America to a large extent has forgotten the 1960s there were strange things on the air and they found their way into the music the new music and the new poster came out of a very oppressive social economy it has been such a defining decade in terms of the consciousness of people in living today it was also a moment that often Mitch remembered he really felt that there was a country trying to understand itself trying to create an identity when you think of the 1960s the Voting Rights Act 1965 the women's movement started with a feminine mystique 1962 the gay rights movement soul and I was 1969 there's a 1960 in front of so much of the problems that we're dealing with today we started to deal with them that this is an MDC special news report you know what happened in October 1963 a month before Kennedy was killed no one remembers this the nightly television news went from 15 minutes to 30 minutes all of a sudden they could show the war they could show the civil rights demonstration well television news came of age in the 60 and television was going to understand with responsabilities 3-way it covered news I think America's view of itself check every night America saw our plane dropping stacks of bombs you couldn't really sit there and not say we're doing that we have to also remember the Cold War itself put more pressure on the United States to essentially close the gap between the contradictions of how it sold itself to the world and how it treated its own minority population the activists really did imagine that through their power they could make the world anew the events of the 16 exploded onto television and you really sell a country that was under immense pressure so much of this relates to music it relates to protest or well certainly for the counterculture the younger audience leader could be animating drive for social consciousness I had the radio on day and night you never knew what you were going to hear on the radio next the first time avant-garde music on American television was January of 1960 John Cage performed water walk on television the time of the fixers assembly was a very rich mingling between not just music and painting but social and and dancin strollin that's where the arts began to really work together I encountered all sorts of music but when I first heard black angels by George crumb the world of music made sense to me and in fact everything that was going on in our society and in my own life all of a sudden became focused all social movements have been accompanied by an artistic vanguard but what makes the 1960s perhaps particularly special is the explosion of a kind of desegregated arts and culture scene blacks visual art tradition and the evolution of jazz and the explosion of free jazz were people like D'Arnot Coleman who inverted every kind of formal training and traditions were all rooted in the same 1960s moment so what I think of the 1960s one of the things that I think of is 1964 with Freedom Summer thousands of students though to the Mississippi project to register black voters one of the first bus loads down there free of these young men would kill and then for the rest of that summer data to stop coming they were afraid so they had a ritual before they got on the bus they would link their hands and certainly shall overcome and they put in the verse we are not afraid and one of those that we're singing out or fear the pressure that those young people put on the system he is fundamentally helped to push that system in ways and it had not been pushed before there's no way of exaggerating the impact the effect and the inner corner of the user is a great movie of the 1960's now I think the attentions and wounds the 60s remain with us today they were so insolvable in some ways the 1960s created new divisions between communities everything from the nature of our government whether it's too big or too small individual rights and liberty what does the leading power in the world do and how does it act responsible how do you treat your all at citizens jerilyn we never really fundamentally address those issues in any way if you don't look at the history today so the ledge of the 1960s in my opinion you can't really understand it would be to be seen and we sure could be all the change [Music]