1960s: Counterculture and Civil Rights Movement

Tupperware Parties: Suburban Women’s Plastic Path to Empowerment

The parties swept the nation during the 1950s and 1960s—and were more than they seemed.

We Were There: The 1968 Democratic Convention

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin shares intimate—and harrowing—memories of the turmoil she and her husband witnessed that summer in Chicago.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: A Personal History of the 1960s

With youthful stints in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the presidential historian and her husband had unparalleled views into the pivotal people and events of that momentous decade.

The Unsolved Mysteries of 8 Missing Passenger Flights

A look back at eight times when commercial airliners suffered unexplained catastrophes—and sometimes seemed to vanish into thin air.

How MLK Responded When Segregationists Bombed His Home

On the 57th day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. was giving a speech when he got the news that his home in the Alabama city had been bombed. His wife, Coretta Scott King, and their 10‑week‑old daughter, Yolanda, who were in the home at the time of […]

When Martin Luther King Jr. Considered a Presidential Run

In 1967, several prominent antiwar activists urged MLK to run for president with Dr. Spock as his VP.

Here’s Why You Don’t Need to Pay a Tax to Vote

In 1962, Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, a Southern Democrat with a longstanding aversion to the poll tax, attached anti‑poll tax language to a proposal everyone could get behind—a bill designating Alexander Hamilton’s home, the Grange, a national monument. Holland changed the language of the Grange bill outright, turning it into a Constitutional amendment that […]

Barbie’s Little‑Known and Discontinued Friends

In 1959, the Mattel toy company debuted what would become its flagship doll: Barbara Millicent Roberts, more commonly known as Barbie. At a time when many of the dolls available in the United States resembled babies or children, Barbie broke the mold by resembling an older teenager or a young adult (more specifically, she looked […]

1960s ‑ Stories

Tupperware Parties: Suburban Women’s Plastic Path to Empowerment

We Were There: The 1968 Democratic Convention

Doris Kearns Goodwin: A Personal History of the 1960s

The Unsolved Mysteries of 8 Missing Passenger Flights

How MLK Responded When Segregationists Bombed His Home

When Martin Luther King Jr. Considered a Presidential Run

Here’s Why You Don’t Need to Pay a Tax to Vote

Barbie’s Little‑Known and Discontinued Friends

The Campus Walkout That Led to America’s First Black Studies Department

When James Baldwin and William Buckley Debated Race’s Role in the American Dream

How 1968 East LA Student Walkouts Ignited the Chicano Movement

Why Did the Beatles Break Up?