1963

ON THIS DAY

On Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in the deadliest act of the civil rights era.

1963:

• 200,00 freedom marchers descend on Washington to demonstrate
• 3,000 troops called out to control demonstrations and riots in Birmingham, AL
• Castro in USSR
• Buddhist-led military coup overthrows government of South Vietnam;  U.S. sends financial and economic aid
• Profumo crisis in Gr. Britain
• Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who is subsequently murdered by Jack Ruby
• Authors:   Jessica Mitford, Robert Frost, John Updike, Aldous Huxley, William Carlos Williams wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry
• “Mona Lisa” exhibited in NY
• Andy Warhol exhibit at Guggenheim
• Films:  “Tom Jones,”  “The Birds,” “Dr. Strangelove”
• Joan Baez and Bob Dylan lead in popularity as singers
• Friction welding invented
• Cooper completes 20 orbits in Atlas rocket
• DeBakey first uses artificial heart
• Glasgow-London train robbery
• Jack Nicklaus wins his first Masters

Oh, the times, they were a changin’ for sure.  I was a young married woman, finishing up my degree at Albany State….which gave me an up-close view of those changes.   Civil Rights;  the beginning of what we simply refer to as “Vietnam”;  and then the assassination of a beloved President.   It was a lot to take in, and no matter how we processed things,  they did change us.   I’m not sure anyone in my generation completely trusted a politician ever again.

Don was part of that first wave of U.S. soldier to enter Vietnam, back when we still maintained an advisory role.  Does that make it sound peaceful?  Trust me, it was not.  And the reception those soldiers met when they at last came back home was insulting, belittling, heart-breaking.    Don can still barely speak of it.

How did that merge with the art of the likes of Andy Warhol?   Those images riveted us…”Is this ART?”  What is he trying to prove/do?   It was a new world, for sure.

Here in our Florida senior park, we are all of an age to remember 1963, to remember how it seared;  to remember the tragedies and triumphs of the Civil Rights movement;  to be devastated by the Vietnam experience;  and don’t forget…during all of that, Betty Friedan turned our “The Feminine Mystique,”  and that was life-changing in another way entirely.

It was an interesting, exhilarating, frightening time to be alive.  I’m glad I was there. (And, oh!  I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in New York!!)