Civil Rights Act & Inner City Riots > #BlackLivesMatter
Civil Rights Act & Feminism > #MeToo
Student Marches Against Vietnam > #MarchForOurLives
Medicare > Obamacare
Immigration Act < #Dreamers
Books
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961
Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring, 1962
Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique, 1963
Malcolm X & Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965
Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968
William H. Whyte and Tony Hiss, The Last Landscape, 1968
Bernard Rudofsky, Streets for People, 1969
Charles Reich, Greening of America. 1970
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973
Events
Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1964
Freedom Riders, 1961
Strøget (Copenhagen pedestrianisation), 1962
Bicycling (first cycling magazine), 1962
Clean Air Act, 1963
Martin Luther King, “I have a dream…,” 1963
Pennsylvania Station demolished, 1963
First Historic Preservation Program (Columbia), 1964
Black Panther Party, 1965
Voting Rights Act, 1965
Immigration and Naturalization Act, 1965
Brooklyn Heights First Historic District in NYC, 1965
NYC Landmarks Preservation Committee, 1966
NOW (National Organization for Women), 1966
Summer of Love, 1967
Classical America, 1968
Jane Jacobs stops Robert Moses’ Manhattan Expressway, 1968
Paris Riots, 1968
Prague Spring, 1968
Chicago Democratic Convention Riots, 1968
Stonewall riots, 1969
Think Global Act Local (Friends of the Earth), 1969
Mayoral Candidate Norman Mailer Proposes Car Free Manhattan, 1969
Woodstock Music & Arts Fair, 1969
Earth Day, 1970
Chez Panisse (local, organic), 1971
Ms. magazine, 1972
Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, 1972
International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, 1972
First oil crisis, 1973
And now…
Earth Day & The Limits of Growth > Climate Change
Organic Farming & Chez Panisse > Foodies & Farm to Table
Hippies & Back to the Land > New Ruralism*
Stonewall & Gay Pride > Transgender & Cisgender
Penn Station demolished > Rebuild Penn Station
Cycling & Streets for People > Vision Zero & Congestion Pricing
Cycling & Streets for People > Bike Share & Walkability
Medicare, 1965 > Obamacare
Voting Rights Act of 1965 > “Voter Fraud” & Kris Kobach
Immigration Act of 1965 > Trump, The Wall, DACA
Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern > Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders*
George Wallace, Presidential Campaign > Donald Trump, President
Richard Nixon, Resigned before he was impeached > Donald Trump, We can only hope
Woodstock & Summer of Love > March For Our Lives?
Prague Spring > Arab Spring
* Bernie Sanders (and many others) moved to the Vermont woods in 1968.
Post Script: The second book on the list above used to be Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). A friend said to cut it, and I understand that. She is different than the others. But she has had at least as much effect on the way we live today as the others.
She is an important precedent for the founding of Chez Panisse in 1971. Alice Waters came home from a trip to France, tried to cook what she had eaten on her trip, and realized that the ingredients available to her were not good enough to duplicate French cooking. So she started working with local organic farmers to develop supply lines for the restaurant, and locavore and farm-to-table were born in the United States.
2018 Midterm Elections quote from Andrew Young’s daughter: “I very much feel that I’m facing similar issues that we thought would be resolved by the Voting Rights Act,” [Andrea Young] said. “John Lewis and I were talking to some students the other day, and I observed that we both marched in Selma. We never dreamed that 50 years later we would still be fighting the same battles, and so we just have to persevere.”
Ronald Brownstein, “The Ghosts of the 1960s Haunt the Georgia Governor’s Race,” The Atlantic, November 5, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/stacey-abrams-voting-rights-and-future-georgia/574864/