A detailed look at black, African-American, culture during the "Sixties". (1960-1969)

1. Overview
2. "The Sixties": the counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling – or - irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order.
3. Also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time.
4. Also described as a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where 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.
5. The confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union dominated geopolitics during the '60s, with the struggle expanding into developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia characterized by proxy wars, funding of insurgencies, and puppet governments.
6. In response to civil disobedience campaigns from groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), U.S. President John F. Kennedy, pushed for social reforms. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was a shock.
7. Liberal reforms were finally passed under Lyndon B. Johnson including civil rights for African Americans· and healthcare for the elderly and the poor. Despite his large-scale Great Society programs, Johnson was increasingly reviled. The heavy-handed American role in the Vietnam War outraged student protestors around the globe.
8. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-Vietnam War movement, and the police response towards protesters of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, defined a politics of violence in the United States.

The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations:

1. 12 June 1963 – Medgar Evers, an NAACP field secretary. Assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson, Mississippi.
2. 22 November 1963 – John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
3. 21 February 1965 – Malcolm X. Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in New York City. There is a dispute about which members killed Malcolm X.
4. 4 April 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader. Assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
5. 5 June 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator. Assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, after taking California in the presidential national primaries.

1. Social and political movements (counterculture)
2. Flower Power/Hippies

In the second half of the decade, young people began to revolt against the conservative norms of the time. The youth involved in the popular social aspects of the movement became known as hippies. These groups created a movement toward liberation in society, including the sexual revolution, questioning authority and government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women and minorities. The movement was also marked by the first widespread, socially accepted drug use (including LSD and marijuana) and psychedelic music.

1. Anti-war movement

The war in Vietnam would eventually lead to a commitment of over half a million American troops, resulting in over 58,500 American deaths and producing a large-scale antiwar movement in the United States.

Students became a powerful and disruptive force and university campuses sparked a national debate over the war.

The antiwar movement was heavily influenced by the American Communist Party, but by the mid-1960s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centered in universities and churches: one kind of protes