Media and Pop Culture Final

Elvis Presley

“The first real rock n roll star.” (Rolling Stone)

The “King of Rock n Roll”

Sold Over 1 Billion Records

131 Gold, Platinum and Multiplatinum Awards

114 Top Ten Songs on the Billboard Charts

Music: A blend of Blues, Country, Rock

Made Rock N Roll Socially Acceptable

Ed Sullivan Television Show (1956)

1956: 11 Gold Records

Successful Film Star

Served in the Army

Died in 1977

Buddy Holly

• Band: Buddy Holly and the Crickets

• Wrote his own songs (Peggy Sue; That’ll Be the Day; Not Fade Away)

• Credited with developing the basic Rock n Roll band: lead and rhythm guitars, base, drums

• Died in a plane crash in 1959 in Clear Lake, Iowa (along with Richie Valens and the “Big Bopper”) at 22 years of age.

• Influenced Dylan and McCartney, among many others.

Bob Dylan

• “For over 40 years, Bob Dylan has remained the most influential American musician rock has ever produced…” - Rolling Stone

• “The Poet of Rock”

• Music: Blends Folk with Rock

• Brought Social Consciousness to Rock

• Folk Hits: Blowin’ in the Wind, A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall, The Times They are a Changin’

• Mr. Tambourine Man began era of Folk Rock

• Booed off the Stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 for “Going Electric”

• First Rock Hit: Like A Rolling Stone (1965)

• Bringing it all Back Home” (1965): In this album, half of the songs were backed up by a Rock n Roll Band

• Co-wrote songs with George Harrison (“Its not for You”)

social forces in the ‘50s and ‘60s

• Baby Boomers

• JFK, MLK, LBJ, RFK

• College Students

• Civil Rights Movement

• Women’s Movement

• Anti-Vietnam War Movement

• Hippies/The Counter-Culture

• Rock n Roll

• the cultural community: authors, artists, filmmakers, etc.

• burgeoning Social Movements for the Environment and Gay Rights

• Newspapers

• Television

economic forces in the ‘50s and ‘60s

• Baby Boomers

• Strong United States Economy

• Unions

• “Great Society” Programs of LBJ

• Vietnam War

political forces in the ‘50s and ‘60s

• Baby Boomers

• Unions

• African Americans

• Social Movements

• Relations with Soviet Union

• liberal/conservative divisions on

  • civil rights and women’s rights

  • vietnam war and patriotism

  • cultural issues (birth control, gender roles, rock n roll, etc.)

major themes of the 60s

• social movements: Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Student Rights, Anti-War

• Vietnam War divides America

• assassinations: JFK, MLK, RFK

• alt lifestyles: hippies, yippies, monterey, woodstock, altamont

• competition with USSR

• fear of nuclear war: cuban missile crisis brings world to the brink and back

• breaking “the rules

1960 big events

• Kennedy and Nixon debate

• Muhammad Ali wins Olympic gold medal in boxing

• Nashville meetings with James Lawson (1960)

• Nashville lunch counter sit-ins

1961 big events

• Alan Shephard is the first American in space

• John Glenn is the first American to orbit the Earth

• Freedom Riders (1961)

• Birmingham, AL Voter Registration Drive (1961)

1963 big events

• Julia Child’s cooking show on Public Television

• Little Stevie Wonder becomes the first artist to top the pop singles, pop albums, and R&B charts

• Dr. King’s I have a dream speech (8/28/63)

• JFK assassinated (11/22/1963)

• Lee Harvey Oswald killed

• Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood integrate University of Alabama

• Medgar Evers is assassinated (1963)

• John Kennedy’s Civil Rights speech (1963)

• March on Washington/ Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963)

1962 big events

James Meredith integrates University of Mississippi (1962)

confluence of events and ideals on 11/22/1963

• American Idealism

• Cold War/Vietnam War

• Civil Rights

• Importance of TV news as a cultural force

What did TV news do for Americans on 11/22/63?

• Provided information in an immediate fashion, overcoming time and distance barriers to communication

• Calmed the fears of Americans regarding possible war

• Let Americans see the orderly transition of power

• Enabled Americans to grieve together

1964 big events

• Beatles perform on Ed Sullivan

• Students begin the Free Speech Movement at UCal-Berkeley

• LBJ re-elected over Barry Goldwater

• Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Universities hold “teach-ins” about the Vietnam War

• Three voter registration workers Murdered in 1964: Shwermer, Goodwin, Chaney

I Have A Dream Speech

• delivered August 28th, 1963 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

• partially improvised

• used financial allusions and said the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were promissory notes guaranteeing rights to all citizens which the nation failed to honor - bad check and insufficient funds

• repetition of “dreams”

• biblical and historical references

• metaphors

1965 big events

• Bob Dylan “goes electric” at Newport Folk Festival (1965)

• Selma, AL: Edmund Pettus Bridge incident (1965)

• Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed by Congress

1966 big events

• Health warnings required on cigarette packages (1966)

• Supreme Court’s Miranda decision (1966)

• Betty Friedan and other women’s rights supporters create the National Organization for Women (1966)

1967 big events

• Green Bay Packers defeat Kansas City Chiefs in first Superbowl (1967)

• The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour premieres (1967)

• Muhammad Ali refuses to be drafted (1967)

• Monterey Pop Festival (1967)

• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band changes Rock n Roll music forever (1967)

• The Rock musical Hair opens on Broadway (1967)

1968 big events

• SDS members occupy buildings at Columbia University (1968)

• MLK and RFK assassinated (1968)

• Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago

• Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest U.S. racial injustice with black-power salute at Olympics (1968)

• Richard Nixon elected President, defeating Hubert Humphrey (1968)

• Tet Offensive (1968)

1969 big events

• neil Armstrong walks on the moon (1969)

• Woodstock Music and Arts Festival (1969)

• Altamont Music Festival (1969)

• Stonewall Riots begin the gay rights movement (1969)

• The Beatles last recording (1969), Let It Be was released in 1970

What happened in the Early Years of the Beatles?

• The Quarrymen (1957)

Lennon and McCartney

• The Moondogs (1958)

Lennon, McCartney, Harrison

• The Silver Beatles (1960)

Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Sutcliffe

• The Beatles (1960)

Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Sutcliffe, Best

Where did the Beatles play in the early years?

• Cavern Club (1961)

• Sutcliffe Out (1961)

• Brian Epstein “discovers” The Beatles (1961)

• Pete Best Out and Ringo Starr In (1962)

• George Martin signs group to EMI contract (1962)

What did the Beatles do on their US tour?

“Ed Sullivan Show” (February 9, 1964)

 Began the “British Invasion”

 Top Five Hits on Billboard Charts (April, 1964)

 First Film : A Hard Days’ Night (1964)

 Second Film: Help (1965)

 Shea Stadium concert draws 55,600 (1965)

Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) stats

Most Significant Album in Rock History

 129 Days Recording Album

 First Concept Album

 15 Weeks at #1 on Charts

 8 Million copies sold

Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band techniques

Headphones turned into Microphones

 Microphones inside bells of brass instruments

 Echo on vocals

 Varied speed of instruments

 Sent vocals through Hammond Organ

speakers

 Chopped-up tapes

 The longest chord (A Day in the Life)

What did the Beatles do in 1969?

Last year recording together

 Abbey Road sells 9 million copies

 “Paul is dead” hoax

 Record Let It Be

 John and Yoko release Two Virgins

What did the Beatles do in 1970?

Let It Be released; 14th #1 Album

 April 10: McCartney declares breakup

What is the Beatles’ legacy?

 Nineteen #1 Albums

 The Beatles 1 sold 20 million copies (2000)

 Changed Rock Music

 Changed Pop Culture

folk music

Music that originates in traditional popular culture or is written in that style. It is usually passed down from generation to generation.

characteristics of folk music

 Traditional Folk Music is transferred between generations through an oral culture

 Traditional Folk Music commemorates historical and/or personal events

 It is generally played on acoustic guitar, along with a harmonica

types of folk music

 Primitive/Traditional: Bluegrass

 Elite/Art: Peter, Paul and Mary; Bob Dylan

 Protest: “Blowin’ In The Wind”; “Only a Pawn in

Their Game”

 Folk: “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald”

Bob Dylan’s legacy

 Changed Folk Music with his lyrics and by

using electric guitars and other instruments

 Brought social consciousness to Rock n Roll

with his lyrics

 Influenced generations of musicians. President

Jimmy Carter cited Dylan as an influence in his

life.

 Dylan’s lyrics have been analyzed debated and

quoted like no other Folk/Rock/Pop artist

JFK assassination

• On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, at approximately 12:30 p.m. local time.

• The official investigation, the Warren Commission, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

• Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m

• Kennedy was riding in an open-top limousine in a motorcade when shots were fired in Dealey Plaza.

• He was struck in the neck and head, and Texas Governor John Connally, who was in the same car, was also wounded.

• Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union, was arrested shortly after the assassination.

• He was later shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby before he could stand trial.

• Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President on board Air Force One just hours later.

• The event was a pivotal moment in American history, with the assassination broadcast live on television and photographed by a crowd of witnesses.

• The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone.

• However, a later House committee suggested a possible conspiracy, though no firm conclusions were drawn.

• The assassination remains the subject of much debate and numerous conspiracy theories.

• House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA): A later investigation by the HSCA in the 1970s concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" and that there was "a high probability that two gunmen fired

historical impact of the JFK assassination

• The assassination had a profound and lasting effect on American society, ending a period of optimism and creating a collective shock that many who lived through it remember vividly.

• 25th Amendment: The assassination highlighted the lack of a clear constitutional process for presidential disability or succession, leading to the 25th Amendment, which clarified how a Vice President would become President in such an event.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson used the national mourning and a brief period of unity to push through landmark civil rights legislation, a goal Kennedy had been working toward

POLITICAL AND CULTURAL SHIFTS AFTER KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

• increased cynicism and distrust: The assassination, and the subsequent lingering questions about the Warren Commission's findings, are often cited as the beginning of a decline in public trust in government and an increase in political cynicism.

• Media transformation: The event established television as the dominant news medium. The extensive, non-stop live coverage of the assassination and its aftermath became a defining moment in American media history.

• End of an era: Many historians view the assassination as a symbolic end to the optimism of the 1950s and a loss of innocence for a nation that felt vulnerable and exposed.

• National focus on space program: Kennedy's dream of a moon landing became a memorial to his legacy, and the Apollo program was intensified in his honor.

• Increased Secret Service oversight: In response to the assassination, the Secret Service underwent significant changes, increasing their security protocols and coordination with other law enforcement agencies to better protect the president.

• Deepened conspiracy theories: The assassination is one of history's most debated events, with a significant portion of the public still believing in a conspiracy rather than the official explanation that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Rock N Roll’s Temperature was RISING

• You know my temperature’s rising, / the juke box is blowing a fuse,”

Chuck Berry proclaimed. “My heart’s beating rhythm / and my soul keeps

singing the blues. / Roll over Beethoven, / tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

• The news, of course, was that rock ’n’ roll was a “national pastime,” a

powerhouse in American popular culture.

• Advances in technology following World War II, including the introduction of the

LP, the 45, and high fidelity, and the production of inexpensive phonographs,

prepared the industry to serve a mass market.

• Thanks to rock ’n’ roll, the customers appeared right on cue. Teenagers in the

’50s purchased more records than did adults—and they bought lots of them. In

the latter half of the decade, record sales nearly tripled, from $213 million in

1954 to $613 million in 1959.

How did RnR save radio?

• Rock ’n’ roll helped resuscitate radio.

• Unable to compete with television as a medium of family entertainment,

radio replaced live musicians, comedians, and actors in soap operas with

a much cheaper source of programming, rock ’n’ roll records.

• After school and late at night, radio “narrowcasted” to teenagers, who

used car radios and portable transistor radios to take the music wherever

they went.

• Rock ’n’ roll DJs became powerful figures on radio, commanding high

salaries and the loyalty of listeners as arbiters of musical taste.

How did RnR save the movies?

• Rock Around the Clock (1956) made them sit up and take notice.

• “While their couch potato parents stared at the small screen in suburbia,

adolescents raced to theaters and drive-ins to see and hear Bill Haley,

the Platters, and Alan Freed.”

• The first box office smash targeted exclusively to teens, the film had a

worldwide gross of $2.4 million, about eight times the cost of production.

• By the end of the year, six more rock ’n’ roll movies were in the can.

• Hollywood producers continued to search for blockbusters with

intergenerational appeal, but rock ’n’ roll had a profound and permanent

impact on the industry

Who did not benefit from the RnR boom?

• Members of the American Federation of Musicians, for example, were

devastated by the shift from live music to platter spinning on radio.

• The AFM prohibited musicians from appearing on radio or television or

allowing disc jockeys to use tapes or transcriptions of them without

compensation.

• “Canned music, insisted James Petrillo, president of the AFM, was

inferior, ‘mechanical’ music, beneficial only to the disc jockey and the

radio station.”

battle between BMI and ASCAP

• By the middle of the 1950s, BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) licensed 80 percent of all music on the radio, but ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) refused to roll over.

• By charging that its rival had conspired with radio station owners and independent record company executives to foist rock ’n’ roll on young listeners, ASCAP attempted to seize the cultural high ground. This was a fight against “low quality” music, race music, sexual license, and juvenile delinquency

• As they tapped into the animus against rock ’n’ roll, ASCAPers asked unsettling questions about the relationship among the economy, entertainment, and culture in the United States.

  • Were corporations giving Americans the entertainment they wanted? Or did they manufacture desire for an inferior, inexpensive, and subversive popular culture while maintaining the illusion of choice?

  • Should government protect passive consumers and increase the options available to them?

  • ASCAP helped push these questions into the public arena. The pop culture wars had a significant cultural impact. They left rock ’n’ roll reeling. They also chipped away at confidence in the sovereignty of the consumer, leaving a lingering suspicion of manipulation in the mass media marketplace.

• in 1953, thirty-three ASCAP members, including music luminaries Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin, and Virgil Thomson, filed a $150 million lawsuit against BMI and the major radio networks.

• By owning BMI stock, the plaintiffs argued, the broadcasters could influence radio personnel, especially disc jockeys, to play BMI-licensed songs.

• As ASCAP pressed its case in court, its leaders lobbied the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to investigate BMI for antitrust violations and to pass legislation forcing broadcasters to divest their holdings in BMI.

• In court and in Congress, they pointed to the popularity of rock ’n’ roll as evidence of a clear and present danger to the American public

How did BMI look for new RnR acts?

• Having failed “to lure respectable songwriters” to BMI, the leaders of the organization decided to “fish the rock ’n’ roll lake for all it was worth.”

• They discovered that rock ’n’ roll songs were “simple in the extreme to compose.”

• “Peggy Sue,” consists of nineteen short lines, in which the girl’s name is repeated eighteen

• times.

• Even more telling was the composition and performance history of “Hound Dog.”

  • The song had been “scribbled out in pencil on ordinary paper” and handed to a singer moments before the recording session began. The musicians, who had also been given no time to rehearse, improvised a rhythmic background. Rock ’n’ roll surged, Packard concluded, only after RCA Victor and BMI “bought up for $40,000 the contract of a young man named Elvis Presley.”

  • They drummed the music into the minds of millions of impressionable teenagers using “the parlor psychological treatment of reiteration and reiteration.” Soon after their greatest coup, exposure on prime-time TV for “Elvis and his restless pelvis, … rock and roll became a mass mania … from which we still haven’t recovered.” BMI and its allies had lined their pockets by creating “a new musical trend in America.” Through “intensive plugging,” they made rock ’n’ roll appear to be the music young Americans loved to listen to

How did the Senators feel about the battle between BMI and ASCAP?

• From the outset, it was clear that most senators subscribed to the free market position staked out by BMI.

• Perhaps sensing that ASCAP had failed to stir up public pressure for regulation, Smathers lived up to his reputation as a lazy legislator, appearing only twice in the hearing room.

• The members of the subcommittee could eat their cake and have it, too, by expressing personal distaste for rock ’n’ roll while endorsing the status quo in the name of unencumbered consumer choice.

payola

• The term “payola” was coined by Variety in 1938 to refer to gifts, favors, or cash surreptitiously dispensed by record companies to get orchestra leaders and disc jockeys to play their songs.

• By the 1950s, influential disc jockeys were receiving hundreds of records to listen to every month. Payola was a good way to get their attention.

• For the indies, which had modest marketing budgets, it was often the only way to promote rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll records.

• “Payola to disc jockeys is at an all-time peak,” Billboard reported early in the decade.

• Some DJs preferred a flat-rate deal of $50 to $100 per record, while others negotiated a percentage of sales

• Payola was an open secret. Industry insiders disagreed only about its scope and significance.

• Disc jockeys, of course, denied that they themselves received payola and claimed that only underpaid spinners employed in the backwaters of radio paid for play.

• Payola could wreck the career of a disc jockey, they maintained, because popularity depended on giving the public what it wanted.

• the “DJ who lets his interest lapse,” wrote the music-radio editor of Billboard, “is in danger of having the field pass him by. He will be outpaced by more alert DJs who are quicker to sense the public’s music taste and who are hip to the developing and overlapping music patterns.”

what was payola’s influence on public confidence?

• In the early ’50s, music industry publications warned record companies and radio stations that if they did not clean house they would face a crisis of public confidence and possible government regulation.

• Closely allied with Tin Pan Alley, Variety deemed payola a “Frankenstein,” rampant in rhythm and blues and country music.

• A normal operating expense for the “indies,” payola had forced the majors to make deals with disc jockeys “to unload their merchandise.” Billboard in 1951 saw little prospect of a cure.

• Cash Box called for a moratorium on vague stories about payola but vigorous prosecution of anyone who betrayed the public trust

growth of top 40 radio

• To limit payola and reduce the power of disc jockeys, many stations adopted the Top Forty format.

• Introduced by Todd Storz at KOWH in Omaha and then WTIX in New Orleans, Top Forty limited DJs to songs on the Billboard charts, with only a few slots available to new releases or personal preferences.

• The format relied much less on the discretion and, for that matter, the personality of the disc jockey.

• Top Forty quickly became popular because many listeners liked to hear their favorite songs played over and over again.

• A Top Forty program style, with a playlist limited to mainstream pop singles, interrupted by station identification, news broadcasts, and commercials, spread throughout the nation during the decade.

quiz show scandals

• Television producers Jack Barry and Dan Enright, investigators revealed, had conspired with the sponsor, Revlon, to “fix” the game shows The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One. They had supplied contestants who were audience favorites with the correct answers, coaching them to pause, cogitate, grimace, stammer, and wipe their brows before supplying them.

• When Barry and Enright told investigators that “deception is not necessarily bad … it’s practiced in everyday life,” some observers declared that American innocence had ended.

• Others condemned the cynical immorality imbedded in corporate capitalism.

• The quiz show hoax, President Eisenhower proclaimed, was a “terrible thing” to do to the American people. The quiz show scandals provided the opening (and the audience) opponents of BMI and rock ’n’ roll had been looking for

what reignited the payola scandal?

rigging the quiz show

payola scandal reignited

• Many radio station owners, however, decided to sacrifice their DJs to ensure that their licenses would be renewed.

• Others took advantage of the scandal to settle scores, clean house, or reduce expenses.

• One of the first disc jockeys to go was Tom Clay of WJBK in Detroit. As his popularity with teenagers soared, Clay, whose annual salary was $8,000, was approached by record distributors. “I never told a person he had to pay me to get records played,” Clay claimed. “They asked me to take money. Were they wrong, or good businessmen?” In eighteen months he pocketed $5,000 or $6,000. Apparently, the manager at WJBK learned in August 1959 that the DJ had accepted payola, warned him, but took no action. But when the House of Representatives announced its investigation, Clay was fired

• The bloodletting continued, as the subcommittee staff announced that payola was “all over the place.” Joe Niagara of WBIG in Philadelphia resigned abruptly after a meeting with the management of the station.

• WXYZ in Detroit canned Mickey Shorr, who had allegedly accepted a $2,000 loan from a local rock group, the Royal Tones.

• Stan Richards, Bill Marlowe, and Joe Smith, three of the most popular DJs at WILD in Boston, were let go.

prosecutor involvement in payola scandal

• on the books in several states, but rarely used, commercial bribery statutes appeared to make payola a violation of the law. The most vigorous activity occurred in New York, the home of ASCAP, where district attorney Frank S. Hogan subpoenaed the financial records of eleven companies and several disc jockeys.

• Among his targets was King Records, an “indie” based in Cincinnati. • Promising full cooperation, the president of King, Sydney Nathan, admitted that he paid more than a dozen DJs, some of them in New York, as much as $100 a month to play the company’s records. The payments, which had ceased “many months ago,” had been made openly, by check, because King did not regard payola as a violation of the law.

• “It is a dirty rotten mess,” Nathan told prosecutors, “and it has been getting worse and worse in the last five years. It is getting so you can’t get your records played unless you pay.

FCC and FTC involvement in payola scandal

• The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission moved against payola as well.

• FCC commissioner Robert E. Lee declared the practice “a sneaky commercial” that violated the requirement that paid sponsors be identified.

• The FCC directed all 5,236 radio and television outlets to submit sworn statements indicating whether any employees had taken cash or gifts in exchange for on the-air plugs during the last year.

• Licensees were also required to set forth actions taken to prevent payola from occurring in the future. Station owners found chilling the implication left by the FCC that they might be responsible for the actions of disc jockeys, even if they were not aware of them

what did the FCC do in response to the payola scandal?

• in a twenty-page brief to the FCC, ASCAP president Stanley Adams asserted that the practice of payola “goes much deeper than a few ‘isolated’ cases.”

• At least 146 of the 277 Top Fifty hits of 1959, Adams charged, benefited from play for pay.

• To combat the practice, ASCAP advocated prohibiting radio stations from accepting any remuneration in exchange for playing a musical composition.

• ASCAP also revived its suggestion, aimed at BMI, that the FCC order broadcasters to relinquish financial interests in “performance rights” organizations.

• In March 1960, the FCC ruled that many stations had failed to comply with Section 317 of the Communications Act of 1934, which required stations to mention on the air any material that had been furnished to them for free. Acknowledging that noncompliance may have resulted from ambiguities in the statute, the commission put stations on notice that they could no longer evade punishment by pleading reliance on “accepted industry practices.”

The Hobson’s Choice (in relation to payola)

• The National Association of Broadcasters denounced the FCC ruling. Broadcasters now had a Hobson’s choice: clog the airwaves with self-incriminating announcements or purchase all of their records.

• Acknowledging that payola was bad, the NAB nonetheless insisted that the receipt of free records by a broadcasting station did not destroy “that station’s objectivity in making its determination as to which music should be aired.”

• One industry executive called the regulation “ridiculous. It is like demanding that the Saturday Review or the New York Times Literary Supplement pay for the books they’re going to review.”

  • If stations had to buy all of their records, the impact would fall disproportionately on independent broadcasters and record companies. Only a few radio stations could afford to spend $10,000 to $20,000 to stock new releases. Many small stations would take fewer chances, sticking with the heavily promoted records of the major labels. The regulations victimized the listening public, the NAB concluded, since the variety of music available to them would be reduced.

aftermath of payola

• in the end, virtually all of the defendants signed consent decrees, claiming no crime had been committed but promising, in effect, that they would not do it again.

• Alan Freed’s career was destroyed, Dick Clark’s career began to skyrocket.

Why did RnR falter b/w 1958 and 1963?

• The ASCAP-led assault was the most important. The payola probes left rock ’n’ roll gasping for airtime, as many radio stations switched to mellow, melody music.

• Large record companies promoted polka, calypso, folk music, ballads, novelty songs, and a softer, lushly orchestrated fare.

• Some independents went pop or merged with a major.

• In these years, moreover, the ranks of more hard-line rock ’n’ roll performers were depleted. Fans listed the losses that presaged the end of an era: “Elvis in the Army, Buddy Holly dead, Little Richard in the ministry, Jerry Lee Lewis in disgrace, and Chuck Berry in jail.”

• Some of these singers exited voluntarily or by accident.

• Others were pushed offstage.

• All of them, directly or indirectly, were casualties, if not of a conspiracy, than of the assault against rock ’n’ roll, to which the payola scandal added momentum.

• Many Americans, inside and outside of the entertainment industry, remained unsettled by and hostile to rock ’n’ roll, which retained its association with the blurring and redrawing of racial, sexual, and generational boundaries. The war to reclaim the cultural space in the United States for mainstream values raged on.

The Opponents of Rock n Roll to the British Invasion

• Opponents of rock ’n’ roll recognized that the horse they were beating was not dead.

• Rock ’n’ roll had become less vital, edgy, and creative, but its decline was producer induced, not consumer driven.

• Even as manufacturers promoted mainstream music they called rock ’n’ roll, there remained a market for the real thing.

• Across the United States—and Europe—rock ’n’ roll still had the capacity to agitate, motivate, and arouse.

• The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and dozens of other British musicians—whose explosion into the American market would be known as the British Invasion—cut their musical teeth on Berry, Holly, Presley, Lewis, and Little Richard.

• In fact, historian Alice Echols argues, the British Invaders “conquered America with her very own music—early rock ’n’ roll, hard-driving R&B, and the blues.” Many of their early recordings were note- for-note versions of rock ’n’ roll classics. They would, of course, turn out to be much more than cover artists, but as the revival began, the Brits and their American fans understood that the 1960s began in the ’50s, when rock was young.

Little Richard and Paul McCartney

• Although Little Richard remained attracted to a higher calling, he was ready to return to show business. He recorded dozens of sacred songs sans pompadour, makeup, and slam-bam sound in 1960, but the lure and lucre of rock ’n’ roll were too great.

• One of his most enthusiastic fans was Paul McCartney. Among the very first songs McCartney remembered singing were “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally.” And when the Beatles performed in Liverpool in the early ’60s, they asked Little Richard to join them.

The Beatles & Chuck Berry’s music

• When they performed in a club in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1960, the then little known Beatles sang Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” every night.

• When they became international stars, the Beatles included “Roll Over Beethoven” in most of their concerts. And Berry’s tune “Back in the USA” was the inspiration for McCartney’s “Back in the USSR.”

• “Don’t give me any sophisticated crap,” John Lennon liked to say, “give me Chuck Berry.” With boosts like these, Berry was able to resume his career when he was released from prison in October 1963.

The Day the Music Died / plane crash

• some saw the hand of God striking out against rock ’n’ roll in the plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 3, 1959, that killed the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly.

• Although the Civilian Aeronautics Board blamed pilot error, the crash was not wholly unrelated to the assault on rock ’n’ roll.

• If opportunities for these once and future stars had not narrowed in the late ’50s, they might not have found themselves in the hinterland in winter, traveling from town to town in broken buses and rickety aircraft.

• Immortalized by Don McLean’s anthem “American Pie” (1971) as “the day the music died,” the accident took out three rock ’n’ rollers who had already felt the impact of the industry-induced lull.

• While Waylon Jennings, Dion DiMucci, and the rest of the Winter Party Dance Tour troupe took the bus to Moorhead for the next gig, the four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza with three rock ’n’ rollers and pilot Roger Peterson went down in a snowstorm soon after takeoff.

Ritchie Valens

• While attending San Fernando High School, he began singing with a group called the Silhouettes.

• Among the songs he performed was his own composition “Donna,” inspired by a crush he had on sophomore Donna Ludwig, an Anglo whose father ordered her not to go out with “that Mexican.”

• In 1958, “Donna” rocketed to number 2 on the charts. On the flip side was the exuberant “La Bamba,” whose lyrics were sung entirely in Spanish, interrupted frequently by a frenzied guitar. With “La Bamba” at number 22, Ritchie Valens was hailed as the “Chicano Elvis.”

• Valens was thrilled to be part of the Winter Party Dance Tour because the headliner, Buddy Holly, was his idol.

Buddy Holly

• Born in Lubbock, Texas, in 1936, Holly labored for years in the rockabilly vineyards, held back in part by his plain face and Coke-bottle glasses.

• Dumped by Decca Records at the end of 1956, he formed a new group, the Crickets, and a partnership with producer Norman Petty. Their first release, “That’ll Be the Day” (based on a phrase uttered by John Wayne in the film The Searchers), in 1957, leaped to number 1, and stayed on the Top Forty for sixteen weeks. Two more smash hits followed almost immediately: “Peggy Sue,” with Holly singing solo, reached number 3; “Oh Boy!,” performed with the Crickets, made it to number 10.

• Like many ’50s rock ’n’ roll performers, Holly crossed racial barriers.

• As improbable as it seems, Holly was often thought to be an African American.

• On one occasion, he emerged onstage at the Apollo Theater in New York City, astonishing young Leslie Uggams, who was seated in the audience. “I knew his records,” she recalled, and anticipated seeing “another brother out there doing his number. Then this white guy comes out and everybody says, ‘Oh, that’s Buddy Holly!’ … I said, ‘He’s white, isn’t he?’ But he was terrific.”

• n 1959, Holly’s career was in transition. For about a year, as the opposition to rock ’n’ roll began to crest, his records had been less successful.

• The suggestive “Early in the Morning” got only as far as 32 on the lists, while “Rave On,” which the Catholic Youth Organization denounced for promoting juvenile delinquency and “a pagan culture,” barely made it into the Top Forty.

• Holly had also broken with the Crickets and Norman Petty. Recently married to Maria Elena Santiago, a native of Puerto Rico, once a receptionist at Peer-Southern Music, Holly was learning the Spanish language and listening to Latino songs.

• He looked forward to conversations with Ritchie Valens about Chicano rock ’n’ roll. And he planned to record gospel and the blues, including an album with Ray Charles and another in tribute to Mahalia Jackson.

RnR flourishes in England

• While rock ’n’ roll flourished in England in the early ’60s, with 350 bands in Liverpool alone, the music receded in the United States.

• Oldies and goodies continued to sell, but only a few new artists emerged.

• Roy Orbison was one of the most talented of them. Making full use of an extraordinary vocal range, including a high falsetto, Orbison had a string of rockabilly hits between 1960 and 1965, including “Only the Lonely” (1960), “Crying,” (1961), “Blue Bayou” (1963), and “It’s Over” (1964).

RnR fans couldn’t get what they wanted to hear in America

• Some listeners wanted more than they were getting; they missed music that took risks and spoke to a fuller range of human experiences.

• Although loath to admit it, record manufacturers and radio station owners knew that demand for a more hard-driving rock ’n’ roll had not diminished.

• They watched with dismay as record sales stagnated, after doubling between 1955 and 1959.

• in 1960, when the number 1 pop song was the easy-to-listen-to “A Summer Place,” by Percy Faith, sales decreased 5 percent.

• In 1963, while the number of teens in the United States continued to surge, receipts were an anemic 1.6 percent greater than those of the previous year.

• Music industry executives sat between a rock (’n’ roll) and a hard place. Burned once by the custodians of a complacent consensus, they chose to keep the faith and mark time—and attach the phrase rock ’n’ roll to many of the mainstream records they produced—until something else captured the kids’ imagination

R&B fills the lull left by RnR

• Rhythm and blues–oriented and gospel-inspired rock ’n’ roll, sung by African Americans, flourished during the lull.

• Much of it had crossover appeal. Indeed, since popular music abhors a vacuum, the lull may have helped make room for African-American performers. In the early ’60s, the Platters, the Drifters, and the Coasters scored with white suburban audiences.

• So did Sam Cooke, who moved from gospel to pop, from the Soul Stirrers to the Tonight Show, hitting the charts with “You Send Me” in 1957, and then capitalizing on “The Twist” with “Twistin’ the Night Away” in 1962.

• During these years, white songwriters and producers collaborated with black singers to develop a polished, “uptown” R&B style. The “girl groups” managed by independent producers Luther Dixon and Phil Spector led the way. The Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shirelles, and other “girl groups” secured a place for females in rock ’n’ roll. They stuck to the sunny side of the street. With hit songs like “Be My Baby” (1963), “Da Doo Ron Ron” (1963), and “Dedicated to the One I Love” (1961), in fact, the “girl groups” perpetuated gender stereotypes and steered clear of racial references

growth of Motown

• Founded in 1960 by Berry Gordy, Motown produced a rhythm and blues sound with more staying power than “the girl groups,” who were swept away by the British Invasion.

• When it became “Hitsville USA,” Motown was the largest black-owned corporation in the United States, with African Americans filling virtually all creative positions, as artists, studio musicians, writers, and producers.

• For Gordy, black entrepreneurship was a means to an integrationist end. Motown proved that by their own efforts blacks could achieve prosperity and acceptance into the mainstream of American life. He was willing to pay a price for it: “the Motown Sound,” or as the label logo identified it, “the Sound of Young America,” aimed to please rather than provoke.

• From 1961 to 1966 alone, Motown performers included the Miracles, the Temptations, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder.

• These stars helped make the corporation the nation’s leading seller of singles in 1965.

• During the ’60s, Motown released 535 singles; 357 of them reached the pop or R&B charts, 174 of them the Top Ten. Six records reached number 1 on the pop charts alone, 29 on the R&B charts alone, and 21 were at the top of the heap on both pop and rhythm and blues listings.

• A creative but single-minded genius, Gordy did not want to jeopardize his business by linking Motown music with the sexual and racial controversies associated with rock ’n’ roll.

• Consequently, Motown lyrics were as romantic and noncoital as those of the “girl groups.” The titles of hits by the Miracles were typical of Motown’s subject matter: “Shop Around” (1960), “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” (1962), “Oo Baby Baby” (1965), and “My Girl Has Gone” (1965).

• Before the mid-’60s, Motown lyrics also dealt neither with the oppression or poverty of blacks nor with the civil rights and voting rights movements. Motown did put out an album in late 1963 featuring Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech—only to have King bring suit because it competed directly with the “official” March on Washington recording.

• Gordy’s eyes were on the prize, but the prize was commercial and financial, at least at first, and certainly for now. In 1966, with some reluctance, Gordy permitted Stevie Wonder to cover “Blowin’ in the Wind,” as Motown’s first “topical” record. By then, rock ’n’ roll was no longer under wraps

emergence of soul music

• Soul Music would not emerge as a mass culture phenomenon until the mid-’60s, but it was gathering steam during the lull.

• Ray Charles got hot in 1959 with “What’d I Say” (1959)—and then scored again and again with “Ruby,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hit the Road, Jack,” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” The first of James Brown’s many, many hits came in 1960, with “Think” and “You’ve Got the Power.”

• That year, with the blessing of her father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin, eighteen-year-old Aretha Franklin moved to New York and signed a five-year deal with Columbia Records. And in 1960 as well, Stax Records was established in an unused movie theater in a shabby neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, by two whites, Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton. As “Soulsville USA” it would become the label of Booker T and the MGs, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, and many other soul singers.

• Soul music was a harbinger. By 1964 the times were a-changing.

• The seismic shifts were most noticeable along racial, sexual, and generational fault lines. The fissures of the ’50s were widening into cracks, and a few chasms. And members of the post–World War II “shook up” generation, now’ twixt twelve and thirty, were in the vanguard of change.

ways bob dylan influence pop music

• Dylan’s interest in folk music exploded during his one-year stint at the University of Minnesota.

  • On one side of his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan was backed by a rock band. On the other he just played the acoustic guitar. When Dylan played these tracks at the Newport Folk Festival in July, 1965, and then on tour in England a few months later, his rock songs were roundly booed. But while there was an instant backlash to Dylan’s move from acoustic to electric guitar, his poetic lyrics mixed with the louder sound from the band helped to create and popularize the folk-rock genre.

  • “Dylan is the one who adds the folk energy to rock and roll and actually makes it a lot cooler,” says Daniel. “Like a Rolling Stone” took this sound even further. Released on July 20, 1965, it became a worldwide hit.

  • Dylan’s emergence as a rock star paved the way for further rock subgenres. “Dylan lays the paths for something like psychedelic rock,” says Daniel.

  • Dylan’s refusal to be pigeon-holed and jump from genre to genre also inspired other artists, like David Bowie and Madonna, to follow suit. “He liberated all musical artists not to be trapped into one persona or to freeze in time,” says Daniel.

• He Popularized the Protest Song

  • There were protest songs before Bob Dylan. Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” described lynchings of Black Americans in the South. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” addressed inequality in the United States.

  • But, in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan wrote so many protest songs in such a short space of time that, for many, he became the quintessential protest singer. “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Only a Pawn In Their Game” were inspired by the civil rights movement. “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” warn of the threat of nuclear war. “Blowin’ in the Wind” is a call for peace.

  • “Dylan made the songs mainstream,” says Daniel. “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” were covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary and The Byrds, respectively.

  • These songs continue to be used during protests today. “His songs are available for people who want to protest what they want to protest," says Daniel. "They’re not tied down to a particular time or point in history.”

• He Showed Longer Songs Can Be Hits, Too

  • “Like a Rolling Stone’s” success vindicated Dylan’s decision to embrace a more rowdy rock sound. At 6 minutes and 13 seconds long, it also proved that longer tracks could have mainstream appeal. Before “Like a Rolling Stone,” music executives believed that singles should be restricted to three minutes.

  • “Dylan didn’t care about the three-minute rule,” says Thomas. “I don’t think he even really cared about the radio.” Daniel notes that Dylan was never going to be told by the music industry to make a three minute song that people could dance to. “If he has something to say, he’s going to say it, whether it’s five, seven, 15 or 20 minutes long.”

  • When Dylan gave “Like a Rolling Stone” to Columbia Records they initially decided not to release it. Shaun Considine, a release coordinator for the label, took it to a New York club, where the crowd repeatedly requested the DJ for it. “Like a Rolling Stone” became a word-of-mouth hit across the city, was played endlessly on radio stations, and went on to become the most commercially successful single of Dylan’s career.

  • When Paul McCartney first heard “Like a Rolling Stone” at the house of his bandmate John Lennon, he remembered thinking, “It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful … He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further." McCartney later admitted that “Hey Jude” was partly inspired by “Like a Rolling Stone.”

• He Made One of the Earliest Music Videos

  • Released on March 8, 1965, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” quickly established itself as one of Bob Dylan’s catchiest songs. One of his first recordings with an electric guitar, the song mixes a Chuck Berry style riff with stream of consciousness lyrics that were clearly inspired by the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

  • “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is also regarded as one of the first songs to be prominently presented in a music video. Decades later, when MTV and VH1 were launched, Pennebaker’s video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” aired alongside the more extravagant productions for the likes of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”

  • “It’s a marvelous project that really makes you focus on the words of the song,” says Daniel. ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ had a really powerful influence on the music video and MTV culture

• He Introduced The Beatles to Marijuana!!!

  • On August 28, 1964, Bob Dylan paid a visit to The Beatles at the Delmonico Hotel in New York. After the musical powerhouses exchanged introductions, Dylan suggested that they smoke marijuana. McCartney later wrote in his memoir, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, that the four hadn’t smoked marijuana before, but decided to try it with Dylan. Over the next few hours, McCartney recalled, Dylan and The Beatles got incredibly stoned.

  • McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr went on to regularly smoke marijuana and experiment with other drugs, including LSD. Their music, in turn, became more experimental, as can be heard in the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  • “Bob Dylan opened the minds of many other musicians and geniuses,” she says. “He showed them new ideas for how to string words together and made them think as much about the lyrics as the music.”

what was the world like after World War II?

• Cold War between U.S. and Russia: Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

• U.S. concerned with spread of Communism to China and other nations

• U.S. policy is to contain the growth of Communism: The Domino Theory

domino theory

• a Cold War-era belief that if one country in Southeast Asia fell to communism, others would follow like a row of falling dominoes.

• This theory served as a primary justification for the U.S. to intervene in Vietnam, with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson arguing that a communist victory in South Vietnam would lead to the fall of neighboring countries like Cambodia and Laos, and even potentially threaten allies as far away as Japan.

• However, the theory lost credibility after the Vietnam War concluded in 1975, as widespread communist takeovers in other Southeast Asian nations did not occur

battle of dien bien phu

• French defeated

• After the battle, the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into North and South (1954)

• Leads to eventual involvement by U.S.

draft for the vietnam war

• All U.S. males between 18 and 26 years of age were subject to the military draft

• All U.S. males had to register for the draft when they turned 18 and had to carry their registration card with them

• Approximately 1.9 million men were drafted during the Vietnam War. 66% of all U.S. soldiers were draftees

• The draft was a lottery that was televised each October during the war.

• Your birthdate was pulled from a large tumbler in order from 1 – 365.

• From Dr. Rosenthal: “1971 was my draft year. The first 170 birthdates had to report for pre- induction physicals. Eventually, the first 125 birthdates were drafted.

gulf of tonkin “events”

• August 2, 1964: The USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox fired first, and during the engagement, one North Vietnamese boat was severely damaged, while the Maddox sustained minor damage.

• August 4, 1964: The Maddox and USS Turner Joy reported a second attack by North Vietnamese vessels in poor conditions. However, the Maddox captain soon expressed doubts about the reports, attributing them to weather and "overeager sonarmen"

• Gulf of Tonkin Incident, August 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a naval event in August 1964 involving a confirmed attack and an alleged second attack by North Vietnamese forces on U.S. destroyers, which became the primary justification for the United States' wide- scale military involvement in the Vietnam War.

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964: Using these events as justification, President Johnson secured the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution from Congress on August 7, 1964. This resolution gave the President broad authority to use military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war.

• Result: Increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam’s Civil War

• Eventual commitment of more that 500,000 U.S. troops

later revelations from the Gulf of Tonkin

• Declassified documents later confirmed that the August 4 attack likely did not happen and that intelligence was misrepresented to justify escalation.

• These revelations contributed to the "credibility gap" and public distrust of the government. The resolution was repealed in 1971, leading to the War Powers Act of 1973.

tet offensive

• massive, coordinated surprise attack launched by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces against hundreds of targets across South Vietnam beginning on January 30, 1968, during the Vietnamese New Year (Tet) holiday.

• While a military defeat for the communists, it was a major psychological and political victory that became a crucial turning point in the Vietnam War, eroding American public support for the conflict.

• Military victory for U.S., but public opinion failure

impact of tet offensive

• The Tet Offensive had profound consequences that reshaped the war:

• Erosion of Public Support: American public confidence in the Johnson administration and the war effort plummeted.

• Policy Shift: Facing immense public pressure, President Lyndon B. Johnson refused a request from General William Westmoreland for more than 200,000 additional troops, announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and initiated peace talks.

• Johnson's Decision: On March 31, 1968, a beleaguered Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.

• Beginning of Withdrawal: The U.S. began a shift in strategy towards "Vietnamization," a process of gradually withdrawing U.S. troops and transferring responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese army, which eventually led to the U.S. departure from the conflict.

fall of saigon

• “Vietnamization Strategy” (1969 – 1971): U.S. combat soldiers began to be replaced by South Vietnamese soldiers

• Paris Peace Talks: The Paris Peace Talks were a series of negotiations from 1968 to 1973 that aimed to end the Vietnam War, culminating in the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973.

• While the Accords established a ceasefire and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the ultimate goal of a lasting peace was not achieved, as North Vietnam eventually conquered South Vietnam in 1975.

• The talks themselves were a long and complex process, marked by both public sessions and secret negotiations, as well as periods of deadlock over issues like the shape of the conference table.

• Saigon falls to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, April 30, 1975

• End of U.S. involvement in Vietnam War

journalism and the vietnam war

• First “televised” war

• Initially supported by Journalists

• Journalists began to report problems with the war

• Walter Cronkite and LBJ

Legacy of the Vietnam War for the US

• 58,200 U.S. military personnel died, including 8 women who were nurses

• Changed U.S. approach to foreign policy

• Divided a generation

• U.S. government developed policies to restrict reporting by journalists during wars

RnR's profound impact on the vietnam war

• it served as a powerful soundtrack for both the anti-war movement at home and the soldiers on the front lines, reflecting and amplifying the deep social divisions caused by the conflict.

• fueling anti-war sentiment and providing a shared cultural soundtrack for a generation experiencing a divisive conflict.

• While some early songs were patriotic, many prominent rock songs became anthems of protest, capturing the era's confusion, anger, and dissent.

• Simultaneously, rock music served as a crucial morale booster and coping mechanism for soldiers in the field, who used radios and cassette decks to listen to their favorite artists and connect with home.

RnR and the anti-war sentiment

• Articulating dissent and Amplifying Protest: Songs like Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" and Edwin Starr's "War" became powerful protests against the war, questioning the government's decisions and the human cost of the conflict.

• Unifying a generation by unifying the youth: Music helped unite young people, including those facing the military draft, for social movements and protests. Major musical events like the Woodstock festival in 1969, billed as "three days of peace and music," served as a powerful platform for the anti-war messageMusic provided a common voice for a confused and disillusioned youth, giving a sense of unity to protests and counter- cultural movements.

• Raising awareness: Artists directly addressed the public, using lyrics to describe the chaos and atrocities of war, as seen in The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"

RnR and the American Soldier

• Morale and comfort: The military allowed soldiers to bring radios and musical instruments, and the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) broadcast music to the troops, making it a vital source of morale and comfort.

• Coping with experiences: Music helped soldiers process their experiences, allowing them to express doubt and make sense of the emotions and ambivalence they felt during wartime. Songs from both sides of the political spectrum resonated deeply with soldiers. "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by The Animals became an unofficial anthem for troops who longed to go home and away from the daily terror and death they faced.

  • Originally about working-class struggles and escaping a stifling environment, it became an anthem for American soldiers in the Vietnam War who felt trapped and wanted to return home. The lyrics express frustration and a yearning for a better life, which resonated with many people facing hardship, including working-class hardship, general frustration and angst.

• Connecting to home: Listening to the same music as their friends and family back home helped soldiers feel a sense of connection to a world far away. At least until they came home

january 1968

• 15th: Jeannette Rankin leads Women’s March on Washington to Protest Vietnam War

• 20th: First nationally televised college basketball game from the Astrodome: Houston 71 – UCLA 69

• 23rd: North Korea seizes USS Pueblo and crew

• 30th: Beginning of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam War

february 1968

• 1st: Memphis sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker crushed by a defective garbage truck – assassination of MLK

• 8th: Police fire on people protesting a segregated bowling alley in Orangeburg, SC, killing 3 and wounding 27

• 27th: Walter Cronkite concludes a report on the Tet Offensive noting that we can’t win in Vietnam and should negotiate a peaceful settlement of the war

• The Kerner Commission concludes that race riots in the US happen because we “are moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”

march 1968

• 5th: “Prague Spring” begins in Czechoslovakia

• 12th: New Hampshire primary

• 16th: Robert F. Kennedy enters race for Democratic nomination for President

• 31st: In a nationally televised address, President Johnson announces “I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for President of the United States”

april 1968

• 4th: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis, TN

• Over the next week, riots occur in more than 100 US cities

• 11th: President Johnson signs Fair Housing Act

• 23rd: Columbia University students take over 5 university buildings in protest of Vietnam War

may 1968

• 6th: Riots breakout between police and students in Paris, France

• Other European nations have similar incidents in the next two weeks

• 10th: Vietnam War peace talks begin in Paris

• 17th: Nine protestors steal and burn draft files in Maryland

june 1968

• 4th: Robert F. Kennedy assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles

• 19th: Poor People’s campaign draws 50,000 protestors for economic equality to Washington, DC

july 1968

• 1st: President Johnson signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, limiting the spread of nuclear weapons in the world

• 20th: The first Special Olympics are held in Chicago

• 23rd: The “Glenville Shootout” in Cleveland results in 3 police officers and 3 Black militants dead

august 1968

• 5th – 8th: Republican National Convention in Miami nominates Richard M. Nixon for President

• 26th – 29th: DNC turns violent in Chicago

• 20th: Russians invade Czechoslovakia, ending the democratic reforms of the Prague Spring

• 28th: In what is later found to be a “police riot”, protestors chanting “The whole world’s watching” are beaten by police on television at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Hubert H. Humphrey is nominated.

september 1968

• 7th: Feminists protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City

• “60 Minutes” debuts on CBS

october 1968

• 2nd: Mexican police fire on student protestors in Mexico City, killing and wounding thousands

• 16th: Tommie Smith and John Carlos give the “Black Power” salute during their Olympic Medal ceremony to protest racial injustice in the US

november 1968

• 5th: Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest Presidential elections in US history

• 5th: Shirley Chisolm (NY) becomes the first Black woman to win a seat in the US House of Representatives

• 12th: US Supreme Court declares Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of Evolution violates the First Amendment

december 1968

• 9th: First computer mouse and word processor demonstrated at San Francisco computer convention

• 21st – 27th: Apollo 8 becomes first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon

• 23rd: North Korea releases crew of the USS Pueblo

Brown v. BOE of Topeka (1954)

• Unanimous decision: Racial segregation of children in public schools is illegal

• Overturned “Plessy v Ferguson” (1896) that held that segregated public facilities were allowed if they were equal

• Resulted in desegregation of public schools

• Thurgood Marshall argued the case on behalf of the NAACP

• Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court judge, appointed by President Johnson

aftermath of Brown v. BOE decision

• 1955: Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King lead the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott

• 1957: President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock Arkansas to desegregate Central High School

• Johnson administration passes Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968

• Runyon v McCarry (1976) outlaws segregation in nonsectarian private schools

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

• In 1879, Connecticut passed a law that banned the use of any drug, medical device, or other instrument that aided contraception.

• Birth control clinic opened by C. Lee Buxton and Estelle Griswold in New Haven, Connecticut on Nov. 1, 1961. Arrested and convicted of violating the law on Nov 10, 1961

• Asked if the Constitution protect the right of marital privacy against state laws restricting a couple's ability to use contraception

• A right to privacy can be inferred from several amendments in the Bill of Rights, and this right prevents states from making the use of contraception by married couples illegal.

• Established a constitutional right to privacy for married couples, which was a crucial step toward women's reproductive freedom

• the pill empowered women, especially in the workforce

Women’s Rights

• 1960: FDA approves birth control pill

• 1965: Supreme Court in Griswold overturns Connecticut law that criminalized using birth control (for married people)

• 1972: Legalization of birth control extended to unmarried people

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

• the Court unanimously ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional, violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. The case centered on Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial couple who were arrested in Virginia for being married when the state prohibited interracial unions.

• the Loving v. Virginia decision invalidated similar laws in other states, legalizing interracial marriage nationwide. The ruling also had broader implications for civil rights, and its legal reasoning has been applied in subsequent cases, such as those concerning same-sex marriage.

• There are forces in our society looking to attack these rights

Roe v. Wade (1973)

• Supreme Court voted 7 – 2 to uphold a U.S. District Court opinion that a Texas law prohibiting abortion was unconstitutional

• The decision is based upon a women’s right to privacy (Griswold) as guaranteed by the 9th and 14th Amendments

• The Court held that a woman’s choice to have an abortion outweighs the state’s concern for prenatal life up until the point of viability (when a fetus can live outside of the womb), particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)

• In 2018 the state of Mississippi passed a law banning all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy

• In 2022 the Supreme Court upheld the Mississippi law

• In the majority decision, Justice Alito wrote that the Right of Privacy is not written into the Constitution, and cannot be enforced because it is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.”

• The effect is that states have the legal right to ban and/or regulate abortion

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

• in 2003, Supreme Court recognized right to homosexual relations in Lawrence v Texas

• In Obergefell, Court ruled that the “fundamental right to marry” is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment by a 5-4 margin

• ”While the democratic process may be an appropriate means of addressing the issue, no individual has to rely solely on the democratic process to exercise a fundamental right.”