Dreaming in the 1960s
In 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said his most famous words: "I have a dream." He was not the only one who felt this way. For many, the 1960s was a decade in which their dreams about America might be fulfilled. For Martin Luther King Jr., this was a dream of a truly equal America; for John F. Kennedy, it was a dream of a young vigorous nation that would put a man on the moon; and for the hippy movement, it was one of love, peace, and freedom. The 1960s was a tumultuous decade of social and political upheaval. We are still confronting many social issues that were addressed in the 1960s today. In spite of the turmoil, there were some positive results, such as the civil rights revolution. However, many outcomes were negative: student antiwar protest movements, political assassinations, and ghetto riots excited American people and resulted in a lack of respect for authority and the law. The first president during the 1960s was John F. Kennedy. He was young, appealing, and had a carefully crafted public image that barely won him the election. Because former President Eisenhower supported the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, and because many had doubts about Kennedy's youth and Catholic
religion, Kennedy only received three-tenths of one percent more of the popular vote than Nixon. The first thing Kennedy did during his brief presidency was to try to restore the nation's economy. Economic growth was slow in 1961 when Kennedy entered the White house. The President initiated a series of tariff negotiations to stimulate exports and proposed a federal tax cut to help the economy internally. Besides the Civil Rights movement, there was another important movement during the 1960s: the Student Movement. Youthful Americans were outraged by the intolerance of their universities, racial inequality, social injustice, and the Vietnam War. The Student Movement led to the hippy culture. This movemt marked another response to the decade as the young experimented with ,usic, clothes, drugs, and a counter-culture lifestyle. Hippies preached altruism, mysticism, honesty, joy, and nonviolence. In 1969, they held the famous Woodstock Festival for peace in New York, a three day concert that emphasized their beliefs. However, not all events during the sixties hindered the country's progress. At the end of 1968, Americans became the first human beings to reach the moon. Seven months later, they were the first to actually walk on the moon. Their telecast gave earthbound viewers an unforgettable site. The austronauts looking at the moon were even more amazed. "The vast loneliness up here is awe-inspiring," said austronaut Lovell. "It makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth" (http://www.ksc.nasa.gov, see appendix B). Advances were also made in medicine and health. The medical introduction of the "pill" changed the interaction between the sexes dramtically in 1964. Americans discovered that the freedom from fear of unwanted pregnancy went hand in hand with other kinds of sexual freedom. The sixties became an era in which pleasure was being considered as a constitutional right rather than a privalege, inwhich self-denial became increasingly seen as foolish rather than virtuous. Each pill contains one thirty-thousandth of an ouce of chemical, but it changed the sex and family lives of a large segment of the American population. Another type of chemical, chemical pestisides, were also important in the 1960s. A book written by Rachel Carson described for the first time the dangers of using pesticides. Carson believed that the poisonous chemicals were taking a dreadful toll, and that the only way to fix the situation was to "let the balance of nature take care of the number of insects" (Carson 17). Another poisonous chemical was being used on humans. Mistakes made in the past caused a great deal of health problems to children around the world when it was discovered that using a tranquilizer called thalidomide caused severe birth defects. Babies were born with hands and feet like flippers, attached to the body with little or no arm or leg. Every compound drug containing the sedative was taken off the market. The Kennedy assassination touched everyone around the world. In Canada, for example, Eaton's Company put full-page advertisements in newspapers such as The Hamilton Spectator saying, "With all Canada and the World, we share the shock and grief inflicted by the tragic death of a great statesman and a great hero" (see appendix A
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Approximate Word count = 2231
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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