October 7: Six Gallery Reading: Beat poet Allen Ginsberg first performs his soon-to-be scandalous Howl. September 30: James Dean: The star of Rebel without a Cause and early icon of the disaffected generation dies in a sports car crash at age 24 at Cholame, California. In 2017, Till's apparently coerced female accuser recanted key testimony she gave under oath. 
The incident becomes a pivotal event in the growing civil rights movement after Till's mother allows the boy's mutilated body to be viewed, and after two white men (who later confess to the murder) are acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury.
August 28: Emmett Till murder: A black adolescent is brutally slain in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman. With deep roots in black jazz, blues, and R&B, as well as gospel and country music, the rock & roll era begins. 
July 9: " Rock Around the Clock": Bill Haley's version of the keystone song begins an eight-week run at number 1 on the Billboard charts. The non-binding SEATO commitment, however, is only invoked as justification for involvement in Vietnam by future President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) after later escalation of hostilities there proves unpopular. February: SEATO: The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization is formally activated, nominally obligating the US to intervene as part of collective action in case of military conflagration in the region. The doctrine of " Separate but Equal" as a moral or legal pretext for segregation is no longer enforceable by governments, and true racial integration begins in schools in the southern US. Board of Education: The US Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. December: Marilyn Monroe centerfold: the first issue of Playboy magazine appears, published by Hugh Hefner. Humphrey Osmond guides the trip, and later correspondence between the two produces the term psychedelic. May 4: The " doors of perception" open for author Aldous Huxley as he takes mescaline for the first time. Secret detention camps in Europe and Asia are also set up for torture and experiments on prisoners. April 13: Project MKUltra, the CIA's behavior control research program which grew to include testing LSD and extended sensory deprivation on both volunteer and unsuspecting American and Canadian subjects into the 1960s, commences. Go: John Clellon Holmes' novel is published and is later considered to be the first book depicting the Beat Generation. Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison's highly acclaimed novel of African American life in the 20th century is published. August: Mad magazine debuts as a comic book before switching to standard magazine format in 1955, satirizing both American culture and later counterculture alike. The True Believer: "Longshoreman-philosopher" Eric Hoffer's Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is published.
0 kommentar(er)
