All right. Lets get started. Obviously today were going to talk act the 1960s. Do you guys know about that song with by the way . Buffalo springfield for what its worth . Steve stills wrote it when he was with buffalo springfield. He wrote the song after a protest. They put a law on how long people could be outside of bars in los angeles. And all of the young people protested, i dont want to go to bed at 10 00. I want to party at the whiskey agogo, right . The cops came, they beat some heads and there was a protest. Stephen stills writes this song all about the contentious nature of the 1960s, right . And the thing about that song, its a ski protest song, you guys know it all and it was written 50 years ago. The thing about that song is its not so much a protest song im right and youre wrong. But it is about look at what is happening to our society, right . Field day for the heat. Right . A thousand people on the street. All of them carrying signs mostly saying hooray for our side, my side, not your side but my side. Battle lines being drawn. Who is right when everybody is wrong. Right . Its a key song of the 1960s not because its a good lefty song or a good conservative song but because it talks about the rise of the contentious nature that we know of as the 1960s. There are a lot of misconceptions about the 1960s, but one of the key things that i want you to learn today, im going to repeat this theme over and over and over again. One of the key themes of the 60s is calls for freedom. Right . People want freedom. Hooray for my side. And in the 1960s the cost of that individual freedom might be the greater good. And so the story of this lecture in the 1960s is going to be the rise of the calls for freedom at the expense of the greater good. That kind of sounds bad. But when you think about what the greater good was doing, why did the Civil Rights Movement happen . Well, the greater good wasnt creating an equal environment for everybody. Why does the Womens Movement happen . Because women were treated as second class citizens in a lot of ways. So thats the theme of the lecture. And it really plays on what weve learned about since world war ii, right . America comes together during world war ii. What does fdr say that the world is about . Anybody remember . The four freedoms, right . The two freedoms from something were the two freedoms for something. The society in the 1950s gets incredibly wealthy as we stop making bombs and start making frisbees and yet there are all of these rules, this conformity that people sense in the 1950s. Remember we talk about that . And then starting in the 1960s, even early in the 1950s but comes to a head in the 1960s, all of the sudden people want to bust out of that box, right . They want to bust out of the contained society that has been successful in a lot of ways. 1950s with the Richest Society in the history of man kind. Human kind, right . But a lot of people feel its not quite spiritually satisfying. And the busting out of that, declaring their freedom from conformity or declaring their freedom from the onerous burden of bureaucracy and taxation, thats what the 1960s is about. And thats going to be the theme of the lecture today. Does that make sense . Yeah . Calls for freedom, right . Okay. Instead of a story, normally i start with a story. Instead of a story, im going to show a bunch of pictures to start us off because i any theres so much about the 1960s that is generally misunderstood. I went and looked up some images of the 60s, right . And evidently, if you Google Search the 60s, this is what you get. This is a Halloween Costume you can buy to be a 60s kind of hern. This is a poster that you can buy to decorate your dorm rooms or what not. You can buy this post, right . Youre in tune wh the 1960s radicalism. And this was a mini series that appeared on Nbc Television about 10 or 15 years ago, was all about flower power and families experiencing what its like to have a daughter become a hippy. These kinds of things. Right . And so in our popular mind, Popular Culture especially, the 60s are really perceived to be there, hippies, flower power, smoking pot and all of that stuff. But of course the 60s are way more complicated than that, right . You guys know what this is . Right. Jfk getting assassinated. 1963 in texas. Rig right . 60s people listen to music, youthful music. We talked about Elvis Presley last time. Weve got bob dillon up there, one of my favorite jimi hendrix of course as you guys know. People went on picnics, right . Im always i want to wear those shorts every time i give this lecture, right . Not the haircut but the shorts. The Civil Rights Movement which we talked about last lecture really heats up in the 60s and even changes course towards the end. Weve talked about that, right . Remember this image up here, Martin Luther king, the assassination of Martin Luther king, right . Calls for freedom, right . Freedom must be lived. Its called the freedom movement, right . Of course africanamericans arent alone. These are images of womens liberation, right . Liberation of course is just another word for freedom, right . Womens liberation. Dont call me girl. All right. This is the rise of the whkhaka movement in the 1960s. See your chavez unionizing a lot of latino workers in california trying to protest and bring their protest to national prominence, right . We must understand that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline. Stay true to the cause and you will be free. Right . All these movements for freedom. Right . And yet we must not forget that in 1968 this guy becomes president , right . You guys know who this is . Richard millhouse nixon. The simpsons took his middle name. Richard nixon and he wins in 68. And some of the things that he advocates for are free markets. Freedom. So freedom is a call from the left and the right in the 1960s. And its a real challenge to the postwar society that emerged out of world war ii. Right . If you remember what we talked about in that society, in the 1950s, it was premised on government control, a little bit of the economy. It happened during the new deal. It happened during world war ii. Bureaucracies were taking over, right . It was premised on friendly corporate relationships with the government. Remember i showed you that really weird complicated slide about defense spend in the United States and how the congressman worked on that door to become lobbyists and worked in the defense industry. Huge amounts of federal dollars were being spent in the Defense Ministry to help prop up the economy that needed help after the war after it converted frwod war ii, right . And society in that period, it became suburbanized. Remember i showed you the pictures of all of the Straight Lines in the middle, the potato fields, William Levitt planting those houses everywhere, in pretty Straight Lines with no trees until the trees grew up. Right . And people followed the rules of society. And if you followed the rules of society, you too could have a 1200 square foot home in new jersey or pennsylvania, Something Like that, which to us sounds unappealing. But if you grew up in the Great Depression in chicago say in some small Apartment Building and your dad was always looking for work, that house sounds fantastic, right . But it also came with certain rules and expectations. Remember what happens to women after the war . Right . Rosie the riveter has to go home and have children. Thats the social expectation. And the number of children skyrockets, right . So theres all this and there are these complaints, the sense of that were a conformist society, we need to bust free from conformity. And what happens in the 1960s is people start pushing back. Okay. So the start of the 1960s actually looks a lot like the 1950s in your imagination, and that 50s idea lasts through 61, 62, 63. Only in 64, 65, 66 start changing in what we saw as the 1960s. Do you know who this is . This is john f. Kennedy. I have down here playboy millionaire catholic for president. He inherited he was the son of a very wealthy man, Joseph Kennedy, who made a ton of money in the liquor industry, in the movie industry, in hollywood. And he really wanted his sons to not sort of be businessmen working on the margins. But he wanted them to be president s or senators. Theres a scene in one of my favorite movies the godfather with don is sitting there looking at his youngest son michael about to take over the mafia. He said michael, i never wanted this for you, i wanted you to be senator corleone, judge core rer corleone and instead you became the mafia boss. Thats what Joseph Kennedy wanted. They go to harvard. It was the oldest son that joseph, the dad, was priming for the presidency. The oldest son gets killed in world war ii, so its the second oldest son, john f. Kennedy who becomes the heir apparent. After the war he runs for the house op representatives from massachusetts where hes from. Gets elected. Becomes a senator. And at a very young age, hes 43 years old when he runs for president in 1960. Hes really, really young. And one of the things that was inspiring about him was not just the rhetoric although he had a very very powerful way of speaking to people. He was very charming, very comfortable in front of cameras. He looked good. Had hollywood good looks, they said. He was unafraid to use those looks on a variety of women as you guys probably all know about, to great effect, i should say. But to people who were starting to complain about the conformity of the 1950s, they saw this young guy as maybe a spark, a way out. Right . It was incredibly close election in 1960. He just squeaks by. This is the famous election where a lot of dead people in chicago vote and kennedy wins illinois and kennedy goes on to win the presidency. In his inaugural address, he gives one of the more famous he says one of the most famous lines in president ial history right . There are a handful of this unbelievably famous line as enthis is one of them. Im sure you guys know this line, right . Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. You guys know this line . Do you ever think about what it means . Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. What can you do to improve the whole of society . Right . Dont ask about your own individual freedom but ask what you can do to make our country better. Right . You guys get that . That sense . Right . Just to give away the lecture, its hard to imagine at the end of the lecture somebody saying this because so many calls for freedom had happened in the decade of the 1960s. He comes in to office filled with hope and promises of change in some ways, right . But its the cold war period and everybody assumes that the cold war is going to be what dominates his ten years as presidency. And sure enough in the very beginning it does. The focal point this time is cu cuba. An island 90 miles off the cost of florida here. Like many latin america countries in this period, there are revolutions. Like many occasions of these revolutions, the United States try to intervene and dictate and make sure theres no communist takeover of these countries. In cuba the revolution is in 58. Castro takes charge. Hes a communist. The United States tries to unseat him but it doesnt work. This bay of pigs disaster that you can read about in the textbook. It doesnt work at all. And so slowly but surely castro goes through cubas economy and they start kicking out all of the american businesses, nationalizing things like the Oil Refineries and we start kicking out american businesses. Youll remember dollar diplomacy from several lectures ago, the United States gets very interested. And so in 1962 the United States puts an embargo on cuba. We are not allowed to expo export import goods from cuba. Which still exists although theres much discussion about lifting it. So well see how that plays out ultimately. A funny story about the embargo, john f. Kennedy really loved cuban cigars, who wouldnt, right . So the day before hes about to sign the embargo, he asks his press secretary to buy as many cuban cigars as he could possibly get his hands on. He gets his hands on 1200 cigars, delivers them to the president and three minutes later john f. Kennedy signs the embargo. So jfk got his cigars, right . Thats not the end of the story, of course. Because now that cuba doesnt have a friend in the United States, it needs trading partners because cuba is a communist country, who are they going to pick to be one of their key trading partners . Soviet union, right . As the soviet union and cuba become closer and closer partners, the soviet union says hey, theres a country that were friendly with 90 miles from the coast of florida. I wonder if they would let us put some Nuclear Weapons on that island so that we can be right in range of the United States. Right . They plan on it. They Start Building facilities in cuba. They start putting the warheads on ships and sending them to the island. Reconnaissance photos of which this is one, from american spy planes, look at this and they say, you know what theyre doing, theyre building places to store these weapons. Theyre building places where they can launch Nuclear Weapons 90 miles from the coast of the United States. We cannot allow them to do this. Then the United States discoffers that these ships have left the soviet union carrying the weapons. So on tv jfk announces whats going on and demands that the soviet union turn those ships around, no weapons in cuba. This is what comes to be called the cuban missile crisis. And this is the closest we ever came to having all out nuclear war between the two super powers. Well the soviet union says, were not going to turn our ships around. Were entitled to arm our ally. After all, you guys just tried to invade them and upset the communist revolution there. So were entitled to defend them. And anyway, you, United States you have weapons in turkey and italy, within striking distance of the soviet union. So how is this different from that . And what ensues is remarkable. For 13 days the ships gets closer and closer and closer. Television is covering this every single day. People start writing wills. They start plotting for the destruction of humanity. Right . How is this going to end . There are all sorts of negotiations taking place. Every day everybody turns on the tv an sees the ships getting closer and closer and closer to cuba. Right. Here they are arm wrestling. Look what theyre sitting on, right . Theyre sitting on their weapons. Finally, after 13 days, theres an agreement. And on paper that agreement is the United States agrees never to invade cuba again and the soviet union will no longer plan on putting offensive weapons in cuba and they turn the ships around. Secretly the United States also agrees to take its weapons out of italy and turkey, so theres a bit of a quid pro quo there. And kennedy is hailed as a hero. One commentator said he played the scariest hand of poker anybody has ever played and he won. All right. Theres a pretty decent movie about this. I think its called 13 days. I think thats what its called. A pretty decent movie that talks about the anxiety, every day the end could come. Right . I guess we all should live like that but maybe not with that much fear. So jfk is a cold warrior but hes also sort of facing the challenges of the cold war trying to maybe, maybe back it down a little bit. Hes willing to use diplomacy. Hes pulling Nuclear Weapons out of italy and turkey, right . He also slowly but sure ly gets engaged in the Civil Rights Movement. This isnt really because he wants to get engaged with the Civil Rights Movement. Its because the Civil Rights Movement forces it to be engaged with it. Remember last lecture i talked about the sitins in greensboro, really creating the mod tern Civil Rights Movement. Public spectacles. Anybody can be a part of it, right . Martin luther king picks up on this and starts his confrontational methods, having everybody dress up in really nice subdivisinday clothes, go for freedom and then get arre arrested, insighvites all of th cameras to show up. This is going to mobilize america to fight for civil rights and one of those people that gets mobilized is john f. Kennedy. He has a great line. 100 years of delay has passed since president lincoln freed the slaves yet they are not yet freed from the bonds of justice, social and economic oppression. And this nation for all of its hopes and boasts will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free. Right. A great sentence. Or two. All right. So hes cautiously endorsing Civil Rights Action. And why, just to remind you again, not because hes this advocate of Civil Rights Activity. But because of images like this. Right . Remember, it was this image that he said it made him sick, right, these visceral images of the Civil Rights Movement prompted him to act. Right . Kids getting pelted by fire hoses to stop them from marching. But before he can see through any of the change thats being pushed upon him, well this happens. November 22nd, 1963, he is shot. You guys seen the footage of this . Its pretty horrific, right . Super gross. Pronounced dead sh