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Millennium: 2nd millennium
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
Categories: Births - Deaths - Architecture
Establishments - Disestablishments

The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969. The term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends in the west, particularly United States, Britain, France, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Spain, Italy, and West Germany. Social and political upheaval was not limited to these countries, but included such nations as Japan, Mexico, and others.

In the United States, "The Sixties", as they are known in popular culture, may have lasted from about 1963 to 1971. The term is used descriptively by historians, journalists, and other objective academics; nostalgically by those who participated in the counter-culture and social revolution; and pejoratively by those who perceive the era as one of irresponsible excess and flamboyance. The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the libertine attitudes that emerged during this decade. Rampant drug use has become inextricably associated with the counter-culture of the era, as Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner mentions: "If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there."

The 1960s have become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers, only for this rule to be replaced in many cases by civil war or corrupt dictatorships.

Some commentators[1] have seen in this era a classical Jungian nightmare cycle as a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm. Booker charts the rise, success, fall/nightmare and explosion in the London scene of the 1960s. This does not alone however explain the mass nature of the phenomenon.

Several Western governments turned to the left in the early 1960s. In the United States President John F. Kennedy was elected as president. Italy formed its first left-of-centre government in March 1962 with a coalition of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and moderate Republicans. Socialists joined the ruling block in December 1963. In Britain, the Labour Party gained power in 1964.[2]

Assassinations

The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations.

• A Belgian and Congolese firing squad assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, on January 17, 1961.
• A member of the Ku Klux Klan assassinated Medgar Evers, an NAACP field secretary, on June 12, 1963.
• Duong Hieu Nghia and Nguyen Van Nhung assassinated Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in the back of an APC on November 2, 1963. Nguyen also assassinated other Vietnamese leaders.
• Lee Harvey Oswald, assassinated US President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in his car during a parade. See JFK assassination for more details.
• Members of the Nation of Islam assassinated Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, although there has been a dispute about which members had killed Malcolm X.
• James Earl Ray assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.
• Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 6, 1968.
• Chicago policemen assassinated the deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Fred Hampton, in December, 1969.

Social and political movements

Counterculture/social revolution

Younger generations soon began to rebel against the conservative norms of the time, as well as disassociate themselves from mainstream liberalism, in particular they turned away from the high levels of materialism which was so common during the era. This created a counter-culture that eventually turned into a social revolution throughout much of the western world. It began in the United States as a reaction against the conservative social norms and stasis of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam. The more social/cultural youth from the movement were called hippies. Together they created a new liberated stance for society, including the sexual revolution, questioning authority and government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women, homosexuals, and minorities. The Underground Press, a wide-spread, eclectic collection of underground newspapers served as a unifying factor for the counterculture. The movement was marked by drug use (including LSD and marijuana) and psychedelic music.

Anti-war movement

A mass movement began rising 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 heavily influenced by the American Communist Party, but by the mid-1960s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centered on the universities and churches: one kind of protest was called a "sit-in." Other terms heard nationally included the Draft, draft dodger, conscientious objector, and Vietnam vet. Voter age-limits were challenged by the phrase: "If you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to vote." Many of the youth involved in the politics of the movements distanced themselves from the "hippies".

The most well-known anti-war demonstration was the Kent State shootings. In 1970, university students were protesting the war and the draft. Riots ensued during the weekend and the National Guard was called into maintain the peace. However, by Monday, tensions arose again, and as the crowd grew larger, the National Guard started shooting. Four students were dead and nine injured. This event caused disbelief and shock throughout the country and became a staple of anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

Civil rights

Much of the political movements and the people participating in them came from the civil rights struggle in the south in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Blacks began to challenge segregation in the south through various means, such as, boycotts, freedom rides, sit-ins, law suits and registering blacks to vote. Stimulated by this movement, but growing beyond it, were 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 and reaching a climax with the shootings at Kent State University in 1970, which some claimed as proof that "police brutality" was rampant. The terms were: "The Establishment" referring to traditional management/government, and "pigs" referring to police using excessive force. 1969 also saw the Stonewall riots, the birth of the gay rights movement.

The rise of feminism

Feminism in the United States and around the world began in the early 1960s. In the US, a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women found discrimination against women in the workplace and every other aspect of life, a revelation which launched two decades of prominent women-centered legal reforms (i.e. the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title IX, etc.) which broke down the last remaining legal barriers to women's personal freedom and professional success. Feminists took to the streets, marching and protesting, writing and debating to change social views that limited women. In 1963, with Betty Friedan's revolutionary book, The Feminine Mystique, the role of women in society, and in public and private life was questioned. By 1966, the movement was beginning to grow in size and power as women's group spread across the country and Friedan, along with other feminists, founded the National Organization for Women. In 1968, "Women's Liberation" became a household term as, for the first time, the new women's movement eclipsed the black civil rights movement when New York Radical Women, led by Robin Morgan, protested the annual Miss America pagent in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The movement continued throughout the next decade.

Chicano Movement

Socially, the Chicano Movement addressed what it perceived to be negative ethnic stereotype of Mexicans in mass media and the American consciousness. It did so through the creation of works of literary and visual art that validated the Mexican-American ethnicity and culture.