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In the 1960's, People Turned to Music for Hope, Peace, and Happiness

Decent Essays

During the 1960s and the early 1970s, music reflected the political and social changes that America was undergoing at the time. Some of these major changes included the African-American civil rights movement and the conflict over America’s role in the Vietnam War. During these hard times, people turned to music for hope, peace, happiness and answers. The African-American civil rights movement was a cruel time for the African American race to endure due to the harsh discrimination and segregation that they faced. This movement fought for the rights and the equality of African Americans in the United States. With all that was going on, African Americans turned to music for motivation, courage, inspiration and strength to overcome the …show more content…

In these following verses, she is implying that they will be slaves no longer; that they would rather die rather than not being treated with the same equality as the white people. The African Americans would rather die and be with their Lord so they could finally be free from all the hatred and discrimination that they are facing during this era. In the last three lines, “No more weeping/ No more shooting/ There’ll be singing” (7-9), Baez is referring to the freedom that the African Americans have finally achieved and the battle that they have now won There will be no more crying and no more violence to be faced by them. Instead they will live and peace and happiness. This song gave the African Americans hope that their equality would be coming soon and that they would soon be celebrating their freedom. Along with the African-American civil rights movement, music had an incredibly huge impact on one of the longest wars at the time, the Vietnam War. “In the 1960s, several now-influential artists appealed to the disaffected counterculture’s emphasis on peace and love, especially with the sliding approval rates of the Vietnam War” (Hopkins). The main purpose of the Vietnam War was to stop the spreading of communism from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. When France was defeated at Dien Bien Phu while trying to gain back control of
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Vietnam, they decided to pull out of Vietnam and the U.S. entered the war because North Vietnam was an ally of the U.S. More

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