1960’s

Hubert Humphrey once stated, “When we say, ‘One nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,’ we are talking about all people. We either ought to believe it or quit saying it” (Hakim 111). During the 1960’s, a great number of people did, in fact, begin to believe it. These years were a time of great change for America. The country was literally redefined as people from all walks of life fought to uphold their standards on what they believed a true democracy is made of; equal rights for all races, freedom of speech, and the right to stay out of wars in which they felt they didn’t belong. The music of the era did a lot of defining and upholding as well; in fact, it was a driving force, or at the very least a strongly supporting force, in many of the movements that took place. However, it is to be expected that in attempting to change a nation one will inevitably face opposition. The Vietnamese weren’t the only ones involved in a civil war those years; in America, one could easily find brother turning against brother, or more commonly, parent against child, as each side fought to defend their views. The 1960’s were a major turning point in the history of the U.S, and when it was all over, the American way of life would never be the same. Almost seventy years before the sixties even began, segregation was legalized. As long as both races had “equal” facilities, it was entirely legal to divide them (Hakim 64-65). In 1955, however, an elderly black woman by the name of Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. She was arrested. Parks later proved to be the true catalyst of the anti-segregation movement. When news of the arrest reached the black population, action was taken immediately. A massive bus boycott was organized, during which time no one of color could be found on a bus in the Montgomery area. Finally, in 1956, a law was passed proclaiming that any form of segregation was illegal and immoral (Hakim 69-71). Unfortunately, not everyone was eager to embrace this change. Many whites felt that if they were forced to share, they would rather go without. Across the country, public recreational facilities were locked up rather than integrated. In Birmingham, Alabama in 1962, for example, sixty-eight parks, thirty-eight playgrounds, six pools, and four gold courses were closed to the public (Hakim 97). Congress had finally granted equal rights, but the black population of America had a long way to go before their rights were truly equal. Many groups such as the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), and CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality) were formed to organize rallies and marches to support their cause (Benson 15, 18-19). A few individuals such as James Farmer and Marin Luther King, Jr., however, stand out among all others as the true leaders of the movement. Farmer was the nation’s first black man to earn a Ph.D., and he was also the founder of CORE. He realized that the black population would be seen as ignorant and inferior until they had equal education and job training. He demanded that the federal government provide programs to make education and training available, stating, “When a society has crippled some of it’s people, it has an obligation to provide the requisite crutches” (Benson 34-35). Martin Luther King Jr., born in 1929, became famous for his methods of anti-violent protest, modeled after the methods of the late Mahatma Gandhi

. He said Gandhi

taught him that, “…there is more power in socially organized masses on the march than… in guns in the hands of a few desperate men.” In 1964, King became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (Hakim 76, 121). On April 4, 1968, however, King’s short life was brought to an untimely end when he was assassinated by white supremacist James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of thirty-nine. To this day, some people believe that the FBI was involved in the killing, due to the fact that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover strongly and openly disliked King . These beliefs have never been confirmed (Benson 33). King’s tactics of peaceful demonstration were the most popular of the time. Sit-ins were very common, originating in 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina when, despite being covered in ketchup and brutally beaten by violent spectators, four black students refused to leave a lunch counter at Woolworth’s until they were served (Benson 16),. Protestors simply wrapped their ankles around the stool legs and grasped the edges of their seats, defiantly resisting all attempts to remove them (Hakim 100). More efficient than the sit-ins, however, were the marches that took place during the time. A march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery in 1964 resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a march on Washington in 1963 consisting of two- hundred and fifty thousand