What was happening in the 1960s

Humble ISD History. Skip to Main Content. District Home. Select a School Select a School. Sign In. Search Our Site. Trivia - Major Events. Kennedy wins the U. Presidential Election after defeating Republican Richard Nixon. Here's the future princess on her 1st birthday.

See 15 rare photos of Princess Di ». Thirty years later, he'd graduate from Harvard Law School. See 14 Presidential before-and-afters ».

The cookbook isn't just a hit — it'll be a bestseller for 5 years and make a star out of Julia Child. Learn more lessons from Julia Child ». A tribute to Mary Tyler Moore ». Bob Dylan's eponymous first album is released on March Fun fact: The album took only two afternoons to record.

A lesson on happiness from Bob Dylan ». It was incredibly well-received, selling two million copies in the first three weeks. Millions of fans are shocked to hear the news that Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home on August 5. See rare photos of a young Marilyn ». On September 2, Rod Laver becomes the third tennis player to earn the "Calendar Grand Slam" by winning all four prestigious major tournaments in the same year.

Sadly, Saarinen would never see his long-term project debut — he died of a brain tumor in John Steinbeck wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This same year, Linus Pauling wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to weapons of mass destruction. It sold 3 million copies in its first three years — and would spark the women's movement. Read a article by Betty Friedan ». On March 21, Alcatraz is closed as a prison due to high operation costs. On June 12, civil rights activist Medgar Evers is assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

On July 14, the film Beach Party is released which helps begin the "beach party" film genre. Martin Luther King, Jr. The speech would become famous as his "I Have a Dream" speech. Despite protests, destruction begins on the old Penn Station in Its ruins would inspire laws for the preservation of landmarks.

On November 22, President John F. Johnson could muster the political capital to enact his own expansive program of reforms. There was simply not enough money to pay for the War on Poverty and the Vietnam War. Conflict in Southeast Asia had been going on since the s, and President Johnson had inherited a substantial American commitment to anti-communist South Vietnam.

Soon after he took office, he escalated that commitment into a full-scale war. Within days, the draft began. The war dragged on, and it divided the nation.

Some young people took to the streets in protest, while others fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Their movement spread: Hundreds of demonstrators went back to that lunch counter every day, and tens of thousands clogged segregated restaurants and shops across the upper South.

In general, the federal government stayed out of the civil rights struggle until , when President Johnson pushed a Civil Rights Act through Congress that prohibited discrimination in public places, gave the Justice Department permission to sue states that discriminated against women and minorities and promised equal opportunities in the workplace to all.

The next year, the Voting Rights Act eliminated poll taxes, literacy requirements and other tools that southern whites had traditionally used to keep blacks from voting.

But these laws did not solve the problems facing African Americans: They did not eliminate racism or poverty and they did not improve the conditions in many black urban neighborhoods.

Many black leaders began to rethink their goals, and some embraced a more militant ideology of separatism and self-defense. Just as black power became the new focus of the civil rights movement in the mids, other groups were growing similarly impatient with incremental reforms. Student activists grew more radical. They took over college campuses, organized massive antiwar demonstrations and occupied parks and other public places.

Some even made bombs and set campus buildings on fire. At the same time, young women who had read The Feminine Mystique celebrated the passage of the Equal Pay Act and joined the moderate National Organization for Women were also increasingly annoyed with the slow progress of reform. They too became more militant. The counterculture also seemed to grow more outlandish as the decade wore on. That year, the brutal North Vietnamese Tet Offensive convinced many people that the Vietnam War would be impossible to win.

The Democratic Party split, and at the end of March, Johnson went on television to announce that he was ending his reelection campaign. Richard Nixon, chief spokesman for the silent majority, won the election that fall. Martin Luther King Jr.