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A Lecture About One of the Fateful Hinges of History

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A Lecture About One of the Fateful Hinges of History 1963: The Hinge of the Sixties David Shribman Chautauqua Lecture Series - July 18, 2013 Welcome to a lecture about one of the fateful hinges of history. We are speaking, of course, about 1963, and if you were alive that year, then surely those four digits are freighted with memory, and tragedy. Those digits are chiseled into history because of what happened during a split second in Dallas, Texas, on an afternoon that delivered November 22 into infamy. That is not only the principal event of the year 1963, but it is surely the pivotal event of the entire decade of the 1960s and, for many of us of a certain age, and many who followed, that may be the pivotal event of the half century, or more. It marked us like no other until the year 2001 and perhaps more deeply. There is, in truth, some debate about history and its hinges, especially in the 1960s. A distinguished historian, James T. Patterson of Brown University, has just written a book called, evocatively, “Eve of Destruction,” wherein he argues that the hinge is 1965, not 1963. He argues that 1965 was “the time when America’s social cohesion began to unravel and when the turbulent phenomenon that would be called ‘The Sixties’ broke into view.” He says, moreover, that it spawned “exceptionally rapid and widespread change,” and it is hard to argue with that. But in fact I will argue with that. All of those things that happened in 1965—the rapid buildup in Vietnam and the growing distrust of the war and of the leaders who planned it, the Civil Rights ferment culminating in the confrontation at Selma, the growth of the Great Society—were very important, indispensable even, to our understanding of the period. But all of that really has roots in 1963. It seems a tautology to say that 1965 couldn’t have happened without 1963—we can say that of any pair of years—but I think there are persuasive reasons to think that the real hinge was earlier— 50 years ago, in 1963. There are real reasons to pause and remark upon our year of 1963. The year Patsy Kline died in a plane crash and Sylvia Plath died in an oven. The year Martin Luther King wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail and delivered a speech from a Washington monument. The year the James Bond movies began and Project Mercury—and the Studebaker line of cars—ended. The year Lester Pearson, Alec Douglas Home and Jomo Kenyatta became prime ministers, the year Giovanni Battista Montini became Pope Paul VI. The year “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was released and ZIP codes were introduced. In that year, a Buddhist monk set himself afire in Vietnam, Medgar Evers was murdered, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped, and an American nuclear submarine carrying 129 crewmen sank. The first diet drink—the Coca Cola Co. called it TAB—was introduced. Sandy Koufax struck out 15 in Game One of the World Series against the Yankees. Christine Keeler was arrested for perjury in the Profumo scandal, and Kim Philby was given asylum in Soviet Russia after a British spy scandal. And here in Ohio, the Buckeyes went 5-3-1; the Browns, led by Frank Ryan at quarterback, Jim Brown in the backfield and Lou Groza at kicker, went 10-4; and the Indians, with Max Alvis at third, Vic Davalillo in center field and Mudcat Grant and Sam McDowell on the mound, finished in fifth. Stephen Young and Frank Louche were in the Senate, and Del Latta and John Ashbrook were in the House. Jacqueline Mayer, graduate of Sandusky High School, was Miss America. She, like so many of those who strode across the stage of 1963, is a heroic figure—a stroke survivor whose seven years of rehabilitation, followed by decades of public speaking, has inspired and helped so many to walk, speak—and dream. - 2 - In 1963, the United States was more powerful than it had ever been, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Everything about it was big—its nuclear arms, its popular culture, its colorful eccentricities, its peculiar weaknesses. It was a huge, diverse, powerful nation: It was sending men to explore the new frontier of outer space. It was exploring its interior soul, wondering whether a nation conceived in liberty for all could continue to deny its blessings to some. It was involved in a cold struggle in Europe, especially in Berlin, and in hot struggles around the globe, especially in Congo, Laos and, ominously, Vietnam. Its power was symbolized by the troops that sat at the ready a rifle shot across tense borders in Eastern Europe and on the Korean peninsula. Its weakness was symbolized by the missiles that, only a year earlier, had been assembled a brief trajectory away in Cuba. Its promise was symbolized by great wealth assembled in its cities and suburbs and harvested on its farms, but its great problems were symbolized by those in city, suburb and farm who were clawing to be invited in—a toxic mixture that would, in the decade to come, produce the sort of domestic turmoil and national introspection that the nation had not known since the Great Depression. And so, amid all this turmoil, it should not be surprising to learn that this was a year of new rights and great wrongs. The new rights became apparent early in the year, when Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique” and then, in June, the first woman travelled into space. Back here on earth, the Supreme Court handed down its famous “Gideon v. Wainwright” decision, assuring that all those accused be provided lawyers. The country would never be the same again. But much of that was in the future. Let’s take a look for a moment at America in 1963. As the year began, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Ernie Davis, Pope John XXIII, Homerun Baker, Estes Kefauver, Edith Piaf, Aldous Huxley, Herbert Lehman, Dinah Washington, Paul Hindenmuth, J.D. Tipett, Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy, and Jack Ruby were alive. By year’s end they were all dead. As the year began, the following had not yet been born: Charles Barkley, Michael Chabon, Johnny Depp, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Brad Pitt, Vanessa Williams. By the end of the year every one of them would be alive, not walking on this earth but preparing, in the way infants do, to change the world. They would be among the 189,241,798 Americans on this continent, only about 60 percent of the number who live here today. And it was a very different country. The entire US gross domestic product was $599.2 billion. The president’s budget proposal for this year was $106.5 billion. The budget deficit for fiscal 2012 was 1.089 trillion. The average cost of a new home was $12,600. Today the average cost in the Midwest is about $150,000. You could buy two gallons of gasoline for about the same price as one gallon of milk. A loaf of bread in 1963 cost half what a postage stamp costs today. And if you’re wondering, you could mail a first-class letter for four cents when the year began, five when it ended. A Hershey bar was a nickel, and a whole generation of us will always think that a Hershey bar should be a nickel. The average wage was $4,397, and I can imagine a lot of you are thinking that that would be a lot of money in today’s dollars. You’re wrong. The equivalent today is $31,420. The average household income today is at least 33% more than that—a reflection of our relative prosperity and, of course, of the movement of women into the workplace. And by the way, 1963 was the year the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by President Kennedy. - 3 - While you are figuring your relative economic status to 1963, let me remind you that your Internet service fee, your cable fee and your cell-phone bill were a lot lower in 1963. Then again, the Dow was around 700. I haven’t checked this afternoon, but I can say reliably that it is higher today. You could buy a blast shelter to save your family from a nuclear attack in 1963. Those are harder to find today. Apples were 16 cents a pound in 1963. They’re more than a dollar now. A pound of Colby cheese cost 39 cents. It would set you back $5.69 today. Ground beef was 49 cents a pound, and probably was organic. Today regular old ground chuck goes for $3.48 a pound. You could get a dozen sugared doughnuts for 49 cents in 1963. Your kids and grandkids would think you were crazy if you walked into the house today with a dozen sugared doughnuts at any price. A Motorola car radio would cost you about $40 in 1963, and if you bought one, you could hear it play “Sugar Shack,” “Surfin’ USA,” “He’s So Fine,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Walk Like a Man.” Everyone in this audience still knows those songs, along with “I Will Follow Him,” “It’s My Party,” and “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.” All of them were released in 1963. None of them is out of style, or ever will be. Television was in its heyday. You could buy a set for about $100, which is pretty expensive when you think that a Swanson chicken TV dinner went for 39 cents.
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