ABSTRACT
In October 1960, during a speech at the United Nations in New York City, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev became so incensed at a suggestion by a representative from the Philippines that the Soviet Union had deprived Eastern Europe of its political freedom that he took off his shoe and banged it repeatedly on the rostrum. The Soviet Union was continuing to seek allies and spread its influence beyond the boundaries of Eastern Europe. US fears of Soviet expansion and the spread of communism led to one of the defining moments of the early 1960s: the Cuban missile crisis. The significant-even revolutionary-changes that occurred during the 1960s made the world a different place at the end of the decade. At the end of the decade, much had changed to make the world unrecognizable compared to what went before it. Civil rights for African-Americans in the United States had become a reality, though there was still more work to be done.
