then thecensorshipitself, that's not the worst evil. The worst evil is — and that's the product of censorship — is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys mycharacterbecause I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself. I am stopping to beinghonest,I am becominghypocrite— and that's what they wanted, they wanted everybody to feelguilty,they were, you know... And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; whatCommunist Partymembers could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted — steal, you know,lie,whatever.What was important — that theypunishedif you'reinnocent,because that puts everybody, you know, putsfearin everybody.
  • that was kind of the '60s mentality, too—you didn't need to be published, that was mainstream. You just wanted to be anartistand create something.
  • One of the wonderful things about the 1960s waslanguage.There was a new language and there were wonderful new ways of describingpsychedelicstates, spiritual states, trying to find new words for political actions like those ofGandhiandMartin Luther King.What do you call that when you sit at the lunch counter and you don't move and you do it withpeaceandlove?
    • 1993 interview in Conversations withMaxine Hong Kingstonedited by Paul Skenazy and Tera Martin (1998)
  • My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularlyyoung people,is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement insecular,external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quitschool;I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.
  • AsBlack people,if there is one thing we can learn from the 60s, it is how infinitely complex any move for liberation must be. For we must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have been forced to take into ourselves. Through examining the combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those closest to us who mirrored our own impotence.
  • Historically, difference had been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness. In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline for living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity — Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized chocolate milk. Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures. Our persistence in examining the tensions within diversity encourages growth toward our common goal. So often we either ignore the past or romanticize it, render the reason for unity useless or mythic. We forget that the necessary ingredient needed to make the past work for the future is our energy in the present, metabolizing one into the other. Continuity does not happen automatically, nor is it a passive process.
  • The 60s were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. They were vital years of awakening, of pride, and of error. Thecivil rightsandBlack power movementsrekindled possibilities for disenfranchised groups within this nation. Even though we fought common enemies, at times the lure of individual solutions made us careless of each other. Sometimes we could not bear the face of each other’s differences because of what we feared those differences might say about ourselves. As if everybody can’t eventually be too Black, too white, too man, too woman. But any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve. The answer to cold is heat, the answer to hunger is food. But there is no simple monolithic solution toracism,tosexism,tohomophobia.There is only the conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them, wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the same disease. By seeing who theweis, we learn to use our energies with greater precision against our enemies rather than against ourselves.
  • The 60s for me was a time of promise and excitement, but the 60s was also a time of isolation and frustration from within. [...] It was a time of great hope and great expectation; it was also a time of great waste. That is history. We do not need to repeat these mistakes in the 80s.
  • Sixtiesradicalsrarely went on tograduate school;if they did, they often dropped out. If they made it through, they had trouble getting a job and keeping it. They remain mavericks, isolated, off-center. Today's academicleftistsare strutting wannabes, timorousnerdswho missed the Sixties while they were grade-grubbing in thelibraryand brown-nosing the senior faculty. Theirpoliticscame to them late, secondhand, and special delivery via theParisianimport craze of theSeventies.These people have risen to the top not by challenging the system but by smoothly adapting themselves to it. They're company men,Rosencrantz and Guildensterns,privileged opportunists who rode the wave of fashion.
    • Camille Paglia,“Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf,”Arion,Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 176-177
  • I see today’sparentsas terrified of theirchildren,not least because they have been deemed the proximal agents of this hypothetical socialtyranny,and simultaneously denied credit for their roles asbenevolentand necessary agents ofdiscipline,orderandconventionality.They dwell uncomfortably and self-consciously in the all-too-powerful shadow of theadolescentethos of the 1960s, a decade whose excesses led to a general denigration ofadulthood,an unthinking disbelief in the existence of competentpower,and the inability to distinguish between thechaosof immaturity and responsiblefreedom.This has increased parental sensitivity to the short-term emotionalsufferingof their children, while heightening theirfearof damaging their children to a painful and counterproductive degree. Better this than the reverse, you might argue—but there arecatastropheslurking at the extremes of every moral continuum.
  • San Franciscoin the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe itmeant something.Maybe not…but every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
    My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big650 Lightningacross theBay Bridgeat a hundred miles an hour...booming through theTreasure Islandtunnel at the lights ofOaklandandBerkeleyandRichmond,not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end...but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went, I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was...
    There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up theGolden Gateor down101toLos AltosorLa Honda...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing wasright,that we were winning...And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil...We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
    So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill inLas Vegasand look West, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
  • If anything, the sixties was a decade of change, with the lines often drawn between those who embraced change and those who resisted it. And time after time, it was those who embraced it who prevailed.
    • Tim Wendel,Summer of ’68(2012), Chapter 5 (p. 135 in the paperback edition)
  • Although the '60scounterculturehas been much maligned and discredited, it attempted to provide what we still desperately need: a spirited culture ofrefusal,a counter-life to the reigningcorporateculture ofdeath.We don't need to return to that counterculture, but we do need to take up its challenge again. If the work we do produces mostly bad, ugly, and destructive things, those things in turn will tend to re-create us in their image. We need to turn to good, useful, and beautiful work. We need to ask, asThoreauandRuskindid,What are the life-giving things?Such important questions are answered for us in the present by the corporate state, while we are left with the most trivial decisions: what programs to watch onTVand what modelcarto buy.
  • Unlike the civil rights struggles ofAfrican Americansor the protest politics surrounding theVietnam War,the Chicano andPuerto Ricanmovements represent a decidedly underexplored aspect of 1960sNew Leftradicalism.Outside of the communities themselves, the names, places, and events of these two movements are virtually unknown.
    • Beltrán, Cristina,The Trouble with Unity,2010
  • In two books about the cultural flowering of the 1960s, the many volumes of Chicano poetry, short stories, songs, and skits go unmentioned. In two books on the underground press,Robert Glessing's The Underground Press in America and Abe Peck's Uncovering the Sixties, you will find no mention of Chicano movement newspapers in the first (except for two listings in its appendix) and two references in the second. Yet there was a Chicano Press Association comprising 60 newspapers and magazines in those years.
  • White radicals of the 1960s-many of them called "theNew Left"-learned tactics fromAfrican Americans,who had learned some of theirs fromAsians(Gandhi) and who also adopted tactics fromwhiteworkersof an earlier era.Native Americanstook tactics fromBlacks.Asian-Americanyouths were inspired by youngPuerto Ricanactivists. Chicano organizations copied from theBlack Panther Party,as in their breakfast program. Yet the "New Left" is usually staked out withEurocentricboundaries in our books on the 1960s. Even many people of color define the New Left as white, and would deny that their activism had anything to do with a new, old or any other kind of Left. The New Left was indeed born primarily white. But its vision of a society in which the exploited and oppressed become an empowered collectivity did inspire people across racial and national lines. That vision generated an international political culture that stirred youth fromParistoMexicotoTokyoand lives on today. Who cannot be reminded of that New Left ideal, "participatory democracy" (a phrase used byStudents for a Democratic Society), when hearing of how 3,000Chinesestudents voted on every major decision inTiananmen Squarein May 1989?
  • The 1960s were revolutionary times. Across the world, people demanded national independence, racial equality,women's rights,and more humane societies. Their actions gave birth to radical changes in politics, culture, and social relations that influence our lives to the present day. Specific events and individuals moved the hearts of Puerto Ricans living in the United States. The African American struggle for freedom and justice led the way.Malcolm X's powerful speeches about self-determination and self-defense taught us that revolutionary change was in our hands. When Malcolm was assassinated in 1965, we mourned the loss of a great spokesman and leader. Two months later, donPedro Albizu Campos,Puerto Rican freedom fighter, died after being imprisoned for twenty-six years in the United States where he was subjected to radiation experiments. Again, we cried and grieved a national hero. Thewar in Vietnamdominated global attention. In 1968, theTet Offensivea series of attacks byNorth Vietnameseforces onSouth Vietnamesecities, including on the US Embassy grounds in Saigon-shocked the world. The American command retaliated swiftly causing heavy casualties, and livetelevisioncoverage brought the war's reality into our homes. Worldwide protests intensified. A year earlier,Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.had spoken out against the war, calling it an enemy of the poor among other things. Emphasizing the relation between the war machine and poverty, Dr. King organized thePoor People's Campaignurging black, white, brown, and Asian people to camp out in front of theCapitol BuildinginWashington D.C.until either a job or a living income was guaranteed for all. When Dr. King wasassassinatedon April 4, 1968, thousands took to the streets in more than two hundred uprisings in 172 cities. Many had lost faith, and no longer believed, that America could be reformed via elections or demonstrations. A new wave of grassroots militancy surged.
    • Iris MoralesThrough the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords 1969-1976(2016)
  • It could be that today'sconservativemovement remains in thrall to the samenarrativethat has defined itsattitudetowardfilmand theartsfor decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion afterHollywoodand the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s,this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemablyliberalinstitution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early20th centuryup through the '40s,'50sand into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors asHoward Hawks,Frank Capra,andCecil B. DeMille,and major stars likeJohn Wayne,Clark Gable,andCharlton Heston.These talents often worked side by side with notableHollywoodliberalslike directorsBilly Wilder,William Wyler,andJohn Huston,and stars likeHumphrey Bogart,Lauren Bacall,andSpencer Tracy.The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences. As the younger, more left-leaning "New Hollywood"generation swept into the industry in the late '60s and '70s, this older group of Hollywood conservatives faded away, never to be replaced. Except for a brief period in the '80swhen theReaganPresidency led to a conservative reengagement with film—with popular stars likeClint Eastwood,Sylvester Stallone,andArnold Schwarzeneggermaking macho,patrioticaction films—conservatives appeared to abandon popular culture altogether. In the wake of this retreat, conservative failure to engage with Hollywood now appears to have been recast by today's East Coast conservative establishment into a generalized opposition toward film and popular culture itself. In the early '90s, conservative film criticMichael Medvedcodified this oppositional feeling toward Hollywood in his best-selling bookHollywood vs. America.
  • I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universalfreedom.Precisely becausewomensaw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country. The fact that the people were against thewar in Vietnam,saw us go into the street and win, made it possible for them to have the courage to go into the street and win, and the lesson that I would like to see from this is, that we must now find a way to deal with the problem offull employment,and as surely as we were able to bring about theCivil Rights Act,the voter rights act--theVoting Rights Act,I mean the education act, and thehousing act,so is it possible for all of us now to combine our forces in a coalition, includingCatholic,Protestant,JewandlaborandblacksandPuerto RicansandMexican-Americansand all otherminorities,to bring about the one thing that will bring peace internally to the United States. And that is that any man who wants a job, or any woman who wants a job, shall not be leftunemployed.
    • Bayard Rustin,Eyes on the Prizeinterview,Interview with Bayard Rustin, conducted by Blackside, Inc. in 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection. (1979)
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