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1960 to 1980
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by Jeff Bloodworth
Gannon University
Erie, Pennsylvania
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The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The 40th Anniversary
This Web site produced by The National Security Archive is a wonderful retrospective on the event that brought the world to the nuclear brink. The site gathers press releases, selected documents, photographs, audio clips, and other material from a conference in Havana that commemorated the event by bringing together many of the major policymakers who played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Though the number of documents on the site can easily overwhelm most students there are several gems that make the Web site worthwhile. For instance, the audio clips of the President's Executive Committee (ExComm) enables students to hear President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy discuss the situation with their advisers. In addition, students can read the Washington Post's coverage of events and compare how the newspaper's accounts jived with what was actually happening.
Advanced students will be eager to read Soviet and Eastern Bloc documents that have been declassified and translated. However, some of the site's features such as the "minute-by-minute" chronology of events can leave even the most enthusiastic student dumbfounded.
Teachers can utilize this site in a number of ways. For instance, students can be instructed to listen to the audio clips in order to assess Kennedy's decision-making process. The declassified documents can be assigned so that students can compare what the Soviets were thinking with what the President believed they were considering. The site is for advanced students with a firm grasp of chronology, the primary participants, and an understanding of international relations.
 The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The 40th Anniversary
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
This Web site created by the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Oral History offers 84 oral histories, nearly 1 thousand photographs and a manuscript collection totaling more than 7-thousand pages, which depict the civil rights movement in the deep South. The University of Southern Mississippi, located in Hattiesburg, was home to the most successful Freedom Summer project and was a focal point in the civil rights movement.
Though the digital archives boasts an accessible and searchable manuscript collection and a thorough explanation of the civil rights movement, the oral histories are the heart this Web site. The site features interviews with famous Mississippians such as Charles Evers and Aaron Henry. However, this oral history archive is unique because it offers the oral histories of civil rights antagonists such as Governor Ross Barnett and White Citizens Council leader William Simmons.
The site can be used in several different ways in the classroom. For example, students can be assigned to listen to, report on, and assess the arguments of civil rights activists and their opponents.
The site's focus on the civil rights movement in Mississippi features relatively obscure figures that were nevertheless historically significant. Thus, teachers can broaden the civil rights movement beyond Dr. King and landmark pieces of legislation. For example, Victoria Gray was active in SNCC, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and was a board member of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and her papers and oral history reveals how local activists worked to implement King's vision.
The site offers links to a number of other civil rights resources including the National Civil Rights Museum, the King Center, and the personal journals of journalists who covered the civil rights movement.
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
Though the lion share of resources available from a Presidential library are not accessible on the web, the Johnson Museum's online holdings are considerable. There are six categories of online sources including speeches and messages, photographs, audio/video, oral histories, daily diary, and National Security Memoranda. Through accessing the Johnson Library's online holdings students can learn much about the civil rights movement, Presidential decision-making, and White House politics.
There are twenty-six of Johnson's speeches on the Web site. They range from 1963 through the early 1970s and include his major addresses on civil rights, healthcare and Vietnam. Of greater import to students are the recorded telephone conversations accessible through the site. Students can hear Johnson weave his political magic as he cajoles and charms major figures such as Thurgood Marshall or Mike Mansfield. In this way, students can understand why Johnson was such an effective leader behind the scenes.
The Johnson Library features an extensive collection of nearly eighty oral histories collected from White House insiders, members of the press, and confidants of the President. Key congressional insiders such as Carl Albert, journalists like John Chancellor, and civil rights leaders such as Henry Aaron are some of the highlights of this extensive collection.
In addition, students can access the President's daily diary from the first to the last day of his Presidency. This site offers a treasure trove of primary sources so that students can understand the genius of Lyndon Johnson's wheeling and dealing and the dark side of his presidency. The photographs, recorded telephone conversations, and oral histories render this site an outstanding resource for students.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
The Psychedelic '60s
The American Social History Project, the Center for Media and Learning, and the University of Virginia collaborated to produce this award-winning site documenting and detailing the 1960s. The site features background information and primary sources so that students can assess the sixties and interpret its significance. The table of contents gives students 24 sub-categories that detail and offer background on different aspects of the era. These categories range from the Beats and Rock Music to Ken Kesey and digitized images of posters and Rock Festival Handbills.
Among the twenty-four categories the students can peruse is the literature of the era. The University of Virginia's Special Collections Department mined its literary collections to produce a list of significant works that shaped the minds of the counterculture. Consequently, student will learn that literature can be read as a primary source and will encounter some familiar names such as Rolling Stone along with obscure writers like Gary Snyder.
There are several ways the site can be used in the classroom. Students can assign themselves a category and report to the class as a resident expert on their subject. In addition, students can use the primary documents as a source for a paper or the class can engage in a discussion on the relative merits of the era.
The site has garnered many awards and much media attention. Among the accolades it has received was the A #1 Quality Award for Excellence and certified "Child Safe" by the Quality Search Engine. It has been reviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education and was featured on CNN Headline News.
The Psychedelic '60s
The Whole World Was Watching: an Oral History of 1968
1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in recent American history. Replete with assassinations and protests, 1968 was a watershed in American political life. Brown University in conjunction with local high school students built a Web site to document the oral histories of Rhode Islanders who directly participated in the events of that fateful year.
The site is divided in four main categories narrators, interviews, reference material, and classroom oral history. The narrator section features oral histories compiled by the high school students and the transcripts and audio of their 31 interviews. The interviews break down into four broad themes civil rights, U.S. politics, Vietnam, and women's rights. The third main category, reference material, features essays, a timeline, a glossary and bibliography. The site is well organized easy to use, and a valuable resource.
The fact that high school students compiled the oral histories makes this site unique and particularly valuable. Other students can learn from their experience in conducting an oral history interview and the entire site is geared toward high school history students. For instance, each transcript of the interviews features a glossary of words so that students can access the definition of "the pill" or the "draft board."
The reference section is at least as valuable as the interviews. The essays, timeline, glossary, and bibliography are valuable resources. In particular, the timeline breaks down the events of 1968 to reveal how events built upon the other and produced an explosion of violence and anger at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
This site is easy to use and geared to advanced high school students. Students can read about the student interviewers and assess whether their work was historically sound. Thus, the site offers students an opportunity to learn the historian's craft.
The Whole World Was Watching: an Oral History of 1968
Merry Prankster History Project
This is an unusual yet valuable resource for students of the cultural history of the 1960s. Teachers should be warned that this site chronicles the early history of LSD and the counterculture and could offend some parents. Despite the controversial subject matter, the Web site is actually devoted to collecting the memories, stories, and images of author Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Kesey emerged as a major author in the publication of his 1962 classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and promoted large and public "acid test" parties that played a foundational role in establishing the counterculture in San Francisco.
The site was built and maintained by Rick Dodgson, who uses the stories collected on the web page to source his Ph.D. dissertation on Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Thus, the site is NOT devoted to glorifying or even advocating the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. It is however, an educationally sound introduction to the history of the counterculture and the role that illicit drug use played in the movement. Students will undoubtedly relish reading first-hand accounts of Kesey's "electric" Kool-Aid parties and the house band, the Grateful Dead, which are credited with establishing the experimental tone of the Haight Ashbury and hippie scene.
The major strength of the Web site are the numerous links which detail the early history of key events involving Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. These events have become stuff of myth and lore amongst hippies and students of the counterculture. Indeed, Tom Wolfe's legendary book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was an account of Kesey and his Merry Pranksters experiments with LSD. Dodgson's site breaks through the mythmaking by compiling first-hand accounts of the Acid Tests.
The music of the late 1960s, especially the Grateful Dead, are popular with young people of today. Students will be interested to know that the Grateful Dead was the "house band" for Kesey and his Acid Tests. Dodgson's site offers the early history of the band, photos, first-hand accounts of legendary Grateful Dead shows from the 1960s.
The sites major strengths are the scores of links to rare photos of flyers, band performances, and Acid Test Diplomas that cannot be viewed anywhere else. Unfortunately, there are no audio oral histories on the site and the stories submitted to the web page vary in quality and contain adult content. Despite these drawbacks this site is wonderful place for students to understand the early history of the counterculture and break through the mythology that surrounds the 1960s.
Merry Prankster History Project
The Hard Hat Riots: An Online History Project
This Web site produced by George Mason University's Center For History & New Media focuses on the culture wars of the sixties and seventies. During the late sixties and early seventies, the white working class grew increasingly alarmed by anti-war protesters flouting social conventions. Their disgust with hippies and protesters, culminated in a backlash against them on May 8, 1970. At noon on the streets outside of the New York Stock Exchange, hundreds of construction workers arrived to violently disrupt a protest against the Vietnam War. From there, the hard hats moved to City Hall where their rampage continued. This bizarre event signaled the end of the 1960s and the beginning of a backlash against permissive politics and the counterculture.
This is an outstanding site for the classroom because it is designed for students so that they can use the evidence to build a narrative and assess the event's meaning and significance. The site has four sections that offer a different perspective in understanding the events of that day. These sections are titled newspapers, photos, places, and hindsight. The newspaper and photograph sections features new stories and photos of the hard hat riot so that students can understand what happened. The places section allows students to view the three sites where the riot took place. The hindsight link is probably the most interesting of the four sections because it contains commentary that looks back on the events and tries to make sense of what occurred.
The activities section of the site offers several useful ideas for how to use the site in classroom. In particular, students are asked to review the material and write a two-minute news story on what happened. Much debate can be generated when the class compares differing accounts of the events that used the same evidence as sources.
This is a very useful Web site that contains some outstanding tips for classroom use. It is designed for advanced students who are familiar with the history of the 1960s and is a great vehicle for beginning a section on the 1970s and backlash politics.
The Hard Hat Riots: An Online History Project
The Nixon-Presley Meeting: 21 December 1970
This Web site produced by the National Security Archive is a suitable way for students to escape the dismal troika of riots, war, and inflation which marred 1970 for a comedic yet informative look into the Nixon Administration. Surprisingly the National Security Archive's most requested document is the photograph of Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon. This Web site chronicles how this "historic" meeting occurred and how dreadfully serious the administration took Presley's entreaty.
The meeting took place within the context of what the Nixon Administration believed to be a "drug epidemic" in the United States. Nixon was reviled by most youth and student organizations and the administration was eager to be seen as "doing something" to fight the scourge of youth drug addiction. The Web site contains approximately twenty photos of the Nixon-Presley meeting and fewer than ten documents detailing the episode. However, the documents are an entertaining introduction to presidential history and reading primary sources.
Presley initiated the meeting by writing a rambling and scrawled six-page letter to Nixon on American Airline stationary. Students can read the letter on the Web site which should provoke debate on why someone of in an obviously dubious mental state was allowed to meet the President. Moreover, Presley sent his letter and then showed up at the White House uninvited and was still granted a meeting with Nixon. Students will get much amusement from a memo detailing what Presley and Nixon discussed including Elvis's contention that "he [had been] studying Communist brainwashing and the drug culture for over ten years."
This site is valuable for more than classroom laughs. First, students confront primary sources and do so in a less intimidating manner. Second, the bizarre meeting does reveal the Nixon administration's almost desperate desire to connect with the student movement, and shows how poorly officials understood youth culture. The site should stimulate some discussion on Nixon's staff and their ability to make sound decisions.
The Nixon-Presley Meeting: 21 December 1970
Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement
There are few quality Web sites devoted to contemporary women's history. Duke University's online collection of documents from the women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s is a rare exception. The Web site is a highly specialized site that appeals to advanced students interested in radical intellectual history.
The site features eight general subject categories including General and Theoretical, Medical and Reproductive Rights, Music, Activism, Sexuality, Socialist Feminism, Women of Color, and Women's Work and Roles. For example, the General and Theoretical category includes nearly twenty journals and books written by feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm. This literature provides an opportunity for students to use primary sources and study feminist intellectual history.
The Music and Medical categories are sparser and include copies of speeches and lyrics of feminist music. Under the subject of Activism, the collection features the actual manuscript "minute book" of DAR II an Atlanta based feminist organization. Thus, the online archive though small, is varied enough to offer students enough resources to paint a complex picture of contemporary feminist thought and activism.
The site features a highly effective keyword search that will sift through the categories for pertinent documents. In addition, there are a list of related links, which are helpful to students researching women's history and the 1960s.
Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement
Vietnam Stories Since the War
This Web site is not just another online locale devoted to the Vietnam War. In fact, this site is a digitized collection of oral histories from veterans, activists, and refugees with a particular emphasis on the aftermath of the war. Indeed, the site is dedicated to understanding the war's enduring impact on American society. Though the site's introduction oozes with well-intentioned sincerity claiming that the Internet's "democratic" potential combined with timing has rendered the American people, "ready to listen to each other on Vietnam." Despite this shortcoming, the Web site is a great classroom tool through which student's can understand how and why Vietnam drove a wedge into American society.
The site features personal stories about the Vietnam War. The main page of site, the "Stories" page contains excerpts of selected stories and is changed regularly. Searchable archives contain the full text of all submitted narratives and experimenting with different types of searches will yield interesting combinations of stories. Of particular interest is the special page for stories about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The "Dialog" page offers students an opportunity to read running commentary and debate about issues surrounding the war and contribute their own thoughts. What makes this site particularly valuable for the classroom is that it includes clear and concise instructions for students to produce and contribute their own oral history to the site. Students can be instructed to contact a veteran, activist, or refugee for an interview that they can contribute to the Web site. The site gives clear instructions for students such as producing permission forms, conducting an interview, and transcribing it. Through this process students can learn much about the Vietnam War, its domestic impact, and the historian's craft. The site offers an impressive list of related links that are a wealth of information for students and teachers.
Vietnam Stories Since the War
Watergate: The Scandal That Brought Down Richard Nixon
No political scandal in American history is more difficult to understand than Watergate. "Watergate" is the term journalists used to describe a complex web of scandals that undermined the Nixon presidency but most Americans and a surprising number of professional historians are hard-pressed to give a precise meaning to the term. That is why this site is so valuable because it explains Watergate in understandable terms and offers access to the infamous Nixon tapes along with scores of other items.
The site built by an Australian secondary school teacher features a readily understandable overview of Watergate, a summary of events, the chronology, and categories that detail Nixon's impeachment. Students can listen to some of the Watergate Tapes on this site or follow links and hear a larger collection of tapes. In addition, the site offers a wide collection of primary documents such as the articles of impeachment, the Supreme Court's 1974 decision against Nixon, and a wide array of taped Oval Office telephone and face-to-face conversations between Nixon and high-level officials.
The site does not cease covering the political scene after Nixon's resignation. It details Gerald Ford's pardon of the former President and the aftermath of the scandal. The site is a refreshingly neutral explanation of Nixon and Watergate. The President was a polarizing figure and many historians have penned downright mean and nasty accounts of his presidency. This site recounts the course of events and defines the scandal in a remarkably lucid fashion. It is ideal for secondary students because it is sophisticated enough to be very worthwhile but not so dense as to impenetrable.
The site's related links are outstanding. Using these links students can hear more audio, access the variety of books Nixon has inspired, read analysis of Watergate, and even relate the impeachment of Nixon to that of Clinton. This Web site is one of those rare sites compiled by an individual that is more valuable than "professionally" produced Web sites. It is ideal for an Advanced Placement U.S. history class.
Watergate: The Scandal That Brought Down Richard Nixon
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