COUNTERCULTURE HAD ITS DAY IN '60S: EVERY ASPECT OF U.S. LIFE CHALLENGED

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Ask most any adult to select the stormiest decade of the century, and the response would be the 1960s. Nearly every part of America was challenged - its politics, laws, attitudes, sociological mores, authority, and more.

More than 2 million Americans took to the streets in anti-war demonstrations that resulted in 9,000 casualties, 200 deaths and 70,000 arrests. More than 1 million people marched in civil-rights demonstrations and 200,000 participated in urban riots, according to researcher and author Jules Archer.

The anti-war movement intensified from a deliberate beginning, swelling as the decade ended. The first peace march on Washington, D.C., attracted 20,000 people. At the decade's conclusion, 300,000-plus joined in a moratorium on Oct. 15, 1969, and 500,000 joined in a Nov. 15 moratorium, Archer said.

Idealistic youths challenged the conformity of the prior decade, questioning accepted rules and regulations.

One factor behind the movement was the vast numbers of the new generation. Returning World War II veterans inadvertently created the 70-million-plus baby-boomer generation. The synergy they created started revolutionary changes in the country's structure that continue even today.

For the first time in history, college students maintained a substantial force for social turnabout. More and more middle-class youths were radicalized and polarized by the Vietnam War and a civil-rights campaign. The "establishment's" efforts to repress the rising tide only brought about more defiance.

The decade started with the inauguration of 43-year-old President John F. Kennedy, who declared, "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," words that awakened a sleeping country. Later, his assassination and that of other ideological leaders in 1968 swept up more youth into activism and further polarized the nation. The generation gap widened and young people had many questions.

Cape Girardeau business owner David Michel, a student during the '60s, saw changes in society and its values. "Society measured success by how much you had: your house, your car," he said. "The new generation wasn't driven by the dollar sign. The meaning of success is being at peace with yourself, and believing what you do is right."

Michel was graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1970 with dual degrees in psychology and philosophy. He said he believes the embodiment of the counterculture the Hippies symbolize the decade with an image of free-flowing long hair and bell-bottom pants.

"It was the dawning of a new awareness that we are citizens of the world, not our little microcosm," he said. "The seeds were planted then, but the movement had a long way to go."

Michel, the father of a 20-year-old college student, said conflicts from the era have yet to be resolved. He cited the civil-rights, peace and environmental movements from the '60s.

Michel, a 1966 high-school graduate, lost a best friend and saw two others wounded in the Vietnam War, which he considers the most significant event of the decade. "Nobody was left untouched," he said. "The war had such a widespread effect on all of us. It was unlike the world wars, when the soldiers knew what they were fighting against. Vietnam was a popular war at first, then became unpopular when the economy went down and people started losing their sons. The emotional scars are still around."

One legacy, the music of the '60s, continues to receive air time on radio. Michel said when he hears the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Doors, and Bob Dylan, "the most quintessent and influential artist," he recalls the era.

The myriad styles of the decade's music is one of the hallmarks of its genre to Peter Hirschburg, head of the department of sociology and anthropology at Southeast Missouri State. He has studied its music and lectured on it.

"There was a tremendous amount of diversity," he said. "In the early 1960s, the trend was to California music; the British (music) invasion in the mid 1960s, and the psychedelic sound from San Francisco in the late 1960s. The protest element spanned the decade, becoming more prominent at the end."

The subject of songs, once the realm of teenage angst, broadened as newly found freedoms came about. More young people began buying records and they became an unprecedented force in the music market, Hirschburg said.

Hirschburg, a 1965 high-school graduate, said rhythm and blues, which had been sanitized and sung by whites in the 1950s, finally came to the forefront and was legitimized.

"The music reflected society," Hirschburg said. "And it helped bring an awareness of issues to American society that people would not otherwise have seen. It did not create the conditions, but enhanced the awareness."

Cape Girardeau school Principal Carolyn Vandeven said she watched the trend in music change from 1950 complacency to the '60s' innovations. "Elvis was fading," she said. "Peter, Paul and Mary and others were coming in with a strong theme of peace and folk music."

She said she preferred the rock 'n' roll of the British: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

The 1964 College High School graduate said, unlike the music, she did not change through the decade of the '60s. "Southeast Missouri was insulated from the movement," Vandeven said. "It was here, but not to the extent as on the coasts."

Television news brought the image of the Vietnam War into everybody's front room at 6 p.m. It produced varied reactions. "I was concerned and wondering about alternative ways to war," said Vandeven. "And people I knew were being drafted and sent to war. Lives were disrupted."

Values in American society changed through the decade as people examined and questioned beliefs once held absolute. "It was an era of unrest and changes," said Vandeven. "People started asking questions, and not blindly following the establishment and its thinking."

Clothing worn by youths reflected their thinking; the crinoline and crewsocks were replaced by a casual, unisex look with beads, bell-bottoms and long hair, Vandeven said. But teenagers' social activities were unchanged; they still went to the movies, school dances, drive-ins, or just "cruised," as they did in the '50s, she said.