The 1960s decade was a decade of turbulence, protests, political unrest as well as disillusionment in contrast to 1950s that was remembered by the historians as a decade of consensus, conformity, and prosperity. These labels and pigeonholes are at large accurate although there are exceptions to every perspective in life. The place that 1960s finds in American history perhaps no other decade can find and so immortalize in Americans memories. Accompanied by the inspiring memories of Civil rights movements, remembered for its art, music, and activism as well as the prevalence of chaos, tragedies plague of conflicts such as riots in cities. Vietnam War and assassinations linked with the termination of the youth’s idealism was enough to symbolize it a decade of great controversies due to its political unrest, fashion and social norms.
It was a decade of disillusionment and struggle influenced by cultural, social and political turmoil, there were so many changes occurred to be remembered and so much can be achieved that didn’t. It was termed as “The Sixties” by many journalists, historians as well as in other academic literature, to pronounce the revolution and counterculture in social norms concerning dress, music, fashion, sexuality, drugs, clothing, schooling and formalities (Ginosar et al. 18). The second phase of feminism gets accelerated focusing on the agenda of changing social and cultural norms as well as demanding women rights. Young peoples who got estranged from social norms, show resistance and searched alternatives thus formed counterculture, thus became a social activist or adopted alternative lifestyles. “Swinging Sixties” another terminology used to demonstrate the atrocities related to segregation of racial communities and sexism that happened during this time. It was the period when a rigid culture failed to fulfill the demands of superior personal liberty, ignored all the social constraints of the moral and ethical values thus deviate remarkably from the norms (O’connor & Kelly 1968).
The dominated geopolitical issue during the 1960s was the confrontation between Soviet Union and the United States of America. Both countries were struggling to become a higher power and were trying to expand their influence in developing countries of the entire world. At that time the Soviet Union was growing progressively and transforming from a regional power to a more significant truly global superpower (Grossmann et al. 311). President Kennedy’s slaying mounted great tensions among former USSR and US that result in the start of an era of cold war characterized by funding for insurgencies, proxy wars, and dummy governments.
There was worse condition during the 1960s in contrast to previous decades with continued trend of whites to leave the cities and reside in the suburbs resulting in causing the poor condition in cities. Crime rates, drug usage and the upsurge of various other social problems was the specialty of this era. Civil rights movements were accelerating there pace against the racial segregation in schools, markets and public places (Ginosar et al. 18). Activist and protesters demanded better civil rights legislation, protection for protesters against police brutalities and introducing social reforms.
President John F. Kennedy, a loyal anti-communist and a Keynesian, introduced social reforms in response to civil disobedience and civil rights movements and campaigns. In 1963 the assassination of President Kennedy was a shock, and all the liberal changes he presented were passed during Lyndon B. Johnson tenure.
The 1960s era was also recognized for introducing several modern trends in the fashion industry as it was the decade abolished all the traditional fashion trends hence familiarized public with modern ones. During middle years of the decade young talented designers bring new fashion trends that attract broad public and media publicity thus appeal towards massive investment from mass-market manufactures as well as elite designers (Grossmann et al. 311). More experimental example of modern fashion in the 1960s includes go-go boots, miniskirts, and culottes.
The 1960s decade at one side hailed Americans through their first moon landing in human history, and their victory against USSR while on other side remind them the disillusions of the Vietnam War, assassinations of their political leadership, brutalities and atrocities committed during racial segregations and riots occurred in various cities.
Works Cited
Ginosar, Shiry, et al. “A century of portraits: A visual historical record of American high school yearbooks.” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops. 2015.
O’Connor, Kelly Ann. “The Fashionable Life: Fashion Imagery and the Construction of Masculinity in America, 1960-2000.” (2014).
Grossmann, Igor, and Michael EW Varnum. “Social structure, infectious diseases, disasters, secularism, and cultural change in America.” Psychological science 26.3 (2015): 311-324.
