New Digital Archive Brings the 1960s to Life
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 is an exciting in-depth digital archive on a significant period of recent history whose legacy continues to impact us today. Over 55,000 pages of material are currently available from more than 1,000 sources online; with the addition of audio and video files, its value and use will only be enhanced.
...the memoir of a self-described Mestizo soldier who served in Vietnam
...Sixties radical and later state legislator Tom Hayden's Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) manifesto, The Port Huron Statement
...The full-text of Jo Freeman’s At Berkeley in the 60's: The Education of an Activist
...and discover how Orange County was viewed in the 1960s
According to the publisher, Alexander Street Press,The Sixties "brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary." The content covers a broad range of themes, including Arts,Music, and Leisure; Civil Rights; Counter-Culture; Law andGovernment; Left and Radical Left Movements; Mass and Underground Media; Right and Radical Right Movements; Sciences and Technology; Sexual Revolution; Student Activism; Vietnam War; and the Women's Movement.
Underground newspapers are also preserved in this digital archive, including selective issues of the Berkeley Barb. The Barb's strike committee special edition (December 5, 1966) about UC Berkeley's student turmoil at the time makes for eerie reading today. Later this year, the collection will add a complete run of Ramparts, the underground magazine whose investigative reporting and advanced design were markers of the period. American journalist Robert Scheer, a former Los Angeles Times columnist and UCI Lecturer, was Editor in Chief between 1964 and 1969.
In UCI’s earlier days, pioneering students had the foresight to bury a time capsule on the campus grounds. The Sixties database ensures that core materials from that early period will be now much more accessible, without the need to dig up any time capsules.
For more information, contact Daniel C. Tsang, Political Science Bibliographer (dtsang@uci.edu or x44978).