Society and change in the 1960s

_Elsa_

Aha! There it is! Draft dodgers! She remembers them.

“Hey Yeti, I remember how the hippies protested the Vietnam war,” Elsa says. “Many Americans refused to be drafted to fight for something that they didn’t believe in. So, they came to Canada looking for a place to stay so they wouldn’t get drafted. When the war was over there was a big stink of whether the draft dodgers be allowed to re-enter the USA. I think that they did go back. This is a good article so I’ll read it to you.”

‘The 1960s were a decade of revolution and change in politics, music and society around the world. It started in the United States and the United Kingdom and spread to continental Europe and other parts of the globe.

The 1960s were an era of protest. In the civil rights movement blacks and whites protested against the unfair treatment of races. Towards the end of the decade more and more Americans protested against the war in Vietnam. Many people in the United States thought that Americans had no reason to fight in war that was so far away from home.

Female activists demanded more rights for women, whose role in society began to change. The birth control pill and other contraceptives were introduced, making it possible for women to plan their careers and have babies when they wanted them.

The 1960s shattered American politics with the assassination of famous leaders. John F. Kennedy, who became the first Catholic President in American history, was gunned down in Dallas in 1963. When his brother Robert ran for president in 1968 he too was killed by an assassin’s bullet in California. A few months earlier, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who had done more for African Americans than any other person before him, was killed in Memphis, Tennessee.

After World War II people all over the world started working hard and respecting the values they were brought up with. Especially in Europe, it was an era of recovery and rebuilding. In the 1960s many young people started doubting such values. They protested against society and everything that was mainstream. They had hair long and wore unusual and strange clothes.

 Social change was also reflected in the music of the decade. In the 1950s America and the rest of the world danced and sang to rock and roll music. A decade later Bob Dylan (Blowing in the Wind), Joan Baez and other protest singers composed lyrics that showed what was wrong in society . The Beatles and the Rolling Stones started a new era of beat and pop music. In Europe pirate radio stations broadcast from ships in the North Sea.

Television dominated the decade as the most important entertainment medium. By the end of the decade almost all homes in America had at least one TV set.

Towards the end of the 1960s hundreds of thousands of young music fans gathered at Woodstock, New York to celebrate the largest pop festival ever held. All of the popular musicians of the time performed there: Jimmy Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Janis Joplin and others. Many of the young people there called themselves hippies. They took drugs, preferably marijuana and LSD, which allowed people to see a colorful, unreal world. They believed in sexual freedom and often changed partners at random.

On the other side of the social scale, many people looked strangely at these protesters. They could not understand them and stuck to hard work and family values.’ (Source)

Tears begin to run down Elsa’s face as she remembers the death of President Kennedy. 

“Yeti, it was such a sad day when he was shot,” Elsa says. “Everyone was crying as they saw the motorcade driving down the street and then we heard the gun shot and we were all in total shock. Lee Harvey Oswald shot him and they arrested him an hour later. The next day as they were transferring him from one jail to another he was shot and killed. I’ll never forget those memories.”

Let’s continue – History of the Woodstock Festival

Start at the beginning – Tiffi and Yeti learn about Woodstock