need to interview somone from the 1950's? need help?

[Raul]

1)Many people say they remember where they were when they heard Kennedy died. Do you remember JFK’s assassination? What impact did it have on you? What impact did the later assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy have on you?
2)As the 60’s began the Cold War was certainly intensifying. Do you recollect the Bay of Pigs Incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis? What was your reaction? What were your views about our presence in Vietnam later?
3)One historian said that rock n’ roll music was the “pied piper” who led suburban kids into counterculture. Do you agree? How did you view the music and counterculture of the late 60’s?
4)What are your general recollections of the following: The 1963 March on Washington and “I Have a Dream Speech”, the marches on Birmingham and Selma, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X.
5)By the end of the 60’s civil rights had gotten more radicalized. Did your opinion of the civil rights movement change between the early 60’s and the 1970’s? What was your opinion of the Black Panthers and other more radical civil rights groups-like AIM, the Weathermen, or Radical Women?
6)Many people view the pinnacle event of counterculture as Woodstock. What is your recollection of Woodstock (or the talk of it in 1969)?
7)When people think of the 60’s the typical reaction is to think of hippies, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and social change. However, there are many things that people may recall about the 60’s that don’t fall under those categories (for example-the Moon landing, Joe Namath and the Jets or the Packers winning the Super Bowl, the Miracle Mets in baseball, movies like The Graduate or Easy Rider, or TV shows like Bonanza or Laugh In). What are your recollections of popular culture in the 60’s?
8)Some historians have argued that the biggest change in society in the 60’s was in politics. They say the impact of TV, the white south leaving the Democratic Party (then later becoming Republican), the ethnic make-up of Congress, the environmental movement, and chaos and corruption of the parties, were all significant changes in politics. What do you remember about politics in the 1960’s?
whats ur email david smith. need it please

[BJ Rus]

I don't think someone that old will be on Yahoo Answers.

[David Smith]

Yes I was around in the 1930s / 50s. I am willing to answer your questions if you email me, but not here.

[Betty]

JFK assassination plan is explained in a 86-page pdf document available for download from

jackieiskillerqueen.blogspot.com

The document also explains who gave the orders to assassinate JFK.

[justagrandma]

I was a teen ager in the sixties and yes I remember all of those things.
There are a lot of questions there, and a lot of reactions.
The assassinations left us wondering what was going on in the world, it seemed like death was all around us, At eighteen the men were drafted, the boy voted best looking lost his arm in Vietnam. Bay of Pigs seemed miles away, And JFK standing down Khrushchev was the kind of thing that had the young men enlisting. Or running to Canada, Vietnam was universally hated, we, the younger generation of the time, felt we were bearing the burden of a group of old generals who no longer fought on their own. We got pictures of the war, I think that changed forever the way people looked at war, no amount of bravery, or pageantry could make up for the pictures we saw that showed those at home that war was ugly and unremittingly terrifying.
Rock and roll music was loathed by the older people some of whom saw it as lustful, or even racially based. Civil Rights wasn't universally welcomed, people on both sides felt it was forced, and even among friends it was not always easy.
What those speeches did though is offer hope, that things could and would get better, that we could recognize worth no matter what.
I'm still not sure we can do that, but for a while there, some people really did believe that.
Between the war and civil rights we didn't have much trust in older people or the government. But far and away we simply did what we did, went into the service, got married, had families, far younger than most generations, because marriage was a way out of the draft. One reason so many from that generation got divorced.
We were all starting out in life back then, most of us without a clue, so innocent that it hurts to think about it. There was a split, between those who lived the drug culture, arty, hippie life, and those who were pretty tame, married with children and yet no matter where you were on that scale, there was an us and them attitude, I often wonder if our parents didn't understand that we didn't want their burdens, their hates, their ways. It was gloves and hats for us as a child, and no one's worn them since but the British.
Recollections of popular culture were along what you've listed, and the clothes, really quite daring considering where we had been, I've always been fashion conscious and I could list some items that make me laugh now when I think of them.
I also owned six bikinis, considered a scandal, that also makes me laugh now, they had more coverage than many dresses do now.

I didn't go to Woodstock, my sister did, or tried to, it was the worlds largest parking lot. She never got there. Few were really hippies, some were weekend hippies.
I do remember the moon landing, we had a party to watch such a miraculous thing, and I was seven months pregnant, she was born early on Splashdown day four days later.

Politics in the sixties was so full of change and anger and what seemed to me to be a whole society giving rebirth to itself, all the pain and blood and agony rippling through the country as we came out of the safe, straight grey fifties and moved into the sixties and seventies. It was not the best of times, but it was interesting times.
Very difficult times. If you'd like more email me.

[Bflowing]

Too many questions to answer all at once. Yes, I remember JFK being assassinated. I was in high school. My family was glued to the TV for the next 3 days. We saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV. It was a devastating time, especially in the Northeast. Every household, just about, had a picture of JFK in it.
The thing to remember about the culture in the '60's, is that it was driven by the baby boomers. We were the largest generation ever. Needless to say, we controlled the market place even as teens. We caught a lot of flack about our music, the way we dressed, and the length of our hair. But we had the numbers on our side. The movies, TV, and music, reflected our lives, not molded us.
It was a definite generational gap. The older generation, our parents and older, were more authoritative oriented. We just didn't protest against the war, or for civil rights, but also against unreasonable authority. We just wanted to be heard, and have some representation.

[Gerald Cline]

1. I was in the library when Kennedy's assassination was announced over the PA system. It was a shock. MLK and Bobby Kennedy were less of a shock.

2. Yes, I remember both. I stayed up all night watching the live reports on the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted a couple of weeks, and we all pretty much expected it to end in a nuclear exchange.

3. I'd put it the other-way around. The counterculture embraced Rock 'n Roll as its theme music. Until the early 60s most of the Rock was love ballads, not "protest" songs.

4. Something that happened outside the framework of MY world. It was events on the 6 o'clock news, nothing to me personally.

5. Like most Americans I supported the early Civil Rights Movements. As EVERYTHING became more radicalized in the later 60s and 70s I withdrew my support. Most Americans wanted to see evolution, not revolution. Despite all the rhetoric and revisionist history since then, MOST Americans did NOT support the radicals and disapproved of the riots, hate-speech, and anti-American hysteria of the left-wing radicals.

6. I was serving in Vietnam at the time, and never knew a thing about it until after I came home a year later.

7. Media hype about the hippies, protests, antiwar movement, riots...etc. etc.... Most Americans were only exposed to the youth movement trough their children, but it was pushed into everyone's face all the time by the media.

8. After 1968 the radical-left seized control of the Democratic Party, and has run both the party and the country ever since. Later "movements" like the ecologists, population alarmists, and global warming enthusiasts are just radical-left wing agitators using these causes to promote their agenda of a command-economy in which THEY are in charge. No...I don't approve....