History Channel: The 1960’s Magazine

At the beginning of the 1960s, many Americans believed they were standing at the dawn of a golden age. But between the fight for civil rights, the looming Vietnam War, and the televised assassination of a popular sitting President, that golden age never materialized. Yet some shreds of the hopeful ’60s remained. In the summer of 1969, more than 400,000 young people trooped to the Woodstock music festival in upstate New York, a harmonious three days that seemed to represent the best of the peace-and-love generation. In this issue, the HISTORY CHANNEL examines the era’s mixed legacy. Inside, find a history of: The Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and the birth of the “New Deal,” the radicalization of student activist groups, who organized antiwar demonstrations and occupied parks, and why the counterculture movement took off, and the sudden influx of “free love” communes.