City of Belmont - Ruth Faulkner Public Library

This decade in history

E. Exempt from classification

This decade in history

By 1950s end, the world had largely recovered from World War II and the Cold War developed from its modest beginning in the late 1940s to a hot competition between the United States and the Soviet Union by the beginning of the 1960s. Clashes between communism and capitalism dominated the decade, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The conflicts included the Korean War in the beginnings of the decade and the beginning of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik I. The beginning of decolonization in Africa and Asia occurred in this decade and accelerated in the following decade, the 1960s. The 1960s was the decade we put man on the moon and saw the rise of the American civil rights movement, hippies, Woodstock, Vietnam protests and the Cuban Missile crisis. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as 32 countries gained independence from their European Colonial rulers. This decade was labelled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of some social taboos especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time. The 1960s have become synonymous with the new, radical and subversive events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond

This decade in history, Part 2, nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties