1960s

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Millennia:	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 which occurred roughly during the years 1958-1974 in the west, particularly Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Italy and West Germany. Social and political upheaval was not limited to these countries, but included such nations as Japan, Mexico, the United States, and others. In the United States, The Sixties as they are known in popular culture today lasted from about 1963 to 1973. 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 labelled 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]

[edit] Assassinations

The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated by Belgian/Congolese firing squad on January 17, 1961.
Medgar Evers, a NAACP field secretary, was assassinated by a Ku Klux Klan member on June 12, 1963.
Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem (Ngô Ðình Diệm) was assassinated in the back of an APC November 2, 1963.
US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in his car during a parade, JFK assassination for more details.
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968.
Social activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Fred Hampton, was assassinated in December, 1969.

[edit] Social and political movements

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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"--they were the more serious protesters with a real cause.

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

The Chicano Movement also addressed discrimination in public and private institutions. Early in the twentieth century, Mexican Americans formed organizations to protect themselves from discrimination. One of those organizations, the League of United Latin American Citizens, was formed in 1929 and remains active today.^[3]

The movement gained momentum after World War II when groups such as the American G.I. Forum, which was formed by returning Mexican American veterans, joined in the efforts by other civil rights organizations.^[4]

Mexican American civil rights activists achieved several major legal victories including the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster Supreme Court ruling which declared that segregating children of "Mexican and Latin descent" was unconstitutional and the 1954 Hernandez v. Texas ruling which declared that Mexican Americans and other racial groups in the United States were entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.^[5]^[6]

The most prominent civil rights organization in the Mexican-American community is the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), founded in 1968.^[7] Although modeled after the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF has also taken on many of the functions of other organizations, including political advocacy and training of local leaders.

[edit] New Left

The rapid rise of a "New Left" applied the class perspective of Marxism to postwar America, but had little organizational connection with older Marxist organizations such as the Communist Party, and even went as far as to reject organized labor as the basis of a unified left-wing movement. The New Left differed from the traditional left in its resistance to dogma and its emphasis on personal as well as societal change. SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) became the organizational focus of the New Left and was the prime mover behind the opposition to the War in Vietnam. The sixties left also consisted of ephemeral campus-based Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist groups, some of which by the end of the 1960s had turned to militancy.

[edit] Technology

The Soviet Union and the United States were involved in the space race. This led to an increase in spending on science and technology during this period. The space race heated up when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth and President Kennedy announced Project Apollo in 1961. The Soviets and Americans were then involved in a race to put a man on the Moon before the decade was over. America won the race when it placed the first men on the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, in July 1969.

American automobiles evolved through the stream-lined, jet-inspired designs for sports cars such as the Pontiac GTO and the Plymouth Barracuda, Ford Mustang, and the Chevrolet Corvette.

1960 - The female birth control contraceptive, the pill, was released
1960 - The first working laser was demonstrated in May by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.
1961 - First human spaceflight to orbit the Earth: Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1.
1962 - First trans-Atlantic satellite broadcast via the Telstar satellite.
1962 - The first computer video game, Spacewar!, is invented.
1963 - The first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2 is launched.
1963 - Touch-Tone telephones introduced.
1964 - The first successful Minicomputer, Digital Equipment Corporation’s 12-bit PDP-8, is marketed.
1964 - The programming language BASIC was created.
1965 - Sony markets the CV-2000, the first home video tape recorder.
1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1967 - First heart transplantation operation.
1967 - PAL and SECAM broadcast color TV systems start publicly transmitting in Europe.
1967 - The first minibank is opened in Barclays Bank, London.
1968 - First humans to leave Earth's gravity influence and orbit another world: Apollo 8.
1968 - The first public demonstration of the computer mouse, the paper paradigm Graphical user interface, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, and hypertext.
1969 - Arpanet, the research-oriented prototype of the Internet, was introduced.
1969 - First humans to walk on the Moon: Apollo 11.
1969 - CCD invented at AT&T Bell Labs, used as the electronic imager in still and video cameras.

[edit] Popular culture

The overlapping, but somewhat different, movement of youth cultural radicalism was 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 sub-culture, associated with this movement, spread the recreational use of cannabis and other drugs, particularly new semi-synthetic drugs such as LSD. The era heralded the rejection and a reformation by hippies of traditional Christian notions on spirituality, leading to the widespread introduction of Eastern and ethnic religious thinking to western values and concepts concerning one's religious and spiritual development. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were popularly used medicinally, spiritually and recreationally throughout the 1960s. Psychedelic influenced the music, artwork and movies of the decade.

[edit] Music

Popular music entered an era of "all hits", as numerous artists released recordings, beginning in the 1950s, as 45-rpm "singles" (with another on the flip side), and radio stations tended to play only the most popular of the wide variety of records being made. Also, bands tended to record only the best of their songs as a chance to become a hit record. The developments of the Motown Sound, "folk rock" and the British Invasion of bands from the U.K. (The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones and so on), are major examples of American listeners expanding from the folksinger, doo-wop and saxophone sounds of the 1950s and evolving to include psychedelic music.

The rise of the counterculture, particularly among the youth, created a huge market for rock, soul, pop and blues music produced by drug-culture, influenced bands such as The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix Experience, and The Incredible String Band, also for radical music in the folk tradition pioneered by Bob Dylan, The Mamas and the Papas, and Joan Baez in the United States, and in England, Donovan was helping to create folk rock.

Significant events in music in the 1960s:

Motown Record Corporation founded in 1960. Its first Top Ten hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot 100, and was Motown's first million-selling record.
The Marvelettes scored Motown Record Corporation's first US #1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman" in 1961. Motown would score 110 Billboard Top-Ten hits during its run.
The Four Seasons released 4 straight number 1s
The Beatles went to America in 1964, spearheading the first British Invasion.
The Supremes scored twelve number one hit singles between 1964 and 1969, beginning with Where Did Our Love Go.
Bob Dylan goes electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds in 1966, ushering in the era of album-orientated rock.
Bob Dylan is called "Judas" by an audience member during the legendary Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, the start of the Bootleg recording industry follows, with recordings of this concert circulating for 30 years – wrongly labeled as – The Royal Albert Hall Concert before a legitimate release in 1998 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert.
In February of 1966, Nancy Sinatra's song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" became very popular.
In 1966, The Supremes A' Go-Go was the first album by a female group to reach the top position of the Billboard magazine pop albums chart in the United States.
Jefferson Airplane release the influential Surrealistic Pillow in 1967.
The Velvet Underground release their influential self-titled debut albumThe Velvet Underground and Nico in 1967.
The Doors release their self-tilted debut album The Doors.
Love release their masterpiece Forever Changes in 1967.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience release two successful albums during 1967 Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques.
The Beatles release the seminal concept album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967.
The Moody Blues release the album Days of Future Passed in November 1967.
Pink Floyd releases their debut record The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Bob Dylan releases the Country Rock album John Wesley Harding in December 1967.
The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 was the apex of the so-called "Summer of Love".
Johnny Cash releases At Folsom Prison in 1968
After The Yardbirds had folded, Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, met with Robert Plant and they together with John Bonham and John Paul Jones called themselves Led Zeppelin and released their début album Led Zeppelin.
The Band releases the roots rock album Music from Big Pink in 1968.
Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin as lead singer, becomes an overnight sensation after their performance at Monterey Pop in 1967 and release their massively successful second album Cheap Thrills in 1968.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience release the highly influential double LP Electric Ladyland in 1968 that furthered the guitar and studio innovations of the previous two albums.
Sly and the Family Stone revolutionize black music with their massive 1968 hit single Dance to the Music and by 1969 became international sensations with the release of their phenomenal hit record Stand!. The band cemented their position as a vital counterculture band when they performed at the Woodstock Festival.
The Rolling Stones film the TV special Rock and Roll Circus in December 1968 which was never broadcast during its contemporary time. Considered for decades as a fabled 'lost' performance until released in North America on Laserdisc and VHS in 1995. Features performances from The Who; The Dirty Mac featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell; Jethro Tull and Taj Mahal.
The Who release and tour the first rock opera Tommy in 1969.
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band release the avant garde Trout Mask Replica in 1969.
The Stooges release their debut album in 1969.
The Flying Burrito Brothers release their influential debut The Gilded Palace Of Sin in 1969.
The Woodstock Festival, and four months later, the Altamont Free Concert in 1969.

[edit] Film

See also: History of film#1960s and 1960s in film

The Counterculture Revolution had a big effect on cinema. Movies began to break social taboos such as sex and violence causing both controversy and fascination. They turned increasingly dramatic, unbalanced, and hectic as the cultural revolution was starting. This was the beginning of the New Hollywood era that dominated the next decade in theatres and revolutionized the movie industry. Films such as Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (film) (1968) are examples of this new, edgy direction. Films of this time also focused on the changes happening in the world. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969) focused on the drug culture of the time. Movies also became more sexually explicit, such as Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) as the counterculture progressed.

In Europe, Art Cinema gains wider distribution and sees movements like la Nouvelle Vague (The French New Wave); Cinéma Vérité documentary movement in Canada, France and the United States; and the high-point of Italian filmmaking with Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Pier Paulo Pasolini making some of their most known films during this period. Notable films from this period include: 8½; L'avventura; La notte; Blowup; Satyricon; Accattone; The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Theorem; Breathless;Vivre sa vie; Contempt; Bande à part; Alphaville; Pierrot le fou; Week End; Shoot the Piano Player; Jules and Jim; Fahrenheit 451;Last Year at Marienbad;Dont Look Back; Chronique d'un été; Titicut Follies; High School; Salesman; La Jetée; Warrendale

The sixties were about experimentation. With the explosion of light-weight and affordable cameras, the underground avant-garde film movement thrived. Canada's Michael Snow, Americans Kenneth Anger. Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, and Jack Smith. Notable films in this genre are: Dog Star Man; Scorpio Rising; Wavelength; Chelsea Girls;Blow Job; Vinyl; Flaming Creatures.

Significant events in the film industry in the 1960s:

Removal of the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code in 1967.
The decline and end of the Studio System.
The rise of 'art house' films and theaters.
The beginning of the New Hollywood Era due to the counterculture.
The rise of independent producers that worked outside of the Studio System.
Move to all-color production in Hollywood movies.
The invention of the Nagra 1/4", sync-sound, portable open-reel tape deck.
Expo 67 where new film formats like Imax were invented and new ways of displaying film were tested.
Flat-bed film editing tables appear, like the Steenbeck, they eventually replace the Moviola editing platform.
The French New Wave.
Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité documentaries....

[edit] Music and Film

The marriage of music and movies keeps the spirit of the sixties alive today. Movies about the era are incredibly popular. The Vietnam War is the topic most often considered, with movies like Apocalypse Now; Platoon; and Born on the Fourth of July. The influence of the counterculture and Civil Rights is common as well, as seen in movies like Across the Universe; Forrest Gump; and Malcolm X. The subject material of sixties movies is coupled with, and improved by, the music of the era. The integration of the music into a movie makes it seem more realistic and true to the time period.

[edit] International issues

[edit] In Africa

The transformation of Africa from colonialism to independence in what is know as the decolonisation of Africa dramatically accelerated during the decade, with 32 new countries declaring independence between 1960 and 1968.

[edit] In Canada

Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary of Confederation in 1967 by hosting Expo 67, the World's Fair, in Montreal, Quebec.
The Quiet Revolution in Quebec altered the province into a more secular society. The Jean Lesage Liberal government created a welfare state (État-Providence) and fermented the rise of active nationalism among Francophone Québécois.
On February 15, 1965, Canada got the new maple leaf flag, after much acrimonious debate known as the Great Flag Debate.
In 1960, The Canadian Bill of Rights becomes law, and Universal Suffrage, the right for any Canadian citizen to vote, is finally adopted by John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government. The new election act allows first nations people to vote for the first time.

[edit] In China

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 both in China and America, however, saw the Nixon visit as a victory in the relationship between US and China(this was the Party stance on the visit in late 1971 and early 1972).

[edit] In the Commonwealth

Australia and New Zealand committed troops to the Vietnam war with controversy and war protests. Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary of confederation in 1967 by hosting Expo 67, the World's Fair, in Montreal, Quebec.

[edit] In Europe

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivers his Wind of Change speech in 1960.
Pope John XXIII calls the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, continued by Pope Paul VI, which met from Oct. 11, 1962 until Dec. 8, 1965.
The May 1968 student and worker uprisings in France.
Mass socialist 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 student revolt of 1968 in Paris that linked up with a general strike of ten million workers called by the trade unions;and for a few days seemed capable of overthrowing the government of Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle went off to visit French troops in Germany to check on their loyalty. Major concessions were won for trade union rights, higher minimum wages and better working conditions.
University students protested in their hundreds of thousands in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome with the huge crowds that protested against the Vietnam War.

[edit] In Eastern Europe

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.

[edit] In Mexico

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 sprung 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 protested against the authoritarian regime of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz: in the resulting Tlatelolco massacre in which hundreds were killed.

The October 2, 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, of student protesters and uninvolved bystanders, by the Mexican military and police.

[edit] In the Middle East

Military troops from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan amass at Israeli borders in May and June of 1967. Israeli Defense Forces launch a pre-emptive attack on June 5th, 1967 capturing the Golan Heights, West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, and Gaza Strip, culminating in the Six Day War.

[edit] In South America

The Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara travelled to Africa and then Bolivia in his campaigning to spread worldwide revolution. He was killed in 1967 by Bolivian government forces, but in the process became an iconic figure for the student left.
Velasco Alvarado took the power of Peru in the year 1968.

[edit] In the United States

President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson take office in 1961; Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
Substantial (approximately 700), American forces first arrive in Vietnam in 1961.
1963 - After Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson becomes president, and presses civil rights legislation; college attendance soars. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Vietnam War escalates. After 1966 with the draft in place more than 500,000 troops are sent to Vietnam by the Johnson administration.
U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated in January 1969; promises "peace with honor" to end the Vietnam War; price inflation soars; Nixon imposes wage and price controls.
1963 - Martin Luther King's,"I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C.
1965- The Assassination of Malcolm X
1968- The Assassination of Martin Luther King

[edit] People

[edit] Artists, intellectuals, political figures, writers and the rest

[edit] Artists in the media

[edit] Intellectuals

[edit] Political figures

[edit] Writers

[edit] Visual artists, painters and sculptors

[edit] Miscellaneous

[edit] Sports

There were six Olympics held during the decade. These were:

1960 XVII Summer Olympics — Rome, Italy
1960 VIII Winter Olympics — Squaw Valley, USA
1964 XVIII Summer Olympics — Tokyo, Japan
1964 IX Winter Olympics — Innsbruck, Austria
1968 XIX Summer Olympics — Mexico City, Mexico
1968 X Winter Olympics — Grenoble, France

There were two FIFA World Cups during the decade:

1962 FIFA World Cup — Chile (winner Brazil)
1966 FIFA World Cup — England (winner England)

The ten European Cup winners during the decade were:

* First British club to win the European Cup, Celtic triumphed over Internazionale 2-1 in a stunning victory. See European Cup 1966-67 or Lisbon Lions.

The ten Formula One World Championship Winners were:

1960 — Jack Brabham
1961 — Phil Hill
1962 — Graham Hill
1963 — Jim Clark
1964 — John Surtees
1965 — Jim Clark
1966 — Jack Brabham
1967 — Denny Hulme
1968 — Graham Hill
1969 — Jackie Stewart