The Revolutionary '60s

   The 1960s, an epoch of revolutionary actions for common human rights (freedom) and peace. To begin with, America joined the Vietnam War, when Congress authorized the president to take all necessary actions to protect American soldiers from the communist Viet Cong. Soldiers were beginning to get recruited and sent to the battlefield without excuses (unless you suffered from a medical condition). This lead to massive riots in cities all around America that searched only for peace and freedom, imploring them to send their loved ones back home and put an end to the violence. In addition, the fight for civil rights spread like wildfire across the nation. African American have had it, they wanted to have common human rights and were finally fighting for this with their lives. Ironically, it all began with four black students who refused to move their seats in lunch because of their color. Then of course, bigger and bigger black communities were influenced by small rebellious actions such as this one, leading to whole crowds protesting and clogging segregated stores all over the upper South. Just like Mr.Dryden tells General Murray in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, "Big things have small beginnings, sir." Many other racial groups sought freedom and equality as well. An extremely famous incident which I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, was the Stonewall Inn rebellion, in which homosexuals formed riots and went out to the streets, yelling out from the depths of their lungs, "The word is out. We have had it with oppression!" In the end, the 1960s was the perfect era for Woodstock to happen because people finally spoke out and fought for freedom. "Man is free at the moment he wishes to be" (Voltaire).

   Can too much freedom be harmful to mankind?

"The 1960s." History .