Amazing pictures at the Atlantic. 50 pictures of the world in 1963. 50 years ago.

[madfloridian]

50 Years Ago. The World in 1963

A half century ago, much of the news in the United States was dominated by the actions of civil rights activists and those who opposed them. Our role in Vietnam was steadily growing, along with the costs of that involvement. It was the year Beatlemania began, and the year President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin and delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Push-button telephones were introduced, 1st class postage cost 5 cents, and the population of the world was 3.2 billion, less than half of what it is today. The final months of 1963 were punctuated by one of the most tragic events in American history, the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a look at the world as it was in 1963. [50 photos]

We did not have the TV access then that we have now. I knew all these things were going on, but many of the pictures just blew my mind. Heartwarming, thought-provoking, sentimental, tragic.

[uppityperson]

1. Oh my dog, what a year. Thank you for the link.

[madfloridian]

2. Aren't they wonderful?

At the bottom there are links to pictures from 1962 and 1961.

[PDJane]

3. I remember all of those pictures.

I was born in 1949, and saw them all and remember them all. I remember hula hoops and transistor radios and all of the upheaval of the world at that time. It takes the trip down memory lane to remember how long a trip it's been since then, and how enthusiastic and somewhat naive the world was then.

[madfloridian]

4. I remember seeing many of them on the limited TV then. Just a few channels. No internet.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Thank you, my dear madfloridian...

50 years ago.

I was in college.

What a different time it was. So much of this history is familiar to me...

Wonderful pictures!

Thank you...

[madfloridian]

6. I was just out of college, raising my family, teaching.

Did you see the links at the bottom for the pictures from 1962 and 1961? Going to look at them tomorrow.

[Are_grits_groceries]

7. "What a long, strange trip it's been."

-GD
What a ride! Wouldn't have missed it for the world.
The high points were were breathtaking and the low points were heartbreaking and horrific.

[madfloridian]

10. Well-said.

They are wonderful pictures of a time of great change.

[grilled onions]

8. And We Were There

What I remember most besides the horror of so many events was the unity of many teens/college age students. They spent much of their free time at one protest or another. They hated war. They hated the prejudice that seemed to be everywhere. They wanted change. They wanted peace. They worried little about material things as a rule. They did not have to worry about jobs(they seemed plentiful enough). But war was the big concern. The draft was very much a threat to so many young men. There were so many changes in the world at that time and so many who did not want any changes at all. They wanted to live in the past with barriers for many and freedom for the others. When you see that and then look at today you realize we still have many who do not want change and want to bring back those barriers that we tore down so many years ago.

[pinboy3niner]

9. It was a momentous time to be alive--for those who survived

I celebrated my 15th birthday less than 2 weeks before JFK was assassinated. In HS, one friend spent summer vacation working with Cesar Chavez and migrant farmworkers and another was suspended from school for displaying a 'Legalize Abortion' bumper sticker on his briefcase. And 3 years later a bunch of us paid about 4 bucks apiece to see the Beatles at Dodger Stadium. By then, we'd already had friends dying in Vietnam...and one of our schoolmates from the class behind me was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. I was seriously wounded and survived...but that wasn't until 7 years after 1963, when the war was still going on....

[agracie]

11. Amazing indeed... I was a junior in high school - a lifetime ago ! nt

[BlueMTexpat]

12. Wow - I was still in college in 1963,

which was also the year that JFK visited my birth state (Sept 1963), just a bare two months before that tragic November.

I remember so many of these events being reported - except for those in Vietnam. Most of us were still not as focused on what was happening in SE Asia as we later became. But the tears are literally running down my face at seeing JFK, RFK and MLK and all the reminders of events then and since that surrounded the civil rights struggle - which is still continuing for many, even today.

The unholy and unreasoning hatred that still remains among very ugly elements towards our President today - and make no doubt about it, that hatred is at least 99% because his father was a black man - is a legacy of that era and its predecessors.

While I do not support all of Prez Obama's decisions/actions, I am fully conscious of the symbolic nature of his Presidency and am so proud that a majority of my fellow citizens helped to elect/re-elect him in a spite of all the worst RW efforts. I am also proud of him and especially of Michelle and their daughters.

Especially when I remember back to the events of 1963 .... I, for one, will never forget - and my ongoing tears are proof of that. We still have very far to go, but we have come a LONG way.

[Hekate]

14. ^^^ This ^^^

Though I do remember the photos from Vietnam, especially the burning monk.

Vietnam was much more real to my 17 y.o. boyfriend than it was to me; he once said rather bitterly something about "being the first on your block to step on a punji stick," which certainly showed an awareness that I lacked at the time.

You are right about the raw hatred on the faces of segregationists -- how far we have come, how far we have to go.

[Hekate]

13. Gives me chills. I was a junior in high school.

We are now so accustomed to instant access that sometimes the lasting impact of an individual image is blurred, I think.

I remember these photos from the nightly news (black and white tv) and from TIME and LIFE magazines, both of which my parents subscribed to. I remember them distinctly....

[Norrin Radd]

15. I was born...

ten years later in '73, but it is still startling seeing the images of the times my mother talked about.

[Moostache]

16. JFK Jr. would have been 53...and he would also have been POTUS.

I still can't believe he died so tragically at the exact moment his passions were seeming to turn to politics.

I firmly believe that had history gone differently we would be in the second term of JFK Jr.'s presidency, very possibly with a Vice President Obama as well...

The picture of Kennedy saluting his father's coffin is heart-breaking in so many ways that it truly numbs the soul. I visited the eternal flame at Arlington, and I could not help but think about that picture then as again tonight.

[pinboy3niner]

19. When I visited JFK's grave at Arlington years ago, there were green berets placed there...

It was many years later when I moved here and met a local Special Forces Vietnam veteran whose brother was KIA in VN. My friend had been given his beret personally by JFK, and he left it at his brother's panel on the Wall...

[4bucksagallon]

17. 1963 was the first time I saw color tv.

We watched the JFK news of his assassination at a neighbors house. We did not own one for another year of so. Funny how I just remembered that. Thanks for the memory......

[pinboy3niner]

21. Remember the old come-ons for turning B&W to color?

I remember one that had you placing a lamp on top of or behind your TV and I don't remember what else. Tried that one...didn't work.

[DollarBillHines]

29. And those laminate things you put over the screen

Green on the bottom third, kinda reddish in the middle and blue on top.

Every once in a while, the image would line up with the colors.

We used ours once.

[jambo101]

18. Evokes memories from when i was young.

I was about 16 years old in 63 and remember many of those pics, i was about to embark on one hell of a life at that time,now i can look back and say what a rush..

[struggle4progress]

20. thanks for posting:

[HughBeaumont]

22. This photo captures how angry white male America wishes it still was.

[madfloridian]

27. The expression of contempt as he threw water in his face captured forever.

[Demonaut]

23. wow...all I can say

[lunatica]

24. 50 years ago I was 14 years old

and living in Mexico where I grew up. I remember all of that. I think everyone watched the US during those times of such change and violence and hope. We watched the three days of the events when Jack Kennedy lay in the Capital Building and the long procession on TV. The mother of one of my friends was the voice of the simultaneous translator on the TV. I watched John John salute his father's procession live.

[SteveG]

25. It really does not seem that long ago

I was 13 that year and remember most of those photos from our Newspaper. I also watched Oswald get killed by Ruby, live on TV, something I'll never forget.

[madfloridian]

26. No, it really doesn't seem so long ago.

I remember sitting in front of our cabinet TV, round tube, really pretty. It could show something in color, but there wasn't that much to see. I sat for hours crying over JFK's death. I never saw anything hit people so hard.

[ananda]

28. Imagine..

.. what our country would be like if people were as determined to make things right as they were back then! Ah, those were the days ....