1959: The Year That Changed Everything

 1959: The Year That Changed Everything

A crowd gathers in New York's Times Square to usher¹ in the New Year, 1959. The importance of what future met them that year is still being debated.

How Significant Will 2009 Appear in the Lens of History? Jeff Greenfield Focuses on How Another Iconic Year Played Out

Many of us may be looking back on 2009 and exclaiming what a year! . . . but there's no telling whether future historians will agree. Take, for example, the mixed judgments² you can find about a year that concluded half a century ago. Senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield reports our Cover Story:

The year 2009 is barely in our rearview mirror, but already we know some events this year will continue to loom³ large.

The inauguration⁴ of the first black president . . . the collapse⁵ of the once-mighty American auto⁶ industry . . . the struggle to revive the country's economy.

But in the longer view of history, how significant will this past year be? How will 2009 compare with other clearly consequential⁷ years?

Will it compare, for example, to 1945, which marked the end of a world war, the death of the most powerful of men, and the birth of a weapon that would define the coming age?

Or how about 1968, when at home a war-turned-quagmire brought a challenge to a sitting president, and the murder of the civil rights leader triggered violence in city after city - followed just a few months later by the killing⁸ of a potential president and riots at a political convention to end all conventions.

Now, consider the year 1959. Could that really be a year that changed everything?

The last year of the fifties, a decade whose image is all but etched in stone: men in grey flannel⁹ suits, Stepford wives in suburban¹⁰ complacency, a veritable white bread sandwich of a time?

Would anyone seriously claim that this was a time when the Earth moved, when foundations began to crumble¹¹?

Journalist Fred Kaplan thinks 1959 is exactly that kind of landmark¹² year.

"There was this growing sense that things were changing," he said. "The new is good. The new is something worth embracing."

Kaplan's argument ranges far and wide. From science and technology come the birth of the microchip, without which "We couldn't have digital telephones," Kaplan said. "We couldn't have satellites. I mean, there's almost nothing that we have in everyday life that doesn't have microchips in it."

1959 also brought the first steps toward the birth control pill.

"This allowed not just a sexual revolution, but it allowed women to get jobs, to advance professionally," Kaplan said. "They could control their own reproductive cycles that control everything about their lives. I mean, that was immense."

In the arts, says Kaplan, 1959 brought upheaval¹³ upon upheaval: The opening of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (left), whose very architecture challenged its neighbors . . . and whose collection was the first wholly devoted¹⁴ to abstract art.

In music, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, were breaking the chord structure of older jazz.

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And censorship was dealt a fatal blow when a court permitted the distribution of the openly sexual "Lady Chatterly's Lover."

"Up until there were all these pulls, which constrained¹⁵ where things could go," Kaplan said. "And in that year, you had the first breaking out from that pull."

But can a single year like 1959 really bear all that weight? Kaplan says the year was significant in civil rights - a federal commission held hearings, and the lynching of Mack Charles Parker triggered national outrage¹⁶.

But wait a minute. Think about the civil rights movement. Does 1959 really measure up?

Does it equal 1954's Supreme¹⁷ Court decision striking down school segregation¹⁸? Or the Montgomery bus boycott¹⁹ of 1956? Or the lunch counter sit-ins across the South that began in 1960?

And what about dating the birth control pill to 1959? Yes, research began that year, but should we measure the impact of the pill when research began, or when it first went on the market, in the 1960s?

And, most fundamentally, does history really work this way? Are some years far more equal than others? Ask two people which year they think was especially significant, and you're likely to get two different opinions.

Newsweek editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meachem says, "There are years in which reality was one way before they started, and another way afterward²⁰. You think about 1968, You think about 2000.

"I think you could find any year in American history, and say X or Y began, or ended, whether it's somebody being born, whether it's the invention of something."

Meachem offered a "fun game": Suggesting the largest single event in human history.

"My theory is that the two most significant events are the trial and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and the Second World War. Because of the crucifixion, given the birth of Christianity, the shifting of the calendar, everything that came from that. And the Second World War, because of the splitting of the atom, and suddenly, for the first time, we had the capacity to destroy everything."

Writer Christohper Hitchens points to one of the most frequently-cited of all years as worthy²¹ of special attention: 1914 - the year the First World War began.

"A step was taken into apocalypse and revolution and mass-produced industrialized violence and cruelty, then, that couldn't be taken back again," he said. "It's the hinge event."

But Hitchens and Meachem agree that to some extent, viewing history as discrete²² events in particular years is a kind of organizing tool.

"Remember what Napoleon said about history? It's a fable²³ agreed upon," said Meachem. "I think it's essentially²⁴ what we're talking about, is that we find ways to organize our experience, in order to understand what happened and why, and whether we can learn anything from it."

"We are pattern-seeking mammals," said Hitchens. "We look for explanations. We'd rather have junk explanations than no explanations at all. Anything's better than having no explanation!"

So what about the case for 1959? Fred Kaplan answers the challenge to defend his year:

"Right, of course. I'm referring to this as a pivotal year when something changed. Now, you don't see all the results of the change in the year when it begins to change. All I'm saying is that everything that followed stemmed from changes that took place then."

So, will 2009 wind up as "just another year"? Or as a pivotal moment in the history of the 21st century? Check back with us around . . . 2059.

1 usher   

n.带位员，招待员；vt.引导，护送；vi.做招待，担任引座员

参考例句：

• The usher seated us in the front row.引座员让我们在前排就座。
• They were quickly ushered away.他们被迅速领开。

2 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。

3 loom   

n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近

参考例句：

• The old woman was weaving on her loom.那位老太太正在织布机上织布。
• The shuttle flies back and forth on the loom.织布机上梭子来回飞动。

4 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。

5 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

6 auto   

n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车

参考例句：

• Don't park your auto here.别把你的汽车停在这儿。
• The auto industry has brought many people to Detroit.汽车工业把许多人吸引到了底特律。

7 consequential   

adj.作为结果的，间接的；重要的

参考例句：

• She was injured and suffered a consequential loss of earnings.她受了伤因而收入受损。
• This new transformation is at least as consequential as that one was.这一新的转变至少和那次一样重要。

8 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

9 flannel   

n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服

参考例句：

• She always wears a grey flannel trousers.她总是穿一条灰色法兰绒长裤。
• She was looking luscious in a flannel shirt.她穿着法兰绒裙子，看上去楚楚动人。

10 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

11 crumble   

vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁

参考例句：

• Opposition more or less crumbled away.反对势力差不多都瓦解了。
• Even if the seas go dry and rocks crumble,my will will remain firm.纵然海枯石烂，意志永不动摇。

12 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

13 upheaval   

n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱

参考例句：

• It was faced with the greatest social upheaval since World War Ⅱ.它面临第二次世界大战以来最大的社会动乱。
• The country has been thrown into an upheaval.这个国家已经陷入动乱之中。

14 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

15 constrained   

adj.束缚的,节制的

参考例句：

• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。
• I feel constrained to write and ask for your forgiveness. 我不得不写信请你原谅。

16 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

17 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

18 segregation   

n.隔离，种族隔离

参考例句：

• Many school boards found segregation a hot potato in the early 1960s.在60年代初，许多学校部门都觉得按水平分班是一个棘手的问题。
• They were tired to death of segregation and of being kicked around.他们十分厌恶种族隔离和总是被人踢来踢去。

19 boycott   

n./v.(联合)抵制，拒绝参与

参考例句：

• We put the production under a boycott.我们联合抵制该商品。
• The boycott lasts a year until the Victoria board permitsreturn.这个抗争持续了一年直到维多利亚教育局妥协为止。

20 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。

21 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

22 discrete   

adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的

参考例句：

• The picture consists of a lot of discrete spots of colour.这幅画由许多不相连的色点组成。
• Most staple fibers are discrete,individual entities.大多数短纤维是不联系的单独实体。

23 fable   

n.寓言；童话；神话

参考例句：

• The fable is given on the next page. 这篇寓言登在下一页上。
• He had some motive in telling this fable. 他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

24 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。