Subject and Course Guides: U.S. History After 1865: The Sixties

Online Resources

The 1960s: A Decade of Promise and Heartbreak
It was a decade of extremes, of transformational change and bizarre contrasts: flower children and assassins, idealism and alienation, rebellion and backlash. For many in the massive post-World War II baby boom generation, it was both the best of times and the worst of times.
The Civil Rights Movement
In the middle of the 20th century, a nationwide movement for equal rights for African Americans and for an end to racial segregation and exclusion arose across the United States. This movement took many forms, and its participants used a wide range of means to make their demands felt, including sit-ins, boycotts, protest marches, freedom rides, and lobbying government officials for legislative action.
Hope for America: Performers, Politics, and Pop Culture
The Presidential Election of 1960
John F. Kennedy, a wealthy Democratic senator from Massachusetts, was elected president in 1960, defeating Vice President Richard Nixon.
The Sixties: Moments in Time
This timeline offers a sample of newsworthy happenings from the 1960s. The events used in this interactive timeline were chosen on the basis of importance at the time, and continuing significance for American culture at the start of the 21st century.

Databases

African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new window
The culmination of more than 10 years of organizing and collecting materials, the African American Historical Serials Collection is a centralized and accessible resource of formerly fragmentary, widely-dispersed and endangered materials originating from various institutions and sources—including some that had not
previously participated in preservation projects.
Now compiled and accessible to researchers in one digital collection, this unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922.
America: History and Life (Full-Text) This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing, abstracts, and full-text for U.S. and Canadian historical and cultural literature, from prehistory to present. NOTE: Only 6 simultaneous users allowed.
America: History and Life is a comprehensive source for U.S. and Canadian history and culture, from prehistoric times to the present. The database contains indexing, abstracts, and full-text for over 1,700 journals as well as books, book reviews, theses/dissertations, and film project reviews. A strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including English abstracts of articles published in more than 40 languages. This database is an excellent bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of American history, Canadian history, popular culture, American studies, literature/folklore, genealogy, women's studies/gender studies, multicultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of science. The database corresponds to the print America: History and Life, which is produced by ABC-CLIO. Updated regularly.

NOTE: Only 6 simultaneous users allowed.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Compilation of nearly 400 Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. This collection offers a diversity of unabridged voices, ranging from intellectuals and literary notables to politicians, union organizers and grassroots figures.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is an archive collection of over 620 full-text scholarly journals primarily from university presses and professional society publishers. Additional titles are added to the collection as back files are digitized. Subject areas include: African American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Botany, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, Folklore, History, History of Science Technology, Language Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Public Policy Administration, Science, Slavic Studies, Sociology, Statistics.
Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window
Focused on current military affairs, covering areas of engineering, public affairs, public policy, and international affairs
This database is focused on current military affairs, covering areas of engineering, public affairs, public policy, and international affairs. Includes full text for nearly 300 journals, 245 pamphlets, and CountryWatch country reports. Indexing and abstracting is provided for nearly 400 titles.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974 This link opens in a new window
For scholars and students researching this important period in American history, culture, and politics.
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 contains diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. Spanning 1960 to 1974, The Sixties is centered on key themes that provide insight into the issues that shaped America and that still resonate in today's debates: Arts, Music, and Leisure; Civil Rights; Counter-Culture; Environmental Movement; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Law and Government; Mass Media; New Left and Emerging Neo-Conservative Movement; Science and Technology; Student Activism; Vietnam War; and Women's Movement.
Student Activism Digital Archive Collection - Reveal Digital This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized archives of student protest, political actions, and equal rights advocacy; includes the Donald W. Cantwell Papers from UTA Special Collections.
Women & Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Brings together books, images, primary sources, biographical information and statistics for in-depth access to research on women's studies.
This database is a repository of primary and secondary documents in the field of U.S. Women's History. Included are a dictionary of social movements and organizations, a chronology of U.S. Women's History, advertisements, book chapters, diaries, images, legal documents, letters, organizational notes, transcripts of speeches, along with scholarly interpretations.

Secondary Research - In our Collection

The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement by Winifred Breines
ISBN: 0195334590
Publication Date: 2007-08-31
Focusing on white and black women, this book examines the feminist movement to ask why, given the roots of second wave feminism in the civil rights movement, a racially integrated women's liberation movement didn't develop in the 1960s and 70s in the United States.
Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s by Howard Brick (Editor)
ISBN: 0805790802
Publication Date: 1998-08-01
Brick undertakes three tasks: to plot out the principal contradictions or polarities that structured debate and contention in American thought and the arts: to note distinguished figures - such as sociologist Erving Goffman, black modernist poet Melvin Tolson, and feminist literary critic Kate Millett - whose innovations managed to move beyond the restraints imposed by those forms of dualism; and to recognize dilemmas of the 1960s that remained unresolved.
Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement by Tomiko Brown-Nagin
ISBN: 9780195386592
Publication Date: 2011-02-09
In this sweeping history of the Civil Rights movement in Atlanta - the South's largest and most economically important city - from the 1940s through 1980, Tomiko Brown-Nagin shows that the movement featured a vast array of activists and many sophisticated approaches to activism. Long before "black power" emerged and gave black dissent from the mainstream civil rights agenda a new name, African Americans in Atlanta debated the meaning of equality and the steps necessary to obtain social and economic justice.
The American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island by Troy R. Johnson (Afterword by); Donald L. Fixico (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780803217799
Publication Date: 2008-12-01
The occupation of Alcatraz Island by American Indians from November 20, 1969, through June 11, 1971, focused the attention of the world on Native Americans and helped develop pan-Indian activism. In this detailed examination of the takeover, Troy R. Johnson tells the story of those who organized the occupation and those who participated, some by living on the island and others by soliciting donations of money, food, water, clothing, and other necessities.
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America by Peniel E. Joseph
ISBN: 0805075399
Publication Date: 2006-07-25
In 1966, a group of black activists, including Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton, turned their backs on Martin Luther King's pacifism in order to build on the legacy of Malcolm X. The result? The Black Power movement, a radical new approach to the fight for equality. Joseph traces the history of the men and women of the movement - many famous and infamous, some forgotten. Drawing on original archival research and more than 60 original oral histories, this narrative history vividly reports the way in which Black Power redefined black identity in the USA.
America Divided: the Civil War of The 1960s
ISBN: 1282367307
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
This book brings together the portraits and autobiographical texts of six 17th-century Latin American women, drawing on primary sources that include Inquisition and canonization records, confessional and mystic journals, and legal defenses and petitions.
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right by Lisa McGirr (Preface by)
ISBN: 1400866200
Publication Date: 2015-06-02
Suburban Warriors introduces us to these people: women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures.
Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty by Annelise Orleck
ISBN: 1429469749
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
The inspirational and little-known story of welfare mothers in Las Vegas, America's Sin City, who crafted an original response to poverty-from the ground upIn Storming Caesars Palace, historian Annelise Orleck tells the compelling story of how a group of welfare mothers built one of this country's most successful antipoverty programs.
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein
ISBN: 9781568584126
Publication Date: 2009-03-17
Acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein chronicles the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. At the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed federal government, despised liberals, and mocked "peaceful coexistence" with the USSR. Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers. Vividly written, Before the Storm is an essential book about the 1960s.
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
ISBN: 0807862703
Publication Date: 2003-11-20
One of the most important African American leaders of the 20th century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned 50 years and touched thousands of lives.
How Long? How Long?: African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights by Belinda Robnett
ISBN: 0195114906
Publication Date: 1997-08-07
Author Belinda Robnett argues that the diversity of experiences of the African-American women organizers has been underemphasized in favor of monolithic treatments of their femaleness and blackness. Drawing heavily on interviews with actual participants in the American Civil Rights movement, this work retells the movement as seen through the eyes and spoken through the voices of African-American women participants. It is the first book to provide an analysis of race, class, gender, and culture as substructures that shaped the organization and outcome of the movement.
The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas J. Sugrue (Preface by)
ISBN: 9780691162553
Publication Date: 2014-04-27
Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit's bankruptcy.