1964...it was a very good, very
interesting, very exciting....it was one heck of a
year.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 |
To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer
jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide
injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to
authorize the attorney General to institute suits to protect
constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to
extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in
federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal
Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the
Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Civil Rights
Act of 1964".
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Vast forces dormant in
nuggets of imprisoned sunlight? Machines that fly, think, transport,
fashion and do man's work? Spices, perfumes, ivory, apes and peacocks?
Dead Sea Scrolls? Images divine and graven? Painted lilies and refined
gold? ...We have them all..."
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New York World's Fair
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Lyndon B. Johnson Elected 36th President in Landslide
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President Johnson was nominated for re-election by
acclamation at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City. Senator
Goldwater ran for the republican nomination, He was opposed by Nelson
Rockefeller, but was nominated on the first ballot.
Goldwater promised "a choice and not an echo." Goldwater
suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam if necessary.
He called for deep cuts in the social programs. He also called opposed
much of the civil rights legislation. He suggested that social security
become voluntary, and that Tennessee Valley Authority be sold. Johnson
campaigned on a platform of continued social programs, and a limited
involvement in Vietnam.
The election of 1964 was the first election since 1932 that was fought
over true issues, and which brought ideology into Americans politics.
President Johnson won by a landslide.
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More than 30 years ago, on January 11, 1964, Luther L.
Terry, M.D., Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, released
the report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and
Health. That landmark document, now referred to as the first Surgeon
General's Report on Smoking and Health, was America's first widely
publicized official recognition that cigarette smoking is a cause of
cancer and other serious diseases.
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1964 Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health
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Lyndon B. Johnson: The Prudent Progressive
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the
flood in 1964, led on to fame for Lyndon Baines Johnson.
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From that November afternoon when he made it clear
that the torch of continuity was safe in his hands to that November
night nearly a year later when he won the biggest election triumph in
history, it was his year--his to act in, his to mold, his to dominate.
And dominate it he did. By worlds and gestures, by pleas and orders. By
speeches noble and plainly blunt. By exasperated outbursts and
munificent tributes. By intuitive insights and the blueprints of
planners.
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Physics |
Charles Hard
Townes |
Literature |
John-Paul Sartre |
Peace Prize |
Martin Luther
King, Jr. |
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1964 Nobel Prize Winners
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Tonkin Gulf Incident
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"Last night I announced to the American people that the
North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against
U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters, and I had
therefore directed air action against gunboats and supporting facilities
used in these hostile operations. This air action has now been carried
out with substantial damage to the boats and facilities. Two U.S.
aircraft were lost in the action."-Lyndon Johnson
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sentenced to life imprisonment in South
Africa (June 11).
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Khrushchev
is deposed; Kosygin
becomes premier and Brezhnev
becomes first secretary of the Communist Party (October).
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President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy issues Warren
Report concluding that Lee
Harvey Oswald acted alone.
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Select Economic Data from 1964
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US GDP (1998 dollars): $663
billion
Federal spending: $118.53 billion
Federal debt: $316.1 billion
Consumer Price Index: 31
Unemployment: 5.7%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.05
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World Series: St. Louis beats New York Yankees, 4-3
Olympics held in Tokyo
Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston to win heavyweight boxing title.
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Sports
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Books of 1964
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Come Back, Dr. Caligari,
Donald
Barthelme
77 Dream Songs,
John Berryman
The Wapshot Scandal,
John Cheever
Helmets, Two Poems of the Air,
James Dickey
Second Skin,
John Hawkes
A Moveable Feast,
Ernest
Hemingway
Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter,
Katherine Anne
Porter
Last Exit to Brooklyn,
Hubert Selby
Herzog,
Saul Bellow
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Movies, TV & Theater
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Movies: Lord of the Flies, A Hard Day's Night, My Fair Lady, Goldfinger,
Zorba the Greek, Mary Poppins,
Oscars:
Best Picture - My Fair Lady
Best Actor - Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady)
Best Actress - Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins)
TV: The Munsters, The Virginian, Daniel Boone, Outer
Limits, Gilligan's Island, Man from UNCLE, Flipper, Dr. Kildare, Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea.
Peyton Place premieres on ABC and is the first prime-time soap
opera. Color television makes its way into U.S. homes.
The Beatles
appear on The Ed
Sullivan Show. (According to some
reports, not a single juvenile crime is reported in NYC the night of the
Beatles' first appearance.)
Theater: Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Dolly
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I want to Hold Your Hand, Hello Dolly, She Loves You, Can't Buy Me
Love, Do Wah Diddy
Diddy, Oh Pretty Woman, Baby Love, My Guy
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Songs
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The year it all came
apart
'The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964: The
Beginning of the Sixties'
by Jon Margolis
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(CNN) -- "It was the year of the Beatles," Paul Simon once
wrote, "the year of the Stones, the year after JFK."
It was a year that, to outward appearances, seemed like the decade or
so that preceded it. But beneath that placid surface, the United States
was changing in ways most Americans couldn't recognize or begin to
understand. It was 1964, and the '60s were about to begin.
"The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964: The Beginning of
the 'Sixties'" opens, appropriately enough, in the hours after John
F. Kennedy was slain in November 1963.
It ends 12 months later, with the election of Lyndon Johnson to a full
term as President of the United States. The 1960s, Margolis asserts,
didn't begin with the calendar on January 1, 1960. They began that day in
Dallas, when the shimmering image of the Kennedy Camelot was shattered by
gunfire.
"One of the enduring images of those four days of mourning,"
he writes, "had been a sign posted outside a New York City newsstand
that said, 'Closed because of a death in the American family.' On both
counts, the newsie had had it right. There had been a death -- a murder --
but for all its horror, that murder had demonstrated the reality, and the
resilience, of the American family."
The signs of the unraveling of "innocence" were visible, if not widely recognized.
Margolis chooses the effort to entice Senator Barry Goldwater into the
Republican Presidential campaign as an example. The move had an air of
insurrection. Those behind it, notably conservative activist F. Clinton
White, saw themselves as revolutionaries, storming the battlements of the
establishment. As it became more likely to succeed, the Goldwater movement
marched ever farther from the confines of the consensus. It even left its
progenitors behind. "Revolutions, it's said, eat their young,"
Margolis trenchantly observes, "but Barry Goldwater's may have been
the first to eat its father."
The cracks in the consensus spread and multiplied. As Congress debated
the Civil Rights Act, the bodies of three murdered civil rights leaders
were being unearthed in Mississippi. The 1964 fall television season was a
lightweight froth of new comedies like "Gilligan's Island" and
"Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." spiced up by a drama called "Peyton
Place."
When the year began, crooner Andy Williams was a mainstay on every
radio station. By mid-year, he'd been supplanted by four lads from
Liverpool who pumped out cheeky love songs with an infectious beat. Their
popularity was documented in, and inflated by, a low-budget movie. "A
Hard Day's Night" promptly shoved the latest Technicolor Elvis
Presley pabulum off the box office lists.
And without much fanfare, Congress approved a measure known as the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution, granting the President authority to conduct an
undeclared war in a place called Vietnam.
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- 24th Amendment to Constitution adopted, ensuring fair voting
practices.
- Race riots break out in Harlem and other U.S. cities.
- President Johnson declares "war on poverty," introduces a
variety of federal welfare programs, including Medicare (initially
proposed by JFK in 1960).
- Three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi during
"Freedom Summer."
- Turkey attacked Cyprus
- Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa convicted of fraud, conspiracy and jury
tampering.
- Space probe Mariner IV flies by Mars transmitting pictures of the
planet's surface back to earth.
- The Verrazano Narrows Bridge in NYC opens (world's longest
suspension bridge).
- First lung transplant.
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Headlines
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