The Historical Dictionary of the 1960s

Edited by James S. Olson

Few eras in U.S. history have begun with more optimistic promise and ended in more pessimistic despair than the 1960s. When J.F.K. became president in 1960, the U.S. was the hope of the world. Ten years later American power abroad seemed wasted in the jungles of Indochina, and critics at home wondered whether the U.S. was really the "land of the free and the home of the brave." This book takes an encyclopedic look at the decade--at the individuals who shaped the era, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the youth rebellion. It covers the political, military, social, cultural, religious, economic, and diplomatic topics that made the 1960s a unique decade in U.S. history.

Excerpt

OCHS, PHIL. Phil Ochs was born in El Paso, Texas, December 19, 1940. He was raised in Queens, New York, and attended military school in Virginia. He went to Ohio State University to study journalism, but in Columbus, Ochs became interested in folk music. He moved to New York in 1961. There, in Greenwich Village, he became involved in the folk protest movement with Bob Dylan. A critic of the Vietnam War, Ochs had hits in 1965 with "I Ain't a'Marchin' " and "Draft Dodger Rag." Because of his antiwar posture, Ochs was banned from radio and television in the United States. After the release of his Pleasures of the Harbor album in 1967, Ochs moved to California, where he became interested in rock and roll. His 1968 album Tape from California contained antiwar folk tunes like "War Is Over." By that time Ochs had become a genuine folk hero to the antiwar counterculture, even though he was suffering badly from depression. He committed suicide in 1976.
REFERENCE: Michael Schumacher, There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs, 1996.