Agent Orange and Napalm
In September 1966, the United States introduced “Agent Orange”, a very strong chemical defoliant (dioxin) that was supposed to destroy the jungle cover used by the VC guerillas. Despite continued use, the efficacy of Agent Orange was debatable. A U.S. civilian nurse serving in Vietnam wrote a letter home describing the effects of combat on […]
Hawks and Doves/Demonstrations and Protests
The first large-scale protest demonstrations against the Vietnam War occurred in 1965. These demonstrations had been preceded by a series of smaller protests organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS was part of the “New Left,” as compared to the “Old Left” of the 1930s and 1940s. (Mitchell, pp. 96-97.) SDS had its […]
The Tet Offensive and its Consequences, 1968 Presidential Election
The Communist Tet Offensive on January 31, 1968 (the Vietnamese lunar new year) was a turning point in America’s involvement in Vietnam. American military leaders had been telling President Johnson, political leaders and the American public that their strategies were working and that “we were winning the war.” But, on Tet, Viet Cong guerrillas and […]
Nixon’s Plan for Peace, The War and Protests Continue
Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election. Although Nixon campaigned on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War, it took the United States almost five years after Nixon’s election to end its involvement. During that time about 20,000 additional U.S. combat forces (1/3 of the total of […]
The Troops Come Home
American soldiers returning from Vietnam were not greeted with welcoming arms by a public that believed they were the instruments of an immoral war. The returning soldiers were young. And unlike the soldiers who returned to America after World War II, these “kids” were not given anything like a hero’s welcome. “Readjustment Blues,” written by […]
Cultural Rebellion Introduction
The tumultuous years of the 1960s were a time of substantial rejection of the moral and cultural standards of previous generations by the young people of the day. Thus, “the Sixties” has been called the “Counterculture Era.” The Counterculture Era, generally from 1960 through 1975, was characterized by social upheaval—the rejection of parental and governmental […]
The Flower Children/Hippies/LSD
Cultural revolutionaries wanted to overturn or transcend dominant American values and morals and develop a higher consciousness. They sought to do this through a process called “deconditioning,” which they thought would result in the jettisoning of the social conditioning received from the previous generations and in its place create a new, superior social order. (Braunsten […]
Haight Ashbury
The Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco was the LSD phenomenon’s epicenter with such “accoutrements of the acid flash as tie-dyed clothes, strobe lights and psychedelic posters.” (Farber, p. 36.) LSD philosophers concluded that adults’ perception of their environment was so shuttered, rigid, and one-dimensional that their response to stimuli always followed the same dismal pattern, […]
Communes
Communes, where hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of young people sought to rebuild the society that they viewed as severely flawed, were a significant part of the 1960s counterculture. The media stereotype consisted of funky architecture, outlandish clothing styles, deviant lifestyles dominated by drug use and free love. (Braunstein and Doyle, Miller, The Sixties-Era […]
Women’s Liberation
Women’s studies scholars identify several stages of the American Women’s Movement. The first stage, suffrage/voting rights, began with the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention in 1848 through decades of work by women’s activists, suffragettes and the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. (Edwards, Women & Music, p. 211.) The second stage, initiated by Betty […]