A Brief Summary Of 1968

In the duration of one year, 1968, the American national mood shifted from general confidence and optimism to chaotic confusion. Certainly the most turbulent twelve months of the post-WWII period and arguably one of the most disturbing episodes the country has endured since the Civil War, 1968 offers the world a glimpse into the tumultuous workings of a revolution. Although the entire epoch of the 1960's remains significant in US history, 1968 stands alone as the pivotal year of the decade; it was the moment when all of the nation's urges toward violence, sublimity, diversity, and disorder peaked to produce a transformation great enough to blanket an entire society. While some may superficially disagree, the evidence found in the Tet

He traces the baby-boom generation's involvement with the civil-rights, Vietnam War, and countercultural movements in stunning detail and evidence. Anderson entails insight of how the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, where driving forces and very nearly launched a civil war. The author skewers a system that sent so many impoverished minority youngsters and white American males to Southeast Asia while condemning a national ethos of the communism. Clearly, for him the '60s are very much alive, and his passionate remembrance galvanizes the book. However, it does suffer from some

Ever get that feeling, you’re going through problems, or some type of adversity but everything turns out fine? It’s an awesome and free feeling, and this was the feeling the American people experienced during the 1960s. The people went through the great stress of beating their rivals, the Russians, in the great space race with the Apollo Program during that commotion, engineers around the country were working double time trying to find ways to create and improve the blueprints for the laser. This wasn’t even the most problematic as the American people had to cope with one of America’s greatest movement, the civil rights movements and one of its fearless leaders Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr became an icon during the 1960s due to

1968! War was going on in Vietnam, people started thinking and getting told that we could win the war. What if we did win? How would the world have turned out if we could take this year out of our history? There were many things that went wrong in 1968 some include the Tet Offensive, election of 1968, and the assignations during 1968.

During the 1960s our nation was going through many important and crucial events. From the Vietnam War to national politics, and even civil rights, our country was changing a lot. In particular, the year 1968, was when our country went through a major turning point, especially when you take in consideration the major events that involved the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement such as the “Tet Offense”, violent protests, and the Civil Rights Act being passed.

The 1960’s were a time of radical change. It was a decade where people began to question authority, and time of confrontation. The decade's radicalism began with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963. This event changed the country's idealistic views, and started an upheaval of civil rights movements. Baby boomers started a new perception, and formalized the act of resistance to war. There were also many of whom, turned violent and rebellious; in their effort to fight "the system."

With the overwhelming amount of Levittown houses, the obsession to obtain the perfect American “ideal family” as seen on TV and the unspoken agreement to fear any and all foreign ideas and values, the 1950s were revealed to be a decade of prosperity, conformity and consensus. Just ten years later the atmosphere in America was shockingly different; the 1960s were a decade of turbulence, protest and disillusionment due to the ongoing struggle for civil rights, arising feminism, and the Vietnam War.

The unexpected occurrences of the late 1960 's through the 1970’s led to a broad form of skepticism and distrust toward the countries ' leaders in a number of ways. The occurrences that impacted how Americans looked at the nation’s leader was complete disillusionment. They felt this way because of hidden secrets, corrupt scandals in the white house, continuous social and economic problems that seemed to never change and the ongoing Vietnam war which Americans were opposed too. Most Americans blamed the government for many of the issues the that were going on and that should have ended but instead funded, ignored, and made other things important on their agenda. Political leaders had proclaimed intentions on ending the cold war, racial discrimination, fixing social and economic problems and creating reforms that would begin to make a difference.Americans did not see a change of these significant issues through these years.They only saw the nation getting worse which made them unhappy, doubtful and even worried about a new civil war. Some of the events that contributed to Americans cynicism was the watergate scandal, the ongoing Vietnam war, social and economic catastrophes and inequality.

The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil

America’s Uncivil Wars is a book written about the sixties era that captures that provides understanding of how and why events occurred during this period, as well as their historical roots from the time since the Second World War. The author, Mark Hamilton Lytle, used a chronological approach to explain the era by dividing the sixties into three separate phases. The first is the era of consensus, which starts approximately around 1954 and includes the years up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. From there, Lytle talks about events in the second phase: the years from 1964 to 1968. These are the years after Kennedy’s death until the

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. federal government took several actions both at home and abroad that many Americans didn’t always feel were justified, and didn’t agree with.

Preceding Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination was North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive against the United States which “signified the beginning of the end of U.S involvement in the Vietnam War” (CNN). Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, “was a holiday during which the North and South had previously observed an informal truce” (CNN). However, on January 31st, 1968, a “coordinated attack by Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese targeted 36 major cities and towns in South Vietnam” (CNN). Despite the heavy casualties, “North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region” (“Tet Offensive”). This attack was a crucial turning point in the war because the ambush resulted in Americans withdrawing their support of the war. Before the offensive, the U.S.

The Tet offensive is touched in both “The Doves Ascendant: The American Antiwar Movement in 1968” and “1968: The End and the Beginning in the United States and Western Europe”. As we learned in class the Tet offensive was a military strategy that caught the United States’ forced off guard on a Vietnamese holiday.

The 1960s are frequently referred to as a period of social protest and dissent. Antiwar demonstrators, civil-rights activists, feminists, and members of various other social groups demanded what they considered to be justice and sought reparation for the wrongs they believed they had suffered. The decade marked a shift from a collective view on politics, to a much more individualistic viewpoint. The 1960s could easily be characterized as a period during which political, ideological, and social tensions among radicals, liberals, and conservatives in American society are seen to have rapidly unfolded. Due to this, the decade has had an overwhelming effect on the decades that have followed. The sixties have had the greatest impact on American society out of any decade in recent history. Whether for better or for worse, the decade has had a profound influence on politics, society, foreign policy, and culture.

Renown as one of the three important turning points of our modern world-system besides the long sixteenth century as a capitalist world-economy; and the French Revolution of geoculture for this world-system, one that was dominated by centrist liberalism; and the world revolution of 1968, which presaged the long terminal phase of the modern world system in which we find ourselves and which undermined the centrist liberal geoculture that was holding the world-system together. At the same time, the undeniable predicaments that the revolution was met by the upholders of the system enabled the World Revolution of 1968 to be lost in uprisals failing to bring about the change that it set out to achieve.