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22. THE LATER 1960s

CLOSING THE TURBULENT '60s

CONTENTS

The American moon landing – July 1969

Teddy Kennedy's troubles at
        Chappaquiddick – July 1969

The senseless Manson murders – July-
        August 1969

The Woodstock Festival – August 15-17,
        1969

The tough, even terrible, downside of
        "hippie freedom"

The Boomers still rage against the war –
        and American culture in general

The news from Vietnam grows ever
        grimmer:  the "My Lai Massacre"

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work America – The Covenant Nation © 2021, Volume Two, pages 208-212.

A MAJOR BOOST FOR AMERICAN SPIRITS  WAS THE LANDING OF AMERICAN ASTRONAUTS ON THE MOON
The Apollo 11 Moon Landing (July 20, 1969).

But Americans found themselves thrilled to hear (and see) the news that the lunar module Eagle of the American spaceship, Apollo 11, had successfully landed on the moon, and two American astronauts had the privilege of walking on the moon, collecting moon samples, and nearly a day later then taking off from the moon for their return trip back to earth.

The event marked the ultimate victory of America in the space race that had been set off back in 1957 with the Russian launch of Sputnik I.  Nixon was pleased to be the President able to announce the success of this highly risky venture, but it was the result of the work of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson before him ... which Nixon well acknowledged.

In a way this event marked the end of the space race.  Other American missions would be sent to the moon.  But for all practical purposes the race was over. America had won, and the Soviets made no attempt at demonstrating the value of a second-place finish behind America.  They would make no effort of their own to duplicate the event.

US Saturn booster rocket

Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy

Crew of the Apollo 11 (left to right:  Neil Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, pilot of command module Columbia; Edwin "Buz" Aldrin, Jr., pilot of the lunar module Eagle)

The Lunar module Eagle

"Close-up view of an astronaut's leg and foot and footprint in the lunar soil, photographed with a 70mm lunar surface camera during the Apollo 11 lunar surface extravehicular activity.  Astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command Service Modules in lunar orbit while Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., lunar module pilot, explored the Moon."

Picture of Aldrin taken by Armstrong

Aldrin and US flag on the moon

TEDDY KENNEDY'S TROUBLES AT CHAPPAQUIDDICK
(JULY 1969)

Just the day previous to the moon landing another Kennedy tragedy occurred, this time with the last surviving brother Teddy.  A former Bobby Kennedy campaign worker drowned (or suffocated) on July 19 (1969) when Ted's car went off a small bridge leading from Cape Cod to Chappaquiddick Island.  Teddy got out.  She did not.

Meanwhile another event occurring at almost the same time would come to have a major impact on the shaping of American politics.

Chappaquiddick was a small island off the Massachusetts coast where two days before the moon landing, on the night of July 18 (1969), the car of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy1 drove off a small wooden bridge leading to the island, turning over in the water and trapping Patty Jo Kopechne, a very pretty young "Boiler Room Girl" (a member of one of deceased brother Bobby's campaign groups) who was with him in the car.  Patty Jo drowned (or possibly simply suffocated after having been trapped in the car for some time).

Kennedy's explanations of the whats and whys didn't make much sense (why he got out and she didn't; why she was in the car in the first place; why they were headed in the direction they were going; why he didn't go immediately for help; why he didn't report the incident to the police until the next morning, when they had already discovered her body).

Kennedy soon pled guilty and was issued a two-month prison sentence for "having left the scene of the accident," a sentence which the judge suspended anyway. Then an inquest into the accident was initiated the following January (1970) and in May a Massachusetts grand jury found that Kennedy had not committed any punishable offense (not even for leaving the scene of an accident!).

Politically speaking, Kennedy laid low... well, sort of that is, because he was one of the forces trying to have the country led from the "democratic" Congress rather than the "imperialist" White House.  Indeed, if he, as a typically ambitious Kennedy, still had any plans to direct the country after the shame of Chappaquiddick, he really had no other option anyway.

At the same time, what was also truly amazing was how quickly the Democratic Party gave him a moral "pass" on this event.  The Kennedy name had real power, like the European royal dynasties of Habsburgs, Valois, Bourbons, Tudors, Stuarts, Romanovs, etc.  Even in democratic America names like Adams and Roosevelt (and eventually Bush) had a special power.  And in Massachusetts, the name Kennedy would continue to have unchallenged power, all the way up until Senator Ted Kennedy's death forty years later in 2009 (still in office as Senator at the time).

1The always-problematic younger brother of John and Bobby Kennedy.

Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne
Kopechne:  Caldwell College yearbook

Kennedy's car towed from Chappaquiddick Sound

Kennedy being led away by police for failure to report the accident

Kennedy with his sister-in-law Ethel and wife (ahead of him) at the Kopechne funeral

AND THE BRUTALITY OF THE NEW YOUTH CULTURE MANIFESTS ITSELF IN THE SENSELESS MANSON MURDERS – JULY-AUGUST 1969
The Manson Murders, and arrest of the "Manson Family"

Sleazy Charles Manson, who convinced a number of young impressionable minds that he was some kind of very special spiritual guru, demonstrated how low hippie communal life could go.

He was born into a troubled domestic environment and grew up involved in a life of petty crime (which had him in and out of prison).  Later, as the hippie movement advanced through the 1960s, he took on the airs of being a songwriter, and passed himself off in Berkeley, California, which was becoming America's hippie center, as something of a hippie "guru."  As a guru, he organized around himself a small commune of vulnerable girls, and moved them into the home (originally uninvited but ultimately accepting) of Beach Boy singer Dennis Wilson.  This brought Mason and his "Family" into contact with the professional world of music. But finally Wilson forced Manson and the Family out of his home, and the Family eventually relocated themselves at a run-down California ranch.  Manson's obsession with the Beatles and their music ultimately moved Manson to an apocalyptic spirit, as he began preparing the Family for a great race war ("Helter Skelter"), in which the Family would emerge as the supreme directors of a new era.

By 1969 Manson was convinced that it was time to move on this grand event, and set off down a trail of gruesome, semi-ritualistic murder, performed by the members of the Family (principally Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel) at Manson's request.  After midnight on August 9, 1969 the Family broke into the home of movie producer Roman Polanski (who himself was away in London) and murdered the inhabitants of the home (most notably Polanski's wife, pregnant actress Sharon Tate) by shootings and multiple stabbings, leaving cryptic messages written on the walls and mirrors of the home.  The next evening the same group, now accompanied by Manson himself, and Leslie Van Houten and Steve Grogan, continued the murder rampage by attacking and killing a supermarket executive, Leno LaBianca and his wife in their home, again in a gruesome, ritualistic fashion.

Soon thereafter (mid-October) Manson and members of his Family were arrested, but at the time only for multiple car thefts (stealing VW minibusses and converting them into dune buggies).  Soon connections between Manson and his Family and the murders began to appear, and Manson and members of his Family were charged with murder.

The trial (which began in June of 1970) was a national sensation, the murders having been so brutal and pointless, and Manson and his Family representing so clearly the dead end of the hippie life of drugs and fantasy.

Charles Manson arrested - 1969

Charles Manson of Death Valley - December 1969

He demonstrated how easy it is to control the thoughts and actions of others simply through his own bizarre, but forceful personality.  But Boomers were particularly susceptible, being ungrounded in any fundamental ethical principles except “be free” ... and being ready to believe any new or fascinating idea, no matter how bizarre or even grotesque.


Members of the Manson Family, murderer Robert Beausoleil – and Mary Bruner and Susan Atkins who accompanied him – in the capture, torture and murder of musician Gary Hinman – July 25, 1969

Actress Sharon Tate, 8½ - month pregnant wife of movie producer Roman Polanski, brutally murdered (along with four others at the Polanski house) by the "Manson Family" the night of August 9, 1969

 The Polanski house murderers:  Tex Watson, Susan Atkins,

and Patricia Krenwinkel; Linda Kassabian (right) was the driver

Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murdered (a totally random brutal killing) by the Manson Family the next evening (August 10)

Lesli Van Houten and Steve Grogan, plus Manson, ("to make sure it's done right") joined the Polanski murder team the next night to murder the LaBiancas in the same grizzly way

Another member of the Manson family, Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, was not part of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders ... but later,  on September 15, 1975,
was caught with a gun aimed at U.S. President Ford


THE WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL – AUGUST 15-17, 1969

Much of the nation's youth remain as distant as ever from this world of the adult "Establishment" – given such dramatic expression at the Woodstock Festival near Bethel, New York, in mid-August

In mid-August of 1969 nearly a half-million Boomer youth congregated at a 600-acre farm in Upstate New York (Woodstock) to enjoy a three-day-long rock concert featuring a huge number of the major music stars of the day.  But the event was more than just a music festival, it was the very clear expression of the emerging Boomer culture in all its ways, especially its idealization of both social harmony and social action, supposedly all about "love and peace" – love, which often took on a distinctly sexual character, and peace, which frequently involved drug use in order to accentuate the spiritual "coming together" of the very self-focused Boomers.

Above all, it helped to give precise definition as to what it meant to be a Boomer, in dramatic distinction to the Middle-Class ways of the Boomers' parents, which in so many ways the Boomers departed from as far as possible – as a testimony as to how far they had come in securing a new freedom for themselves as a rising generation.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair – August 15-17, 1969

Woodstock – August 1969

Some of the 400,000+ youth who gathered for the 3-day festival

Janis Joplin – Woodstock - August 1969


Jimi Hendrix playing at the Woodstock Festival, August 18, 1969

Scenes from Woodstock – August 1969

In the buff at Leon's Lake - Woodstock – August 1969

Skinny dipping at Leon's Lake – Woodstock – August 1969

Skinny dipping at Leon's Lake – Woodstock – August 1969

Scenes from Woodstock

THE ROUGH, EVEN TERRIBLE, DOWNSIDE OF "HIPPIE FREEDOM"

Hippie life on the streets of San Francisco – late 1960s

All is not easy for hippies - scene from New York City's East Village

All is not easy for hippies - scene from New York City's East Village

BUT THE BOOMERS HAVE NOT LOST ANY OF THEIR RAGE AGAINST THE WAR – AND AMERICAN CULTURE IN GENERAL

In 1969 the radical group (part of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society – SDS) called for 'Days of Rage (October 8-11) in Chicago, in protest of the war and in part in protest against the trial of the "Gang of 8" currently underway in Chicago.
The "Days of Rage" (October 8-11, 1969)

In 1969 the radical Boomer group, the "Weathermen,"2 called for "Days of Rage" (October 8-11) in Chicago, in protest against the Vietnam war, and in part in protest against the trial then underway in Chicago of the Chicago Eight (reduced ultimately to the Chicago Seven).3

Only about 800 protesters showed up on the first day, as opposed to about 2,000 Chicago police confronting them.  There was much brave talk about confronting the Fascist police, even the readiness to lose some of the lives of the protesters in order to advance the cause of freedom.  Then the group began their march, smashing store and car windows, overturning cars and attacking bystanders (breaking the neck of a Chicago lawyer who had been watching the event) as they went, until they ran into a cordon of police officers and the two groups clashed. Sixty-eight Weathermen were arrested, a number injured, including twenty-eight policemen, and six of the protesters were shot.

The next day the protest continued, and then the next day and the next. The number of participants dwindled to less than half the original numbers in those next days.  Of the total number of participants, 280 weathermen ended up being arrested for participation in the Days of Rage.

What this all had achieved was unclear. But it spoke volumes about the way Boomer youth were so easily mobilized for action, violent action if necessary, in pursuit of some social ideal, any social ideal, as long as it was indeed "ideal" (meaning: more of the nature of a slogan demanding a strong show of support rather than any well thought-through social policy).

The development of Boomer political logic

And even though the street-based protest movements would decline in number in the 1970s (although there would still remain a number of the more "professional" of the Boomer protesters who would continue to show up for almost any kind of a demonstration, anywhere and for any cause), the crusading spirit of the Boomers would in general continue to impact Boomer ideas of how American politics ought to proceed.  This would even show up in the new social-political and even cultural attitudes that would find their way into Congress, where politics would become more and more a matter of bringing ideological opponents down to humiliating public defeat, rather than undertaking the art of political compromise as the foundation of real social progress.  This latter and well-proven but old-fashioned political style would somehow get lost in the new political atmosphere.

2The Weathermen were a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) created to spark revolution or even, as they claimed, a state of war against "U.S. imperialism" – their name Weathermen taken from a 1965 Bob Dylan song in which appears the phrase "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."  During the first half of the 1970s they would conduct a bombing campaign on various government buildings and banks in protest against the Vietnam war – and American "imperialist" culture in general.

3These were the "Yippie" leaders who inspired the Boomer riots at the 1968 Chicago National Convention – who were convicted of the crimes of disturbing the peace, but who however on appeal had the convictions overturned.

SDS/Weathermen marching in Chicago during the "Days of Rage" – October 11, 1969

SDS/Weathermen marching in Chicago during the "Days of Rage" – October 11, 1969

On the ground, a Chicago lawyer (left) with a broken neck and a subdued weatherman (right)

MEANWHILE THE NEWS FROM VIETNAM GROWS EVER-DARKER:  THE "MY LAI MASSACRE"

In November of 1969 the American press broke the story of the slaughter in 1968 by American soldiers of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai
The My Lai massacre

Another event to rock the country at about the same time was the revelation by the nation's press in November concerning what American soldiers had done to an entire Vietnamese village (My Lai) when in March of the previous year, as part of the American retaliatory response to the Tet offensive, American soldiers entered a village where the villagers were getting ready for market day, and, under the orders of their officers, while encountering no enemy action, proceeded nonetheless over the period of a full morning to execute the villagers, men, women and children (from 350 to 500 as the best estimate of those killed), based solely on the suspicion that they had been harboring Viet Cong units.

Previously the military had attempted a coverup of the tragedy, originally announcing the action as another victory against the Viet Cong.  But because of the complaints and letters of some of the American soldiers shocked at the behavior of their fellow soldiers, the story eventually became public, in fact by November (1969) becoming front page news in America (complete with horrifying pictures of the wholesale killing).

And thus it was that the chaotic 1960s came to a brutal close.

One of a number of photos taken by Army photographer Ronald Haeberle showing the atrocities at My Lai

The March 16, 1968 event was at first portrayed as a victory over enemy VC.   But published pictures by Army photographer Ronald Haeberle revealed that the "enemy" was mostly women and children. The estimated dead ran between 350 and 500 in number.   Americans were outraged.

  Miles H. Hodges