1960s: Retooling for New Realities

The 1960s are remembered as a time of turmoil and dramatic social change, war protest, civic rights demonstrations, hallucinatory drugs, youthful rebellion, and riots in the cities. The decade opened with the election of the first Catholic president in the United States, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. A war the French had lost in Vietnam soon made the nightly news, the distant conflict ripping America apart.

At a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, four young black men, college freshmen, were refused service. “We don’t serve Negroes,” the waitress told them. The following day, 23 young black people returned to stage a peaceful “sit-in” to protest segregation. Not long after, black and white civil rights protestors faced angry mobs in the first of a series of Freedom Rides on public transportation.

John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X were assassinated. Watts, Newark, and Detroit burst into flames. Chicago police clubbed protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

“It seems clear that the Junior Leagues do not have to change their basic ideas or ideals, but it may be that we shall have to change some our areas of emphasis to fit a changing world.” -Marjorie McCullough Lunken (Hiatt), Association President, 1961