Monterey Pop Festival

ETA: I originally posted a YouTube link to the Monterey Pop Festival documentary by D. A. Pennebaker that has since been taken down. Here are some alternatives for a similar viewing experience. Enjoy!

This clip is the introduction from the documentary. You can find other clips from the film on YouTube.

This website provides more details about the Monterey International Pop Festival, and includes excerpts from the documentary with a commentary track.

During the same summer of 1967 when riots broke out in Newark, Cleveland, and Detroit over racial tensions, urban renewal and police violence, the Monterey Pop Festival brought together some of the most recognized musicians of the day as well as yet-unknown artists for a three-day music festival in Monterey, California.

The Monterey Pop Festival took place three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam. "Monterey" was two years before Woodstock and one year before the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. It was two years after the assassination of Malcolm X. As much as the 1960s are remembered as a decade of "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll," they are also a decade of tremendous conflict and transformation for Americans.

What insight does the D. A. Pennebaker documentary of the Monterey Pop Festival give you into this period? What does the documentary show you about the complexities and conflict of this time that you don't get from only reading documents?

Southern Poverty Law Center

Civil Rights Memorial, Library of Congress photo.

We've discusses the changes within the Civil Rights movement following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and we saw many different groups organize with different ideas about how to advance the fight for equality.

The Civil Rights Memorial is located in Montgomery, Alabama, across the street from the Southern Poverty Law Center offices, an organization founded in 1971 and committed to "seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society." Look through their website to see the kinds of cases they handle and how they approach their work.

What does the phrase "civil rights" mean today? How is that similar to or different from what it meant in 1954?

Levittown, Long Island

Architect's rendering of a 1947 Cape Cod house built in Levittown, NY. Photo from the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

We tend to concentrate on the Civil Rights movement taking place in the South and emphasize events in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, but northern states also practiced de facto and de jure segregation. Read this article from The New York Times on the 50th anniversary of the construction of Levittown, Long Island.

Think about the changes in urban areas after World War II and the ongoing struggle for civil rights nationally, considering the examples discussed in class. How does the history of Levittown change your perception or understanding of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s?

Highways

Photo credit: Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

As we discussed in class, highways created a link between declining urban areas and growing suburban areas. Read the "document info" for the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 (you may choose to read the transcript of the act if you like). What other changes or shifts in American life did a national highway system spark?

"You are the Un-Americans"

Biography of Paul Robeson, published by The New Press

Senator Joseph McCarthy's efforts to expose communists within the US reflected the broader national concern over Soviet infiltration of US government and social institutions. At the same time, African-Americans within the US were routinely denied their rights as citizens and faced a constant threat of violence. In his testimony before HUAC in 1956, Paul Robeson spoke against the unequal treatment of African-Americans in the US. Reflect again on the documents of the early Cold War, and consider in what ways did the anti-Communist ideology effect movements for equality within the US?