United States

Despite Cold War anxieties, the 1960s in the United States began with great optimism. The American economy was the strongest in the world, the United States had reached the height of its international powers, and faith in the government seemed stronger than ever. John F. Kennedy, the youngest American to be elected President in his country's history, ended his famous 1961 inaugural address with a rousing, patriotic call to action: "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." While his assassination in 1963 came as a shock, his successor, Lyndon Johnson carried the torch forward with the "Great Society," a set of social programs designed to improve education, expand health care, and alleviate poverty.

Despite this idealism from above, discontent stirred below. While the government saw itself as the leader of the free world, American society was in fact profoundly unequal. Throughout the country, African Americans faced discrimination, disenfranchisement, segregation, and outright violence. In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy was lynched in Mississippi. In 1958, a poll found that 44 percent of whites said they would sell their homes if a Black family moved next door. Even after the landmark Brown v Board of Education ruling in 1954, many institutions in the South remained formally segregated, and interracial marriage remained illegal in some states until 1967.

African Americans had long organized against racial discrimination, and through the tireless efforts of groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), eventually secured major gains, such as civic equality with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and political inclusion with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But Black struggles were by no means monolithic. While some fought for equitable access to the existing system, others, especially Black nationalists, called for a transformation of the system itself. Channeling the energy of Black urban rebellions exploding across the country, like Watts in 1965, they adopted a more combative politics. Looking to anti-colonial struggles abroad, they saw African Americans as an internal colony and understood their own struggle as part of a larger internationalist revolution. The most famous representative of this current was the Black Panther Party, formed in 1966.

Black struggles inspired white students across the country, many of whom first cut their teeth in the civil rights movement. By the 1960s, a student movement began to coalesce in the United States, led by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In its founding manifesto, The Port Huron Statement of 1962, SDS articulated a sense of alienation from not only mainstream American society, but also what it considered to be the outdated ideas of the Old Left. Instead, they called for a New Left based on the idea of "participatory democracy." Born of the gap between the celebratory discourse of the country's leaders and the stark realities of American life, SDS soon took a radical turn, taking a leading role in opposing the Vietnam War, protesting the modern university, and fighting for a more equitable society. At its height in the late 1960s, the group claimed nearly a hundred thousand members.

At the same time, many young people began to search for an alternative to the mainstream culture of their parents. What would eventually become the counterculture arose from a paradox at the heart of American society: despite enjoying unprecedented affluence, many American youth felt a deep sense of emptiness, malaise, and meaninglessness. Rejecting the passionless world of routines, some sought to invent a new set of values through art, psychedelic music, underground newspapers, communal living, drugs, and sexual liberation. Although the "hippies" remained an extremely marginal phenomenon, countercultural sentiments spread widely, challenging many deeply-held mores.

The backdrop to this turmoil was the Vietnam War. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, dispatching young Americans to fight in a country few could find on a map. Although most Americans initially supported their government, the war quickly became a deeply divisive issue. Young men burned draft cards, students occupied universities, and hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets. Despite growing opposition, at home and abroad, Johnson continued to escalate the war, driving many antiwar activists further to the left. Refusing to be complicit in their country's war abroad, some activists began to think seriously about opening a new front in the "belly of the beast."

Although the year 1968 did not culminate in a single explosion, as in France, the United States did experience a prolonged wave of activism that was no less transformative. The year began with the Tet Offensive, which gave the lie to imminent victory. The war, and the Offensive in particular, not only damaged Johnson's credibility, it threatened to tear the Democratic Party apart. Losing control over his party, Lyndon Johnson astounded the country by announcing on March 31 that he would not seek reelection. Less than a week later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, sparking urban rebellions across the country. Later in April, protesting students occupied academic buildings at Columbia University, signaling a new level of militancy in the student movement. In June, Americans witnessed yet another assassination when Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down after winning the California Democratic Primary. In October, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. In August, Chicago police mercilessly beat demonstrators outside the Democratic National Convention; inside, the Party fractured, as younger delegates tried to push the Democrats in a more leftist direction, while white Southerners began to rethink their party loyalties. In the end, Party insiders handed Vice President Hubert Humphrey the nomination, even though he never competed in a single primary, leaving many antiwar delegates disillusioned with the entire process. In the general election, Richard Nixon, who ran on a law and order platform, emerged victorious.

The extraordinary events of 1968 had a radicalizing effect. The majority of Americans now saw the war as a mistake. University occupations became more common. Student groups increasingly embraced the idea of revolution. Marxism, indeed Leninism, gained popularity. Workers' struggles grew in number and intensity. In fact, after having condemned the working class as bought off, many young activists firmly turned their attention to the class struggle, with some going so far as to find work in steel mills, auto plants, or mines to help organize the working class for revolution. Others, like the future Weather Underground, called for armed struggle. Although more...