The 1960s Lifestyles and Social Trends: Overview

During the 1960s, pillars of American society that had seemed so indestructible a few years before became the objects of derision. Whether they agreed or disagreed with Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. president from 1953 through 1960, people respected him because he was the president, the commanderin-chief. Yet in the subsequent decade, two presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, were openly despised and lampooned by masses of Americans because of their Vietnam War policies. A few years earlier, Americans in uniform were revered. Now, a young man returning to the United States after his mandatory service in the armed forces might be spat upon and asked to reveal the number of babies he had murdered in Vietnam. A uniformed police officer might be viewed not as a protector but as a bully who would rather harass civil rights or antiwar demonstrators than ensure their safety.

The decade was marked by violence and bloodshed. Several notable Americans, including president John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., were assassinated. Civil rights workers were beaten and murdered in the South. Black schoolchildren attempting to integrate schools were met by violent mobs; blacks in several inner cities rioted during the decade; and some blacks broke from Martin Luther King Jr. and advocated violence as a means for combating racism. At the same time, individual blacks increasingly earned high-profiles in the public consciousness. They ranged from King and Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, another of the decade's assassination victims, to movie actor Sidney Poitier and television personality Bill Cosby.

As antiwar protests grew larger and more frequent, demonstrators violently clashed with police. Thousands of young people rejected the materialism of their elders and embraced what came to be known as the counterculture. They experimented with drugs, favored tie-dyed T-shirts and bellbottom jeans, and gravitated toward alternative communities. The most famous locale was the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. During the second half of the decade, a women's liberation movement arose, with women organizing themselves and demanding equal rights. In the decade's final year, the gay liberation movement was born when a group of homosexual men spontaneously rioted in response to police harassment.

On an altogether different note, compact cars replaced the oversized models that had dominated the 1950s. Teens and young adults danced the Twist. Young men grew their hair long. Young women wore their skirts short. The "Mod" look revolutionized women's fashion. Under the surface was brewing the anger and violence that characterized this tumultuous American decade.