More than 400,000 attend a three-day rock festival at Woodstock in upstate New York.
The New York Times reports that the United States is “torn by dissent” over the issue of sex education in public schools.
The First National Moratorium Day observance draws thousands of people to protest the Vietnam War, including many members of the middle class; Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leads 45,000 in a candlelight parade past the White House.
Vice President Spiro Agnew labels anti-war demonstrators as “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals”; a poll shows that 55 percent of Americans responding sympathize with the protesters.
Lieutenant William Calley Jr. is charged with the murders of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women, and children at the village of My Lai.
In the largest anti-war demonstration to date, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam attracts 800,000 mostly white, middle-class people to protest in Washington, D.C.
Sesame Street premieres.
Movies include: I am Curious (Yellow), Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, and Easy Rider.
Oh! Calcutta, the first nude musical, opens.
The Selective Service System conducts the first draft lottery since 1942.
President Nixon announces the third American troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, bringing the total withdrawal to 115,000.
1970
The first Earth Day (April 22) symbolizes the emerging environmental movement; an estimated 30 million Americans protest the pollution of the environment in the largest demonstration in history.
An American offensive into Cambodia triggers a wave of protests around the country; at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen kill four students and wound nine others in 15 seconds of gunfire.
Between 60,000 and 100,000 demonstrators peacefully gather in Washington, D.C., to protest the Cambodian incursion.
A noontime rally in New York City draws an estimated 60,000 to 150,000 construction workers, longshoremen, and others who support White House policy in Vietnam.
Police fire into a crowd of students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, killing two students and wounding twelve; a federal grand jury fails to return any indictments.
The Environmental Protection Agency is created by Congress.
The United States Commission on Campus Unrest reports that a crisis on American college campuses could threaten “the very survival of the nation.”
Hit songs include “Do the Funky Chicken” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
The Beatles disband.
Chicago YLO opens a free health clinic in the basement of the People’s Church.
YLP opens office in the Bronx.
YLP begins publishing a newspaper, Palante, and broadcasting a weekly radio program on WBAI.
The Second National Chicano Moratorium Committee demonstration takes place in L.A. with 6,000 people.
La Raza Unida Party wins four of seven seats on the Crystal City school board.
YLP seizes NYC TB testing van.
The first Colorado La Raza Unida meeting takes place at Southern Colorado State College. “Corky” Gonzáles is elected state chair.
In the Lincoln Hospital Offensive, YLP demands better services for South Bronx residents by taking over vacant building in hospital complex to run TB and lead poisoning detection programs and create a day care.
The National Chicano Moratorium Committee marches in Houston, drawing 5,000 people.
YLP opens offices on Lower East Side of Manhattan and in Philadelphia.
The third Moratorium protest in Laguna Park, with 10,000–30,000 people attending. A liquor store theft provides police with an excuse to break up the peaceable gathering. Some protesters respond by throwing things back. At the Silver Dollar Bar, Rubén Salazar is shot in the head with a tear gas missile.
More than 600 Chicano students walk out of an East Chicago, Indiana, school after the vice principal says “Mexicans are lazy and ignorant.”
L.A. County District Attorney Evelle J. Younger announces he will not prosecute Deputy Thomas Wilson for Salazar’s death.
Funeral march for Julio Roldán protesting this Young Lord’s suspicious prison death.
Second takeover of the People’s Church occurs.
March to United Nations of 10,000 people recognizing the anniversary of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
The Oakland-Berkeley chapter of La Raza Unida Party has its first meeting.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask makes the best-seller list.
Approximately 9,200 drug violations are recorded among American soldiers in Vietnam.
Since January 1, 1961, 44,241 Americans have been killed in Vietnam.
1971
Cigarette advertising is banned from television.
The number of American troops in Vietnam drops to 184,000.
Anti-war demonstrations climax in Washington, D.C., as thousands try to close down the government by disrupting city traffic.
Peace negotiations over Vietnam begin their fourth year.
The FBI Counter Intelligence Program infiltrates and provokes Chicano organizations.
The Houston Chicana Conference attracts more than 600 Chicanas from twenty-three states.
La Marcha de la Reconquista, a march from Calexico to Sacramento, begins with Rosalío Muñoz, David Sánchez, and the Brown Berets.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution, giving eighteen-year-olds the right to vote, is ratified in a record two months and seven days.
The Supreme Court, by a 6–1 margin, upholds the right of the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the “Pentagon Papers.”
1972
The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse reveals that 24 million Americans—40 percent of the eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old group—have smoked marijuana at least once.
A security guard finds burglars in the Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel complex.
In its 5–4 Furman v. Georgia decision, the Supreme Court declares the death penalty unconstitutional.
Ramsey Muñoz announces his bid for Texas governor under La Raza Unida Party banner at a press conference in San Antonio.
The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) charters the UFW, AFL-CIO.
The UFW files suit in Phoenix to bar enforcement of the new Arizona Agricultural Relations Act, which will prohibit harvest-time picketing.
The Brown Berets invade Catalina Island and take a campsite in late August, early September.
La Raza Unida Party holds its national convention in El Paso. Some 3,000 Chicanos attend. Gutiérrez beats Gonzales for the national chair in a divisive campaign that leads to the division of the LRUP into two camps.
Muñoz garners 6.2 percent of the gubernatorial vote, nearly undermining Democrat Dolph Brisco’s victory.
AIM occupies a Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washington, D.C.
Equal Rights Amendment passes House and Senate, goes to states for ratification
Phyllis Schlaffly forms “Stop ERA.”
Actress Jane Fonda makes an anti-war speech in North Vietnam, earning her the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
Ms. magazine begins publication.
Life magazine ends publication after 36 years.
President Nixon wins re-election, capturing forty-nine states.
1973
Anti-war demonstrations dampen President Nixon’s inauguration.
Worldwide energy crisis spurs economic recession in the United States.
By a 7–2 margin, the Supreme Court legalizes unrestricted abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy in Roe v. Wade.
AIM members occupy Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
President Nixon announces that Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese foreign minister Le Duc Tho have agreed in Paris “to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast
Asia.”
After fourteen years of war in Vietnam, American combat deaths number 46,226, and 10,326 noncombatant deaths.
The seven-member Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities opens televised hearings on the origin and activities related to the Watergate break-in.
An advocate of law and order, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns from office after pleading nolo contendere to charges of income tax evasion.
Representative Gerald R. Ford is sworn in as the new vice president.
A shootout with police takes place at a Chicano Crusade apartment building, Escuela Tlatelolco, next door to its headquarters.
More than 800 gay organizations have been formed to offer support and education for gay men and women.
1974
The Supreme Court rules, 9–0, that President Nixon cannot invoke executive privilege to block the release of sixty-four Watergate-related tapes to the U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica.
Nixon is the first president to resign from office.
Gerald R. Ford is sworn in as the thirty-eighth president.
The Southwest Voter Registration Education Project is established. Willie Valásquez, a former member of MAYO and La Raza Unida, becomes its director.
Raúl Castro becomes the fist Chicano governor of Arizona.
Little League baseball is opened to girls.
1975
An American airlift delivers 1,400 Amerasian orphans to the United States.
Congress denies President Ford’s request for nearly $1 billion in military and humanitarian aid for South Vietnam.
When the North Vietnamese launch a massive rocket attack on the Saigon airport, President Ford orders the remaining 1,000 Americans and 5,500 South Vietnamese evacuated to offshore ships.
South Vietnam surrenders to the North Vietnamese.
The Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act is made law, guaranteeing American Indians far more power and additional federal funds to govern their own reservations and to control their children’s education.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is extended to Hispanic Americans.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abramson, Michael, and Young Lords Party. Palante: Young Lords Party. Photographs by Michael Abramson. McGraw-Hill, NY, 1971.
Albert, Judith Clavir, and Stewart Edward Albert, eds. The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade. Praeger, 1984.
Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Anderson, Terry H. The Sixties. 2nd ed. Pearson/Longman, 2004.
Arturo, Rosales F. Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Arte Publico, 1996.
Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press, 1981.
Dickstein, Morris. Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. Basic Books, 1977.
Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Movement and the New Left. Random House, 1979.
Farber, David. The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. Hill and Wang, 1994.
Farber, David, ed. The Sixties: From Memory to History. University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. Bantam Books, 1987.
Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. University of California Press, 1980.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. Fawcett, 1983.
Hampton, Henry, and Steve Fayer. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. Bantam Books, 1990.
Jones, Landon Y. Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation. Coward-McCann, 1980.
King, Mary. Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Morrow, 1987.
Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. Ballantine, 2004.
Miller, Jim. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Simon & Schuster, 1970.
Noriega, Chon A., ed. ¿Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California. Santa Barbara, 2001.
Perrett, Geoffrey. A Dream of Greatness: The American People 1945–1963. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979.
Perry, Charles. The Haight-Ashbury: A History. Wenner Books, 2005.
Powers, Thomas. The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People, 1964–1968. Grossman Publishers, 1973.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. Random House, 1973.
Schell, Jonathan. The Time of Illusion. Knopf, 1976.
Unger, Irwin, and Debi Unger. The Times Were a Changin’: A Sixties Reader. Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Van Deburg, William L. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Viorst, Milton. Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam. University of California Press, 1994.
Wittstock, Laura W., and Elaine J. Salinas. A Brief History of the American Indian Movement. American Indian Movement (AIM).
Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up? American Protest against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975. Doubleday, 1984.
WEB SITES
Black Arts Movement, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/blackarts/blackarts.htm
The Black Panthers, http://www.blackpanther.org/
The Free Speech Movement Archives, http://www.fsm-a.org/
The History of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Congress of Racial Equality, http://www.core-online.org/history/history%20opening.htm
The History of the National Organization for Women. National Organization for Women. http://www.now.org/history/history.html
Jackson, Rebecca. The 1960s: A Bibliography.http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjackson/webbibl.html
Laughead, George. History: USA: 1960–1969. WWW Virtual Library. http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA/ERAS/20TH/1960s.html
Noble, Eric. The Digger Archives.http://www.diggers.org/
Pawluk, Adam, Scott Griffin, Mark Andrews, and Mark Monaco. SNCC, 1960–1966: Six Years of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.ibiblio.org. http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/
The Sixties: 1954–1974. A Biography of America. Annenberg/CPB. http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog24/index.html
Tal, Kalí, ed. The Sixties Project. Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH), University of Virginia. http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Sixties.html
Westbrook, Robert, ed. America in the Sixties: Culture and Counter-Culture. Yale–New Haven Teachers Institute, 1983, vol. 4. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/guides/1983/4/
CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material. (page numbers refer to the print edition)
Page 26, By Damien Cave, Matt Diehl, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, et al. From Rolling Stone, June 24, 2004 © Rolling Stone LLC 2004.
Page 55, Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
Page 57, Words and music by Joe McDonald © 1965. Copyright renewed 1993 by Alkatraz Corner Music Co. BMI.
Page 59, From Gary Snyder Reader by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press, a member of the Perseus Group.
Pages 88 and 89, From The Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader by Imamu Amiri Baraka. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Thunder Mouth Press, A Division of the Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.
Pages 93–95, From The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Copyright © 1983, 1974, 1973, 1963 by Betty Friedan. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Pages 117–119, “I Am Joaquín” is reprinted with p
ermission from the publisher of Message to Aztlán by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles (Houston: Arte Público Press—University of Houston, 2001).
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Pages ii, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 19, 22, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44 top and bottom, 46–47, 49, 50, 53, 57 bottom. 60 bottom right, 61 top right, 69, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 88, 89, 95, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 121 top and bottom, 139, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Pages x, 1, 2, 5 center, 7, 10, 13, 21 bottom, 23, 52, 58 and 59, 70, 144, Courtesy of author’s collection.
Page 4, Courtesy of State Museum of PA, PA Historical and Museum Commission.
Page 6, Courtesy of Bayer Healthcare LLC.
Page 11, “cover” by James Avati, from The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, copyright © 1951 by NAL. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Page 16, Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972. Photograph of painting by Lee Stalsworth.
Pages 17, 30, 54, Courtesy of Corbis.
Page 21 top, Courtesy of Anna Grady.
Pages 24, 25, 131, Courtesy of NASA
Page 57 top, Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
Pages 60 top left, 135, Courtesy of National Archives
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Page 65, Courtesy of Kent State University Libraries and Media Services, Department of Special Collections and Archives.
Pages 62, 97, Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.
Pages 72–73, Courtesy of R. Crumb.
Pages 74, 137, 140, 141, Courtesy of Robert Altman.
Page 88, Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Page 101, by permission of Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Page 106, Courtesy of Ilka Hartmann.
Page 110, Courtesy of Michelle Vignes.
Pages 114–115, 116, 119, Courtesy of Denver Public Library.
Page 122, Courtesy of Oscar Castillo.
Page 125, Courtesy of Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
Page 126, Courtesy of the artist Salvador Torres and California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, UCSB.
America Dreaming Page 21