Bob McElvaine, a celebrated Millsaps history professor, has retired and moved to North Carolina. But from his class on the history of the 1960s he has left one final lesson, a book with the long but explanatory title “The Times They Were A-changing/ 1964 the Year the Sixties Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn.”
The book weaves together politics, music, literature and film in a more-or-less chronological trip through what he calls “Long 1964,” the period from November 1963 to mid-1965. The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 bookend the narrative.
His tapestry makes a convincing case that events during those months changed American customs, mores and attitudes in remarkable ways that remain with us today.
Before November 1963, life was different in many ways, both large and small. Americans listened to American-made pop music. Bob Dylan played an acoustic guitar. A comedian could be arrested in New York for using obscenities in his act. Contraceptives were illegal in some states. Women were expected to stay home and make their husbands happy.
The only notable college demonstrations were male “panty raids” on womens’ dorms. There were no federal civil rights or voting laws. Restaurants, restrooms, libraries and water fountains in Mississippi were segregated, and only 5% of the black population in Mississippi was registered to vote. There was no public health insurance program. There were American “advisers” in Vietnam, but no troops. Nationwide 77% of people polled said they trusted government to do what was right.
McIlvaine says Long 1964 is when the change began. By its end the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had won the loyalty of American listeners. Bob Dylan released his song, “The Times, they Are a-Changin,” and went through some changes himself, most notably by switching to an electric guitar. Congress enacted the Medicaid and Medicare health insurance programs. The Supreme Court held that the constitution protected the right to use contraceptives. The murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during a voter registration campaign spurred final passage of federal civil rights and voting rights laws.
That campaign, known as the Mississippi Summer Project, inspired one of its participants to lead the first major campus political protest, the California Free Speech Movement. The campaign also produced a memo by two women leaders that argued false assumptions about the abilities of women were just as harmful as false assumptions about the abilities of black people. They are now considered to be the founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement. And by the end of Long 1964, the United States had committed to send 125,000 troops to Vietnam.
The changes came with a cost. Although Democrat Lyndon Johnson was elected in 1964 with 61% of the vote, his embrace of civil rights drove the white south into the Republican Party. The campus demonstrations in California ignited the political career of a movie actor named Ronald Regan. Brutal attacks by southern policemen on civil rights protestors inspired riots in black ghettos in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Protest against the Vietnam War, and our ultimate defeat there, began the erosion of public confidence in government. Today the percentage who think that government can generally be trusted to do what is right is down to 17%.
To anyone who lived through this period, and remembers pieces of it, the book’s chronology puts the pieces together in some surprising ways. President Johnson’s stand for civil rights in his January 1964 state of the union address was followed almost immediately by the release of Dylan’s famous song, which called on legislators to act. When the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show a month later, 75% of America’s televisions were tuned to the show. At the same time, just behind them on the charts was an early feminist statement, Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” In that same month, a boxer named Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the world championship and announced he had joined the Black Muslims, who changed his name to Mohammed Ali.
President Johnson stands at the center of the book, although it takes significant detours into Malcolm X and the Black Muslims, Barry Goldwater, feminism, the musical strategies of rock groups and the movie Dr. Strangelove. The book presents the Johnson story as a tragedy. His Great Society programs greatly improved American life for racial minorities and the poor. At the same time, his belief that he could not remain popular if he “lost” Vietnam led him to escalate America’s commitment even though he knew victory was unlikely. The escalation irrevocably tied him to the war’s casualties and defeats. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many people did you kill today” was one chant of those opposed to being drafted to fight there. His decision not to run again in 1968 was a sad ending to a presidency that came close to surpassing all others in its success in passing useful domestic programs.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
