What Killed America Pt. 4 (When Rebellion Went Mainstream.)

The 1960s had arrived, and at first, America still seemed rather peaceful.

The economy was doing great, families were growing, and the traditional American home was still normal. Certainly, the teenage rebellion we talked about in the last article was growing, but America had not completely changed yet. 

Then in 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president.

Kennedy was young, popular, and represented a new generation of Americans. However, while America seemed prosperous on the outside, there was a major problem happening inside the country.

Segregation.

For years, Black Americans had been treated differently because of the color of their skin. They went to different schools, ate in different restaurants, and were separated from white Americans in many areas of everyday life.

This was wrong.

The Bible says:

Acts 17:26

“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth...”

The Civil Rights Movement fought against this segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. became a major leader, protests spread across the country, and eventually the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in many areas of American life.

Now I'm not saying the Civil Rights Movement was wrong. Certainly not. Segregation was wrong, and Americans should have been treated equally regardless of the color of their skin.

However, something else was happening.

Americans were learning to question the way things had always been.

Sometimes that was needed.

But soon people were not just questioning segregation.

They were questioning authority, morality, the Bible, and God.

At the same time, another major change was taking place.

In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled against a government-written prayer being said in public schools. Then in 1963, the Supreme Court ruled against state-sponsored devotional Bible reading in public schools.

The Bible and prayer were losing the official place they had once held in many American classrooms.

This becomes a huge failure when they took God out of schools.

Then came Vietnam.

World War Two had brought Americans together. After Pearl Harbor, millions of young men willingly went to war. They understood that their country had been attacked and that freedom had to be defended.

Vietnam was much different.

America became heavily involved in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism and protect South Vietnam from communist takeover.

However, as the war continued, young Americans began protesting. 

Some burned their draft cards. Others fled the country to avoid military service. Huge anti-war protests filled the streets.

But the culture was changing.

The generation of World War Two had been known for sacrifice.

The new generation was becoming known for rebellion.

It is thus important to note that the rebellious spirit that started in the late 1950s broke out into a completely rebellious culture.

And while all of this was happening, Hollywood was also changing.

For decades, Hollywood had followed something called the Production Code. This code restricted profanity, nudity, sexual immorality, and other immoral content in movies.

It certainly did not make every movie good.

But it created boundaries.

Those boundaries began disappearing during the 1960s.

One example was James Bond.

In 1962, Dr. No introduced movie audiences to James Bond. Bond was cool, confident, drove expensive cars, fought bad guys, and always seemed to be doing immoral things with women.

The hero was openly immoral.

And that immorality was part of what made him cool to the rebel culture.

Hollywood learned something it would use for decades.

Immorality sold.

Movies continued pushing the boundaries until the Production Code finally collapsed in the late 1960s and was replaced by the movie rating system.

Instead of certain things simply not being shown, Hollywood could now show them and put a rating on the movie.

And the movies would only get worse.

Meanwhile, the teenage rebellion of the 1950s was exploding.

Rock and roll became bigger. The Beatles became a sensation.

The Beatles became one of the greatest influences on the youth culture of the 1960s.

Their music eventually went far beyond simple love songs. All You Need Is Love became connected with the “peace and love” message spreading throughout the culture. The Beatles used with LSD and marijuana, believed in Eastern religion, and helped make their music popular around the world. Their enormous popularity helped carry the changing ideas, sounds, and attitudes of the 1960s straight into the culture.

This culture would only help produce the hippies.

By the middle and late 1960s, thousands of young Americans were rejecting the traditional lifestyle of their parents.

They grew their hair long, experimented with drugs such as marijuana and LSD, promoted “free love,” and rejected traditional authority.

In 1967, thousands traveled to San Francisco for what became known as the Summer of Love.

Then in 1969 came Woodstock.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered for several days of rock music, drugs, and their culture.

Think about what had happened.

Just over ten years earlier, Elvis's rock music on television had shocked American parents.

Now hundreds of thousands of young Americans were gathering together and openly living the rebellious culture their parents had feared.

The rebellion was no longer shaping.

It had become the culture.

The seeds planted in the 1950s were now growing.

And sadly, America was only getting started.

The rebellious ideas of the 1960s would follow America straight into the 1970s.