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Missouri Humanities Council e-News | February 2010| View Online | ||||||||||
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Were You a Child in the 1960s?By Joel Rhodes, Southeast Missouri State University
I began this project in the fall and have contacted nearly 250 newspapers in all fifty states (plus DC) with a "Letter to the Editor" as well as setting up a Facebook page "Children of the Sixties." I’m hoping to collect hundreds, if not thousands, of stories. Over the next couple of years I'll weave those recollections into a history of social change in "the sixties" and explore how historical events such as Vietnam impacted preadolescents (kids born between 1956 and 1970) based on their particular developmental age. My guess is that the stories themselves will take the book into directions that I don't yet anticipate. If you are interested please write down your recollections about anything you remember from the sixties and e-mail them to jrhodes@semo.edu – pretty much stream of consciousness style. You may send them all together at once or as you think of them. Feel free to share as much or as little as you like. Some have written paragraphs while others sent many pages. [Return to Passages Front Page] Also in This Issue:
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As a history professor with a special interest in the Vietnam era, I am researching and writing a book on the 1960s as seen through the eyes of American children. For many Americans like myself who were born between 1956 and 1970 – and are now in our forties and fifties – the “sixties experience” was a fundamental part of our childhood and remains central in our lives today. I would like to hear stories from this generation about growing up in the United States during the turbulent 1960s in order to understand the meaning of “the sixties” from the perspective of children. How did you experience the Vietnam era's powerful historical forces and popular culture between Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 and Nixon’s resignation in 1974 in your life as a child? What did things such as the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, the Beatles, hippies, assassinations, moon landings and protest mean to you as a preadolescent? Ultimately, has your unique perspective on "the sixties" had any impact on you as an adult?