1964 - The Year The Sixties Began | American Heritage - October, 2006

1964 - The Year The Sixties Began - Joshua Zeitz

Joshua Zeitz confirms in this essay what many of us intuitively understood, but were unable to put our fingers on. The 1960s, that decade of activism and men's long hair and the Vietnam War, really began on January 1, 1964.  Dr. Zeitz uses three events, the arrival of the Beatles, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Gulf of Tonkin events that led to the escalation in Vietnam.

How do we intuitively know this?  For most of us, it is probably musical.  The Beatles didn't top the charts in the United States until 1964.  That is a pretty clear demarcation for popular music.  As Dr. Zeitz says, the music prior to the arrival of the Beatles was strictly Fifties, crooning innocent music.  He recounts their arrival in New York and explains how they were the right band at the right time for a generation looking to break out from the clean cut image of their parents.

Dr. Zeitz continues his description of 1964 by focusing on Andy Goodman and his decision, at the age of 21, to help out the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi.  His story is harrowing stuff and is largely forgotten today unless you are interested in the origin of the Civil Rights Act and ending of Jim Crow in the American south.  Using Andy's parents in the story brings home the anguish of our personal decisions.

Then there is the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam.  Controversial and far-reaching in its consequences, the resolution made by Congress that gave the President a free hand in escalating the war is still part of our war culture today.  There was a time when Congress had to issue a Declaration of War before the President could legally and purposefully send troops into conflict.  Dr. Zeitz also sheds some light on President Johnson's quandary when it came to the rabid anti-communist feeling in the country.

Today is my birthday.  I was born in 1964, the year the Sixties began happens to be the year that I began a life of my own.  Usually, around a birthday, we think back on that birth year and we wonder what it was like to bring a baby into the world.  My parents were oh so young, my mother was still a teenager.  I don't know how these events affected them, though I did grow up with a lot of Beatles records around the house.