Category: Events/Displays

Parham Campus Library put up a 1969 display this summer, and the Downtown Campus is finally putting up a display before the year is over. We are also using the beautiful graphic that KC from PRC Library created. It is amazing how some things have changed based on actions taken in 1969 and how other things have not changed at all. Below are some examples.

Most of the examples below and in the display were taken from Wikipedia and these sites:
https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-history-timeline-1965-1969-45444
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_African-American_history
https://timelines.ws/20thcent/1969.HTML

January 2, The play “To be Young, Gifted & Black,” by Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) premiered in NYC.

February 24, The US Supreme Court in the Tinker vs. Des Moines School District case ruled that students had the right to express opinions at odds with the government.

March 25, John and Yoko Ono staged a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.

May 25, “Midnight Cowboy” was released with an X rating and became the only X-rated film to win an Oscar.

June 3, The last episode of Star Trek aired on NBC (Turnabout Intruder).

June 22, In Cleveland the Cuyahoga River became heavily affected by industrial pollution, so much so that it “caught fire” at least 13 times, most famously on June 22, 1969, when it helped spur the American environmental movement with the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.

June 28, In the early hours 8 police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police raided the bar because it had refused to pay an increase in bribery. This led to a clash in what came to be called The Stonewall Rebellion, an incident considered the birth of the gay rights movement. Some 400 to 1,000 patrons rioted against police for 3 days.

July 11, David Bowie (b.1947), British musician, released his single “Space Oddity,” supposedly in conjunction with the July 20 Apollo 11 moon landing.

July 18, A car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009), D-Mass., plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died. Kennedy did not report the accident until it was discovered 9 hours later.

July 20, Astronaut Neil Armstrong took his legendary “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin made the first successful landing of a manned vehicle on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility when they touched down in Apollo 11.

July 25, A week after the Chappaquiddick accident that claimed the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

August 15, Guitarist Jimi Hendrix headlines the Woodstock Music Festival in upstate New York.

August 17, Hurricane Camille hit the Gulf Coast at Pass Christian, MS., leaving 256 people killed in Louisiana and Mississippi. A widespread area of western and central Virginia received over 8 inches of rain from Camille’s remains, leading to significant flooding across the state. A total of 153 people lost their lives from blunt trauma sustained during mountain slides, related to the flash flooding, not drowning. More than 123 of these deaths, including 21 members of one family, the Huffmans, were in Nelson County where the number of deaths amounted to over one percent of the county’s population. Hurricane Camille caused more than $140 million of damage (1969 dollars) in Virginia. The book, Roar of the Heavens, available for checkout.

November 10, Sesame Street, a children’s show, premiered on the National Education Television network (NET), which later became PBS.

November 13, Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accused network television news departments of bias and distortion, and urged viewers to lodge complaints.

November 20, A group of 80 Native Americans, all college students, seized Alcatraz Island in the name of “Indians of All Tribes.” The occupation lasted 19 months. They offered $24 in beads and cloth to buy the island, demanded an American Indian Univ., museum and cultural center, and listed reasons why the island was a suitable Indian reservation.

December 4, Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home.

December 14, The Jackson 5 appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Michael Jackson was 11.

December 18, Britain’s Parliament abolished the death penalty for murder.

In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (d.2004) wrote “On Death and Dying.” The book helped to launch the hospice movement in the US.

In 1969, Marvel Comics introduced Falcon, the first African-American superhero, in an issue of its Captain America comics.