1965

The year it all changed -- Picture courtesy of ABC

by blogSpotter
I've always been fascinated by change -- not change for the sake of change, but real, progressive change. We see it everywhere and yet much of the time the changes are unsubstantial or stylistic in nature. I'd like to discuss a year, 1965, when very nearly everything changed. To be sure, 1965 was a year of stylistic changes -- '65 automobiles phased from a chrome-laden rocket style over to smooth, geometric lines. Young women and men became suddenly "mod", sporting bangs and Beatle boots. The major networks began showing all broadcasts in living color for fall of '65 and we were graced with the first airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Along with all of this, Gemini 2 was launched as part of the ambitious NASA space program.

All of these were visual cues to accompany the sea changes that were unfolding all around. President Johnson described his "Great Society" in the '65 State of the Union address. He signed the Social Security Act of 1965, establishing Medicaid and Medicare and simultaneously declared a War on Poverty. August of that year, he signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Some of the most influential legislation of modern times came to us in these few short months. 1965 was a momentous year in the struggle for civil rights. Martin Luther King and 35,000 civil rights activists marched from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. Malcolm X was assassinated on the first day of National Brotherhood Week, and the Watts Riots broke out in Los Angeles.

The Viet Nam War was starting to dominate the news. In May, Berkeley staged a teach-in of 30,000 in which draft cards were observed being burned. In reaction, Johnson signed a law making draft-card burning punishable by 5 years in prison. The Pentagon informed Johnson that a major sweep of Viet Cong operations would call for an increase of troops from 120,000 to 400,000. Johnson followed this advice and the escalated war later became his political undoing.

The music of 1965 pop culture was a direct reaction to the turbulent times. Bob Dylan shocked fellow folk artists by using an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. That August, he released Highway 61 Revisited which featured his magnum opus "Like a Rolling Stone". Meanwhile the Beatles were appearing at Shea Stadium and Jefferson Airplane debuted at the Matrix in San Francisco. Not all music was about war protest, to be sure, but the message of change was compelling nonetheless.

The events I just described here would make for a busy decade nowadays --- everything that could possibly change did so, and in grand scale. Someone coming out of a one year coma on 1/1/1966 might have trouble recognizing or reconciling a few things in the room. In 2008, we can only get excited by a new gizmo (iPhone) or maybe a writers' strike. While I'm by no means an Obama groupie, it might just be that Obama's ascendancy is some kind of reviving jolt to the political senses -- maybe an America striving to rediscover its activist past. We surely don't savor the idea of public assassinations or war escalation, but we probably relish the idea of being "relevant" once more -- the crackling energy of ideals in action. 1965 was such a period, and and we can hope that 2008 or 2009 reenergizes us once more.

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