How did the 1960s impact American families?

The 1960s saw a shift from the traditional family model as divorce rates doubled and the concept of marriage changed, leading to only 15% fitting the traditional description by the end of the decade.

What were some societal norms that changed during the 1960s?

The 1960s brought changes in sexual mores, resulting in more women having premarital sex, changing views on living together before marriage, and general liberalization of sexual behavior.

How did the 1960s influence political structures?

The political landscape shifted as the civil rights movement and social upheavals led to a fragmentation of the Democratic coalition, aiding in Republican dominance in subsequent decades.

What lasting cultural impacts did the 1960s have?

The 1960s challenged conformity, fostered diversity, and encouraged personal expression, resulting in lasting changes in American culture and identity.

In what ways did the Vietnam War affect American society?

The Vietnam War left a legacy of skepticism toward government and warlike moves, influencing American foreign policy and public trust in political leaders.

How did the 1960s economic ideals evolve over time?

The decade encouraged seeing work as self-expression and fulfillment, impacting career goals and standards for personal success.

What was the role of women during and after the 1960s?

Women's liberation gained traction, though women continued to face dual burdens of work and home responsibilities, leading to ongoing stress in balancing roles.

Did the 1960s contribute to changes in education?

Yes, the era brought about reforms like ethnic and women's studies courses and increased curricular diversity that persist today.

What was the impact of civil rights movements during the 1960s?

While the civil rights movements made legislative gains, the deep-rooted challenges of racism and inequality remained, with ongoing work necessary to achieve true equality.

How is the 60s generation perceived today?

The 60s generation is viewed as having unique cultural experiences that continue to shape current societal values and dynamics.

What Baby Boomers Feel About The 1960s. Show 6.

00:59:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ESly55Om8

Summary

TLDRThe documentary 'Making Sense of the 60s' delves into the pivotal decade of the 1960s, exploring its significant, lasting impacts on American society. It discusses how the era heralded shifts in family structures, such as rising divorce rates and altered gender roles, leading to a societal landscape vastly different from the 1950s nuclear family model. The cultural revolution of this time saw an unprecedented change in sexual norms and attitudes, broadening the societal acceptance of diverse lifestyles and sexual preferences. In education, the 60s brought about reforms that introduced new curricula, including ethnic and women's studies, which remain influential. The counterculture movement and anti-establishment sentiments of the time contributed to a legacy of skepticism towards authority, especially seen in the response to the Vietnam War and the subsequent Watergate scandal. Politically, the era's civil rights movements challenged deeply ingrained systemic racism, leading to vital legislative changes despite persistent social challenges. The long-term political impact included a shift in party dominance, with Republicans gaining strength post-60s due to changing demographics and disillusionment with the liberal agenda.

Takeaways

📅 The 1960s marked significant societal upheavals and transformations.
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family structures changed, with divorce becoming more common.
🚨 The era fueled skepticism of authority due to events like the Vietnam War.
🎓 Educational reforms saw the introduction of ethnic and women's studies.
🇺🇸 Civil rights movements made legislative gains but faced ongoing challenges.
🎸 Counterculture movements fostered new forms of personal expression.
💼 Work attitudes shifted towards self-fulfillment rather than just earning.
♂️♀️ The sexual revolution altered societal norms around relationships.
🎤 Political landscapes shifted, influencing decades of party dynamics.
🔍 The decade continues to fuel debates on its long-term impacts.
📖 Many who lived through it feel it was a deeply educational period.
🔄 The cultural shifts of the 60s are still felt in today's society.

Timeline

00:00:00 - 00:05:00
"Making Sense of the 60s" reflects on how the decade remains a significant part of the lives of those who experienced it, having shaped identities and personal insights. Some people see it as a time of self-discovery that still influences their lives today.
00:05:00 - 00:10:00
The close of the 1960s is seen as a pivotal moment; for some, it was a chance to find a spiritual or philosophical high, imagining communities like the Kingdom of God. Others saw it as liberation from an era where societal norms seemed restrictive.
00:10:00 - 00:15:00
Personal narratives reveal the 60s as a time of radical change—choices made, often out of necessity, led to new careers and personal paths. While some embraced counterculture, others eventually found solace in traditional roles, re-evaluating past ideals of success and societal norms.
00:15:00 - 00:20:00
Differences in life choices reflect the diversity of the 60s experience. Those involved in counterculture have stories of ideological and geographic shifts. Despite initial rebellious fervor, many later sought change from within established systems, questioning the permanence of 60s ideals.
00:20:00 - 00:25:00
The focus shifts to family dynamics, highlighting transformative changes in societal norms since the 60s. The era witnessed a dramatic shift in traditional views on marriage and family, with divorce rates doubling and evolving attitudes towards cohabitation before marriage.
00:25:00 - 00:30:00
The sexual revolution of the 60s created lasting changes in societal norms. Conversations around premarital sex and gender equality expanded, challenging traditional views and breaking long-standing taboos, reflecting broader social tolerance for diverse lifestyles.
00:30:00 - 00:35:00
The counterculture movement is critiqued for its anti-establishment ethos and naivety, especially in alienating potential allies like the working class. However, critiques highlight its impact on academic and cultural reforms which persisted and evolved into mainstream societal norms.
00:35:00 - 00:40:00
The legacy of the 60s is explored through feminism's impact on women's roles, career attitudes that prioritize fulfillment over finance, and persisting questions about the true meaning of success. The era challenged conventional metrics of achievement.
00:40:00 - 00:45:00
The 60s altered American societal fabric profoundly, yet integration and civil rights reforms left unresolved socio-economic disparities, leading to ongoing challenges in achieving racial equality. The era's ambitions clashed with realities of institutional inertia.
00:45:00 - 00:50:00
Reflections on governmental and political paradigms shifted after Vietnam, leading to skepticism in political leadership and ethical governance. The era's veterans remain cautious of repeating past mistakes, sustaining a wariness towards authority and interventionist policies.
00:50:00 - 00:59:18
The continuing influence of the 60s asks enduring questions about societal values and personal legacies. As the nation grapples with these reflections, individuals must negotiate how to convey their past experiences to younger generations, capturing the era's complexities.

Mind Map

Video Q&A

How did the 1960s impact American families?
The 1960s saw a shift from the traditional family model as divorce rates doubled and the concept of marriage changed, leading to only 15% fitting the traditional description by the end of the decade.
What were some societal norms that changed during the 1960s?
The 1960s brought changes in sexual mores, resulting in more women having premarital sex, changing views on living together before marriage, and general liberalization of sexual behavior.
How did the 1960s influence political structures?
The political landscape shifted as the civil rights movement and social upheavals led to a fragmentation of the Democratic coalition, aiding in Republican dominance in subsequent decades.
What lasting cultural impacts did the 1960s have?
The 1960s challenged conformity, fostered diversity, and encouraged personal expression, resulting in lasting changes in American culture and identity.
In what ways did the Vietnam War affect American society?
The Vietnam War left a legacy of skepticism toward government and warlike moves, influencing American foreign policy and public trust in political leaders.
How did the 1960s economic ideals evolve over time?
The decade encouraged seeing work as self-expression and fulfillment, impacting career goals and standards for personal success.
What was the role of women during and after the 1960s?
Women's liberation gained traction, though women continued to face dual burdens of work and home responsibilities, leading to ongoing stress in balancing roles.
Did the 1960s contribute to changes in education?
Yes, the era brought about reforms like ethnic and women's studies courses and increased curricular diversity that persist today.
What was the impact of civil rights movements during the 1960s?
While the civil rights movements made legislative gains, the deep-rooted challenges of racism and inequality remained, with ongoing work necessary to achieve true equality.
How is the 60s generation perceived today?
The 60s generation is viewed as having unique cultural experiences that continue to shape current societal values and dynamics.

View more video summaries

Get instant access to free YouTube video summaries powered by AI!

Subtitles

Auto Scroll:

00:00:02
we now return to making sense of the 60s
00:00:09
major funding for making sense of the
00:00:12
60s was provided by the corporation for
00:00:15
public broadcasting
00:00:17
and by viewers like you
00:00:22
additional funding was provided by sims
00:00:24
clothing stores where since 1960 an
00:00:26
educated consumer has been our best
00:00:29
customer
00:00:31
and by toms of maine a pioneer in
00:00:33
natural personal care toms of maine and
00:00:36
nature a friendship of 20 years
00:00:42
is the 60s part of your life today
00:00:45
is it still in there
00:00:47
god that's hard
00:00:53
i think all of us went through it myself
00:00:58
a lot of it's still in here
00:01:01
you live through that time
00:01:03
it's like you live through all times you
00:01:04
learn you learn a lot what i learned was
00:01:07
is invaluable to me today
00:01:12
is your life better for having lived
00:01:13
through the 60s
00:01:18
yeah
00:01:20
i had a really chance to examine myself
00:01:22
and find out who i am what i'm about
00:01:25
uh that was the reason i left home to
00:01:27
start with
00:01:30
who i was
00:01:34
yeah and it's yeah sure it's
00:01:37
yeah it's part of me
00:01:41
[Music]
00:02:04
[Music]
00:02:06
um
00:02:11
[Music]
00:02:20
[Music]
00:02:34
[Laughter]
00:02:36
[Music]
00:02:37
[Laughter]
00:02:40
[Music]
00:02:50
the 60s ended more than 21 years ago
00:02:53
in the minds of some americans it
00:02:55
couldn't have happened soon enough
00:02:57
for others the 60s are still hanging on
00:03:01
but for everyone who lived through those
00:03:03
times the end of the 60s is more than
00:03:06
just a date on the calendar it's a
00:03:09
milestone a point of departure
00:03:11
[Music]
00:03:14
i finally left the communes and moved
00:03:16
back to the forbidden city
00:03:19
[Music]
00:03:22
and from there i still live in a city
00:03:25
today
00:03:26
but i found the commune i was always
00:03:28
dreaming of
00:03:30
it's called the kingdom of god
00:03:32
and now i've got an everlasting high
00:03:37
and i know i came a different way than
00:03:39
many do
00:03:41
but i've got the 60s to thank in a way
00:03:44
and i've got
00:03:45
that whole crazy time to thank because
00:03:48
in a way
00:03:49
it's what jolted me into a place
00:03:52
where i could finally behold the lord
00:03:56
i felt i might be morally bankrupt if i
00:03:59
had ambition
00:04:01
or if i
00:04:03
god forbid
00:04:04
work towards making one of my boyfriends
00:04:06
want to marry me all of that seemed
00:04:08
wrong
00:04:10
i felt i was endlessly resilient
00:04:13
and life was longer than it would be
00:04:16
that i had
00:04:17
the rest of my life to make up my minds
00:04:19
about a lot of things i'm single i've
00:04:21
never married
00:04:23
so uh
00:04:24
and i've you know i'm
00:04:27
past i think child bearing years except
00:04:30
with great
00:04:32
megillah to get you know
00:04:34
which i'm not willing to do
00:04:37
i think when i was doing the things that
00:04:39
i did in the 60s
00:04:41
i felt like i had no other choice
00:04:43
i was
00:04:44
so relieved when it was over
00:04:47
and i could get out of it and i was
00:04:50
deliriously happy to be able to come
00:04:53
back and join the system and work from
00:04:55
within it to make a difference as
00:04:57
opposed to being outside
00:05:00
i think i've changed i mean my life has
00:05:02
taken directions that i never would have
00:05:04
imagined were possible
00:05:06
especially when i became a conscientious
00:05:08
objector and a potential war resistor
00:05:11
then i thought that a career for me in
00:05:13
the in the sort of in mainstream
00:05:15
institutions was
00:05:16
was impossible well then it turned out i
00:05:18
ended up being the chief speechwriter of
00:05:20
the president of the united states and
00:05:21
now i'm editor of a
00:05:23
fairly well known
00:05:24
national magazine
00:05:27
i have never made more than
00:05:30
fifteen thousand dollars a year as a
00:05:32
teacher
00:05:33
most of the time it's been considerably
00:05:36
less than that
00:05:37
i write i have never made more than
00:05:40
thirteen thousand dollars a year as a
00:05:42
writer
00:05:43
and i didn't make that 13 in that 15 in
00:05:45
the same year so
00:05:47
my my combined income has never exceeded
00:05:50
more than twenty thousand dollars
00:05:53
[Music]
00:05:54
i've spent
00:05:56
i've walked away from
00:05:58
a lot of opportunities that
00:06:01
might have made my life a whole lot more
00:06:03
secure because i felt that
00:06:06
they were simply not
00:06:09
well one hates to use this word but
00:06:13
because i felt as though to taking those
00:06:15
opportunities would have been to sell
00:06:16
out to the values that i acquired
00:06:21
i didn't know what to think anymore i
00:06:23
didn't know what to believe i didn't
00:06:25
know what to espouse
00:06:27
i didn't know what to wear
00:06:28
i was really just kind of lost
00:06:32
and i was also by at that point
00:06:34
getting divorced
00:06:37
and
00:06:39
so i did go back and live with my
00:06:40
parents for a while
00:06:42
and
00:06:44
i did try on
00:06:46
literally tried on some polyester
00:06:48
pantsuits and i kind of tried that out
00:06:50
to see well do i just kind of go back
00:06:52
all the way or and it really wasn't me
00:06:55
anymore i really had gone
00:06:57
i had just gone too far the other
00:07:00
the other way
00:07:03
i moved to a small rural town for many
00:07:05
years and tried to grow a big garden did
00:07:07
some hunting and fishing
00:07:10
and uh i considered myself conservative
00:07:12
at the time even reactionary
00:07:14
uh and
00:07:17
but at the same time most people
00:07:18
describing my life would have said it
00:07:20
he's one of those 60s dropouts doing the
00:07:23
during the rural thing although i myself
00:07:26
was sitting around reading southern
00:07:27
agrarians
00:07:29
who saw the automobile as a symbol of
00:07:31
the country going to hell and of course
00:07:33
they were right
00:07:35
so uh
00:07:36
so i i i guess it's not that big elite
00:07:40
uh going from being radical to
00:07:42
reactionary
00:07:45
you know but that's that's what happened
00:07:46
to me
00:07:49
[Music]
00:07:52
the people you've just heard from are a
00:07:54
few of the members of the age group that
00:07:56
the press and the pollsters call the
00:07:58
sixties generation
00:08:00
since the sixties ended tens of millions
00:08:02
of these people have been searching for
00:08:04
balance second guessing their past
00:08:07
piecing together their dreams
00:08:09
and finding the strength and wisdom to
00:08:11
get on with their lives
00:08:13
[Music]
00:08:16
but what's so unique about that
00:08:18
they've grown older just like everyone
00:08:20
else
00:08:22
yet something about this generation is
00:08:24
different even as they enter middle age
00:08:27
they continue to be set apart by a past
00:08:30
they seem unable to leave behind
00:08:33
a past that continues to raise
00:08:34
disturbing questions for all americans
00:08:38
why hasn't america gotten over the 1960s
00:08:45
could it be that in the 60s not only a
00:08:47
generation but a nation came of age
00:08:51
that a nation's illusions were shattered
00:08:54
that since the 1960s ended a nation has
00:08:57
been trying to find the strength and
00:08:59
wisdom to get on with the way of life
00:09:01
that is very different from what came
00:09:04
before
00:09:09
this is a program about reappraisal a
00:09:12
program that looks around to see how
00:09:14
what happened in the 60s is affecting
00:09:16
america today
00:09:18
it is not a final assessment just a
00:09:20
point on the chart because it appears
00:09:23
the nineteen sixties will continue to
00:09:26
affect our society for a long long time
00:09:29
to come
00:09:30
[Music]
00:09:33
of course as every girl i have
00:09:34
aspirations to sunday be married and
00:09:36
raise a family and to someday be in love
00:09:40
with someone very very much so that even
00:09:42
after i'm past 30
00:09:46
even after i'm past 30 there's something
00:09:48
to live for because you have someone to
00:09:50
give your life to someone to do things
00:09:52
for
00:09:53
back in 1960 most young people had a
00:09:56
clear vision of what their future
00:09:57
families would be like
00:09:59
at that time 70 percent of american
00:10:02
families had a breadwinning dad a
00:10:04
housekeeping mom and one or more kids
00:10:08
but today only 15 percent of american
00:10:10
families fit that description
00:10:14
the dream i had from childhood
00:10:18
was to have a loving family unit
00:10:21
that lived together forever
00:10:24
i mean that's i wanted to do i wanted to
00:10:26
to do all those
00:10:28
all-american kind of things with my kids
00:10:30
the boys work on the truck with the dad
00:10:33
and the kids are
00:10:34
you know out there gardening with the
00:10:36
mom and
00:10:37
you know to do those things together as
00:10:40
a family unit
00:10:42
and the thing that i have to face that
00:10:44
hurts the most is the fact that i
00:10:46
couldn't
00:10:48
go on with that family unit
00:10:50
that hurts
00:10:57
since the late 1960s divorce rates in
00:11:00
america have doubled to the point where
00:11:02
today
00:11:03
one of every two marriages will break up
00:11:06
of all the revolutions that occurred in
00:11:08
the 1960s the most lasting
00:11:11
the one with the greatest impact were
00:11:13
the changes that it brought about in
00:11:15
private life
00:11:17
the protests against the vietnam war
00:11:19
rose and then fell
00:11:22
public concern about civil rights
00:11:25
rose and then sadly ebbed
00:11:28
but the changes that occurred in
00:11:30
american private life lasted
00:11:33
in fact they became even more intense in
00:11:35
the early 1970s and they persist even
00:11:38
till today
00:11:40
so american families are fundamentally
00:11:42
different than they were a decade and a
00:11:44
half ago
00:11:45
divorce is much more common
00:11:48
many people lament that but there's
00:11:50
clearly a good side about that that is
00:11:52
people do not have to remain in loveless
00:11:55
marriages
00:11:56
that people felt compelled to remain in
00:11:58
in the 1950s
00:12:02
attitudes toward marriage and divorce
00:12:04
are not the only social norms to be
00:12:06
shattered by the experiences of the
00:12:08
sixties
00:12:09
back in 1959 90 percent of american
00:12:13
adults agreed that the only proper time
00:12:15
to discover intimate details about a
00:12:17
partner was after the matrimonial knot
00:12:20
had been tied
00:12:21
today one of every two americans
00:12:23
acknowledges that living together before
00:12:26
marriage is a good idea
00:12:29
i haven't changed politically one little
00:12:30
bit not but one bit since i was in world
00:12:33
war ii
00:12:35
i still feel very strongly about a
00:12:36
strong defense and you know i'm not
00:12:38
going to review all that but
00:12:40
but
00:12:41
sexually uh
00:12:43
now if i had a little girl
00:12:45
i might have felt differently you know
00:12:48
and we filled up the house with boys
00:12:49
trying to get a little girl
00:12:51
but uh boys uh
00:12:54
i think that
00:12:56
it
00:12:58
i am i've changed
00:13:01
i wouldn't hesitate to say go ahead if
00:13:02
you want to live with it go ahead if
00:13:03
it's all right with her
00:13:05
and see how it works out
00:13:07
and if it's right you get married and if
00:13:09
you don't you'll know
00:13:11
so there was no real hand done just a
00:13:12
little time wasted
00:13:15
physical desire is very normal and it
00:13:18
happens and sometimes everything just
00:13:20
comes down to a very basic level and
00:13:22
there's nothing wrong with it
00:13:23
i think that sex is just much groupier
00:13:26
when there's love you know there's a lot
00:13:28
more happening but there's nothing wrong
00:13:30
with just sex for sex
00:13:33
sexual revolution
00:13:35
one thing this open and permissive
00:13:37
experiment with sex dramatically changed
00:13:40
was the great american double standard
00:13:43
the percentage of men who say they had
00:13:45
sex before marriage has increased
00:13:47
slightly over the years
00:13:49
but since the sixties the percentage of
00:13:51
women who say they've had sex before
00:13:53
marriage has nearly doubled
00:13:56
but clearly that's not all the sexual
00:13:58
revolution of the sixties changed
00:14:01
well actually the sexual revolution was
00:14:03
the most widespread and most
00:14:05
long-lasting of all the legacies of the
00:14:07
sixties i mean the polls in 1970 showed
00:14:10
radical changes and sexual behavior and
00:14:12
mores not just among hippies and college
00:14:14
students on the two coast
00:14:16
but blue collar workers in texarkana and
00:14:18
des moines it was very widespread it
00:14:21
permeated entire culture
00:14:23
you know i've written a book that was
00:14:24
originally titled the end of sex an
00:14:26
all-time worst title for a book
00:14:28
but it was really about uh the end of
00:14:31
the
00:14:32
obligatory sexuality and i have
00:14:34
criticized the sexual revolution so i'm
00:14:36
on that side too and yet i can say very
00:14:39
clearly that it was it was one of those
00:14:41
long overdue revolutions that people had
00:14:44
certain types of sexual desire that they
00:14:46
felt they could never speak to another
00:14:48
human being it could always had to be
00:14:49
locked within within themselves
00:14:51
they held these seemingly guilty secrets
00:14:55
and you know all of life was sort of
00:14:56
constrained by the fact that they had
00:14:58
this secret and there was no one to talk
00:15:00
to no way to express it i am amazed when
00:15:03
i look around me now at how freely uh we
00:15:06
can in the media
00:15:08
in the society generally in
00:15:11
in polite society around a dinner table
00:15:14
or at lunch and in my classrooms we can
00:15:16
talk about matters of sexuality that
00:15:19
could never be talked about openly uh
00:15:21
through the 40s 50s and even up into the
00:15:23
early 60s
00:15:25
our willingness to
00:15:27
accept many different
00:15:30
sexual preferences lifestyles in our
00:15:32
society is much greater the range of
00:15:35
social tolerance is much greater than it
00:15:37
was before
00:15:38
most of my college life sex was terrible
00:15:42
um i found myself um
00:15:45
always in that awful situation that
00:15:47
women found themselves before the
00:15:48
women's movement of basically having to
00:15:50
sort of say no and being sort of called
00:15:53
on it and everything was sort of tense
00:15:55
and and and difficult and so you tried
00:15:57
to have intellectual relations with
00:15:59
someone with people that weren't sexual
00:16:00
and and then there were other people had
00:16:02
a lot more sex and probably a lot more
00:16:03
fun but for me sex was a terrible trauma
00:16:07
i think we didn't have the tools
00:16:10
to really use it well
00:16:12
and i think the real problem with the
00:16:13
60s counterculture
00:16:17
was that most of us who experienced it
00:16:20
were still adolescents
00:16:21
and so therefore we didn't have the
00:16:24
stuff to really
00:16:26
get off with it
00:16:27
[Music]
00:16:29
the counterculture
00:16:31
many of those millions who were part of
00:16:33
the youth rebellion of the 1960s feel a
00:16:36
sense of regret even embarrassment
00:16:39
when they look back on how they behaved
00:16:42
when so much of the nation's attention
00:16:44
was focused on them
00:16:46
you go back and you watch a videotape or
00:16:49
from the 60s it looks gross it looks
00:16:52
dirty everybody looks dirty and sloppy
00:16:54
and messy and foul-mouthed and you know
00:16:57
you sort of want to scratch yourself
00:16:58
when you see it
00:16:59
you know and was that was it so
00:17:01
important to us not to take a bath you
00:17:04
know
00:17:05
how important was that that was childish
00:17:07
of course we were children so
00:17:09
i suppose we had an excuse
00:17:15
the biggest regret is foolishly
00:17:17
alienating the working class
00:17:19
that's the number one regret
00:17:22
because we had at that time no concept
00:17:25
of divide and conquer
00:17:27
no concept that those people might be
00:17:29
important allies and that it was not
00:17:31
worth alienating them for really
00:17:33
childish issues like the right to use
00:17:35
four-letter words
00:17:37
you know
00:17:38
or the right to flaunt your sexuality
00:17:41
um i mean i will i will censor this
00:17:44
quote a little bit
00:17:45
but
00:17:46
the leader of the farm stephen gaskin
00:17:48
said
00:17:50
that the reagan era was paying us back
00:17:52
for doing it in the streets and next
00:17:54
time we'll try to make our revolution a
00:17:56
little bit more
00:17:57
serious and substantial and deal with
00:17:59
social issues
00:18:02
[Applause]
00:18:05
we'll do something which hasn't occurred
00:18:07
at this university in a good long time
00:18:10
we're going to have real classes up
00:18:12
there but
00:18:14
they're going to be freedom schools
00:18:15
conducted up there we're going to have
00:18:16
classes on 1st and 14th amendments
00:18:18
one place where the young people of the
00:18:20
1960s did make serious and substantial
00:18:23
changes was on the college campus
00:18:27
it's a curious irony that some of those
00:18:29
who once actively protested against
00:18:31
administration policies have themselves
00:18:34
become professors and university
00:18:36
administrators
00:18:38
dr arthur levine we did a study a few
00:18:40
years ago to look at what happened to
00:18:41
all the reforms of the 60s
00:18:43
and they included things like new and
00:18:45
relevant courses
00:18:48
those new and relevant courses still
00:18:49
there
00:18:50
looked at areas that had come into the
00:18:52
curriculum
00:18:53
like ethnic studies like women's studies
00:18:56
those things are still there we created
00:18:59
things like interdisciplinary majors
00:19:01
which brought a variety of fields
00:19:02
together those are still there in equal
00:19:04
numbers we created things like
00:19:06
independent study which led a student
00:19:07
study with a faculty member alone on an
00:19:09
issue of interest to the student those
00:19:11
are still there in the same proportion
00:19:13
we created new kinds of grading systems
00:19:15
pass fail grading for some courses
00:19:18
that's still there in the same
00:19:20
proportion or higher so all the reforms
00:19:22
of the 60s have just been layered upon
00:19:26
but haven't disappeared so in a lot of
00:19:28
ways the 60s formed at least an
00:19:30
important part of what the curriculum is
00:19:32
today
00:19:34
the
00:19:35
things that heard about the
00:19:36
60s are that
00:19:38
there really was
00:19:41
an anti-intellectualism
00:19:42
in which we said all people and all
00:19:44
ideas are equal they're not that was a
00:19:47
hurtful kind of response in a lot of
00:19:49
ways it's reminiscent
00:19:51
of the red garden china in the 60s and
00:19:53
70s
00:19:54
in which
00:19:56
they threw out the important ideas
00:19:59
and
00:20:00
turned their universities into places
00:20:01
that no longer discovered truth
00:20:04
no longer disseminated truth
00:20:08
but just think of setting them down in
00:20:10
front of bill and saying
00:20:12
bill look i made these myself
00:20:15
i know what do you think he'd say
00:20:19
bill bill porter
00:20:22
i'll tell you what he'd say
00:20:24
he'd say i knew my wife was beautiful
00:20:27
i knew she had brains
00:20:29
but i never realized she had such talent
00:20:33
say
00:20:34
that looks good
00:20:36
when do we eat it's absolutely better i
00:20:39
i'm unequivocal about that it is better
00:20:41
to be a woman today
00:20:43
to say that it's easy
00:20:45
i wouldn't say that it's easy to say
00:20:46
that the feminist revolution is complete
00:20:48
i wouldn't say that for a minute
00:20:50
on the other hand i know my my own life
00:20:53
would be different had i been born at a
00:20:54
different time my life would resemble my
00:20:56
mother's and
00:20:58
i wouldn't want that for myself
00:21:01
on the other hand i claim to be one of
00:21:02
those women who want it all and who
00:21:04
refuses to give up any piece of it
00:21:07
and just con continues to batter away
00:21:10
at the
00:21:12
restrictions that are still out there
00:21:15
and and i'm determined to hang on one
00:21:18
way or another
00:21:21
although 54 of women in america feel
00:21:24
their lives are better than 20 years ago
00:21:26
75 percent think it's harder for
00:21:29
marriages to succeed
00:21:30
and 80 percent say it's harder to raise
00:21:33
children
00:21:34
we have come a long ways and yet we
00:21:36
really haven't
00:21:38
we don't have utopia and not there ever
00:21:40
will be
00:21:41
i think today that a woman
00:21:43
is
00:21:45
very productive
00:21:46
on the job
00:21:48
very responsible on the job
00:21:51
and she gets home and she is still
00:21:54
wife
00:21:55
and mother
00:21:57
i think she's still going home and
00:21:58
making sure that she has done the
00:22:00
grocery shopping she's making sure that
00:22:02
there is food on the table and she's
00:22:04
making sure that the house is clean
00:22:07
the reality and uh gloria steinem has
00:22:10
said it the reality is that what women's
00:22:12
liberation means by 1990 is that women
00:22:15
wind up doing more
00:22:16
because men haven't moved into blurred
00:22:18
sex roles and this isn't just a woman
00:22:20
sitting here complaining
00:22:22
survey after survey among men
00:22:25
men acknowledging that they haven't
00:22:27
picked up the slack on home and child
00:22:30
rearing so we have women baby boom women
00:22:33
going into the 1990s
00:22:35
with a new economic prospect of outlook
00:22:38
that says they have to be working to
00:22:40
earn some money but that also says
00:22:42
family is now more important to me
00:22:45
i want to have children or i have
00:22:47
children i want to spend more time with
00:22:48
them there are things that have to get
00:22:50
done in the household that don't get
00:22:52
done
00:22:53
he's not going to do it we now have many
00:22:55
single women who are parents so there
00:22:58
isn't even the question of a man picking
00:23:00
up the slack and women are under a
00:23:02
significant amount of stress
00:23:05
women's liberation has obviously worked
00:23:07
in the sense that more women really have
00:23:10
good job opportunities that women's
00:23:12
incomes in many many spheres are better
00:23:15
it's worked in a lot of ways but it
00:23:17
hasn't been perfect and the legacy is
00:23:19
stress and women in the 90s are going to
00:23:22
be about resolving that stress by making
00:23:25
some choices about what roles they're
00:23:26
going to play
00:23:29
the 1950s concept of work had changed by
00:23:32
the end of the 1960s not only in terms
00:23:35
of stress
00:23:36
but because of a 60 sensibility that
00:23:38
work should be a means of
00:23:40
self-expression and fulfillment that a
00:23:42
person should get more from a job than
00:23:44
simply a paycheck
00:23:46
i think this is one of the best things
00:23:48
the best holdovers personally for me
00:23:50
is i've followed
00:23:52
my heart's desires
00:23:54
i haven't fallen into the trap of you
00:23:57
have to make money doing this and that
00:23:58
and money's a god
00:24:00
it's not the
00:24:03
being self-satisfied in the sense that
00:24:05
what you're doing in life is
00:24:07
important and going to pass something on
00:24:09
to another generation is much more
00:24:10
important to me and i believe that i
00:24:12
learned all that in the 60s especially
00:24:14
the sense that i want some part of me to
00:24:17
affect somebody else in life later on
00:24:20
i've noticed this people who went to
00:24:21
school during that era like 68 through
00:24:24
73 share a set of values and a set of
00:24:27
understandings that people on either
00:24:29
side younger and older just don't get
00:24:32
and so when you're in the workplace
00:24:35
and uh you're talking about uh
00:24:38
idealism that people of that generation
00:24:42
have a certain sense of idealism that
00:24:44
things can and should be better right
00:24:46
down to the details of how people treat
00:24:48
each other day to day and that that
00:24:51
there's a political component to
00:24:53
day-to-day interaction and experience
00:24:54
it's just it's a perspective that we
00:24:56
have and when you go into the workplace
00:24:59
with other people
00:25:00
uh who may be just a few years older a
00:25:02
few years younger and talk that way they
00:25:04
look at you like you're a martian
00:25:07
pay our act as five dollars a
00:25:08
performance you can live on 25 a week
00:25:10
let's assume you're doing something
00:25:11
you're interested in and something
00:25:13
that's valuable
00:25:14
if you're not doing anything that's
00:25:15
interesting then you gotta get a lot of
00:25:17
money mac you gotta make a fortune to
00:25:20
keep a boring job
00:25:22
that 60's attitude led many working
00:25:24
americans to feel that money was not the
00:25:26
only important career goal
00:25:29
that each individual should set his or
00:25:31
her own standards for determining what
00:25:34
success means
00:25:37
but although many today strive for a
00:25:39
more fulfilling work life
00:25:41
the way the 60s generation measures
00:25:43
success has stayed essentially the same
00:25:47
a recent rolling stone magazine survey
00:25:49
revealed that most members of the 60s
00:25:51
generation were surprised by how
00:25:53
career-oriented they had become and
00:25:56
perplexed by how much the system they
00:25:58
tried to change
00:25:59
changed them
00:26:01
only the promise of a material affluence
00:26:04
only the promise of of two cars only the
00:26:07
promise of a split level divided again
00:26:09
and again and again in suburbia after
00:26:11
suburbia after suburbia that's the only
00:26:13
thing that this that this culture can
00:26:15
offer people now bread alone
00:26:18
now
00:26:19
the question is whether or not you're
00:26:21
going to accept that i shared a blazing
00:26:24
contempt for everything that america
00:26:26
seemed to pride itself in that is to say
00:26:28
straight middle america
00:26:31
uh
00:26:33
since then
00:26:34
i think i've learned to appreciate
00:26:37
better the
00:26:38
the terrific labor
00:26:40
the
00:26:41
industry
00:26:43
and good luck
00:26:45
that are required
00:26:47
for the
00:26:49
the purger of that dream
00:26:52
it looks shakier these days
00:26:55
and the culture that could achieve some
00:26:59
confidence in its ability to provide
00:27:02
the nice house on the nice street the
00:27:04
nice school the nice college education
00:27:06
the nice job the confidence of such a
00:27:08
culture seems
00:27:11
more of a more of an achievement than it
00:27:13
did it seemed to come without effort but
00:27:16
now i understand there was a lot of
00:27:18
effort and a lot of chanciness to it
00:27:21
the american middle class
00:27:23
with respect to its
00:27:25
orientation toward money success uh
00:27:28
family life and so on
00:27:30
has certainly proved to be far more
00:27:31
tenacious than anybody would have
00:27:33
predicted uh
00:27:35
in the middle of the the
00:27:36
counter-cultural rebellion of the 60s i
00:27:38
mean if you go back and look at some of
00:27:39
the underground newspapers at that
00:27:41
period
00:27:42
um they are filled with a sense that
00:27:44
everything can be changed overnight in
00:27:47
in america and you know the walls are
00:27:49
going to come tumbling down we're going
00:27:50
to transform the society
00:27:52
totally into the you know another this i
00:27:55
felt this was far-fetched at the time
00:27:57
but even i would not have
00:27:59
predicted how how tenacious
00:28:02
the uh the american corporation is the
00:28:04
american middle class way of life is
00:28:07
um you don't overturn something like
00:28:10
that you can you change it around the
00:28:11
edges and perhaps you infuse it with
00:28:13
some more value some new values but you
00:28:15
don't um simply get rid of it scrap it
00:28:18
within a single generation
00:28:20
now i've got a two-story house
00:28:22
got a family got two cars
00:28:25
i'm comfortable
00:28:27
it's hard to draw about poverty it's
00:28:30
hard to draw about the difficulties of
00:28:33
making it
00:28:34
it's hard even to draw about the things
00:28:36
i really care deeply about
00:28:39
because they don't really affect my life
00:28:41
as viscerally as they used to
00:28:44
and that has an effect it has a real
00:28:47
effect on you you begin
00:28:48
asking the old questions
00:28:51
from the 60s
00:28:52
you begin saying to yourself again
00:28:54
what's this all about
00:28:55
do you really need the house do you
00:28:56
really need the cars do you really need
00:28:58
the money
00:28:59
are you better off living closer to the
00:29:01
edge
00:29:02
do you really live life any other way
00:29:04
but there
00:29:05
and i don't have the answer to it
00:29:07
there's no way to go back
00:29:09
there's no way to there's no way to do
00:29:11
it again i don't know if i have the
00:29:12
energy to do it again
00:29:15
but that
00:29:17
those
00:29:18
those 60s questions will nag me for the
00:29:20
rest of my life
00:29:24
i am happy to join with you today
00:29:30
in what will go down in history
00:29:35
as the greatest demonstration for
00:29:38
freedom in the history
00:29:40
of our nation
00:29:41
[Music]
00:29:42
this speech offered to america a renewed
00:29:45
vision of a society with freedom justice
00:29:48
and opportunity for all my four little
00:29:52
children
00:29:54
one day live in a nation where they will
00:29:56
not be judged by the color of their skin
00:29:59
but by the content of their character i
00:30:01
have a dream today
00:30:03
but nearly 30 years later many who once
00:30:06
supported the civil rights struggle
00:30:08
shake their heads and wonder why such a
00:30:10
desirable and worthy dream remains
00:30:14
essentially unrealized
00:30:16
i think people
00:30:18
have become just a little um
00:30:21
disabused with the notion that uh
00:30:23
integration was going to solve the
00:30:25
problems that voting was going to solve
00:30:27
the problems that voting rights said is
00:30:30
that uh
00:30:31
being able to sit down and drug store
00:30:32
next to a white person drink a cup of
00:30:34
coffee
00:30:35
had any real meaning
00:30:37
it
00:30:38
things had changed but these only
00:30:40
surface changes
00:30:41
the
00:30:42
i think the they were far
00:30:45
they were deep
00:30:46
things that remained unchanged and uh
00:30:50
it didn't even have to be particularly
00:30:52
bright
00:30:54
to see how many corporations didn't have
00:30:56
any black representation
00:30:58
or how few airlines had a black pilot
00:31:01
flying or or even railroads have any
00:31:04
black engineers on the rear with even
00:31:06
today
00:31:07
um
00:31:09
so i think maybe people began to see
00:31:10
that
00:31:11
and they began to question
00:31:13
was it worth it was it really worth it
00:31:18
what we witnessed in the 60s
00:31:22
was a wholesale abandonment of the black
00:31:25
community by the black community
00:31:28
in other words we bought into
00:31:29
integration as opposed to desegregation
00:31:33
and so we integrated ourselves out of
00:31:35
our own colleges out of our own medical
00:31:37
schools out of our own businesses out of
00:31:39
our own baseball teams
00:31:41
there was a wholesale abandonment of our
00:31:43
own institutions that sustained us
00:31:45
through slavery through segregation
00:31:47
through discrimination through bigotry
00:31:49
the all those institutions within our
00:31:51
community that sustained us
00:31:53
uh that that provided the moral glue
00:31:56
that kept us going
00:31:58
that this was just torn asunder
00:32:00
in the name of integration and i think
00:32:04
the black community today
00:32:06
continues to pay a heavy price
00:32:08
for what we gained in the civil rights
00:32:11
movement
00:32:13
if you had told me in watts in 65 when i
00:32:16
was there with
00:32:17
every government there was the city
00:32:20
government and the county government and
00:32:22
the state government and the u.s
00:32:24
government all saying we're going to fix
00:32:26
watts
00:32:27
nobody could have told me that either
00:32:28
going back there in the 88 campaign with
00:32:30
jackson and watts would be worse
00:32:33
that all that stuff that people said
00:32:35
they were going to put in isn't there
00:32:37
you mean worse worse worse worse that
00:32:40
drugs that have their hands so deep in
00:32:43
that community
00:32:44
and people said don't they said jesse
00:32:46
don't come in and just say it's too
00:32:48
dangerous for you to come in but jesse
00:32:49
went in and so and he then he had a
00:32:51
meeting with the kids gangs and watched
00:32:56
and their kids there were just strung
00:32:57
out on drugs there were kids there who
00:33:00
who had
00:33:02
gold ropes on their necks and beepers
00:33:05
that
00:33:06
all of them victims of the drug business
00:33:07
in one way or another and there was
00:33:10
saying it to jesse as they would have
00:33:12
said to no other human being on this
00:33:14
earth
00:33:16
things that were in their heart my mind
00:33:18
i know it's wrong reverend i know it's
00:33:20
wrong
00:33:21
but i i just had nothing else to do
00:33:23
reverend i another guy said i know
00:33:25
what's wrong either people shouldn't be
00:33:26
using these things but reverend i got to
00:33:27
sell them because
00:33:29
i pay my rent for my mother and i pay my
00:33:31
rent for my hand well you know now that
00:33:33
partly that is that is rationalization
00:33:35
you know that but you also know it's
00:33:37
true that that they are engaging in the
00:33:39
only economic opportunity and uh
00:33:42
others say oh i'm i'm i'm all right
00:33:44
reverend i'm getting together tomorrow
00:33:46
and you know i mean these kids are just
00:33:48
done the hideous thing about it the
00:33:50
hideous thing for me that was ripping my
00:33:52
heart was that all these people were
00:33:53
born after 1965 they were all born after
00:33:57
i was there after we were going to do
00:33:58
all that stuff
00:34:01
that i would never have expected to see
00:34:03
and that's heartbreaking it's
00:34:04
heartbreaking
00:34:10
we neglected the next generation
00:34:12
and nobody instilled in them values and
00:34:15
social responsibility that they needed
00:34:17
to become effective constructive
00:34:19
participants in today's society
00:34:23
that is the fault of my generation that
00:34:26
we didn't leave
00:34:28
that consciousness and that
00:34:30
obligation or social responsibility as a
00:34:33
legacy
00:34:34
not only to
00:34:36
the college students of today but to the
00:34:39
non-college students of the day more so
00:34:42
you know because they are the ones that
00:34:44
are the real custodians
00:34:47
of our society especially the society
00:34:51
of urban america
00:34:53
here's where it's important
00:34:54
to step back and look at what's happened
00:34:58
this country lived quite comfortably
00:35:00
except for black people with racism for
00:35:02
300 years it's going to take more than
00:35:04
25 or 30 years to root it all out it's
00:35:07
going to continue to take struggle
00:35:10
white people have
00:35:11
changed in some fundamental ways but
00:35:13
there are still deep pockets of racism
00:35:16
left
00:35:18
it would have been extraordinary if
00:35:20
beginning let's say in 1964 when the
00:35:22
first
00:35:23
historic civil rights acts were passed
00:35:25
if beginning in that period
00:35:28
with hard work there had been one
00:35:30
straight continuum and lo and behold a
00:35:33
quarter century later it was all gone
00:35:36
you never would know that there had been
00:35:37
segregation
00:35:40
no way to do it that fast
00:35:42
i'm not always sure that the country has
00:35:44
the kind of energy and commitment to
00:35:45
keep at it until we in fact eliminate it
00:35:48
all and the 80s
00:35:50
uh
00:35:51
lowered the morale in the black
00:35:53
community so bad you would have thought
00:35:54
for some that we had gone back to the
00:35:57
1930s or the 1920s i never thought that
00:36:00
because i'm not going that way i'm not
00:36:02
going back psychologically i'm not going
00:36:04
back actually
00:36:06
uh
00:36:07
what i do recognize is that on the road
00:36:09
to full freedom there will be periods
00:36:11
like the 80s there will be leaders like
00:36:13
reagan
00:36:14
but i'm not going to let him destroy my
00:36:16
morale and i'm not going to let one
00:36:18
decade convince me
00:36:20
that we are in the same position our
00:36:22
ancestors were
00:36:24
in reconstruction
00:36:26
because we're just not going to let it
00:36:27
happen
00:36:29
the great society rests on abundance and
00:36:32
liberty for all
00:36:35
it demands an end to poverty
00:36:38
and racial injustice
00:36:40
to which we're totally committed in our
00:36:43
time
00:36:45
[Applause]
00:36:47
the democratic party of 1964 the party
00:36:50
of the great society
00:36:52
built a liberal coalition that struck a
00:36:54
responsive court with many americans
00:36:57
especially young americans
00:36:59
yet an often acknowledged legacy of the
00:37:01
1960s is the fragmentation of that
00:37:04
national democratic coalition and the
00:37:07
subsequent control of the white house by
00:37:08
the republicans
00:37:10
what happened
00:37:12
people scratch their heads and try to
00:37:13
wonder why it is that the republican
00:37:15
party has dominated presidential
00:37:17
politics since nineteen sixty eight
00:37:19
simple answer the civil rights movement
00:37:21
and the turmoil of the 60s and i'm not
00:37:24
saying oh yes the political pendulum
00:37:26
swung the other way in the conservative
00:37:28
direction no it's more fundamental than
00:37:29
that what the civil rights movement did
00:37:32
was dismantle a one-party south the one
00:37:36
party was the democratic party and that
00:37:38
allowed viable republican party
00:37:40
organizations to spring up throughout
00:37:42
the south and that more than anything
00:37:44
has been the cornerstone of the
00:37:46
republican party ascension to political
00:37:49
to political prominence in the 60s 70s
00:37:51
and 80s and into the 90s mr chairman
00:37:55
most delegates to this convention do not
00:37:57
know that thousands of young people are
00:38:00
being beaten
00:38:01
in the streets of chicago
00:38:05
and for that reason
00:38:06
and that reason alone i request the
00:38:09
suspension of the rules for the purpose
00:38:11
of adjournment for two weeks
00:38:15
to relocate the convention in another
00:38:18
city
00:38:20
if you look back to the late 1960s and
00:38:22
the early 1970s and if you ask yourself
00:38:24
what was the legacy
00:38:26
of
00:38:27
that time and of the of left-wing
00:38:30
activity at that time the legacy was the
00:38:32
election of richard nixon in 1968 the
00:38:34
emergence of ronald reagan in the
00:38:36
conservative movement and the election
00:38:38
of reagan in 1980 to the presidency
00:38:40
by 1968 in 1969 those of us were active
00:38:46
in the conservative movement knew for a
00:38:48
fact that the ultimate
00:38:50
result of what was going on was going to
00:38:51
be just that whether it was going to be
00:38:53
nixon or reagan was a question but we
00:38:55
knew
00:38:56
that these people who were out there
00:38:58
rioting in the streets were handing us
00:38:59
the country
00:39:01
and for that we have something to be
00:39:02
grateful for
00:39:03
a teenager held up a sign
00:39:06
bring us together
00:39:08
and
00:39:09
that will be the
00:39:12
great objective of this administration
00:39:13
at the outset
00:39:15
to bring the american people together
00:39:18
[Applause]
00:39:21
since richard nixon's election the
00:39:22
republican party has dominated the
00:39:24
presidency
00:39:27
but the victories they have enjoyed have
00:39:29
been and continue to be tainted by
00:39:32
fundamental changes in the way many
00:39:34
americans feel about their government
00:39:38
a recent survey suggests that 79 percent
00:39:41
feel that politicians have lost touch
00:39:43
with the people
00:39:45
i think that
00:39:47
certain patterns of thought were set
00:39:51
that are still with us
00:39:54
for one thing
00:39:55
i think an extreme skepticism
00:39:58
of any warlike move
00:40:00
i think that after vietnam
00:40:03
it became almost impossible
00:40:06
to get the american people embroiled in
00:40:08
any war where there was no
00:40:11
obvious direct threat
00:40:14
that's one
00:40:15
number two
00:40:17
i think
00:40:19
that the nation has been left
00:40:22
with a rather deep feeling of skepticism
00:40:26
about its political leaders
00:40:28
uh
00:40:29
part of that i believe was nixon and the
00:40:31
watergate
00:40:33
which of course took place afterward
00:40:35
uh but i think that a great deal of it
00:40:38
was due to what happened in vietnam
00:40:42
vietnam
00:40:44
a memory that continues to color the
00:40:46
judgment and the outlook of the people
00:40:48
who lived through it
00:40:54
what i learned in vietnam where as a
00:40:56
result of vietnam
00:41:00
is the way in which
00:41:02
our government operates
00:41:06
is very different from the way that we
00:41:07
are taught it operates very different
00:41:09
from what i learned in public school in
00:41:11
purgate pennsylvania
00:41:13
and this and and
00:41:14
the astounding thing and the
00:41:16
disappointing thing is that almost no
00:41:19
one
00:41:20
is willing to believe that
00:41:23
people listen to
00:41:25
someone like me talk
00:41:27
and they go away thinking that guy's
00:41:28
crazy
00:41:32
i understand things in a way that i
00:41:34
couldn't have understood before
00:41:36
but the
00:41:37
the problem with that is that it leaves
00:41:40
me
00:41:41
forever at odds
00:41:44
with the culture and the society in
00:41:45
which i live
00:41:47
because
00:41:53
the things which got us into vietnam and
00:41:56
in fact the things which
00:41:58
have
00:41:59
which created the crisis of the civil
00:42:01
rights movement
00:42:04
have not been resolved
00:42:08
i believe that america was right i
00:42:10
believe that we could have won the war i
00:42:13
believe the politicians were wrong
00:42:15
i believe that you know they did the
00:42:17
whole thing wrong
00:42:18
don't get in if you're not going to
00:42:19
fight to win
00:42:21
if you're going to fight to win
00:42:22
we could have won we could have went
00:42:24
right on to moscow as far as i was
00:42:26
concerned
00:42:27
don't play games with my life my
00:42:30
brother's life or the kids from my
00:42:32
neighborhood
00:42:37
for what end toward what in to how did
00:42:40
it gain us why were we there in the
00:42:42
first place
00:42:43
what was there to be gained to the
00:42:45
average citizen
00:42:47
what would have constituted winning
00:42:49
can you define that for me it's real
00:42:51
hard to win if you can't define what
00:42:53
constitutes
00:42:55
what constitutes winning
00:42:57
and that was the that was the damn
00:42:59
problem
00:43:00
is that once you decided to go in it was
00:43:03
in for a dime in for a dollar if you
00:43:05
don't figure out before people start
00:43:07
getting blown away
00:43:09
what is going to constitute winning
00:43:11
either in political terms or in
00:43:12
geographic terms you damn sure aren't
00:43:15
going to figure it out
00:43:16
when people start coming home in body
00:43:18
bags
00:43:25
[Music]
00:43:33
[Music]
00:43:35
[Applause]
00:43:46
there's no question but what the country
00:43:50
didn't go where some of us would have
00:43:51
wanted it to go in terms of its
00:43:54
particularly its sense of social justice
00:43:56
at home but also its sense of
00:43:59
of a broad but there is also no question
00:44:01
but what
00:44:02
today no one would try to ban the
00:44:04
communist speaker on a college campus
00:44:07
today no one would say you can't drink a
00:44:10
cup of coffee at this lunch counter you
00:44:12
can't drink out of that drinking
00:44:13
fountain no one today would try for a
00:44:16
minute to suggest that we should send a
00:44:18
half a million troops
00:44:20
to fight a war in burma thailand
00:44:23
cambodia
00:44:25
la any place in latin america i mean
00:44:27
pick the place that i mean it is out of
00:44:30
the question that the most conservative
00:44:34
legislator could conceivably in their
00:44:38
wildest imagination
00:44:40
suggest
00:44:41
returning to the early 60s out of the
00:44:43
question we have moved way beyond that
00:44:46
and won't move back
00:44:48
[Music]
00:44:50
americans from the 60s generation are on
00:44:52
the move
00:44:54
and select members of this group are
00:44:56
ascending to positions of political
00:44:57
leadership
00:44:59
but to what extent are americans of any
00:45:01
age willing to entrust those who took
00:45:03
part in the experiences of the 60s with
00:45:06
the ultimate responsibility for the
00:45:08
nation's future
00:45:11
it remains to be seen whether a vietnam
00:45:14
era
00:45:15
person will become president
00:45:18
if such a person does become president i
00:45:20
think it's now more likely that that
00:45:21
person will be
00:45:23
a vietnam veteran than a veteran of the
00:45:25
anti-war movement
00:45:28
most likely really would be a vietnam
00:45:30
veteran who is sympathetic to the
00:45:33
anti-war movement
00:45:36
but um
00:45:38
but i think we're at the very at this
00:45:40
moment we're in a period of of cultural
00:45:43
reaction
00:45:44
it's not so severe that people that it
00:45:47
raises the specter of repression
00:45:49
but uh for example
00:45:51
uh
00:45:53
it does mean that people who are
00:45:54
applying for government jobs when the
00:45:56
fbi
00:45:57
asked them have they ever smoked
00:46:00
marijuana
00:46:01
10 years ago they would have said yeah
00:46:03
sure
00:46:04
now they'll have to say no no not me
00:46:08
i never did did that
00:46:11
so
00:46:12
so uh we are haunted our generation is a
00:46:15
bit haunted
00:46:17
by uh by our youthful
00:46:19
follies which are now
00:46:21
for some reason
00:46:22
they're they're harder for for the
00:46:25
younger generation to understand let
00:46:26
alone the older generation i think it's
00:46:29
it's uh it's a kind of
00:46:31
a poignant irony
00:46:34
that um
00:46:36
that we're regarded in some ways by
00:46:39
those younger
00:46:41
in
00:46:42
a bit the same way that we were regarded
00:46:44
by our parents and those older it's just
00:46:46
that now we don't have the glamour of
00:46:48
youth anymore
00:46:50
[Music]
00:46:54
along with growing older comes one of
00:46:56
the toughest challenges for the 60s
00:46:58
generation
00:46:59
what to tell the kids
00:47:01
what to leave out
00:47:03
some feel it's best not to talk about
00:47:05
their wilder excursions away from
00:47:07
mainstream values and behavior
00:47:10
but this is a generation that preached
00:47:12
that parents should teach their children
00:47:14
well
00:47:15
to be honest about feelings and values
00:47:19
trying to make sense of the sixties for
00:47:20
the next generation is a moment of truth
00:47:28
i have an eight-year-old son and he
00:47:31
already has had to confront my political
00:47:33
activity currently
00:47:35
used when his first grade teacher asked
00:47:37
him what his father did he said my
00:47:39
father fights fascism which prompted a
00:47:41
teacher parent conference
00:47:43
um
00:47:44
so and i never told him to say that
00:47:46
but he is getting to the point now where
00:47:48
he is asking some questions about that
00:47:50
and both my wife and i come out of the
00:47:52
political movement of the 60s and
00:47:54
both did a lot of organizing and went
00:47:57
through all those various
00:48:00
sexual and drug revolutions and it's
00:48:02
hard it's hard to know what to answer
00:48:04
because i don't want to lie to him but i
00:48:06
don't want him to be hurt and i feel
00:48:08
echoes of my parents when i say this
00:48:11
because
00:48:12
i
00:48:13
don't want my kid to use crack i don't
00:48:15
want my kid to use
00:48:18
hard drugs
00:48:20
i don't know how to balance
00:48:22
the things in the 60s that happened to
00:48:24
me drugs were part of it
00:48:26
um
00:48:28
to today
00:48:29
so that part of the 60s i don't know how
00:48:31
to deal with the rest of it you bet i
00:48:33
talk to them all the time about it
00:48:35
and they ask about it because some of
00:48:37
them are studying in school now
00:48:39
and it's interesting to look at the
00:48:40
books and hear what it says about the
00:48:42
60s
00:48:43
i mean it's probably very much like my
00:48:44
parents who looked at books about world
00:48:46
war ii that i was looking at when i was
00:48:48
their age
00:48:49
and i want to tell them what the truth
00:48:50
was
00:48:52
or at least as i see it well it's it's
00:48:54
just doesn't have the emotion
00:48:57
it doesn't have the feeling it's sort of
00:48:59
facts and they aren't facts
00:49:01
much more than that
00:49:04
i walk my child to the town
00:49:07
and i take him across the pavement where
00:49:10
it goes down like this and i explain
00:49:11
about that and we pass
00:49:13
you know we pass a sign and it says
00:49:16
women working
00:49:18
yeah but he's seen that sign before it
00:49:20
has no charge for him you can't imagine
00:49:22
what it was like the first time once all
00:49:25
sign women
00:49:26
working you know
00:49:28
how to tell
00:49:29
the young people how life is transformed
00:49:34
i've managed to raise myself from
00:49:37
poverty into the middle class
00:49:40
even though i might not want to
00:49:43
say i am i am
00:49:46
the fact that i could do that as a black
00:49:48
woman in this country
00:49:50
and
00:49:51
really says to me that
00:49:54
we can do anything we want to do if we
00:49:56
can organize and put our minds to it and
00:49:59
we can say that to the youth today
00:50:02
that you can do the same thing we did
00:50:04
back in the 50s and in the 60s and in
00:50:07
the 70s
00:50:09
my daughter julie is 18 registered vote
00:50:13
a student at sarah lawrence college
00:50:15
i am worried about her because if she
00:50:17
has six dollars in her pocket and she
00:50:20
sees a homeless person i know they're
00:50:21
gonna get five
00:50:24
and she has been very concerned about
00:50:27
studying the history and she's writing a
00:50:29
a a paper on the freedom democratic
00:50:32
party she's very committed she was a
00:50:34
volunteer
00:50:36
at georgetown hospital here she was
00:50:38
she's very committed to people
00:50:41
my son is very committed to the stock
00:50:43
market
00:50:44
he says that well while he likes
00:50:47
he myself and his mother and what we do
00:50:50
he thinks that we're wasting a lot of
00:50:51
time on homeless people and when they
00:50:53
were young they should have gotten
00:50:54
newspaper routes save their money
00:50:57
and if they have problems finding a job
00:50:59
he'll be glad to personally teach them
00:51:01
how to work
00:51:02
and uh i mean so it's just uh some of my
00:51:05
friends tell me well that's my that's my
00:51:07
punishment
00:51:09
but despite his politics i of course
00:51:10
love him
00:51:15
the question the 60s generation keeps
00:51:17
struggling to answer not only for their
00:51:19
children but for themselves is what is
00:51:22
the meaning of it all
00:51:24
how will history remember the 1960s
00:51:28
each of the 180 participants witnesses
00:51:30
and experts who contributed to this
00:51:32
series was asked this same question
00:51:35
and while their specific answers varied
00:51:37
greatly almost everyone either talked
00:51:40
about the 1960s impact on america
00:51:43
or talked about the 1960s impact on
00:51:45
themselves
00:51:47
the 60s impact on america was stated
00:51:49
eloquently by dr manning maribel
00:51:52
the 60s
00:51:54
created
00:51:55
a fundamental challenge in question to
00:51:57
the very essence of what american
00:51:59
democracy is all about
00:52:01
the 60s represented a fundamental
00:52:03
question
00:52:04
about the absence of material equality
00:52:07
for poor people and people of color in
00:52:09
the society
00:52:10
the 60s represented a cultural challenge
00:52:14
to the conformity and the velvetization
00:52:17
of american culture
00:52:19
the fact that we could be proud that we
00:52:21
were so similar
00:52:23
the 60s said we should be happy that we
00:52:25
are different
00:52:26
and within the difference we find
00:52:30
creativity we find challenge and change
00:52:34
we find excitement and vibrancy
00:52:37
that is really the power of american
00:52:39
society
00:52:41
the 60s was a fundamental challenge to
00:52:43
what america had said about itself for
00:52:45
so many generations
00:52:47
it was a lie built on top of a lie
00:52:50
democracy didn't live for millions of
00:52:52
african americans and equality was not
00:52:55
real for the poor
00:52:57
the 60s forced america to look in the
00:53:00
mirror at itself
00:53:02
and what it represents
00:53:04
is the promise of american life in the
00:53:06
future because the questions the 60s
00:53:08
raised still haven't gone away
00:53:14
when will those questions be answered
00:53:17
with the memories and passions from the
00:53:19
60s still stirring in so many perhaps
00:53:22
history won't be able to decide on the
00:53:24
full impact of the 60s until the last
00:53:27
member of the sixties generation has
00:53:29
passed on
00:53:30
that's the sentiment of the second
00:53:32
answer to the question about the real
00:53:34
meaning of the sixties experience
00:53:37
an appreciation that on a personal level
00:53:40
at least
00:53:41
final assessments don't come easy
00:53:44
carl oglesby
00:53:46
and meantime we had an experience which
00:53:49
i suppose is unique
00:53:51
in american history
00:53:54
and which nobody who went through it
00:53:55
will ever forget uh it's an experience
00:53:59
filled with treasured moments and
00:54:01
nightmares
00:54:02
alike
00:54:03
to this day all inter-interwoven
00:54:06
and i think that it will always be this
00:54:08
way the 60s will never level out
00:54:12
it's a corkscrew it's a tail spin it's
00:54:17
a joyride on a roller coaster
00:54:20
it's a never-ending mystery
00:54:24
who won who lost what were the terms of
00:54:26
victory and defeat
00:54:29
we'll always be discussing that i think
00:54:31
it was an american it was another civil
00:54:34
war in a sense
00:54:36
and it has all the
00:54:38
the the drama the melodrama
00:54:42
the comedy
00:54:43
the pathos
00:54:44
above all the confusion
00:54:46
the uncertainty as to outcome and
00:54:49
meaning and significance
00:54:51
that the civil war of the 1860s had
00:54:55
maybe it's just that
00:54:56
in every 60s decade
00:54:59
18th century 19th century 20th century
00:55:03
we have to go through some
00:55:05
crisis like this but it was
00:55:08
certainly uh
00:55:11
certainly that we had us a time
00:55:14
and we're still trying to figure out
00:55:15
what it was all about
00:55:24
no we ain't
00:55:26
got no barrel
00:55:29
of mine
00:55:33
[Music]
00:55:41
but we'll travel alone
00:55:46
[Music]
00:55:58
we don't
00:55:59
know what's
00:56:02
[Music]
00:56:14
but we'll
00:56:16
[Music]
00:56:25
time
00:56:35
what if the sky should fall
00:56:39
not just as long as you and me
00:56:47
[Music]
00:56:56
you'll be the
00:57:03
[Music]
00:57:22
traveling
00:57:25
[Music]
00:57:28
and we're shy
00:57:32
[Music]
00:57:42
[Music]
00:57:49
major funding for making sense of the
00:57:52
60s was provided by the corporation for
00:57:55
public broadcasting
00:57:58
and by viewers like you
00:58:02
additional funding was provided by sims
00:58:04
clothing stores where since 1960 an
00:58:07
educated consumer has been our best
00:58:09
customer
00:58:11
and by toms of maine a pioneer in
00:58:14
natural personal care toms of maine and
00:58:16
nature a friendship of 20 years
00:58:21
video cassettes of this program can be
00:58:23
purchased for educational use only by
00:58:26
calling 1-800-424-7963
00:58:31
home video sales are not available
00:58:33
through this offer
00:58:38
this is pbs
00:58:42
for a printed transcript of this program
00:58:44
send ten dollars to sixties transcript
00:58:47
journal graphics 267 broadway new york
00:58:50
new york one triple zero seven to order
00:58:52
by credit card call 212 227 read
00:59:18
you