The Long 1960s: Pop Music, Counterculture, and Black Awakening

The sixties—broadly conceived as a period spanning the mid-1950s to the early to mid-1970s—remain the most influential and turbulent era in the collective living memory of most Americans. The changes that occurred during the sixties transformed the United States, and are still evident today in national politics, foreign policy, social norms and values, culture, and fashion. The sixties themselves are closely associated with political, cultural, and social movements that effected so many of those changes—the African American freedom struggle and the Black Power movement, the diverse movements to end the Vietnam war, women's liberation, gay liberation, and the counterculture and communes of the era. But many Americans defined themselves in opposition to these movements, and the roots of the conservative politics ascendant in the late-1970s are a reaction to the developments of the sixties. The course focuses on the ongoing struggle of Americans to define themselves in this tumultuous period. We explore how participants in these movements understood themselves and their movements to change America, at the time and in retrospect, using a mixture of memoirs, oral histories, music, films, and videos, among other sources.