1960s 
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6/18/2023
How Bob Dylan Ran Afoul of the FBI
by Aaron J. Leonard
The combination of alcohol and unconsidered remarks about Lee Harvey Oswald in the wake of the Kennedy assassination helped ensure that the FBI opened a file on the singer.
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SOURCE: Pop Matters
1/11/2023
The Unlikely Story of the 1960s Revival of Delta Blues Giant Son House
After shifts in African American musical styles, the Great Depression and the Great Migration consigned him to obscurity, Son House recorded live music in the 1960s.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
12/16/2022
Stephen Shames's Photos Document the Lives and Activism of Black Panther Party Women
As a college student, Shames built trust with the members of the BPP and documented their activism. Now, working with former member Ericka Huggins, a book of those photos preserves the history.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
9/16/2022
Inside Riotville: How the Military and the Police Prepared for Domestic Rebellion
by Bench Ansfield
“Riotsville” was the name the Army gave to the training grounds it built, beginning in 1967, to school police departments and military personnel in the art of domestic counterinsurgency. Sierra Pettengill's new documentary tells its story.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
8/10/2022
Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona
by Kevin Dettmar
"What could the personal documents of a writer who was so public about her private world teach us about her work? How much of that persona was a performance and how much a reflection of her real anxieties and ambitions?"
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
7/18/2022
What Does an Electric Makeover Mean for the Car of the Counterculture?
by Jill Lepore
The new electric VW bus seems to lack the charm of the vehicle of the counterculture, reflecting changes in technology and society.
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5/1/2022
1968: A Year of Dashed Hopes
by Walter G. Moss
While people seek to confront life's challenges with hope and courage and banish fear and doubt, some years, like 1968, don't make that easy.
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5/1/2022
Ukraine Evokes Past "Eve of Destruction"
by Richard Aquila
In 1960s America, popular songs gradually roused the conscience of many Americans against the war in Vietnam. What forces might make Russia (as well as Ukraine and the west) push away from the brink of unthinkable acts mass destruction?
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4/17/2022
Even With the Challenge of a Nuclear Crisis, 1962 Was a Year of Hope
by Walter G. Moss
For HNN Contributing Editor Walter Moss, 1962 was a year when it seemed the US was capable of overcoming the gravest challenges with positive results (it was a good year for him personally, too).
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
2/16/2022
When Eartha Kitt Disrupted the Ladies Who Lunch
In 1968, real life imitated "Batman" as the Catwoman actress broke the veneer of politeness at a luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson to denounce the war against Vietnam. But while Catwoman always got away, Kitt's career was destroyed for a decade.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/7/2022
Todd Gitlin's Work Against the Dark
by Jeffrey C. Isaac
As an activist and later a chronicler of Students for a Democratic Society, Todd Gitlin shaped the path and the legacy of the New Left.
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1/23/2022
Peter Richardson on Hunter S. Thompson and the Long Shadow of the Counterculture
by Aaron J. Leonard
"His historical significance, I think, lies in his willingness to challenge the nation’s political class, including the leaders of both major parties. He didn’t do that in established journals of opinion."
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
11/28/2021
Utopia’s Settler Colonialism Problem
by Jessica Namakkal
The commune movements of the 1960s counterculture were organized around a number of pernicious assumptions about indigenous people and the prerogatives of whites to settle and reorganize land.
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10/17/2021
"The Essential Kerner Commission Report" Links Past and Present, but Abridges the Committee's Process
by James Thornton Harris
The Kerner Commission shocked Lyndon Johnson and much of white America by insisting that "the Negro problem" was in fact a problem of pervasive white racism. Two books are essential reading for understanding the commission's work and it's unmet demands.
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SOURCE: YouTube
8/3/2021
Ringer Eddie "The King" Feigner Strikes Out 6 HOF'ers in 1967 Celebrity Softball Game
Hear Vin Scully and Jerry Lewis announce a celebrities vs. big leaguers softball game, watch barstorming softball legend Eddie "The King" Feigner strike out six hall-of-famers in a row.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
8/1/2021
A Warning Ignored: The Kerner Commission after a Half Century
by Jelani Cobb
The Kerner Report and the wave of unrest after the killing of George Floyd show that it is possible to be entirely cognizant of history and repeat it anyway.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
7/30/2021
The Revolution that Wasn't: What did 1960s Radicals Achieve?
by Michael Kazin
A new book of narrative history of the 1960s New Left repeats a common error: mistaking rhetoric for revolution and ignoring a key outcome of the decade: that the right emerged more powerful, argues reviewer Michael Kazin.
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SOURCE: NPR
4/15/2021
The Real Black Panthers
Historian Donna Murch joins NPR's The Throughline to discuss the Black Panther Party's agenda and its targeting by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.
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4/18/2021
Don't Erase Women's Leadership in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
by Robert Cohen
Historians have yet to fully examine the role of women in leadership and at the grass roots of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Even some of the best and most insightful accounts of the FSM treat it as a movement of men and ignore the key roles of Jackie Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker and others.
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SOURCE: OutHistory
4/13/2021
"Where Perversion is Taught": The Untold History of a Gay Rights Demonstration at Bucks County Community College in 1968
by Marc Stein
A student protest at Bucks County (PA) Community College in 1968, sparked by the college's decision to block a speech by gay rights advocate Richard Leitsch, should be recognized as a key event in the growing movement for gay liberation.