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Counterculture Timeline: The High Sixties: Spaceship Earth 1968 - 1969
    EVENTS   ARTS
1968
Sept 8
  Huey Newton (leader Black Panther Party) convicted of voluntary manslaughter of Oakland policeman - 34 months in jail during trial for manslaughter in Oakland (released 1970)

  1968
MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING


I remember a lot of people transferring to UC Santa Cruz in fall 1968 - but it apparently opened in 1965. xx
Sept

[JR xx
Gordon]
  "Eldridge Cleaver banned from lecturing on U.C. Berk campus"

US Stock Market starts 18 month +? downhill slide

American Indian Movement (AIM) born as a volunteer street patrol to combat police brutality, Minneapolis by Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Clyde Bellecort & others (AIM) in Minneapolis, work towards improving living conditions for urban Indians

when in 1968? Akwesasne Notes started by members of Mohawk Nation

[Esalen, Big Sur, Garipota, UCSC, SF: John Mayall, Black Pearl, Mama Thornton, GGPk, Muir Woods, Monterey + xx]

 
fall   Women's movement groups start in Berkeley

 
Sept 18   Troops invade Mexico City National University (demonstrations since mid-summer)

 
Oct 2   After 9 weeks of student strikes, Mexican military opens fire on 6,000 gathered in housing project plaza (Tlatelolco Plaza) for march on National Polytech Institute to protest army occupation of campus; 28-200 killed, 200-500 wounded, 1500 jailed

 
Oct 3   Yippie Jerry Rubin arrives at HUAC's inquiry into Aug uprisings w a toy M-16 & a red, blue & yel cape resembling Viet Cong flag

 
Oct   Angela Davis, 26?, goes to jail

[saw Eldridge Cleaver, & David Harris again xx)

(early October - "a fortnight before Oct 18" - John announces Yoko is pregnant


 
Oct 18   Beatle John & Yoko arrested for possession

 
Oct   late- 4000 demonstrators at U.C. Berk after Regents deny credit for Cleaver's course

 
Oct 31 / Nov 1   LBJ orders halt to all bombing in Vietnam

 
Nov 5   Nixon defeats Humphrey (narrowest victory since 1912: .7% (43.4-42.7))
also Shirley Chisholm, first black female elected to Hse Rep (from NY)

(Stock Market starts drop)

 
Nov 6   San Francisco State: strike called by students
Pres. S.I. Hayakawa stations several hundred police on campus


 
Nov 11   Beatle John & Yoko release Two Virgins (photos?)

 
Nov   First Whole Earth Catalog

Cream's Farewell Concert at the Royal Albert Hall

("a few weeks after late Oct") Cleaver flees to Algeria

Priests from all over US meet in Wash to protest Pope's ban on contraception. Many start to renounce their vows

?Dr. Paul Ehrlich & Dr. Thomas Eisner found Zero Population Growth (ZPG) at Yale

Beatle John & Yoko plead guilty to possession
Nov 7-23 Yoko Ono's miscarriage (John sleeps on floor through the wait)

 
Nov   Hayakawa closes SF State for 8 days (reopens Dec 2)

[Beatles: White Album - my notes xx]

 
Nov?
Dec?
 

Emmet Grogan delivers payment to Fred Hampton in Chicago for (cooperation?) in the making of a movie called "American Revolution II"; Hampton later used this as a medium for forming the Rainbow Coalition

[December: Encinitas xx]

 
Dec (1)   National Commission on the Causes & Prevention of Violence releases "Walker report" which censures Chicago Police for behavior during "Police Riot" at Democratic National Convention

 
Dec 2   New York City high school students uprising: Brooklyn +

 
Dec 3   Elvis comeback special on television: Guitar Man (his voice had changed)
[and so had the times!]

 
Dec
13-16
  San Mateo College closed  
Dec
21-27
  Apollo 8 with three astronauts circles moon ten times
& takes photo of earth rising behind the moon
on Dec 24

 


1969   1968-1969 - Peak of China's "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976)

Airplane hijackings reach peak (65 seized in 69)

North Sea oil operations start (U.K.)

Cuyahoga River catches fire in Cleveland, Ohio due to pollution

SDS has 60,000-100,000 members in 1968-1969
SDS has all-time high of 304 chapters (Geo. Leonard p. 340)

150 community-based underground newspapers (Leonard p. 341)

Charles Evers of Fayette, Miss becomes first black mayor of
an integrated community in the south (doublecheck year)

spring: 150 Navajos meet to oppose Peabody Coal Co strip mining

when? 21 Black Panthers indicted for plotting to kill cops

Life magazine: Black Is Beautiful

SoHo became the new Bohemia

stock market sags

Los Angeles Free Press - 90,0000 + circulation

San Francisco State student Charles Hall designs first waterbed

Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad: Brooks Street Painting, on the back wall of Victor Henderson's Venice studio; and 15,000-square-foot Beverly Hills Siddhartha, on the exterior of The Climax, La Cienega Boulevard nightclub (painted out 1972 by new owner)

"Internet born at UCLA"

? Model Cities program (must be earlier, under LBJ)

  1969
MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING

*Beatles: Abbey Road
(early October)
*Lennon & Plastic Ono Band: Give Peace a Chance
*Lennon & Ono: Two Virgins
*Harrison: Wonderwall
*Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed
*Rod Stewart
*Dylan: Nashville Skyline
Great White Wonder (first Dylan bootleg)
*Baez: David's Album (late 69)
*Joni Mitchell: Clouds
*Santana
*Mother Earth (with Tracy Nelson)
*Dan Hicks
*Janis Joplin: Kozmic (with "Bobby McGee"?)
Jim Croce
*Neil Young (from Buffalo Springfield) first solo
Jethro Tull
*Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica
*Led Zeppelin
*King Crimson
*Chicago
? Jim Kweskin's Jug Band (with Maria Muldaur)

"Heavy Metal":
*MC5
*Black Pearl
*Grand Funk Railroad

*Miles Davis
(*Desmond Decker: The Israelites - pre-Reggae)
"Aquarius" & "Let The Sun Shine In" + (from Hair)

Elvis starts performing in Las Vegas

TV: David Frost 1969-1972
Startrek ends after 3 years

Fellini: Satyricon
Midnight Cowboy;
Alice's Restaurant;
Monterey Pop;
Easy Rider*;
Putney Swope*;
Medium Cool*;
Last Summer*;
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice;
Goodbye, Columbus;
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; Oh! What a Lovely War;
The Who pop opera film;
Wild Bunch [recheck - have this earlier xx];
Butch Cassidy
Life-Raft-Earth (Robert Frank)
& when was the event? xx


Vonnegot: Slaughterhouse-Five
French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
Everything You've Always Wanted to Know about Sex
But Were Afraid to Ask - David Reuben (more 70?)
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
The Strawberry Statement-James Simon Kunen
I'm OK - You're OK - Thomas Harris (Eric Berne's
transactional analysis)
The Peter Principle - Dr. Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull
Charles Bukowski: Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Theodore Roszak: The Making of a Counterculture
Dr. Elisabeth Kubler[.. on u]-Ross: On Death and Dying
Buckminster Fuller: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive - John Muir (?1970)
Custer Died for Your Sins - Vine Deloria, Jr.
Arcology: The City in the Image of Man - Paolo Soleri
(Van Daniken)

Stevie "first realistic book about black children"

long skirts

fall: maxi coats (floor length)

first? unixsex haircutting salon

1969 Life magazine special issue on the 60s reprints whole earth photo - get this xx
Jan

  Jan 2 - (12) - 30 - Beatles record ?Abbey Road? & are breaking up

"4 days before Jan 6": Newark police confiscate 29,850 album covers of New Virgins album,
which was to be released Jan 6
 
Jan 6   San Francisco State reopens after 3 weeks (sic)

 
Jan 7   Gov. Reagan asks Calif legislature to "drive criminal anarchists & latter-day Fascists off the campuses"

 
Jan 8   San Fernando State 1,000 demo & attempt to occupy administration building

San Jose: Teachers join State college strike

 
Jan 10   Apollo 8 photo of earth seen from space on the cover of Life magazine

 
Jan   Panthers John Huggins, 23 & Alprentice (?Bunchy) Carter, 26 shot to death in UCLA lunchroom

[Corinne's party - probably Venice wedding xx]
[Rochester House / Gordon]

 
Jan 19   Two women address the National Mobilization Committee about women's roles in the movement [Gitlin]

 
Jan 25   Prague: Jan Palach's funeral ("suicide")

 
Jan 28   Santa Barbara, California, oil well blowout (continues into midsummer)

 
Jan 30   Beatles last performance ever - on the roof of Apple

Howard University: Medical school freshmen boycott anatomy courses until February ouster of department chairman

 
Feb   Four aquanauts descend 50 feet to a sea lab on the bottom of Great Lameshur Bay in the Virgin Islands, to live there 60 days

Massive strike U.C. Berkeley for ethnic studies
 
Feb 5   Reagan declares state of extreme emergency  
Feb 11   St. George Williams College, Montreal: 200 students smash computer with axes & set computer center on fire during sit-in protesting professors' racism  
Feb 12   Howard University: law school protest  
Feb 13   University of Massachusetts: 33 arrested at admin bldg sit-in
 
Feb 18-19   Howard University: building seized & boycott started
 
Feb 22   Rice Univ: 1,000 students & 200 faculty rally protesting presidential appointment  
Feb 24-25  
Pennsylvania State University: administration building occupied
 
Feb 27   U.C. Berkeley: police charge student picket lines, club and arrest two Chicano leaders;
University of Wisconsin (Madison): thousands rampage thru nine buildings over black enrollments;
University of Chicago: march

 
Mar 2   Jim Morrison arrested - Miami (Dade County)

 
Mar   Chicago Eight indicted

[Mill Creek: acid xx]

 
Mar 12   Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman

 
Mar 13   George Harrison's house raided & Patti busted for 120 joints
[Lennon book says on the same days as McCartney marriage]


 
Mar ? 13   Secret bombings of Cambodia start: 3,650 B-52s drop four times the tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan in all of World War II

 
Mar 20   Beatle John & Yoko fly to Gibraltar & get married,
then fly to Amsterdam (Hilton) "lie-in" for peace 25-31

 
Mar 24   Lennox Raphael's play Che is busted for obscenity two days after opening at the Free Store Theatre in Manhattan

 
April   Dylan: Nashville Skyline

Beatles "Get Back" single released

Creation of People's Park started on land near the U.C. campus, vacant for a year or two since houses bulldozed

1969 when? ASUC election: in large turnout, UC students vote to keep the land as a park

 
Apr 3   US Federal Reserve Board raises prime rate from 5 1/2 to 6% (highest in 40 years)

 
Apr 4   Smothers Brothers television show canceled `controversial'
Also Bill Cosby television show canceled around this time
Rowan & Martin 's Laugh-in starts around this time on television

 
Apr
4-6
  Demonstations on the anniversary of MLK's death & anti-war: Chicago; Memphis (10,000 gather to pay tribute); New York (20,000+ up Fifth Ave, some with "33,000" armbands)
(Is this the Bryant Park demo?)

 
Apr
9-18
  Apr 9 Harvard: 300 led by SDS seize Univ Hall
Apr 10 Harvard: Police called in; 37 injured, 200 arrested
Apr 11 Harvard: start of 3 day student strike
Apr 18 Harvard votes to make ?ROTC "extracurricular"

 
Apr 20   (Sunday) UC Berkeley: People's Park planted with grass and shrubs  
Apr 22   Harvard faculty votes to create black studies program & give students vote in selection of its faculty

City College of New York closed after black & Puerto Rican students lock themselves inside asking higher minority enrollment

 
Apr 23   Los Angeles: Ash Grove burns down (opened 1958)

 
Apr 24   AB-52 launch biggest attack on N? Vietnam

Demos NY (Sixth Ave), Atlanta, Chicago, Calif - 40 cities
Demos and strike at Cornell

 
Apr 27 (ca)   People's Park: swings, benches, more plants added; UC Berkeley announces that construction of playing field and parking lot will begin July 1

 
Apr 30   543,000 US soldiers in Vietnam - "highest number of the war"

 
May   Fifteen people enter Chicago central draft depository and destroy all records of twelve local draft boards and some files of eight others

 
May 3   Tom Donahue leaves KSAN

 
May 7   Lou Gottlieb deeds Morning Star Ranch to God -
http://www.diggers.org/homefree/hfh_01.html

 
May 13   Nixon sends draft reform plan to Congress

 
May 14   US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigns under fire for personal conduct (first in history)

 
May 15   4:45 a. m.: police disburse people around campfires in People's Park and within hours a fence has been put up around it. After noon rally: 3,000 people storm the park; evening: Reagan: "If it's a blood bath, then let it be now." Governor Reagan o rders gassing of U.C. campus
30 people shot, 28 others wounded, including Alan Blanchard blinded for life,
Steve Carr, James Rector -> 17 days of street fighting - 150 demonstrators shot & wounded

 
May 19   Supreme Court overturns Leary conviction for crossing Mexico to Texas with mj - overturns 2 fed anti-mj laws

 
May 20   134 day class boycott of San Francisco State settled

People's Park: James Rector (25) dies of gunshot wounds from May 15

 
May 21   People's Park: 30,000 march in honor of James Rector; ended when police in helicopters drop teargas on the rally

 
May 22   Colombia Univeristy, New York: 100 (SDS) students flee 2 bldgs after warrants (asking no military recruitment on campus, end to ROTC, black studies program) + Queens (NYC) & Cornell

 
when?   "Canadian government allows American military deserters to settle in Canada"

 
May 26   [Incredible String Band at the Troubadour xx]

 
May 26 - June 2   Refused passage to the US due to John's conviction for possession of hashish, Beatle John & Yoko flew to Canada and hold a "bed-in for peace" at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal
and write and record "Give Peace a Chance"
 
May 30   (Memorial Day) 20,000 people in People's Park - with permit; Flowers on the fences

 
May   Apollo 8 photo of earthrise over the moon published as US postage stamp & circulated widely, as Buckminster Fuller is using the term "spaceship earth"

 
June  

June 6 - Life magazine: Apollo 10 photos of moon and of the earth in space

Berkeley Ecology Center (first in U.S.) opens

Progressive Labor Party takes over SDS, Weathermen born

Prime? rate 7 1/2 to 8 1/2% (third hike in 69)

Commencement protests anti-Vietnam war + (Brandeis, Yale, Wesleyan +++)
Brown University: two-thirds of graduating class turn their backs on Henry Kissinger's address

UC Berkeley: Regents go ahead with plan to turn People's Park lot into parking lot & playing field

 
June 8   Nixon announces withdrawal of 25,000 troops from Vietnam (of 540,000) by Aug 31

 
June 28   Police raid of Christopher Street, New York bar sets off
Stonewall Riots
--> start of gay liberation movement

 
July 3   Brian Jones (25) of Rolling Stones dies - also saw as June 2

 
July 7   Charles Ever sworn in as first black mayor of biracial town in Mississippi since Reconstruction (Fayette)

 
July 9   Canada language bill signed, giving right to use either French or English

 
July 11   Spock & Ferber's 68 conviction overturned by First Circuit Court of Appeals, Boston & Coffin & Goodman cases sent back for retrial

 
July 14   Activists storm People's Park and confront police, but no serious injuries

 
July 18   Senator Ted Kennedy's accident at Chappaquiddick (Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, killed)

Life magazine: The Youth Communes

 
July 20   Apollo 11: Armstrong & Aldrin: HUMANITY'S FIRST WALK ON THE MOON
& earthrise from the moon photo taken

 
July 28   John Sinclair, leader of rock 'n' roll group MC5, Michigan and White Panther, goes to prison for selling mj (27 months --> )  
after
mid-July
  through August - Beatles recording Abbey Road
Yoko in studio in bed (due to injuries from car crash)


 
summer   Gaskin's travels -> The Farm founded, Summertown, Tennessee

(last Newport Folk Festival)

 
summer & fall   In the wake of the success of Easy Rider, Hollywood briefly opens up to new, young, low-budget filmmakers - closes up again by summer 1970 [Didion]

 
when?   Cleaver (still) in Algeria & Carmichael in Guinea

 
July 31   People's Park paved over as parking lot; no one seems to pay attention (sic)

 
August  

Blind Faith forms, with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Winwood from Traffic

Sonoma County sends bulldozers onto Morning Star Ranch to remove structures

Bay Coast and Development Commission established to protect San Francisco Bay, through the energies of three women, and the collection of 280,000 signatures on a petition

[saw Crosby, Stills and Nash xx]

 
Aug 9   Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate (26) & LaBiancas found murdered

 
Aug 17-   weekend Woodstock Festival, New York: 300,000 / 400,000 [Great Expectations]
Richie Havens, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Creedance Clearwater Revival, The Who, The Band, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix

 
Aug 20   Oakland, California: Bobby Seale, Natl Chair Black Panther Party, arrested for New Haven murder of former Panther Alex Rachey (suspected black informer) (charges eventually dropped)

 
Aug (31)   last Sat & Sun Isle of Wight Festival: 200,000
including Dylan with The Band, Joe Cocker, the Who, Moody Blues

(second time festival was held, first (smaller) was in 1968)

 

On to The High Sixties: Moratorium and The Strike 1969-1971