From the burning monk of Vietnam to the JFK assassination, these powerful images remain seared into the American consciousness today.
Each new decade in American history has brought substantial societal change. The Roaring Twenties, despite the years of Prohibition, was a great time of prosperity that yielded major advancements in technology, music, and equality for women. Of course, it was then succeeded by the Great Depression, which brought its own major changes to society.
The same could be said of any decade in American history, really, but few had quite the same impact as the 1960s. It was clear when future president John F. Kennedy remarked during his 1960 campaign that the United States was about to usher in the “New Frontier” that big things were on the horizon. Unfortunately for Kennedy, he wasn’t around to see most of it. After his assassination in 1963, the United States and the new president Lyndon B. Johnson became more heavily involved in the Vietnam War, simultaneously kickstarting widespread anti-war protests and calls for peace.
At the same time, Johnson’s plans for a “Great Society” saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, as well as the start of Medicare and Medicaid programs to give people “a hand up, not a handout.”
There was, of course, still a substantial amount of civil unrest, and the countercultural revolution was one response to it, with hippies promoting “free love,” recreational drug use, and wild music festivals — all while strongly rejecting mainstream American culture and authority. Amidst this era came the British Invasion and, eventually, the conclusion to the Space Race, when the United States put mankind on the Moon.
Take a look back through the 1960s in our photo gallery below.
Guevara helped carry out that revolution before attempting to foment similar uprisings elsewhere around the world, which helped make him an enemy of the U.S. Eventually, in 1967, C.I.A.-assisted Bolivian forces captured Guevara in Bolivia and executed him.Alberto Korda/Wikimedia Commons
Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, who was riding in the front seat of the president's car, turned around and said, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you."
President Kennedy then spoke his last words: "No, you certainly can't."
Seconds later, the fatal shot was fired.Wikimedia Commons
On July 12, 1967, an act of police brutality against a Black American man in Newark, New Jersey sparked riots throughout the city that would last for six days and leave 26 dead and hundreds injured.-/AFP/Getty Images
Pictured: Kennedy (right), Monroe, and Kennedy's brother Robert backstage just after Monroe's performance. This is one of the few photos of Monroe and Kennedy together.Wikimedia Commons
Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed and both sides agreed to back their nuclear weapons farther away from the enemy's borders.
Pictured: A U.S. Navy aircraft flies above a Soviet freighter carrying two bomber planes in late 1962.Wikimedia Commons
In Berlin, Kennedy hoped to underline U.S. support for all people on the non-communist side of the world's great political divide, famously declaring "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a citizen of Berlin"), which many incorrectly mistranslated as Kennedy proclaiming himself to be a jelly doughnut.AFP/Getty Images
Artists like these had come to represent the voice of both the younger generation and highlight the plight of nation's oppressed through verse — a trend that would only grow as the decade went on.Wikimedia Commons
The suit remains out of public view in the National Archives in Maryland, together with an unsigned note reading "Jackie's suit and bag worn Nov. 22, 1963" until at least 2103. Its precise location is kept a secret. It was never cleaned. Wikimedia Commons
Ruby told several witnesses immediately after shooting Oswald that he was trying to help the city of Dallas "redeem" itself in the public's eye, and spare "...Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial."Wikimedia Commons
As Martin Luther King Jr. (left) was leaving a news conference, Malcolm X (right) stepped out of the crowd, extended his hand, and smiled.
"Well, Malcolm, good to see you," King said.
"Good to see you," X replied.
The gaggle of photographers surrounding the men took photos to immortalize the historic moment that lasted all of about one minute.Wikimedia Commons
The famous 1965 Mondrian Collection by French designer Yves Saint Laurent took an innovative approach to fashion by combining classical Western forms with the aesthetics of modernist fine art.
Today, some of these dresses themselves are displayed at museums around the world.AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. had just begun bombing operations and troop deployment in Vietnam, for the first time escalating in earnest the conflict that would make the 1960s a truly bloody decade.AFP/Getty Images
Ali's courage both in and out of the ring would come to define the decade. -/AFP/Getty Images
To contain the riots, the LAPD needed nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard. In total, the riots resulted in 34 deaths and $40 million in property damage.Wikimedia Commons
While they differed in approach, the two held each other in high esteem. As King later wrote of Johnson: "His approach to the problem of civil rights was not identical with mine — nor had I expected it to be. Yet his careful practicality was, nonetheless, clearly no mask to conceal indifference. His emotional and intellectual involvement was genuine and devoid of adornment. It was conspicuous that he was searching for a solution to a problem he knew to be a major shortcoming in American life."Wikimedia Commons
After a failed career as a pornographer in Mexico, Ray had returned to the U.S. — where he was wanted for escaping prison — to take dance and bartending lessons before purportedly setting in motion his plan to kill King.
Ultimately, Ray's crimes earned him 99 years in prison, where he died in 1998 at age 70.Wikimedia Commons
Washington, D.C. (pictured) saw the worst of it. Over the five days following King's death, rioters burned more than 1,000 buildings, causing about $27 million in damage and prompting President Johnson to call in 13,600 federal troops.Wikimedia Commons
Pictured: American soldiers burn a Viet Cong base in My Tho on April 5, 1968.NATIONAL ARCHIVES/AFP/Getty Images
The surprise attack on nearly 100 targets in South Vietnam marked a turning point in favor of the communists.AFP/Getty Images
Pictured: Demonstrators rally outside the White House.AFP/AFP/Getty Images
In the end, Soviet forces withdrew and granted Czechoslovakia some freedoms, but the country nevertheless remained under Soviet control, with future leaders tightening back up the restrictions that had been briefly loosened in 1968.AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Shepard became the first American, and the second person ever, to travel into space. He was also the first to manually control a spacecraft.Wikimedia Commons
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy five years earlier, many took the killing of his brother as a sign that, by 1968, the U.S. had truly reached its breaking point.Wikimedia Commons
Soon after debuting in 1967, the revolutionary production — noted for its controversial use of rock music, its embrace of the sexual revolution, and portrayal of drug use — became a cultural touchstone of the era whose legacy lives on to this day.STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images
Decades of LGBTQ mistreatment helped fuel what transpired at Stonewall. Soon after the riots, activist groups formed in New York and around the country, and today the event is widely recognized as the start of the LGBTQ rights movement in the U.S.Wikimedia Commons
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edward "Buzz" Aldrin (pictured) walked the surface of the moon for two minutes and 34 seconds — and in that brief time, made history like few others before or since.NASA/AFP/Getty Images
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair ran from August 15 to August 18, 1969, but its impact reverberates to this day.Wikimedia Commons
Civil Rights, Second-Wave Feminism, And Societal Uprising In 1960s America
The 1960s certainly had a lot going on, but the campaign for civil rights and the ongoing fights for equality for women and Black Americans were definitely prominent themes throughout the decade.
Of course, both of these movements had been a long time in the making. Black Americans had been seeking fair and equal treatment since the time of the Civil War (though, if we're being honest, that fight long predates the war itself), and women had been making great strides toward equality since the suffrage movement and the passage of the 19th Amendment. As history proved, however, these initial movements were nothing more than mere stepping stones on the path to a much larger fight.
For decades, the United States had been operating under Jim Crow laws, especially in the South. These discriminatory laws kept Black and white Americans segregated and theoretically provided "separate but equal" facilities for each race. They were, of course, anything but equal. Major headway was made in 1954 after the landmark decision by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, which formally declared that racial segregation of children in American public schools was unconstitutional.
Science History Images/Alamy Stock PhotoA week after the "Greensboro Four" staged a sit-in protest at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, similar protests began across the country.
Still, there was much work to be done. Private businesses still enacted discriminatory segregation policies, and racism was rampant throughout the nation. People were understandably fed up. Countless Black Americans rose up, banded together, and protested these discriminatory practices, leading to what became known as the civil rights movement, which yielded prominent leaders and activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Eventually, the Civil Rights Act and the subsequent Voting Rights Act were put in place to further prohibit segregation and racial discrimination — massive victories for the movement that, unfortunately, still couldn't eliminate racism, poverty, or other issues that plagued Black communities.
At the same time, young women had been captivated by a book titled The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which has widely been credited with kickstarting the second wave of feminism in the United States. Frustrated with the slow progress of reform, members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other groups also became more outspoken and, in some cases, more "radical" in their approach to protests and demonstrations.
Meanwhile, the United States was becoming more heavily involved in the Vietnam War, eventually leading to a draft, sparking further protests and debate about whether Americans should be fighting in Vietnam at all. Opposition to the Vietnam War only grew as it continued on, with many young men attempting to dodge the draft in any way they could. For many Americans, this period of civil unrest was a part of daily life.
However, others reacted in a different way. To them, it seemed that everyone was too angry, too politically dialed-in. They sought an escape, and so they chose to effectively leave society behind, growing their hair out, living in communes, and singing songs about peace and love. Most people knew them as "hippies," but this reaction eventually became a sort of movement of its own, known as the countercultural revolution. And some hippies did participate in protests, especially those against the Vietnam War.
The Countercultural Revolution, Hippies, And The Ongoing Rejection Of Societal Norms
To try and describe the counterculture movement succinctly would be a Herculean task. At its core, it was a broad-ranging movement that generally rejected traditional authorities and societal conventions while often advocating for peace, love, social justice, and revolution. The specifics of how people chose to embody this philosophy varied, but common attributes applied to the movement included recreational drug use, a rejection of consumerism, communal living, political protests, "free love" (including casual sex), and a deep interest in folk and rock music.
Public DomainAmerican psychologist Timothy Leary, an outspoken advocate of LSD in the 1960s.
The eccentric psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary summed up the philosophy of the movement famously at the Human Be-In gathering in San Fransisco's Golden Gate Park in 1967 when he said, "Like every great religion, we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out."
One part of Leary's speech, "turn on, tune in, drop out," became a sort of rallying cry for the movement. The message resonated strongly with young people, particularly students, who simultaneously wanted to express their outrage toward government institutions and societal injustices through protests, while also enjoying sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
Followers of the movement often aligned themselves with the music of bands and artists like the Grateful Dead, The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana, Bob Dylan, and The Who, among other iconic artists.
Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock PhotoA couple holding each other as others sleep on the grass at Woodstock in 1969.
The most famous example of this was easily Woodstock, a three-day festival in 1969 held in Sullivan County, New York. Though Woodstock was largely peaceful, another event called the Altamont Speedway Free Concert was not. Event organizers made the infamous decision to hire the Hells Angels as security, a member of which fatally stabbed a Black teenager named Meredith Hunter after he'd gotten into an altercation with them, which involved Hunter pointing a gun at them while The Rolling Stones performed.
Looking back on the incident years later, the Associated Press wrote that it "shattered the dream of a utopian counterculture for the '60s generation."
The End Of The 1960s After The Free-Spirited "Summer Of Love"
The 1960s were nothing if not turbulent. Civil unrest, numerous high-profile assassinations, and a general sense of disillusionment with political institutions were all the result of an equal combination of frustration and optimism — frustration that progress had remained stagnant for so long, and optimism that people could build a better tomorrow.
When the United States put mankind on the Moon on July 20, 1969, it was one of the last few celebratory moments of the decade. Before long, the counterculture movement began to fade away, and many of the free love communes degraded into crime-ridden dens of drug addiction.
World History Archive/Alamy Stock PhotoU.S. President Richard Nixon delivering his inaugural address.
By the fall of 1969, massive anti-war protests and marches had broken out across the United States, with more than 500,000 people marching in Washington, D.C. on November 15th alone. In conjunction with several notorious violent incidents — such as the Manson family murders — it soon became clear that the ideas of peace and love were a far-off dream.
The optimism that had proliferated throughout the beginning of the decade had turned to pessimism. Some civil rights activists began to focus more on the Black Power movement, pushing for more radical, rapid, and immediate change — even if that sometimes meant disregarding the more peaceful and nonviolent message of the earlier civil rights movement.
Some members of the women's liberation movement also became more militant, and in the final year of the decade, the Stonewall riots marked one of the first significant moments that members of the LGBTQ community openly rebelled against a police raid of a gay establishment.
It was as Bob Dylan said: "The times, they are a-changin'."
Next, check out these amazing images of San Francisco at the height of hippie power. Then, explore the Goa hippie movement, when American and European hippies briefly fled the West for a tiny Indian state.
