I’m offended when comedians and rock stars say “If you remember the sixties, you really weren’t there” as if drugs defined the Vietnam generation. It’s personal for me and more. In 1960 I volunteered in JFK’s presidential campaign and spent the mid-sixties in a Catholic seminary helping in Baltimore’s inner city. In the late-sixties I went to war in Vietnam and ended the decade trying to stop that war. I wanted to save our country’s soul, American and Vietnamese lives.
This story is not unique. My first post-war girlfriend had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Columbia, served with the Red Cross in Vietnam and was working for Girl Scouts in Appalachia when we met in 1969 at a Washington peace demonstration.
Martin Luther King taught America what active nonviolence could accomplish. Southern Blacks risked their lives to fight segregation and inspired inter-racial Freedom Riders to risk theirs. Saul Alinsky taught community organizing. Thousands became neighborhood advocates. Young women taught us how damaging sexism is to women, men and families.
Sixties music shaped and was transformed by our values and advocacy. The Beatles went from “I want to hold your hand” to John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Black and Brown singers and musicians found a wider audience.
The human potential movement enabled us to process the rapid changes, conflicts with our families and conservative communities. Eastern spirituality helped us find deeper meaning in our lives. We sorted out how we wanted to live our lives. We became more accepting of alternative personal relationships and clarified how we wanted live and raise our kids.
History happens and is then explained by how we record and discuss it. This is my perspective. How do you understand the 1960s?
Thanks to Vincent Ciulla for the graphics I share. If you want a copy of his sixties collage email him at: Vciulla@me.com
Another good piece.
Thanks Van for your leadership
Thank you, Ed, for these comments. I totally agree with you. I did not spend the 60’s in a stupor. My brother was at the MLK March on Washington, my husband went once a week as part of a interfaith clergy group to a vigil in D.C. to protest segregation, I joined and was a delegate to the fledgling AFT (Teacher’s Union) fighting for the rights of teachers to have a safe environment at work and pay that would support a family. (We had to bring in our own chalk and pencils). We spent evenings
going door to door to get the right candidates elected and were devastated when JFK was taken from us.
Thanks for encouraging me to remember the real 60’s I lived in.
Thanks Ed (and thanks Rhea…it’s been forever!) for sharing your experiences — this was really uplifting. Knowing what was possible gives us hope.
You are welcome
Ed. the retrenchment from the sixties, on the part of American politics and Church politics, speaks volumes to the huge ideals that the sixties represented–and the subsequent fear of those ideals that so easily grips human imagination. The call of the sixties continues to make demands on our consciences. These demands will not be erased by smearing a generation by pointing to some of its excesses.
Frank
Thanks. I am happy and proud to have spent my Paulist years with you, our continuing friendship and how you have manifest our faith and hope as a priest and social activist.
I continue to hope in spite and maybe because of the cynics.
The sixties was both turmoil and the beginnings of my becoming a man. Daughter Jaimie was born in 1967 the “summer of love”, the idea for me and my first wife was to avoid going to Vietnam. Once she was born, the joy and deep meaning of it dwarfed the initial reason for it. Jaimie became a central person in my life, even as my marriage failed. I live a life very close to her and now even have greater joy at being remarried to Julie, now of forty years, and being the super proud grandfather to happy Jaimie’s and husband Andy’s two sons
Charlie and Zach creative artists like me. All this gives me a lasting happiness.
Ed, your words are so right on. Thanks so much. Tilda and I continue to be grateful for our collaborations back in those days. Great to connect with you in this way.
George
Thanks. Glad to hear from you and to celebrate our work together snd relationships.
Lin and I send our love and appreciation to you and Tilda
No question that most people today have an extraordinarily screwed up idea of what either the 60s were like or even what the real boomer generation experienced. Fine piece Ed.
Believing in change and having agency to enact it is a meaningful stance for us to explore in our personal history. Did our families nurture or hinder ones belief in our selves enough to be courageous and question the status quo. Was critical thinking encouraged? Was a work ethic developed ?Is the greater good for all a developmental step that can be nurtured in all of us.
Having said that the cultural surround was so inviting so full of possibilities so many blossomed in the peer group as well and defined themselves away from inflexible values.
To be transparent I was fortunate to have my immediate family involved in progressive projects and ideals( not their parents) and a brilliant brave group of feminist women and men friends who nurtured me along the way. Many of us still work together and many of us have found each other again-including Ed and Lin my pals!!
Carol,
We were and remain a cohort of activist people shaped by common values and hopes and stand on the shoulders of earlier giants. May we make room for all who come after us to find places to stand and act. Thanks for being our pal.