by Kathryn E.
Member since:
January 15, 2006

The Sixties: From Lunch Counter 'Sit-ins' to Mylai

April 07, 2006 05:44 AM EDT (Updated: April 25, 2006 02:20 PM EDT)
views: 94 | rating: 9.4/10 (14 votes) | comments: 50

Lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworths
JFK elected President
Peace Corp program announced
Yuri Gargarin, first man in space
Bay of Pigs
Alan Shepard, first American in space
16,000 U.S. advisors sent to Vietnam
John Glenn, first American in Orbit
Cuban Missile Crisis
Black student attends classes at U. of Mississippi
Viet Cong down 5 U.S. helicopters
Medgar Evers killed
Gov. George Wallace allows black students at U. of Alabama
March on Washington
Church in Birmingham bombed
JFK assassinated
Beatles arrive in NYC
LBJ signs Civil Rights Act
Bodies of three civil rights workers found
LBJ elected President
RFK elected Senator
Malcolm X assassinated
'Rolling Thunder' raids begin
Selma to Montgomery march
U.S. authorized to 'search and destroy'
Birth control becomes legal
Mao Zedong launches Cultural Revolution
U.S. deaths exceed Vietnamese deaths, first time
James Meredith shot in civil rights march
Timothy Leary arrested
Hurricane Carter arrested
Jack Ruby dies
Monterey Pop Festival
Race riots in Detroit
Race riots in Newark
Westmoreland asks for more U.S. Troops
Thurgood Marshall, first black on U.S. Supreme Court
"Soul on Ice" Published
Martin Luther King assassinated
Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
Columbia University students protest Vietnam War
Violence erupts at the DNC
Student protests in Paris
Nixon elected President
21 Black Panthers indicted for policeman's death
Man on the Moon
Charles Manson kills Sharon Tate
Chappaquiddick
Woodstock Festival
Massacre at Mylai, 567 killed

 

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Comments: 50

Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 5:51am EDT
This is the first of a series, "The Sixties."
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 5:59am EDT
Michael, two comments. One: You're quick on the draw. This was published two minutes ago. Two: Not that great, I'm afraid. What have we got to show for our human existence these last 10 years?
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:56am EDT
Good point, Wilhelmine, Yes, for me, too, the sixties was the most alive time of my life. My kds made the comment recently that the sixties seemed to have a greater amount of important events than other decades. Passage of civil rights legislation, a lot social upheaval and change.

I'm still waiting for all this change to take place...
Cynthia C. Apr 7, 2006, 7:21am EDT
Kathryn, My biggest mistake was thinking that we had done our job, ending Vietnam, winning rights for women to control their own bodies, etc...I NEVER thought we would be in this horrible place where we are today, struggling for the same rights all over again.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 7:35am EDT
Cynthia, EXACTLY. What is the reason? Why is this so? Those who don't remember history are condemned to relive it?
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 7:57am EDT
Gretel, I wish someone or some ones would take up the challenge. Thank you for this most relevant and important comment.
Christopher C. Apr 7, 2006, 8:23am EDT
Kathryn., Lived each and every day awaking, listening, reading, watching, the news like a slow ticking bomb was going to take my life and not one moment of fear, fight or flight, was the sixties! Youth knows not death! And now today, the news is filtered, slanted, faked, and baked! Does anybody care? I'm looking forward to your Sixties series! Looking at American history, we are a boiling kettle of content and discontent! We've been at revolution since 1776 with our self, a divide culture, but really no different than any other nation, if we look closely, the have's and have nots, the employer-the employee, where ever there is life sustaining imbalance, there is conflict! Thanks!
Nancy S. Apr 7, 2006, 8:53am EDT
This is really good. Reminds me of the Billy Joel song.
Amazing the mix, huh?
George Corneliussen Apr 7, 2006, 10:03am EDT
JFK assassinated - I was outside my seventh grade classroom clapping erasers. Someone near me had a transisitor radio, I heard the news about the President's assassination. I ran back into my classroom and shouted "Hey, everybody they shot the President !"
My teacher must have read the way I shouted it in a way he didn't like, he kicked me as hard as he could in rear-end. I landed a good three feet away. He never told me why he did it, and I never asked.
Carol Voigts Apr 7, 2006, 10:51am EDT
Excellent chronicle of our events of the 60's . It could be a song.
Sandy (Site Psychic™) Knauer Apr 7, 2006, 11:04am EDT
the list reminds me how short we're falling in our job today.
Stephen Schneider Apr 7, 2006, 11:14am EDT
Nice Kathryn. Lots to think about and remember
Serina Matteson Apr 7, 2006, 3:10pm EDT
I wasn't born until 1967 so I don't remember these days. I do find them so interesting to hear about. This is all so scary. The then and the now.
Nancy C. Apr 7, 2006, 3:43pm EDT
I will always remember where I was when they came on the loudspeaker at school and told us the President Kennedy had been shot. Lots of things went on in the sixties and some of those things never really got resolved even in this day and age.
donna f. Apr 7, 2006, 5:53pm EDT
Nostalgic piece. I was a pre-teen in the late sixties, and remember the fear
that the whole family felt when my brother got his draft notice.
Unfortunately, the draft will be brought back if this insanity isn't stopped.
I wouldn't wish that feeling on anyone.
Gisela S. Apr 7, 2006, 6:40pm EDT
I arrived - literally - in the 60's. With ultra-conservative parents, I must have developed my social ideas through cultural, not familial osmosis ;)

I remember the first moon landing, mostly because Mom was pregnant and jumping around like a big beach ball. I was afraid she would pop!!
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:42pm EDT
Christopner, I think SO much about the sixties, how so many people got together to work toward causes they believed in. The fight was worth it, but was short-lived and we need to fight again. The good fights. I'm appalled at today's social stance, so brought up was I, along with every other commenter here, in the 60s. Thanks for your most relevant comment.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:44pm EDT
Gretel, marriage is 'not a word, but a sentence," lol. Yeah, I surrendered my place vis a vis free speech, too.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:45pm EDT
Nancy, WHICH Billy Joel song. I don't seem to know that one, or, if I do, it's not coming to mind, vis a vis the 60s.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:46pm EDT
George, your teacher was frustrated, but still mean. No reason to do that do you, kick a kid;. Not even the day JFK was asssassinated. I was in the 6th grade and had just brought my pet mice from class to my house for lunch across the street, when I heard the news on TV.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:47pm EDT
Carol, thanks, I think of this SO much. I'm appalled at today's social and pollitical stance.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:48pm EDT
Sandy, you and me BOTH.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:49pm EDT
Stephen, thanks, and lots do DO.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:50pm EDT
Serina, 1967 was still a time when a lot of things were happening and needed change. A good time to be born.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:51pm EDT
Nancy C., everybody it seems remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing the moment JFK was shot. A good idea for an article. It is so TRUE that a lot of things didn't get resolved. The revolution needs to keep happnening.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:53pm EDT
Donna, you said a worldful in your comment, and "the fear the whole family felt when [your] brother got his draft notice." I;'ve heard reasons why a draft won't happen, but I'm not well versed enough to argue it. I don't want to look into that subject, as my son will be 18 in less than one month.
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 6:55pm EDT
Gisela, welcome, child of the 60s. A gerat time to grow up in. You're probably right, that you developed your ideas from the culture. The youth culture was SO prevalent, so important.
Heidi S. Apr 7, 2006, 8:34pm EDT
Quite a list. A lot of repetition it seems. Don't we chronical history and study it so the same mistakes aren't repeated? Hah!
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 8:54pm EDT
Heidi, i wish that history didn't have to repeat itself.
Nathan Schauer Apr 7, 2006, 9:18pm EDT
The posting of events in this stark list, has the effect of forcing the reader to experience the breaking apart of the world . Strangely powerful because there is no commentary or editorial here, it is just the events. This work - more than others you have done - seems to achieve the cross over of your strength as a journalist into a more poetic form. Keep working with this, I think you are on to something important. Its not just the idea - its the melding of poetic/journalistic style that strikes me as unusual and exciting here.
Kathy - maybe you could start a gather group - The Sixties.
Madame Donna C. Apr 7, 2006, 9:19pm EDT
Kathryn, You've made me homesick for the 60's! What a progressive and altering time it was back then!
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 9:36pm EDT
Nathan, as I was writing this, I was thinking just the effect that you described. One of the things I like about being a journalist, is the ability to meld creative poetic language into prose, facts and insight.

A Gather group on The Sixties. What a capital idea, Nathan. Thanks, I'll do that. !!! Thank you for your most relevant comments, here !!!
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 9:37pm EDT
Donna, yes, it really was. Those of us who lived it know this: It was not about the drugs. It was about a sea-change, a watershed time.
Edward F. Apr 7, 2006, 10:45pm EDT
How did we ever make it thru the sixties, even more so how did i make it ?More history was made then than in any decade in my life time, and I am no youngster
Kathryn E. Apr 7, 2006, 10:55pm EDT
Edward, yes, MORE history was made in that decade. That is what depresses me so. I'm alive only when thinking about all the sixties represented and ways to try to progress onward, toward real change.
Kathryn E. Apr 8, 2006, 3:38am EDT
Cindy, yes, it is. These are 'talking bullet' points, they 'speak' a million tomes about 'the sixties.'
Bonnie L. Apr 8, 2006, 3:53am EDT
Wow Kathryn...take me back! I was just a little girl in the 60's but I remember a lot of this.....and while I don't remember the sit-ins at the lunch counter at Woolworths, I do remember the grilled cheese, fries and coke I used to get at the lunch counter with my Grandma!
Kathryn E. Apr 8, 2006, 5:02am EDT
Bonnie, thanks so much for your comment. Yes, it was good to grow up in the sixties, whatever part of the sixties a person lived, it was sure to make an impression. I remember my mom telling me about the segregation, that blacks could only sit at sections reserved for blacks, and feeling incensed.
Kathryn E. Apr 8, 2006, 11:44pm EDT
Louis, thank you for your comment. I agree with your timeline, and with the disappearance of activism. It is so sad, the disappearance of activism. I've just started a series on The Sixties: Early Stirrings, Lunch Counters (1)", of which this article was a precursor.

From what you said, being age 10 when JFK was killed, that makes you 2 years older than I.

Thank you, Louis, for finding this article and commenting.
Carolyn Madden Apr 9, 2006, 2:05am EDT
child of '62 here and my baby sister was born the next year on nov 23 1963, so my mum definitely always remembered where she was that day. (should explain, it was already the 23rd here, not the 22nd, it's the same with the moonlanding.. you guys got the date wrong on that one too, hehe)

Great post Kathryn and i'm delighted to become a re-activator!
Kathryn E. Apr 9, 2006, 5:49am EDT
Carolyn, I prefer to think of the date thing as you guys are AHEAD of the times...So, you joined The Renewed Activist? Great!!! Yeah, Of JFK's assassination, that has to be the single worst day in the memory of all those who were alive at the time.
Steve Petersen Apr 10, 2006, 1:02am EDT
The Sixties probably were an exciting time to be alive. Will people like me in their mid-twenties have such excitement? Do we want such excitement?
Kathryn E. Apr 10, 2006, 1:10am EDT
Steve, I prefer to use the word "involvement." Do people in their mid twenties want such involvement as we saw in the 60s? There is a great need for change, even now, especially now. You're a Renewed Activist. You can make a difference. Thanks for joining.
Daniel Pellerin Apr 11, 2006, 6:33pm EDT
I really thank you for this article, but not why you think. It a great article. I was feeling kind of down but I feel better now. I don't want to tell you why cause you may feel bad. If you want to know, and can have a sense of humor about let me know and I'll tell you.
HGM Moya Goatley Apr 25, 2006, 5:54am EDT
What a list. Oh! the memories. We are talking fidderent worlds here. Living through something and seeing it in hindsight are vastly different rxperiences. I think that life now is as mixed a bag as it was then - great advances and discoveries and terrible retrograde steps. We must keep tryiing, it's all in the endeavour. What will defeat us is the accumalative self-generated feeling that we are sinking irrevocably into a morass. We have to have faith in those who are coming behind us.
Kathryn E. Apr 25, 2006, 6:15am EDT
Daniel, sure TELL me. I'm dying to know.
Kathryn E. Apr 25, 2006, 6:19am EDT
Moya, you're right, terrible retrograde steps.
Kathryn E. May 13, 2006, 9:51am EDT
Thanks, all for your comments !!!
Sharon P. Feb 16, 2008, 3:32pm EST
My Sit Ins fits with this too. I do think we helped. But new problems will crop up.
We must work on them also.
jeni e. Jan 28, 2009, 11:40pm EST
I remember the 60's very well. I was in Guantanamo Bay, just turned 15. Life was good and just beyond the border of Windmill Beach were cuban soldiers with their guns. Here is where I learned to horse back ride and snorkle. What fun! I also remember being in the states, too. 11th grade English, the annoucement was made that JFK had been shot. You could have heard a pin drop. My teacher started crying and I could hear others begin to cry. It was horrible for everyone, our lives changed forever. Then Vietnam...many of my classmates lost their lives in that war, and I was clueless at the time about it all, then I grew up. Yes, the 60's was a hornet's nest for sure. Thank you so much for this post. I give you a big 60's ten.

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