1960
It was the new day of freedom in Africa: Ambassador Bunche had predicted that several nations would gain their independence; by year’s end the number was seventeen, free to fly their own flags and issue passports with proud new names. Though Africa was ill-prepared for its future, thanks to its feckless former owners, celebrations reigned from Timbuktu to Lagos to Kinshasa as the former colonies took their place in the parade of nations, swelling membership in the UN to almost 100. But the continent was immediate Cold War fodder, as in the case of Patrice Lumumba, the first premier of Zaire. Beset by rebellion in the army and secession movements, his pleas for help to the US were ignored, he was dismissed as a dirty Red, and his brief life closed in front of a firing squad.
Scientists estimated the solar
system to be five billion years old as the dawn of the space age unfolded, and
the USSR and the US were in frantic competition: with Discoverer 13 (a spy
satellite), the US was the first to recover an object from space—but the
Russians soon topped that by sending two dogs into orbit and bringing Belka and Strelka back alive a day later,
unlike poor Laika, the first dog-naut, who did not survive her 1957 flight. The
US scored another first with Tiros, a weather satellite, which issued forecasts
of rain and sun for just 78 days before its technology burned out. A bit lower in the aerospace, the USSR shot
down an American U-2 spy plane and captured the pilot and the plane’s
gear, thereby rebutting some lame US
denials: all this fuss sabotaged a planned summit meeting and left a cloud
hanging over Ike’s final months in the White House.
In a self-consciously modern
era, technology marched on: the world reached a census of 100 million TV’s; the
laser was patented; the first Xerox machine started copying bad jokes and
unread reports; and a civilian nuclear reactor started up—but most of us still
depended on oil, leading our suppliers to organize OPEC. Despite a succession of court cases, Blacks
remained second class citizens; Congress passed a useless civil rights bill,
but Boynton v. VA outlawed racial segregation in public transit, which would
point to the future Freedom Riders, and the roads where their buses would roll
were changing America: towns with no ramps from I-95 went to sleep, while those
with access were invaded by Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson’s and the malls.
French President De Gaulle was a
busy man: his country started testing an A-bomb; he squashed yet another army
insurrection in Algeria; and France switched to nouveaux francs, which
forced le tout Paris to multiply and divide by a hundred while shopping.
The US sent 3500 soldiers to Vietnam; the world’s first woman prime minister
took office in Sri Lanka; after forty years of censorship we all got to read Lady
Chatterley; Castro was steering Cuba towards the Soviet bloc; the planned
city of Brasilia was opened; and Howdy Doody came to an end, as did any
doubt that television consisted of ephemera.
JFK and Nixon debated on TV; the conventional wisdom was the debates
tipped a close contest to Mr. Kennedy while the cynics and the Republicans
called the election stolen. Eventually
the cries settled down and the country could either bask in the good feeling of
To Kill a Mockingbird—or go to movies and scream as Janet Leigh took her
infamous shower.
1963
We couldn’t expect much from a
year that robbed us of four fine poets: MacNeice, Plath and Roethke, all much
too young, and another, Mr. Frost, who was irreplaceable; as well as bringing
record disasters—a landslide in Italy (2000 died), Hurricane Flora in the Gulf
(8000 perished), and earthquakes in Yugoslavia (1000 lives lost). It was the year both Studebaker and Alcatraz
closed, of touch tone phones, ZIP codes, tape cassettes and pull tabs, and Tab
itself, a fizzy anthem for our growing waistlines. Mr. Warhol was painting soup cans and Brillo
pads in a style called Pop Art, and Ms. Friedan published a book called
the Feminine Mystique; any calculation of its influence is likely a
gross underestimate. Out in space,
Telstar circled the globe, Mariner 2 reached Mars, and the Russians sent a
woman into space; on earth we took notice of folk stars like Baez and Dylan,
but by year’s end, it was those lads who wanted to hold your hand that were becoming
the next rage, the first wave in the British invasion.
For African Americans, the arc
was at last bending: timid at first, the President found his conscience and was
calling for change, James Meredith graduated from Ole Miss, George Wallace
blustered but stepped away from the school door, and Dr. King gave us a
monumental testimony in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Against the protesters, that city kept up its
rear guard action to save white supremacy in the form of fire hoses, Bull
Connor’s police, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church,
which killed four little girls; but all this crass brutality nudged indifferent
Northern whites to a measure of sympathy, and the year of struggle found its
apotheosis in the March on Washington led in August by King, where a quarter
million people assembled for rights, jobs and dignity.
Earl Warren’s court kept finding
things that needed fixing: it ruled against Bible reading in public schools,
which upset the pious; ordered defendants must have a lawyer, which rankled the
law and order crowd; and expanded one man-one vote to more jurisdictions, which
outraged rural politicians. Nelson
Mandela could have used some of that legal consideration for the accused;
arrested in 1962, he was on trial and would be sentenced to life, and though
apartheid still had thirty years to go, the world was taking a few first steps
to isolate South Africa. Meantime, more new African nations emerged, raising UN
membership to well over one hundred.
Americans didn’t know much about Vietnam, but the headlines were not
reassuring—a growing number of American casualties, the very public
self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, and an army coup late in the year that
toppled President Diem.
Our President had visibly learned a lot after the Bay of Pigs snafu, guiding his country through the nervous days of the Cuban missile affair, passing his tax plan, making a historic visit to Berlin, announcing a goal to reach the moon, proposing civil rights legislation, and negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty. That fall, there was a new mastery in John Kennedy’s words and bearing as he went to Dallas on November 22—and then the shots rang out and the craziness broke loose. Again we invoked the words Dicken had given us: it had been the best of times and now it was the worst, it had been a world where we hoped; now it was one where hopes were crushed; and when we did move forward again, it was with an inkling nothing could be the same again—and the years would confirm our every fear.
