Re: [sixties-l] Glad The L's Back

From: Marty Jezer (mjez@sover.net)
Date: Tue Jun 06 2000 - 18:03:40 CUT

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    At 06:34 AM 6/6/2000 -0400, you wrote:
    > Anyway, I remember the later 50's as being an
    >extremely exciting and hopeful period. We felt change in the air.
    >Gretchen Dutschke

    Speaking of the complexity of generations, we need a fresh look at the
    fifties. The conformist, organization man, suburban buttoned-down repress
    fifties was the mainstream reality, but there was so much going on beneath
    the surface. As Abbie Hoffman once said, "there wouldn't have been the
    sixties, if not for the fifties." Or something like that.

    Bebop and hard bop, the first folk revival (a breakthrough for what the
    Almanacs/Weavers were trying to do), the beats and abstract expressionists,
    the sick comics (Lenny Bruce,
    Mort Sahl, etc.) iconoclasts like radio's Jean Shepherd, the Village Voice,
    doo wop (and white kids getting seriously into black music), not to mention
    in politics the ban the bombers
    (Committee for Nonviolent Action and SANE), the NYC air raid protests
    (Catholic Workers and WRL). The consensus that dominated the corporate
    fifties began to fracture in the mid-fifties and it was from the
    underground ferment that the new left and the counter-culture was born.
    The civil rights movement had it's own antecedents but the fact that so
    many young whites were ready to embrace the cause stems from the ferment of
    the fifties.

    Just wingin' it,

    Marty Jezer

    -- 
    Marty Jezer  *  22 Prospect St. *  Brattleboro, VT 05301 * p/f  802 257-5644 
    

    Author: Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words (Basic Books) Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel (Rutgers University Press) The Dark Ages: Life in the USA, 1945-1960 (South End Press) Rachel Carson [American Women of Achievement Series] (Chelsea House) Check out my web page: http://www.sover.net/~mjez To subscribe to my Friday commentary, simply request to be put on my mailing list. It's free!



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