All the talk last week about the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing made me wonder what other semi-centennials we are marking this year.
Sometimes this sort of exercise turns up a pattern of deep connections and heavy portents, something that adds up and helps make sense of our current moment. (See my reflections about the year 1919 on the centennial of my father’s birth.) But that is less the case for 1969. The year certainly had its share of memorable events, but they seem a jumble, more contradictory than coherent. Or maybe the contradictions are the pattern. Maybe what we see emerging in 1969 is the grid of polarization and conflict that still haunts us today.
The other most famous event from 1969 besides the moon landing occurred a month later at the Woodstock arts and music festival, August 15-18. Those days saw an incredible string of talent and fame on stage, but Jimi Hendrix closed the show with “Purple Haze,” singing out loud what the 400,000 in attendance had amply (seen) demonstrated, that you didn’t need a rocket ship to kiss the sky. It’s a commonplace that a harsh bookend to Woodstock plunked down at Altamont, California in December, when four people were killed by the Hell’s Angels who were providing “security” for the Rolling Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil,” indeed, but that might be inevitable when you believe only, Woodstock-like, in the better angels of human nature.
The year put “radical youth” on display, then. But it also saw Richard Nixon inaugurated as president in January, with no little support from young voters—particularly from the 80% of that cohort who did not graduate from college. Even more of that demographic seem to have voted for George Wallace in the previous November’s election. Wallace’s third-party candidacy netted 13 percent of the popular vote and made Nixon a minority president (44 percent), fueling his notorious insecurities. But Nixon coopted the Wallace vote via the Southern Strategy that marks the Republican Party to this day. “Send her back!” did not just drop from the sky.
More contradictions…. John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged two “bed-ins” that year in protest of the Vietnam War, but 30,000 teenagers staged a “Rally for Decency” in Miami to protest Jim Morrison’s indecent exposure on stage there during a Doors concert. The purity party brought in the Lettermen for their music.
The Cuyahoga River caught on fire in Cleveland in June 1969—perhaps the symbolic trigger of the modern environmental movement—but all year long the USA and USSR continued underground nuclear testing. The Concorde inaugurated super-sonic air flight in January, harbinger of a future that did not come to pass. The Boeing 747, the first jumbo jet, had a much more auspicious debut in February; its 50-year service among US airlines ended only this year.
The Australian Rupert Murdoch acquired News of the World in Britain at the very start of 1969 (January 2), his first big step in constructing a worldwide right-wing media empire. Six months later the Stonewall Inn protest against police brutality in New York City gave symbolic birth to the gay-rights movement that has afforded progressive and conservative media so much to fight over ever since.
Naturally, the Vietnam War commanded abundant attention in 1969, though nothing much happened on site besides a lot of killing. Life magazine published one of its most memorable issues on June 27 when it ran a 12-page spread picturing, yearbook-style, the 242 American troops who had recently died in Vietnam in a single week. American forces had taken “Hamburger Hill” a month earlier, but the most notable battle of 1969 would involve belated exposure, that November, of the My Lai massacre some twenty months previous. Life ran the photos again, on December 5.
Antiwar protests built over the course of the year, climaxing with a march of half a million people in Washington D.C. on November 15. I was in that throng. My most vivid memories: a very cold day. My first sighting of Hare Krishnas; hope they had long-johns under those saffron robes. Troops with weapons raised atop government buildings along the parade route. A cordon of buses around the White House. Somebody carrying a sign reading “A Calvinist for Peace.” But what did it avail? The war ground on for five more years, and on December 1 the US conducted the first draft lottery since World War II. Talk about memories! Every American male my age remembers that night as vividly as the afternoon JFK was assassinated. My number? 153—limbo.
If Vietnam was same-old, the new battle gaining international attention was building in Northern Ireland. The “Troubles” technically began the year before, but in 1969 they built into a steady stream of killings, bombings, marches and counter-marches. Contradictions: Bernadette Devlin was elected to Parliament in April, a radical Catholic and the youngest (age 21) woman MP for 45 years. Shortly after, Ian Paisley, the rabid anti-Catholic preacher and politician, was released from jail where he had been remanded for fomenting terrorist acts. He went on to found today’s Democratic Unionist Party, which holds the balance of power in British politics. However Brexit–which the DUP opposes–turns out, it might spell the end of the arrangement that brought the Troubles to an end.
In other international news, Yasser Arafat was named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization simultaneously with Golda Meir becoming the first female prime minister of Israel. Hassan al-Assad came to power in Syria via a military coup; his son Bashir has retained it recently via an egregious series of war crimes. In March 1969 Chinese and Russian forces engaged in border combat that took hundreds of lives; in September Muammar Gaddafi became Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution in Libya.
In technology, geeks honor April 7, 1969 as the birthday of the internet. On Labor Day weekend the first ATM came into use, while IBM shortly after unveiled the magnetic strip that would make possible the credit card explosion. On the celebrity front, two packs of death have fascinated readers ever since: the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Charles Manson Family on August 9-10, and the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island in the company of Senator Ted Kennedy on July 18.
In culture, construction of Disney World began in Florida in late May; the first all-nude Broadway play, “Oh Calcutta,” opened on June 17. In Britain the Beatles released “Abbey Road” on September 26, and Monty Python debuted on BBC two weeks later. The Who pioneered the rock opera with “Tommy” on May 23, but the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar,” released the next day, was Billboard magazine’s Song of the Year.
In television, “The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour” was cancelled by CBS in April for refusing to submit to corporate censorship of its political and cultural radicalism. It was replaced by “Hee Haw” from the other end of the spectrum. The year’s top-rated show was the leftie “Laugh In;” second and third came the traditional Western “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza, where no females were in evidence. “Scooby Doo” debuted to introduce pothead culture for those with eyes to see; “Sesame Street” debuted as the epitome of children’s broadcasting.
In movies the best-picture Oscar went to “Midnight Cowboy,” the first X-rated film to net that honor. Winning Best Actor, however, was John Wayne in “True Grit.” The New Hollywood and the Old, par excellence. The year’s box-office winner was “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” leftie values in a right-wing genre. The 1969 film that has aged most poorly, IMO, is “Easy Rider.” Beside its many other faults, its cheap shots at all things Southern invited backlash from the rising tide of the Sunbelt that would dominate American politics, religion, and other parts of the culture for the next generation.
And in religion? All quiet on the American front. Nothing in the news. You have to know to look below the surface and see the beginnings of the steady erosion of mainline Protestant church membership. On the other hand you can think of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” just getting its legs, as the great national Sunday School of the air, taught by a mainline Presbyterian minister.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” So said the Great American Poet, Walt Whitman. If he was correct, then 1969 was a great American year. But “multitudes” might also mean “legion,” and the man by that name in the Bible was thought mad.
Where were you in 1969, and where are you today?
The most important event of 1969 for me was the birth of our first daughter. The rest, while noteworthy, pale by comparison.
wow-all those things happened in 69.all very memberable,and I do remember most of them.
I am glad you put in something on the Irish Troubles. What the British did was horrendous.
Thank you for the piece. I remember it all especially the Vietnam War and how it changed the nation.
You’re right about the draft. My number was 322–safe. But I agonized for the guys down the hall who had low numbers and felt like they faced doom.
My number was 6. I agonized for those who were male and shared my birthday.
Good memories. I graduated from the Bradley Creek Elementary and entered Roland Grice Jr. High. I felt so mature…
The most memorable event of this transition was the “graduation banquet” where the principal of the Jr. High, Billy Mason (who welded a mean oak paddle) spoke. He told us there were two commandments from the Bible that if we observed, we’d have no problems (and thereby not meet his “board of education”). He asked if we knew which ones. A girl on the front row raised her hand and said, “Do unto others.” She was correct. Then another guy, Jerry, waved his hands and was called up. He said, “Thou shall not commit adultery.” The room erupted in laughter. I wasn’t exactly all that adultery entailed, but I knew enough to know it probably wasn’t going to be an issue for me at Roland Grice.
My draft number kept me out of the military. I was in the front line in the picture of the war protest in front of Calvin College (I was young and impressionable). Remember the “stop the war” painted on the Science building at Calvin? We almost made it to Woodstock, it was a couple hours drive from where we lived, but got stuck in traffic. After observing the crowd passing us on foot, we decided that maybe that event was not for us, we went to a State Park instead. Little did we know what we missed.
It is amazing what young uneducated people will vote for, and some politicians pander to the young and impressionable even today.
Thanks for the memories!
I graduated from Oakdale Chr. School in Grand Rapids, MI with a stellar class, which included James Bratt’s sister, Joy. The class had a 50th reunion in June, and about 1/3rd of the class showed up, many bringing their spouses along. It seemed that people just didn’t want to leave the celebration. A couple of our teachers were there, too. (They must have been newly minted teachers when we had them!) We all agreed that we’d received a fine Christian education at Oakdale – one that prepared us well for life’s bumps and bruises.
Where was I in 1969 and where am I now?:
I spent all of 1969 in Subic Bay R.P. and Hong Kong BCC. . I was in the U. S. Navy. I lost 2 very good friends in Vietnam. I was angry and even now I feel the injustice of my 2 friends lives ending over a conflict to save political face for the leaders who continued a war they knew was failing.
When I returned to the Midwest, in many ways. the culture had changed little, however, we were wearing bell-bottoms and singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in
perfect harmony”. We sang about the Yellow Submarine but never used Mary Jane, only alcohol.
At that time found significant spiritual connections with friends, particularly those seeking relief and recreation with alcohol and drugs.
After 35 years in community banking, I still find meaning reflection with those seeking spiritual direction.
Draft number 102. I was not take in 1971 because the draft law renewal was not approved on time. So those who were called for the summer months, were inducted in the fall. Those who would have been called in the fall (me) made it to the end of the year, and hence were no longer eligible.
As for Woodstock, I lived about 75 miles from Max’s farm. The traffic in that direction was starting to slow to a crawl on NJ-23, just a mile from our house.