The 1960s were a remarkable time, an extraordinary era that saw events ranging from the emergence of the civil rights movement to the tragedy of the Vietnam War to the appearance of the Beatles to the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to place a human on the moon before the close of the decade. But there were other, less-known aspects of this noteworthy period as well, for the 1960s were also a time when there was a resistance to the expansion of civil rights, when there was an intrusion by states into the private lives of citizens, and when the national government exerted a little understood but powerful influence on American public education.
In Th e Other Side of the ’60s: Hidden Dimensions of One of America’s Most Signifi cant Decades, three members of EIU’s history department will share some of these less visible facets of this pivotal time in our nation’s past. In Sex, Drugs, and the U.S. Supreme Court, Dr. Lynne Curry will show how state governments at the time were remarkably intrusive into the everyday private lives of American citizens. In Between Cairo and Chicago: Resistance to Rights Expansion During the 1960s, Dr. Debra Reid will explain how, in the midst of a national expansion of civil rights, there was resistance to that expansion in our own state of Illinois. In Cold War Classrooms: How American Education Served the National Security State, Dr. Charles Titus will describe how American education in a variety of ways served national security interests during the Cold War.
