From J. Edgar Hoover to Christopher Reeve

I regard this as part of what might be called a murder plot against our urban areas. The murder method is that of slowly poisoning the city by the injection of foreign particles into the bloodstream in increasing doses. These particles, in the form of automobiles and trucks, cannot be absorbed by the urban body and therefore cause serious circulatory diseases. The plotters are assisted by fifth columnists within the city who—by facilitating automobile traffic through widening of streets, one-way traffic, construction of gigantic garages—see to it that the poison is spread in the heart of the city until it attacks the tissues of the most important urban cells.

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Margaret Mead
May 20, 1963
In 1963, research showed that people were marrying and starting families at ever younger ages, even before finishing college. The average age of marriage for boys had recently dropped from 27 to 23. Among those who expressed misgivings about the trend was noted anthropologist Margaret Mead, whose studies about the sex lives of South Pacific islanders helped influence the sexual revolution in America .

We are forcing everybody to get married. Not only is this the picture of the family everybody is supposed to have sometime, but it's getting to be the family that everybody is supposed to have very early.... Nobody is going to be interested in doing anything except having children. And you can't run a society if everybody's main interest in life is domestic—if nobody wants to be a senator or a governor or a president; if nobody wants to be an inventor, the lonely thinker. The average American man today is more interested in being a father than he is in his career or his job.

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David Riesman
Feb. 24, 1964
In 1964, four long-haired rockers from Liverpool, England, captivated the world with a fresh, harmonic sound. American girls literally fainted at the sight of them. The Beatles went on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed musical groups of all time, by 1985 selling over 1 billion records worldwide. Fresh off their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, David Riesman, a Harvard University sociologist who wrote widely on social trends, discussed whether the new rock sensation was a lasting phenomenon or a passing fad.

Q: Is the furor over the singers who call themselves the Beatles a sign that American youngsters are going crazy?
A: No crazier than hitherto. One mustn't exaggerate and attribute to the vast majority the reactions of the minority.

Q: Will [the fad] last very long?
A: No. No craze does.

Q: How would you compare the current Beatle craze with the Elvis Presley craze of a few years back?
A: Compared to the Elvis Presley craze it is a very minor one.

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Malcolm X
March 30, 1964
Malcolm X was a black Muslim minister who opposed integration and urged blacks to arm themselves against whites. At the time of this interview, he had just announced plans to form a black nationalist movement that called for complete separation of the races and creation of a black homeland. Later, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he embraced a more humanistic worldview. He was assassinated in 1965 at age 39.