HIST 418 - 1968 and the End of the Sixties

Credit Hours: 4
In 20th century U.S. history, there is perhaps no single year that stands out for drama and tragedy like 1968. This course is a research seminar on that watershed year fifty years ago. The timeline of the course will extend back to the election of John F. Kennedy as a time of great promise and idealism. It will end with Richard Nixon and Watergate as the birth of a more cynical era. Within that timeframe, however, we will examine the many complex forces that came together in 1968 and do extensive reading and writing on how Americans dealt with the major issues of that day. Themes include the war in Vietnam, the counterculture, the rise of the Black Panthers, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the rise of the women’s movement, the emergence of George Wallace, Richard Nixon’s election and the rise of the “silent majority,” to name just a few.