The
Swinging Sixties was a fascinating decade marked by massive social
upheaval, emergence of new subcultures, and political movements.
When asked to sumarize the sixties most people would say “'The
Beatles'”!
Which wouldn't be wrong, nor would it be completely correct. Sure, it
was one of music's defining ages. The
Rolling Stones
were cool to say the least; the ballads of Mick Jagger are still as
popular today if not more so. Yes, The
Beatles
mop tops drove all the girls crazy and who could forget Jimmy
Hendrix's performance of 'The
Star Spangled Banner'
at Woodstock?
It is a decade commonly viewed through nostalgic rose tinted glasses;
giving off the impression that it was just one long ten year LSD trip
sprinkled with episodes of 'I
Dream of Jeannie'.
If you take away pop culture, drugs, sex and rock and roll; you are
left asking yourself this question: “What really defined this
generation, what made it so great”?
On
November 14,1960, Ruby Bridges was one of six African American
students to attend an all white school in New Orleans. This incited a
tidal wave of anger; Ruby had to be esccorted to and from school by
U.S Marshalls (assigned to her by President Eisenhower) amid racial
slurs and taunts. Norman Rockwell importalized this event I his
painting 'The
Problem We All Live With'.
This propagated the message that predjudice would not be tolerated;
black and white students would have the right to learn equally.
Man
has always had the disire to explore; going further than ever thought
possible, testing boundries and limits. September 12, 1962, John F.
Kennedy (the United States first Catholic President and the youngest
president at that time) gave his famous 'Man
on the Moon'
speech. “What
was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be
the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space.”-J.
F. K. With that, the
space race had begun; it was now only a matter of time before man set
foot on the moon 240,000 miles away. A little over a year later on
November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas
Texas. July 20,1969 six years after his assasination of JFK, Apollo
landed on the moon. At 20:18 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) Buzz
Aldrin and Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon, accepting
and completeing John F. Kennedy's callenge to put man on the moon
before the decade was over. 720 million people around the globe tuned
in to watch the event live. “One small step for man, one giant leap
for mankind,” will always be unanimously associated with Apollo 12
landing on the moon.
Huge
strides were made in the medical world in the 1960's. During the
1950's the Polio Virus rose to an epademic state with more than
21,000 cases reported. In 1962 the first Polio Vaccine was liscensed.
Between 1962-1965 about 100 million Americans received the Sabin
Vaccine. We owe a great many medical breakthroughs to this
decade.This was the decade that birth control was finally made
available to the public, CPR (1960), Measles Vaccine (1964) and the
Mumps Vaccine (1967) were invented. Many of the medical treatments we
take for granted now would not have been possible if it were not for
the medical pioneers of the 1960's. Because of these medical
miracles; the expected lifespan has jumped to around 80 years today,
compared to the expected lifespan of the 1960's which was 66.6 years.
In
1963 the Bank of Freedom was severly langushing, something had to be
done. African Americans of the nation came together to make sure that
freedom and the rights liberty were being fairly distributed. Leading
one if the greatest demontrations of all time was Martin Luther King
Jr. On August, 28 1963, Martin Luther King addressed a stagering
250,000 civil rights supporters at the Lincoln Memorial. “I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the
content of their character.” -MLK. In 1964, after much blood had
been spilled over the issue; the Civil Rights Act passed in the U.S.
Stating equal treatment across the board. No longer would citizens of
the United States be discriminated against because of the color of
their skin. Tradgically in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was
assasinated. Far from stoping the cause he fought for, his death
helped to solidfy its purpose. We live in a different world today
because of a selfless man who died for his dream.
1969
was a big year of accomplishments that would lay the ground work for
many things we take for granted in the twenty first century. First we
put man on the moon, then in the same year the precurser to the
internet was invented, it was called the Intergalactic Computer
Network. Later the name was changed to ARPANET (Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network). Not many people today know that fact off
the top of their heads. With our Starbucks caffeine fix and free
wifi, it is hard to remember a time when the Internet did not exist.
In the 1960's, the internet was a thing of the future; a brain child
of a far distant time. This invention changed how we as humans do
everything today, from check our e-mail, ordering food, checking your
phone, keeping in contact with friends and loved ones. All these
things that are apart of our daily routine, would not be possible
today without the valuable technologies invented during the 1960's.
In
this fast paced world, with all the new medical treatments that are
saving lives every second of the day, technologies that make our
daily lives easier and freedoms that we all enjoy; yet not even a
fraction of thought is given to how or why we enjoy the things that
we do today. Many people boast and claim that we live in the “the
best age” with our smart phones, computers, fancy cars, I disagree.
The 1960's was a time of major discovery and change. If you compare
the strides that were made during that decade to the discoveries in
the following decade, there really is no comparison. No other decade
since has dramatically changed from beginning to end. The 1960's was
probably the last decade where hard work was really valued and truly
appreciated. In order to achieve something you wanted, to be where
you wanted to be you had to put in the hard work to get there; there
were no shortcuts.
