Between these Birmingham chapters came what may be the signature moment of the civil rights movement, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.
"By special train, plane, buses by the thousand, private automobiles and even in some cases on foot, the marchers poured into the capital," an AP story reported. An estimated 250,000 people, mostly black but many white, met at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to hear King pronounce, "I have a dream..."
Civil rights advances of 1963 spilled into a broader sense of possibilities.
Many people had long hoped for relief from the specter of atomic war — what Kennedy called the "darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth" as he announced the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in July.
"Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness," he said. "For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under control."
For years, people had staged "ban the bomb" street demonstrations — but almost unnoticed in 1963, they were joined by a few early protesters against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, where Kennedy had been sending American military "advisers."
In the continuum of popular culture, no single year is definitive. Still, by 1963, record buyers, radio stations, even jukebox operators were embracing a broadening range of entertainment. There was the "Motown sound" of black pop songs — singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson has spoken of "the barriers that we broke down with music" — and audiences would soon embrace the "British invasion."
"The '60s revolution in music and style began somewhere, maybe here," say the liner notes for a just-released Beatles collection, "First Recordings: 50th Anniversary Edition," which received a nomination for this year's Grammy awards.
The music never really went away (the Rolling Stones' recent tour was playfully called "Fifty and Counting"). Spivey's '60s class ends with a sing-along, and Varon at the New School marvels at how many of his students know the old lyrics.
A quieter revolution made 1963 "a lever," in the words of historian Stephanie Coontz, who also teaches '60s courses. In February of that year, writer Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique."
At the time, magazines and TV constantly reinforced a view of the American woman and her assigned place: She would marry, raise children, and not work outside the home, which she would maintain with products and appliances designed to make her middle-class life efficient and ideal.
The trouble, Friedan recognized, was that for many this was not ideal, but suffocating, said Coontz, author of the 2011 book "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."
When she reviews the sexism of those days with her students today — "head and master" laws in many states making wives legally subject to husbands, help-wanted ads seeking "pretty looking, cheerful gal" for office work, and the like — "jaws literally drop," she said.
For middle-class women who read Friedan's book, it was a revelation. They'd been told "they should not want anything more out of life — and were 'sick' when they did. These people Friedan literally rescued," Coontz said in an interview. "People I interviewed said ... they were considering suicide."
The book told them they were not alone and change might come.
Transformative change is a central theme of '60s courses; some even offer '60s-style civic outreach projects as substitutes for traditional research papers. Students learn how Kennedy pushed variations of this message in 1963.
- Boy Scouts open membership to all boys,...
- Defending the Faith: A case for the...
- Abercrombie & Fitch CEO posts statement on...
- One third of millenials regret going to college
- Brave woman tried to reason with London...
- Stories behind viral Oklahoma tragedy photos...
- Facts about the Boy Scouts of America
- Why $1 billion doesn't mean what it used to...
- Defending the Faith: A case for the... 50
- Journalists criticize Obama... 38
- Boy Scouts open membership to all boys,... 27
- Associated Press CEO calls records... 23
- IRS official Lerner invokes Fifth... 22
- Former IRS chief to Congress: Can't say... 21
- More Obama aides knew IRS targeted... 19
- Supreme Court to weigh in on... 17