ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, many Western countries faced serious challenges to the political, social and moral order established or re-established after World War II. President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. One year later Congress authorized President Johnson to allow the United States to enter the Vietnam War. This is why the 1960s can rightly be regarded as the years of the Vietnam War and fierce protest against it. It was also the age of the Civil Rights Movement. Riots sprang up in New York, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Los Angeles. Martin Luther King was assassinated in May 1968, which resulted in another outburst of riots. In 1968, the Civil Rights Movement and the protest against the Vietnam War reached a peak. Robert Kennedy was killed in June 1968 – the last hope that a president could be elected by the following November who would end the war was shattered. A mighty anti-war demonstration was held at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August but it was brutally put down by the police.
