ABSTRACT
Decades do not usually have much cultural coherence or unity, but some do, such as the decade of the Great Depression. And the twenties too have a distinctive, sandwiched-in quality between World War I and the Depression. But the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s have little internal unity. And even though the civil rights movement started in the mid-fifties, what are usually thought of as the distinctive sixties do not begin until about 1963 or ’64. The central issue of the ’50s was anti-Communism, both against the Soviet Union and, in its McCarthyist version, against American citizens who leaned in a liberal or radical direction. But anti-Communism started tapering off with the censure of McCarthy by the Senate in 1954.
