1960s

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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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/11/2021
  

  American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread

  Atlantic Editor Vann Newkirk examines the recent and imperiled history of American democracy since the Voting Rights Act, including by interviewing Charles Hamilton, co-author of the keystone book "Black Power." 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/3/2021
  

  Rennie Davis, ‘Chicago Seven’ Antiwar Activist, Dies at 80

  Mr. Davis was most famous as an organizer of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago which led to his trial for conspiracy and inciting riot. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/1/2021
  

  The Plan to Build a Capital for Black Capitalism

  Thomas Healy's book "Soul City" looks at a short-lived experiment to create a capital city for Black capitalism in America, part of a long series of political debates about whether the pursuit of economic power by Black Americans would overcome racism. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1/26/2021
  

  Rewinding Jimi Hendrix’s National Anthem

  "Jimi’s Woodstock anthem was both an expression of protest at the obscene violence of a wholly unnecessary war and an affirmation of aspects of the American experiment entirely worth fighting for."

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• SOURCE: WBUR
  11/11/2020
  

  New Memoir Tells Tale Of 1967 Beer Run To Vietnam

  John "Chick" Donohue was in a bar in Inwood in upper Manhattan in 1967 when the bartender suggested the neighborhood's contingent of troops in Vietnam would appreciate a beer. He made the delivery. His new book explains how. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/28/2020
  

  The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism

  by Alberto Toscano

  Black thinkers have long argued that racial slavery created its own unique form of American fascism.