(upbeat music) - i'm told i'm a baby boomer. - okay, boomer. (upbeat music) - i am a very proud baby boomer. - i am 61 years of age so, wikipedia would tell you i'm a baby boomer. that means absolutely nothing to me. i'm here and one day i'll be dead, and that's it. (dramatic music) (engine humming) (children screaming) - one way or the other, whether you wanted to be a hippie and be heard, or whether you were conservative or rotc or whatever it was, our generation demanded to be heard. (people shouting) (dramatic music) - we felt that our time had come and that it was time to act. - well, the kids of the 60s brought about the notion that maybe your parents aren't always right. - they were seeking something different from what their parents had. these sort of stayed safe lives. people just wanted more.

(group shouting) - if you like natural childbirth, thank a hippie. if you like organic food, thank a hippie. if you like eastern religions, thank a hippie. i mean, we're all over the place. (dramatic music) (mellow music) - [narrator] baby boomers, the 76 million children born between 1946 and 1964. (mellow music) we were for most of our lives the biggest generation in american history. our parents fought in world war ii and korea, then came home to start families, buy cars, move to the suburbs, what you think of when you hear the american dream. that was the american reality for millions of boomers,

at least if you were white. boomers are famous for changing the world, finding their voice, protesting the vietnam war. a lot of people think we were just a bunch of idealistic hippies, you know, peace and love, rock and roll. kids who moved out west to tune in, turn on, drop out. it's true, some of us were like that, but a lot more were conservative. like many of the 6 million men who volunteered for vietnam. (plane engines thundering) however long our hair was, we all lived through the same traumas. the assassinations of our most beloved icons, race riots, the vietnam war, the threat of nuclear war. it wasn't all bad. we saw a man walk on the moon. we witnessed historic achievements in civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, and the movies we watched

and the music we played were as good as it gets. (crowd cheering) we came of age in a technicolor world where our fingers did the walking, where for the first time dinner was served on a tray and where tv went off the air at the end of the night closing with the national anthem. (instrumental national anthem) (static noise) if you lived through all of this, settle in and relive it. if you didn't, watch and learn. (dramatic music) - [reporter] senator john kennedy of massachusetts, democrat, throws his hat in the presidential ring. - [john f. kennedy] i am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the united states. - i was too young to vote. my mother, on the other hand, never said that she voted for kennedy, but we all knew that she did. he certainly had an allure for women and there was

a phenomenon in that campaign that was remarked upon the hoppers. when the motorcade would go past the women would kind of give a little hop. and you see it's actually detectable. there is even some nuns that were hopping. - [narrator] it was hard to miss the distinction between the outgoing president, the grandfatherly general dwight d. eisenhower and handsome young democratic senator. - kennedy taps into this sense, or he marshals the idea that great days are ahead for the united states. - i believe in 1960 and 61 and two and three we have a rendezvous with destiny and i believe it incumbent upon us to be the defenders of the united states and the defenders of freedom, and to do that we must give this country leadership and we must get america moving again. - [narrator]] kennedy's opponent was eisenhower's vice president, richard nixon. kennedy was clearly the more camera ready candidate. - you know,

nixon had that five o'clock shadow thing going on. he looked like a dick tracy bad guy. he seemed like he was right one second before the sweat was gonna break out. - i mean, nixon was only a few years older than kennedy but he looked like a man of the fifties. kennedy was sleek and elegant and handsome and sexy and he radiated a kind of youthful energy. - [woman] i can't wash my hand! (crowd murmuring) - he was beautiful. his wife was beautiful, elegant. all of that had an effect on me. but equally important was that he was a leader of the free world and he was going to save humanity from communism. - he had the grin, he had the rap, he had the girls. (chuckles) more than we knew. - the nbc victory desk has just given california to kennedy and that gives him the election. - my congratulations to senator kennedy for his fine race in this campaign and to all of you.

(crowd shouting) i am sure his supporters are just as enthusiastic as you are for me, and i thank you for that. - nixon was a man of burning resentments and he almost immediately decided that he'd been, you know, cheated out of a victory that belonged to him. it defined the entire course of his future career trying to repair this psychological wound. - [narrator] even though john f. kennedy was a member of the generation who fought world war ii, for baby boomers he was our president. - [man] the whole world was governed by people who had been born in the 19th century and you know, kennedy was new. he was a part of the the younger crowd that was ready to take over. - [narrator] but the younger crowd inherited an old problem. (dramatic music) the looming threat of russia and its nuclear arsenal tainted almost every aspect of american life.

(bombs exploding) - [singer] ♪ he knew just what to do ♪ (explosion) ♪ he's duck and cover - what you see in those government educational films that you laugh at as a parody. we did for real. - i remember the duck and cover drill very well, and one of the things i remember is we had desks where the chairs didn't move, so you had to roll off to the side and then roll under your desk. you couldn't pull your chair out. it's a good thing we all had small tushies at the time. - [film narrator] older people will help us, as they always do but there might not be any grownups around when the bomb explodes. then you're on your own. - remember what to do, friends? now tell me right out loud what are you supposed to do when you see the flash? - [kids shout] duck and cover! - my mother was concerned enough about atomic war that she put a bomb shelter in our backyard

but that's how paranoid some people were. especially my mother. - [narrator] in october, 1962, all those fears became real when we learned that russia had secretly put nukes in cuba. we suspected they were aimed at us. - good evening, my fellow citizens. within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. the purpose of these bases can be none other then to provide a nuclear strike capability against the western hemisphere. - cuban missile crisis was like the first trauma highlight of my life that burns into my brain. i mean i remember everything about it. my ninth period was algebra class and we had this really wiry, snide, funny teacher, and he said, well, class we'll see you monday... if there is a monday.

- i was born in cuba in 1952. here, people were terrified about the cuban missile crisis, thinking that armageddon, the apocalypse was just about to come and where the apocalypse was supposed to be taking place? cuba, the island of cuba. i didn't even know that that was happening. - had war occurred in october of 1962, i think it's safe to say that a hundred million americans could have died. it's almost hard to imagine what could have occurred. and of course we now know that we came very close. - [narrator] at the last moment, russia offered a compromise. remove american missiles from turkey and we'll remove soviet missiles from cuba. kennedy took the deal, the world exhaled. - the soviet missile bases in cuba are being dismantled. their missiles and related equipment are being crated. - yeah, there was a huge collective sigh of relief. it was on sunday.

people went to church and there was a lot of prayers were said that sunday. - [narrator] but the cold war didn't end. it just moved elsewhere. on kennedy's watch, the conflict that would decimate vietnam and divide america was just beginning to heat up. as was the fight for the very soul of our nation. (crowd yelling and screaming) ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ woah, limu! we're in a parade. everyone customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. and you have this dream every night? yeah, every night! hmm... i see. (limu squawks) only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

only pay for what you need. (mellow music) (singing and clapping) (mellow music) - growing up in the jim crow south,

i tell people we knew our limitations. we knew that you had whites only drinking fountains and whites only restrooms. (crowd commotion) - we went to a movie theater. you had to go upstairs, you know, color water fountains. we learned how to read, know the word colored and know the word white. (chuckles) it was a way of life. so as a kid, that's my lane. - my mother never explained to us what was going on why we had to do that, but she just prevented us from having any water. - you know, you might be in a black town and be a black undertaker, you might be a minister, but there are very few things you could do. my father wanted to be a writer. that was not gonna happen. and then you know, people were beaten. people were killed. people were destroyed. - [narrator] in 1963, black americans faced systematic oppression and violent retribution

if they dared fight for equality. the civil rights act was stalled in congress. dr. martin luther king jr. had a plan. - [martin luther king jr.] there is too much greatness in our heritage to tolerate the pettiness of race hate. negros have declared they will die if need be for these freedoms. (phone rings) - [narrator] his idea, - march on washington, may i help you please. - [narrator] organize the largest protest in the history of the civil rights movement in the shadow of the capitol. (singing and clapping) - the president didn't want him to have the march. they tried everything possible to talk 'em out of it because they said we are gonna have people dead in the streets. chaos, we're gonna have the place would be torn up. they predicted the ugliest picture would take place

if they proceeded with the march. - [narrator] but king would not be dissuaded. the march would go on as planned. - [organizer] we are requesting all citizens to move into washington. this is an urgent request. please join. go to washington. - [narrator] the quarter million demonstrators from across the country gathered in the nation's capitol and there was no chaos. (dramatic music) - in 1963, i was a kid in new york about to graduate from high school. i'd grown up in a family that had been very involved with social justice movements, voting rights, equal rights in the city. it simply made sense when our church organized a bus to go to the march on washington, that we would load up into the bus first thing in the morning, head down to washington and be part of that major demonstration.

- [woman] mary. there's mary. (group chatting) - i thought the time had come. i was very proud to be a part of it. i think i had been arrested 14 times and beaten up a couple of times, but it didn't frighten me. i was determined. - [narrator] one of the things that made the march so memorable was the music. bob dylan singing only a pawn in their game. ♪ he's only a pawn in their game ♪ (mahalia jackson singing) and mahalia jackson, the queen of gospel, inspiring the most iconic moment of the march. (clapping) after her performance, dr. king took the stage.

he began to read his prepared speech which originally did not include the words i have a dream. - martin had not planned to include it for the march on washington. when he went to the platform, mahalia jackson said, martin tell him about, i have a dream. so she was whispering, but loudly and he heard her so he added it, and that's the truth. - i have a dream. my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. i have a dream today. (crowd clapping) - nobody will remember anything else he said but i have a dream. (inspirational music) - his words were not only eloquent and inspired, they were words that were really a call to action

and i think all of us who were there left washington that day, with a sense that what we had to do next was return to our local communities and spread the word, and become involved in activist activities that would address issues of racial injustice in the country. - free at last. free at last. thank god almighty, we are free at last! (upbeat motown music) - i mean, there was a soundtrack to the civil rights and a large part of it was motown. i mean, you can just go to dancing in the streets off the rip, like just go there. like the way they were shouting out cities, (upbeat motown music) especially the cities where there was all of this civil unrest.

the way the motown stars were showing up at civil rights protests. those marches had a soundtrack man, and it was motown. a lot of times. - [narrator] in its first 10 years, the label produced more than a hundred top 10 hits. what made motown not just popular, but epic was how it affected audiences. - there's all these documented stories, especially down south shows would have a rope in the middle and the white kids are on one side, and the black kids on the other. it wasn't until the real sixties that you begin seeing those doors break, and so that people are sitting in the crowds together at shows. - [narrator] at a time of tremendous racial strife. motown broke down barriers the way only a perfect pop song can. (singing)

(uplifting music) (uplifting music)

- [reporter] it appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route. something i repeat, has happened in the motorcade route. there's numerous people running up the hill. we understand there is been a shooting. the presidential car coming up now. we know it's the presidential car. you can see mrs. kennedy's pink suit, that is a secret service man spread eagle over the top of the car. - [reporter 2] president kennedy has been assassinated. it's official now. the president is dead. - woodrow wilson high school in my sophomore year. i was in algebra class when the principal came on the pa system that was usual, but what caught our attention is suddenly there was just pause, and then this choked voice of our principal... (tearing up) saying that the president had been shot. - really? right now, i just don't know what to do. - it's just terrible. it doesn't seem like it could really happen.

- i really find it difficult to believe now. - i just remember the date, november 22nd, 1963. - the girls in the class started crying. we were told we could all go home. - we were all sent home on the bus. it was early for being let out of school. we didn't know why. - we were just ushered out of the school, sent home and then when we got home, we realized what had happened and it was devastating. the president of the united states is dead. - it hit me very, very hard. - it was, earth shattering. - i think it's fair to say that the assassination of kennedy changed the fundamental trajectory of the 1960s. america was a different place the day before he went to dallas as compared to after. his violent death deprived americans and people around the world of a belief that society would get better,

a certain hope for the future. - i was at home, i know that, and what i remember is laying on bed, crying and crying and crying and with an enormous sense of loss and sadness. he was our hope of people who wanted to live in freedom everywhere in the world and to see that he's gone. that's very traumatic. - it was an extraordinary moment in the nation's history. (solemn music) - [narrator] five days after the assassination, the new president, lyndon b. johnson, made it clear he intended to pick up the civil rights mantle where jfk left off. (clapping) - no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor president kennedy's memory

than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. (clapping) (screaming and yelling) - [narrator] it was not going to be easy. - i remember distinctly watching the demonstrations in the south on the civil rights movement and the terror that the sheriffs and the police unleashed on people. no, there was something that was completely wrong. it made no sense. (dogs barking) - i grew up in buffalo, new york during the 1950s. while i was a graduate student at berkeley, i became engaged in the civil rights movement and as i became more and more aware of jim crow in the south, it really disturbed me. (screaming and yelling)

- it's difficult for anyone who witnesses that to go back to the way things were before. it inspires young people all across the country to make a commitment in that moment to really getting involved in the movement. - [narrator] after spending the summer standing shoulder to shoulder with civil rights activists in the south, jack weinberg returned to grad school at berkeley where he resumed his activism. in the process, he helped spark what became known as the free speech movement. - we formed a united front of student groups of all kinds to protest. we were originally doing these activities on the edge of the campus. when they said we couldn't do it anywhere on campus we said, well, let's take our activities to the middle of campus. so we started setting up tables and doing these activities, handing out leaflets and one thing led to another and i was arrested. - yourself. you would be disciplined by the dean's office

you're not identifying yourself. we're arresting you because you must be an outsider. - what? what section? by the time i got in the police car, it was surrounded and they couldn't move. i sat in the police car from noon on thursday until late, until pretty late friday evening, 32 hours. - [interviewer] what were you fighting for? - we wanted the right to participate in social and political activity on the campus. the right to hand out leaflets, the right to give speeches, the right to do anything that we are allowed to do under the united states constitution. (crowd chanting) - [narrator] the fire that was lit in berkeley spread across america throughout the sixties. the beating heart of the protest movement was the college campus. - [protestor] we call on all students, faculty, staff and workers of the university to support our strike. - [narrator] mark rudd was chairman of sds, students for a democratic society at columbia university in harlem. on april 23rd 1968, this group,

alongside the black student afro-american society, led protests and sit-ins at columbia. they were fighting the university on two issues. dissociation with the weapons research think tank that did business with the u.s. department of defense. - [protestor] we are no longer asking but demanding an end to all affiliation and ties with the institute for defense analysis - [narrator] and it's plan to build a gym in the mostly black neighborhood that surrounded the campus. - 15% of the gym, the lower floor, would be for the community and the rest would be for the kids from columbia with separate entrances, a high entrance and a low entrance. we called it "gym crow," naturally. - [narrator] for six days, students occupied several buildings on the columbia campus. on the seventh day, the police attacked. (crowd yelling) - the cops who had been gnawing on their night sticks for a week in their buses

beat the crap out of hundreds of kids. over 600 people were arrested, but hundreds were beaten. - [narrator] the lesson of columbia was that peaceful protest often led to violent response. - many people went from protests to revolution, myself included. - [narrator] as the movement shifted from college campuses to the rural south, it became clear to many boomers nothing worth having would be won without a fight. ♪ hold on, hold on hi, my name is damian clark. if you have both medicare and medicaid, i have some really encouraging news that you'll definitely want to hear. depending on the plans available in your area, you may be eligible to get extra benefits with a humana medicare advantage dual-eligible special needs plan. most plans include the humana healthy options allowance. a monthly allowance to help pay for eligible

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(upbeat music) (crowd yelling) - i send my children to another school. i'm simply against children being bused. - the moment a negro child walks into the school. every decent, self-respecting loving parent, should take his white child out of that parochial school.

(crowd yelling) - [narrator] 1964, an election year, civil rights was on the ballot. in mississippi, the drive was on to register black voters. activists called it the freedom summer. - and it's this idea that if you could get young white college students to come to the south to help register african americans to vote it'd be an opportunity to build black voting power while at the same time helping to build the movement and help the movement expand in rural hamlets throughout the south. early on, they're very clear with these young recruits who come from throughout the country that this is a dangerous enterprise. (dramatic music) - [tv reporter] a special report on the three workers for civil rights still missing in mississippi. - [tv reporter 2] the car was in a marshy area about 50 feet off the road. it had been gutted by fire. - [narrator] the disappearance and murder of three activists in mississippi shocked the nation.

one of the men was castrated. david dennis was supposed to be with them that day. - they were going to pick me up and we were going to go over to meridian and then to neshoba county. and so i had developed a very bad cough. i had bronchitis, and so i was coughing all over the places they were concerned and they kept talking to me, telling me i shouldn't go on this ride. a lot of people tell me the same thing that you would've been killed if you gotten in that car. i don't know that, maybe i could have done something i don't know, but it never get out of my head. oh... - i don't want to have to go to another memorial. i'm tired of feeling it. i'm tired of it! (sighs) we've got to stand up! - [narrator] david dennis delivered the eulogy for his friend james chaney.

- you know, when i was talking about tired going to funerals i'm talking about, you know, in general, you know, watching us die, you know, and nothing's being done about it in this country. i was only 23 years old. - it's hard for dad to watch, and really in a lot of ways it's hard for me to watch. no person should have experienced what he experienced and so many other people experienced, but to know that he went through that so young, you know, he was 23. i'm 36, and so he was a younger person than i am now and he's is a kid, like he realized that these are children who are going through this. - [narrator] on july 2nd, 1964, two weeks after the murders, president johnson signed the civil rights act into law. martin luther king jr. was by his side. the reaction from many southern voters was swift. - it was like a switch going off and i mean the migration out of the democratic party into the republican party for,

for southern whites was was amazing. which was ironic because my mom and dad and most blacks in the south when i was growing up were all republicans. they were all members of the party of lincoln, which was the liberal party when i was growing up. - [narrator] the '64 election was between lbj and the far-right republican senator barry goldwater. - i would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. (crowd cheering) - you know, this square-jawed, blunt-speaking arizona senator comes on the scene in a serious way in the early 1960s with a commitment to a kind of unfettered free-market capitalism and the most kind of hawkish position you can imagine with respect to the cold war. - one. two. three. four.

- one of my favorite commercials of all time, it's haunting, haunting. - five. - everyone is concerned about a nuclear holocaust in 1964 and johnson centers that for the american people in this ad with this young girl who's playing out in a field and counting down from 10 to 1 with this looming danger of a nuclear attack. - [tv voice] 2, 1...zero. (loud explosion) - [president johnson] these are the stakes to make a world in which all of god's children can live or to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. - [announcer] vote for president johnson on november 3rd. - it's a very powerful ad. it's controversial. it will only air once but the reality is it only needed to air once. - [tv reporter] and what a vote it was, the democratic landslide of all time.

- [tv reporter 2] the latest figure show, president johnson nearly 41 and three quarter million senator goldwater nearly 26 and one quarter million. - he loses in a landslide to lyndon johnson. but i don't think we should underestimate just how important that goldwater phenomenon is in leading us to a much stronger conservative element in american politics in the years, ultimately the decades to come. power e*trade's easy-to-use tools, like dynamic charting and risk-reward analysis, help make trading feel effortless. and its customizable scans with social sentiment help you find and unlock opportunities in the market. e*trade from morgan stanley with powerful, easy-to-use tools, power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley

or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. (dramatic music) - ♪ let's all go to the lobby ♪ to get ourselves a treat. - [narrator] remember going to the movies, for my generation it was a thing. - the first movie that we went to see together as a family was "claudine," with diane carroll and james earl jones. and she was a single woman raising five kids. and we walked out of the theater together holding hands the same way they did in the movie. it affected me.

it was beautiful. - a "hard day's night" came out, you know we were allowed to take the bus into the town and then we would sit in the movie theater and we would scream whenever the beatles would come on because we would just try to disrupt. - there was this mall in houston called almeda mall. well, i think they had seven or eight screens so you could get dropped off and just spend your day going in and out of movies. you'd buy one ticket. i think this all ended up kind of influencing me on storytelling. - [narrator] we started the sixties with movies like "mary poppins" and the "sound of music" and then suddenly everything changed. the pivotal year was 1967. (dramatic music) - in one year you've got "bonnie and clyde" and "in the heat of the night," and "the graduate", and "guess who's coming to dinner." these are all movies that in very different ways and with different styles are kind of digging into what 1967 was about for americans. what they were seeing on the news,

what they were arguing about at the dinner table, what they were reading about on the op-ed pages of the paper, that was all coming out in these movies. and these were big movies from big studios with big stars in them. - "bonnie and clyde," woo, yes. the beauty of warren beatty, the splendor of that man's eyes and her together. how fabulous is miss faye dunaway, the two of them. - this is a movie about bank robbers. that's the appeal, that's the gimmick of the film is that you are rooting for them. you are not rooting for the cops. you are not rooting for the establishment. - [narrator] that same year, sidney poitier hit the screens too. "in the heat of the night" had one of the most memorable and controversial scenes in movie history. - the slap, let's talk about the slap. - sidney poitier's character, virgil tibbs asks endicott, the bigot, a question that he thinks is a little bit impertinent

and endicott slaps him in the face. (face slap) (face slap) - gillespie, yeah, you saw it. - oh i saw it. - well, what are you gonna do about it? - i don't know. - i remember the theater gasp. it was mostly black people in the theater and we all sort of went (gasps). the black man has slapped a white man but he lived to tell the tale, he survived that. - i just couldn't believe it, my mouth flew open in the movies. i was like, mom, they going to shoot him. (laughs) they gonna shoot him. it was great. - [narrator] then it was poitier again in "guess who's coming to dinner?" a movie that wouldn't even make a wave today. but back then, interracial romance was shocking. - "guess who's coming to dinner?"

i cried because i understood early on that we are all people, you know, black, white, gay, straight, and that's what that film was about. - one of the only ways that hollywood had to deal with race in the 1960s was via sidney poitier, who was the only first tier black movie star they had to work with. - he was always like a tinderbox. you know that he was always just on the edge of exploding but you always knew he couldn't. - you owed me everything you could ever do for me. like i will owe my son if i ever have another, but you don't own me! - [narrator] poitier was the biggest name in pictures. dustin hoffman? we never heard of him. but man, did he make an entrance. - the oldest end of the baby boom audience was essentially the age of benjamin braddock, dustin hoffman's character in "the graduate." that movie was released at the end of 1967 and he was probably 21 or 22 years old.

- [narrator] to this day, a lot of boomers point to "the graduate" as one of their all-time favorites. why did it hit such a nerve? because dustin hoffman was like us, imperfect and uncertain about his future. - have you thought about graduate school? - [benjamin] no. - would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? what was the point of all that hard work? - you got me. - this was real life. this is how people felt. how graduates felt about graduating. now what? - when the graduate hits and reaches theaters and stays there for two years and by the end of its run it's the third highest grossing movie in american history. that's really the first time in movies, i think that you see the spending power of the baby boomer generation. - [narrator] within a few short years, boomers shifted the landscape,

not as creators, but as consumers and hollywood knew it. by the end of the decade they realized something else. black people went to the movies too. - it's one of the greatest movie themes ever. you hear three notes of the wah-wah and it's "shaft." (shaft theme music) - i don't really like to watch movies more than once but you would watch that over and over. and even if i know it's coming on tonight, i'll watch it. but he was our hero growing up. - when "shaft" came out, the problems that existed in the black community were through the roof. it was haywire like they're killing black people. it was very scary to me. but when "shaft" came out in the 'blackploitation' movies came out, "shaft", "superfly", pam grier, all of that stuff, i didn't get to experience that

because my mother and father had my ass in the house when the light came on. so i would wake up the next day and then warren, glenn, and gregory and nathan and jocko the other kids on my block, they went to the mov... hold up, this killed me, by themselves to see "shaft" and leather coats and pimps and stuff like that. i wasn't part of that. - [narrator] the movies of the 60's inspired a whole new generation of filmmakers and actors in the 70's. martin scorsese, robert de niro, al pacino, francis ford coppola, steven spielberg. going to the movies would never be the same. - not every movie was, "the conversation," you know, "apocalypse now" or, they're all great, but you know they don't make them like that anymore. that's, all you gotta say. (upbeat music) (fisher investments) at fisher investments we may look like other money managers, but we're different. (other money manager) how so? (fisher investments) we're a fiduciary, obligated to act in our client'' best interest.

(fisher investments) so we don't sell any commission-based products. (other money manager) then how do you make money? (fisher investments) we have a simple management fee, structured so we do better when our clients do better. (other money manager) your clients really come first then, huh? fisher investments: yes. we make them a top priority, by getting to know their finances, family, health, lifestyle and more. (other money manager) wow, maybe we are different. (fisher investments) at fisher investments, we're clearly different. ( ♪♪ ) my name is jaxon, and i have spastic cerebral palsy. it's a mouthful. one of the harder things is the little things that i need help with: getting dressed, brushing your teeth, being able to go out with your friends by yourself. those are hard because you don't want help, but you need it. children like jaxon need continued support for the rest of their lives.

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mother: your help and your support, the need for it is endless. jaxon: thank you, 'cause there's a lot of people with disabilities out there. people like me. please join easterseals with your monthly gift right now. ( ♪♪ ) (upbeat music) with your monthly gift right now. - [tv reporter] hippies are very interesting and tempting to the young. they dress in bizarre and colorful ways.

they wear their hair long, their very name suggests that they are hip onto something good. - a hippie was pretty much someone who was left-leaning. they grew their hair long, they were unconventional they did what they wanted to do. go where you want to go, do what you want to do. ♪ you got to go where you want to go ♪ ♪ and do what you want to do - i grew my hair really long, started smoking dope. there were like always 10,000 barefoot hippies walking up and down the street of sunset, whiskey a go-go, but and a million other places like that. it was really kind of a wonderful moment. (yelling and laughing) - you've got long hair you're calling your girlfriend, your old lady and the girls would call their boyfriends their old man. and it was very unsexy and they all started wearing granny dresses.

- i can't imagine a decade that had more turmoil. and actually i'll say this too more beautiful clothes. i loved the fashions. (rock music) - [narrator] hippies were everywhere, but the largest clusters were in cities that had big music scenes. new york, los angeles, and especially san francisco. the counterculture even had its own anthem ♪ if you're going to san francisco... ♪ - it was an an anthem. i wasn't putting flowers in my hair, but there certainly were a lot of people around me who were doing it. - that scott mckenzie song was just like an advertisement for san francisco. - [narrator] and it helped turn the city's haight ashbury district

into the epicenter of the hippie movement. - [hippie] there's so much interest in the haight ashbury because it offers some kind of hope of all the people out there that are fews and hungry for some kind of spiritual meaning life. there is hope. - [narrator] it was all peace and love and flowers and headbands with a little dose of a magical substance known as lsd. - you're in love with the bush over there. you're in love with the tree over there. you're in love with the flower. oh, the water, oh, that fish. and then there that little pollywog you're in love with. you're in love with everything when you take acid. so if you give acid to all those kids they're all going to love each other and they all want to hang out with each other and they all want to play music and they want to have colorful clothes. and that's what happened in the haight ashbury. - turn on, tune in, drop out. - [narrator] the number one proponent of the hallucinogenic experience was timothy leary, the clinical psychologist

who once led research studies at harvard. - i mean, drop out of high school, drop out of college. - [narrator] they ended up firing him. (rock music) - [narrator] the main event for the summer of love was monterey pop. - it's where the record business met hippies. all the a&r guys were there and that's where janice joplin gets signed. (rock music) - they'd never seen anything like janice joplin. this is before she'd ever had a hit. (janice joplin singing) - there's a shot of her as she goes into the wings of of the stage and she does this little, little dance like this. she's, you know, she's so excited. she'd never had an audience of that size

and she had never done a show like that. it was the beginning of her real career. - [narrator] but by the fall of that year the haight turned into a bad scene, man. (horn playing) - [woman] it was beautiful at a time. but then all of a sudden heroin got in there and people were selling heroin to the kids. and so you now have kids that were doing psychedelics now taking heroin and that destroyed everything. so that was the death of the hippies. (upbeat music) - [narrator] in some ways, the summer of love was the last hurrah. 1968 was just around the corner. shit was about to get real. - [crowd] hey, hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today? hey, hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today?

(upbeat music)

hey, hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today? (gentle music) - [narrator] by the time the oldest baby boomers started graduating from college, the generation gap between our parents and us had widened into an abyss. (plane whirrs) (bomb explodes) (tv reporter in background speaking) - [narrator] it all came to a head in one of the most turbulent years in our history, 1968. (light music) - good evening, my fellow americans. - people all over the country are sitting in their living rooms watching him, having no idea what's coming. and then johnson says in this speech, "i shall not seek." - i shall not seek and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. - i think many people in our generation, were so angry about vietnam that the domestic agenda that lyndon johnson

was pushing through, they were accomplishing great things. you know, we just didn't give him credit for that, because the only thing that affected us was vietnam and he was still propagating that war. so it was, "lbj, how many kids did you kill today?" - [protesters] hey, hey, lbj! how many kids did you kill today? hey, hey, lbj! - [narrator] by 1968, one of the loudest voices against the vietnam war was dr. martin luther king, jr. - the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play - [narrator] that april when he went to memphis, he seemed to have his legacy on his mind. - i went to pick him up and i said, "i'm here. i'm ready to get my passenger." the kids picked up his briefcase by the door, grabbed it, and said, "daddy, don't leave us."

and he said, "oh, i'll be right back. i'm just going to memphis." "daddy, don't go. daddy, please don't leave us." such plea, i still hear it. - i may not get there with you. but i want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. (people cheering) - i have read that speech a hundred times. the only thing i can come up with is that maybe it had finally come down on him that he's not gonna live long and maybe he didn't care because he didn't like living in this world where we burn children. (distant siren wailing) - i said, "dr. king." that was it. i said, "dr. king." just as he straightened up, i said, "dr. king." and the bullet exploded in his face. (solemn music) - [tv reporter] martin luther king jr. was killed tonight

in memphis, tennessee. - [narrator] news traveled more slowly back then. in indianapolis, people who had turned out to support robert kennedy's presidential campaign heard it from him. (crowd indistinctly chattering) - [campaign staff] do they know about martin luther king? - i have some very sad news for all of you, and i think sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world. and that is that martin luther king was shot and was killed tonight in memphis tennessee. (supporters exclaiming) (solemn music) - [narrator] bobby kennedy was the hope for people who loved his brother, for people who hated the war. if you lived it, you know what happened that june, just two months after mlk. - [supporters] here we go, bobby! here we go! (supporters claps)

- my thanks to all of you. and now it's on to chicago, and let's win there! thank you very much. (supporters cheering) - we've just received our first news film taken at the ambassador hotel moments after senator kennedy was shot. (people panicking) - [crowd person 1] we need a doctor. (people panicking) - [crowd person 2] is there a doctor? is there a.. everybody, please, right here. - i heard the shots coming through the door. - there was blood coming out where he was lying down. they opened up his shirt and he was holding onto his side. - it just felt like the country was destroying itself, and there was a pervasive sense of hopelessness. and all our heroes will be killed. - my family loved the kennedy's. i mean, there's just no other way to put it. there were pictures of john kennedy in the house

and that kind of thing. so when robert kennedy was assassinated, they almost went numb. i have this very distinct memory of standing in front of the tv, watching the train procession with rfk's casket and everyone standing on the sidelines and waving flags and saluting. it seemed very remarkable 'cause there were people from every walk of life. they were every race, they were every age. the silence, i think, is what it was. that people were saluting and crying and waving and waving flags. and it felt like this seminal american moment. you know, i was five, so it was hard to sort of put it all together in my head. like, why is this happening and what does it mean and are we safe, and all of that. but that procession just was so regal and beautiful, but unbearably sad. (crowd yelling) (crowd cheering) - [narrator] that year's democratic convention was pure mayhem.

(ominous music) - [narrator] vice president hubert humphrey got the nomination. republicans rallied behind richard nixon. he was back and he promised to calm the chaos. - [pres. nixon] it is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the united states. - he saw the tensions that were in the country, especially around vietnam and civil rights. and he knew that there were people who didn't agree with the protest against the war, who certainly weren't on board with civil rights, and he felt he could be a voice for those people. that's what nixon plugged into. - [commentator] mr. nixon is appearing in the doorway now, preceded by members of his staff and members of the secret service. - having lost a close one eight years ago and having won a close one this year, i can say this. winning's a lot more fun. (laughs) (people cheering)

(rocket firing) - [astronaut] for all the people back on earth, the crew of apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. (orchestral music) - [narrator] the tumultuous year ended with something amazing. "earthrise", a photo shot by the crew of apollo 8. it was the first time we'd ever seen such a vivid photo of our entire planet. - wow! in many ways, you know, the whole environmental movement sort of began with realizing from that perspective who we are and where we are. it was so beautiful. - you know, it was, "whoa! (chuckles) that's where we live." it was unbelievable. - [narrator] it was a break from the madness of 1968. a shining moment for nasa, a gift for all mankind. - [astronaut] and from the crew of apollo 8, we close, with good night, good luck, a merry christmas, and god bless all of you,

all of you on the good earth.

(dramatic music) - [armstrong] that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. - [narrator] just a few minutes after we saw that first photo of earth from outer space, something even more incredible happened. (rocket firing) - [nasa official] lift-off. we have a lift-off. 32 minutes past the hour. (rocket blazing) (uplifting music) - [armstrong] the eagle has landed. - we were all there in my family. my brother, my sister, my mom, and dad. my grandparents lived upstairs. (chuckles) they had like an upstairs apartment in the house. they didn't come down very much, they were kinda old, but they came down for this one. - i have vivid memory sitting in front of the tv.

for some reason, it must be the time of day we had grilled cheese sandwiches, (chuckles) which was like, i don't know why i remember that. - when neil armstrong walked on the moon i was actually a commissioned second lieutenant and i was in flight school myself. we all hustled back from new orleans to meridian, mississippi so as to be able to get in place in front of the little black and white tv in the bachelor officer's quarters so we could watch man land on the moon. and sitting there that night mesmerized with this little, grainy, black and white tv watching neil armstrong emerge from the apollo capsule. (radio beeps) - [mission control] okay, neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now. - [technician] neil armstrong's been on the lunar surface now almost 45 minutes. - whew! boy. (chuckles) - [operator] we're gonna be busy for a minute. (operator speaking) (radio beeps) - it almost seemed like it was a tv show, you know. like you're seeing these ghostly images of what's happening on the moon. and then i remember going outside and getting out on the front lawn and looking up and seeing the moon and realizing

there's people up there. the world is forever changed. and even as a little kid, i thought to myself this is the most important thing that has ever happened in at least 500 years. and this is gonna be the most significant thing that's ever gonna happen for another 500 years. - [pres. nixon] hello, neil and buzz, i'm talking to you by telephone from the oval room at the white house, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. - [narrator] neil armstrong, buzz aldrin, and michael collins. at that moment in 1969, those guys were bigger than the beatles. (people cheering) - [narrator] i'd love to tell you, apollo 11 was the swan song of the 1960s. but you know what was going on here on planet earth. (bombs explode) things were rough. within a month of the moon landing, the manson murders shook us to our core. and a week after that, (upbeat music)

the counterculture threw itself the biggest party anyone had ever attended. - so woodstock was something i'd heard about, i think. i heard people were naked, so that got my attention. i didn't really know the music then, i was nine. i was way more interested in what was happening on the moon. - i had a ticket. i was dissuaded by some well-meaning people who thought that i would not survive it. - [narrator] woodstock was a mix of peace and love, music and mud, rebellion, and rain. - me, upon reflection, i'm thrilled to be able to say, "hey, i was there!" but at the time i thought, "this sucks." (laughs) - i was standing on the stage at a certain point with chip monck, who's that famous voice of woodstock. guy that's, you know, you hear saying, "the brown acid is not specifically... - [monck] specifically too good. - [john] ...that good". - [monck] it's just bad acid. it's manufactured poorly.

- [narrator] that moment, from the iconic woodstock documentary which forever shaped the way the event would be remembered, musician john sebastian was there as a spectator. he was unexpectedly summoned to the stage. - i don't know how it's done with half a million people, but i just remember, man, when i started singing and i might have had some, "oh, jesus, this is crazy," kind of thoughts. but really, by then, i'm concentrating on the job. so, i'm tuning on the way up the stairs and they announce me and i go on. ♪ then i know that all i've learned ♪ ♪ my kid assumes ♪ and all my deepest worries must be his cartoons ♪ all of us had had enormous amounts of experience playing for those crowds of, wow, 200.

man, i'm rocking! that was our game. but i have to say that the mood of that crowd, it was an intimate mood and everybody was more prepared than anybody thinks because 200 people will prepare you for half a million. - [narrator] what a way to end the 60s, the decade of peace and love. but the 70s were just around the corner and america's worst crisis, vietnam, was about to hit, a new low. (gentle music) what's up, you seem kinda sluggish today. things aren't really movin'. you could use some metamucil. metamucil's psyllium fiber helps keep your digestive system moving so you can feel lighter and more energetic. metamucil keeps you movin'. and try fizzing fiber plus vitamins.

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(upbeat music) a gamechanger for my patients. - 366 large blue capsules like this one, each containing a day of the year, including february 29th, will be placed in this glass bowl. - [narrator] in 1969, the u.s. held its first draft lottery since world war ii. the formula was simple.

if your number came up, you went to war. every american male between 18 and 26 was fair game. - i was at college, about 20 of us went into one room. we were scared to death 'cause this was our future. are you gonna live or are you gonna die? and i got picked. it's number 119. a lot of people burned these thinking they would get out of the draft that way, but it wasn't easy. but this is my draft card and i kept it on me for years. they would always say the reason we're in vietnam is for some cockamamie theory that they came up in the pentagon called, the domino theory. and that was, if south vietnam falls to the communists, then south korea's gonna fall to the communists, then laos and cambodia and so and so, so we gotta stop 'em there. i'm not gonna die because some general came up with this theory, and that's what the war was.

it was a theory! - [announcer] ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. - to protect our men who are in vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and vietnamization programs, i have concluded that the time has come for action. - [fredrik] he wants to disrupt the communists by hitting their sanctuaries in cambodia and laos. and so he expands the war. (missile explodes) in every part of the country, college students respond to this by mass protests and these become heated in a number of different places around the country. the most notable case, of course, is kent state. (dramatic music) - [chic] nixon announced the invasion of cambodia on a thursday, it was april 30th. it was not surprising to see students on college campuses

across the country already assembling on may 1st to protest the escalation of that war and to call for a national student strike. - [narrator] chic canfora was a sophomore at kent state. her brother, alan, was a junior. - i spray painted a building, wanting someone to have to sandblast off the words, u.s. out of cambodia. i threw a rock through the army recruitment office window because i wanted those recruiters the next day to sweep up that glass and know how angry i was that they were going to take my brother off to war. - [narrator] another kent state activist was gerald casale who went on to start the band, devo - kent was a small town. you had the right-wing working class townies who hated the students and were pro-war, and you had the students who were largely either apathetic about the war or anti-war and were afraid of the townies.

and of course, after the announcement by nixon, it was horrific because people were looking for trouble. it wasn't some informed, organized political thing going on there. it was fights. - [narrator] on saturday, the governor ordered the national guard to kent. by the time guardsmen arrived, the rotc building was engulfed in flames. - [operator] c13 advisors, they've cut the hoses up of the firetrucks up on campus. they've set fire to the buildings. - [narrator] by sunday, 1,000 national guardsmen occupied the kent state campus. - [press] governor, what sized organization do you think that you're up against? - [gov. rhodes] i think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in america. they can expect us to return fire. - we were simply too young and too naive to know the danger of all those inflammatory words and how easy it would be for the armed men

that they sent to face us on our college campus, who would then come and to see us as an enemy. they were literally putting targets on our backs. (dramatic music) - [gerald] the morning of may 4th, i already knew from all the communication that there was this big plan for the protest against the expansion of the war into cambodia. and we're gonna start it at noon on the commons. - and we started to chant, "strike, strike, strike." and that's when we were confronted by the ohio national guard, intent to disperse us. - "this is an illegal assembly. you are hereby instructed to leave immediately." - [guardsman] leave this area immediately. - there had never been a protest that i was involved in where anything more than tear gas was shot. and you run from the tear gas. the more brave students put a cloth over their face, try to grab the tear gas, and throw it back at them. - the national guard, just one contingent of them,

got down on their knees and lifted their weapons and aimed at us. my brother walked toward them. he was carrying a black flag in honor of the friend we had just buried and who had died in vietnam. and it was them that i walked up to him and said, "alan, they're aiming right at you." - and the next thing we know, they're all shooting these m1 rifles at us. (bell clangs) (guns firing) - my brother's roommate pulled me behind a parked car that within seconds was riddled with bullets. we could hear the bullet's ricocheting off the car. it was shattering the glass of the car over us as we crouched for 13 horrifying seconds just imagining all those people, including my brother, out there in the open, all those kids.

and then when it stopped, so many of us remember this eerie silence. total silence of shock and disbelief as it started to settle in what they had just done. - [narrator] chic's brother was shot. he survived, but four other students died. - [reporter] guardsmen opened fire on the students, killing four of them, two young men and two young women. (gentle music) - [reporter] there were protests by the students all over the country, some peaceful and some not. in columbus, ohio, 5,000 students marched on the state capitol. - [reporter 2] they came from 18 campuses across ohio. some from schools closed after the kent shootings. - there is a national uproar in response to kent state and it's a very tense moment in the nation's politics. - there are people today that still think we got what we deserved then. and surprisingly, nobody got shot when we were breaking windows or spray painting buildings. we got shot during a peaceful protest.

- [narrator] within weeks of the shooting. crosby, stills, nash, and young released the song, "ohio." ♪ tin soldiers and nixon coming ♪ ♪ we're finally on our own ♪ this summer, i hear the drumming ♪ ♪ four dead in ohio - if kent state had happened in the age of twitter, you know, maybe neil young would've just written a tweet about it. ♪ what if you knew her ♪ and found her dead on the ground ♪ ♪ how can you run when you know? ♪ - "what if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?" "how can you run when you know?" i was never the same after kent state. i know that's true of my brother. so often what comes out of that is a determination to make sure that that never happens to anybody else again. (somber music)

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let's say you're deep in a show ♪ be by your side... i'll be there... ♪ or a game or the game. on a train, at home, at work. okay, maybe not at work. point is at xfinity. we're constantly engineering new ways to get the entertainment you love to you faster and easier than ever. that's what i do. is that love island?

- [narrator] let's just take an inventory of the newsmakers we've seen so far. jfk, lbj, mlk, bobby kennedy, richard nixon, neil armstrong, sidney poitier. what do they have in common? they're all men. even as women started finding their voice, chauvinistic attitude still prevailed, as you can tell from this 1967 commercial for eastern airlines. - [commercial narrator] she's awkward. - [narrator] the point of the ad? - [commercial narrator] she wears glasses. i-i-i (stammering) honey. no, no, the other. oh no, aw, she's married. - [narrator] was that none of these women qualified to be flight attendants. - [commercial narrator] aw, but she's too young. - and it's a man who's doing the judging, of course. and the point of the ad apparently is that we are so careful in selecting a stewardess who's gonna be pleasing to you, our customer. so of course, the underlying message also is

that our customer is a man. (laughs) - [narrator] baby boomers were born into a world where women were not expected to work, unless the job was to serve men. - when i told my father i wanted to go to college his response was, that he had three sons to worry about and that i was just going to get married and have babies anyway. - there was a certain idea of what you were supposed to do. get married, have kids, be a perfect housewife. - my father told me that a woman should always be subordinate to the male. she should be very careful not to cost him too much money and she should be quiet. and he was very hostile to the idea of women talking and thinking. unfortunately for him, he had a daughter who talked and thought. (indistinct crowd chatter) (upbeat music) (gentle piano music)

- [narrator] in the early sixties, there was still a lot of things a woman could not do. apply for a bank loan, without a male co-signer. . in 1963, suzanne braun levine was a senior in college and unexpectedly pregnant. her father was a doctor. his colleagues refused to help. - but they did give him the name of this guy who worked out of a hotel room on 79th street. and i didn't even know what he was going to do, but it turned out his technique was to insert a piece of seaweed and that would supposedly induce, you know, a miscarriage. i was in labor for 10 hours, was so painful, i didn't, i wasn't expecting it. and my mother sat there with me, she didn't know what to do.

(somber music) - [narrator] that same year, 1963, a book came out that lit a fire for women, "the feminine mystique" by arthur betty friedan. sold 3 million copies and sparked a feminist revolution. - [tv commentator] this woman heaved a brick through the rose-colored picture window of the american suburban bungalow and invited the resident housewife to take a clear look at the outside world. - a woman today has been made to feel freakish and alone and guilty. if, simply, she wants to be more than her husband's wife. - [woman 1] it was a unbelievable thing because what she said was the exact opposite of what we've been hearing all our lives. - betty friedan's book, and then famously, the whole second wave of the feminist movement, just totally blew the lid off that and made women realize, my god, i'm really not alone at all. - [woman on tv] we come here as women who earned 58 cents

for every dollar earned by men. - [narrator] by 1972, gloria steinem was america's most famous feminist. - [gloria] we have come to the understanding that you can't marry power so we have to have our own power. - [narrator] as co-founder of "ms. magazine," she brought feminism to newsstands across america. suzanne braun levine was the magazine's first editor. - there was a period where i didn't wanna tell people i worked at ms. if i went like to a cocktail party, some guy would come over and go after me, often about abortion. his mission was to make the feminists cry. but there were also women who came over and said, "what the hell are you doing? "you're ruining my life. "you're planting ideas in my daughter's life, get lost!" - and i would like also to thank my husband fred for letting me come. (crowd laughs) i love to say that because it irritates the women's libbers

more than anything i say. (crowd laughs) - [suzanne] so phyllis schlafly came out of illinois. she was an attorney and a mother of six and set herself up to mobilize women who were very happy being housewives. - [narrator] schlafly was the face of the fight against feminism. - i really think you have to have psychological problems to still have a thing about women not having the right to vote. - she was so smug and, and hypocritical. i mean, here she was this working woman playing power politics who was telling women that they would be much happier at home. - boy, do i dislike that woman. and i very personally dislike her. i dislike the fact that she feels entitled to tell other women what to do. if i could put salt in her coffee, i would do it. (upbeat music) ♪ hey, hey, what do you say?

♪ ratify the era - [woman reporter] today the national woman's party lobbies for the 26th amendment to guarantee women equal rights under the law. that amendment would make women, people, in a legal sense for the first time. - [narrator] as schlafly and her army of supporters fought to stop the era, feminists, including anne richards, the one-time governor of texas, fought hard to pass it. - i remember my mother was highly animated about this and i remember a big fight she had with my dad because he was like, "why would we need an equal rights amendment?" and she really said, "well, you seem to think it's important when it comes to race, but you don't seem to think it's important when it comes to gender." - [narrator] the era didn't pass, still hasn't. but in 1973, women gained another right, to have safe, legal abortions. the supreme court decision came down the same day former president lyndon johnson died.

- [tv reporter] the other major story today, aside from the death of lyndon johnson, the tragic death and the hopes for peace in vietnam, is the decision of the united states supreme court. it handed down a historic decision about abortion. - the supreme court made the ruling and the supreme court is the law of our land. - i just remember the relief and the delight that we won this thing. (laughs) i guess it was one of the very first victories for the feminist agenda. (tv static buzzing) - [tv reporter 2] this is the first time the supreme court has ever granted a constitutional right, which it did so when roe was decided in 1973 and then took it away. - it's unthinkable that we now have the first generation that will literally be coming of age, you know in my lifetime, with no ability to make their own decisions about the most personal decision most folks will ever make. this will take years to win this right back.

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with cabenuva, you're good to go. (upbeat music) (somber music) (tv buzzing) - i remember my grandpa had a remote control for the tv. he would click the button, click, he would make an audible click, and then the dial on the tv would turn as if you were doing it manually. you would go like. (imitating tv dial clicking rapidly) - we didn't have a remote control, you had to get up and walk across the room and go (imitates dial clicking), and turn the channel. but you only had four channels so it's not that much of a workout. - there was no dvrs, there was no vcrs. there was just television. it was black and white, and those pictures of a kid sitting right in front of the damn thing, that's true. you know, you just literally sit down on the floor like eight inches from the screen (laughing) and watch this thing. (chuckles) (somber piano music) - 98% of my time was on that thing. what my parents called the goddamn tv! all we had was black and white because they didn't value the tv and they wouldn't even, though color was certainly available,

i didn't know what i was missing. (gentle piano music) (upbeat music) - [narrator] the following program is brought to you in living color on nbc. (upbeat music) - i remember when we got our first color tv. that was incredibly exciting. - [philip] not in my house. this show is brought to some of you in living in color, it should have said. but for philip, this show will remain in black and white. - [narrator] it's true. as kids, a lot of boomers did watch too much television. it was fun. it was an escape. - think about what was going on in the 1960s. there's protests going on and all the time, we're at war, there's the civil rights movement, and here on television we have "gilligan's island" and "bewitched" and "i dream of genie." there was just this extreme disconnect

between reality and television in a way i don't think we ever saw, even before and certainly since. - [narrator] but then with "the dick van dyke show," things started to get a little more real. (upbeat music) - [tv announcer] starring dick van dyke. - right, it was kind of a breakthrough. why did it ring so true? maybe because carl reiner's whole modus operandi was he would say to his writers every week, "what happened at your house this week?" - i was once asked the question, "what are your five favorite shows?" my answer was, "dick van dyke, dick van dyke, dick van dyke "dick van dyke and dick van dyke." it was brilliant. (woman yelling) (audience laughing) - still kind of looks like these other shows that we have seen before, right? the family sitcom. but there were differences. they realized pretty quickly that mary tyler moore herself was funny. - honey, i'm home! alright. (audience laughing) - and so they started writing bigger, funny plot lines for her.

as opposed to a lot of times, the woman would sort of be the sort of straight character. - honey, did a package come for me? (audience laughing) (upbeat music) - [narrator] four years after dick van dyke went off the air america fell in love all over again. there was something about mary. ♪ you might just make it after all ♪ (upbeat music) - [narrator] at the height of the woman's lib movement. mary richards was a new woman for the seventies. - it was not the traditional story. which was a woman is incomplete, until she meets the right guy. and that was remarkable. - the creators of the show, james l. brooks and alan burns were sticklers for reality and they really wanted to reflect the times and they decided to hire women to write for the show. and so their first hire was treva silverman. - [narrator] treva silverman,

was one of the very few successful female comedy writers at the time. she and james l. brooks were friends from their days in new york city. when she was performing in piano bars and writing comedy. - he said, "so what are you doing now?" and i said, "i'm just about to wash my hair." he said, "no, no, no. career-wise, writing-wise. we're gonna be doing mary tyler moore series." and then came the words that ring in my memory. "you're the first person we're calling. we would like you to write as many as you would like." that was a dream come true. i thought, "i'm home." - [narrator] to generate story ideas, brooks and burns would ask their writers "what happened at your house this week?" straight out of the carl reiner playbook. - so jim and alan called me in, before we started talking about the episode, i was telling them something that had happened to me the week before. there was a fedex guy or some package guy who came

and he called me, "ma'am." but i'm 30 years old, why is this person calling me ma'am? and so alan said, "oh, that's an episode." - excuse me, ma'am. ma'am? - ma'am? oh, you mean me? - yes ma'am. - ma'am. - so it's called, "today, i am a ma'am." it's a big moment in a lot of women's lives. when the time comes that someone calls you, ma'am, instead of miss. - this kid comes over to me and he calls me, ma'am! ma'am! - hm, your first time? - yeah. (audience laughing) - [narrator] if mary tyler moore pushed boundaries, "all in the family," exploded them. - sticks and stones may break my bones, but you are one dumb polack. (audience laughing) - archie bunker was funny actually. i remember archie bunker, but then i remember also thinking that, "wait a minute, what archie bunker thinks it's not that funny." (laughs) it's actually rather ugly.

- i definitely remember watching "all in the family" with my dad and my dad laughing uproariously at the archie bunker. what a show that is. i feel very lucky to have met norman lear in my life. this this guy, he's a national treasure, a living legend. - i think tv could be split into two sections, bn and an. before norman and after norman. that's how huge "all in the family" was. - well, it looked like something we'd seen before, a living room, you know, a couch, an easy chair, you know, a dinner table, but it was about something, it was about the generational rift. it was about traditional values versus what was happening across the country, which was everything was changing and changing fast. - with or without protestors this country would still have the same problems. - what problems? - well, it's the war, the racial problem, the economic problem, the pollution problem. - oh, come on. if you want a nitpick. (audience laughing)

- nitpick? let me tell you something, mr. bunker- - no, let me tell you something mr. stivic, you are a meathead. (audience laughing) - the show was such a gigantic sensation that richard nixon, there were tapes of richard nixon talking to ehrlichman and haldeman about that that nice archie bunker guy. why are they picking on this guy? - [nixon] the general trend of it is to downgrade him and upgrade the hippie son-in-law make the square hard hat out to be bad. - [man] what's it called? i've never seen it. - [nixon] archie is the guy's name. now that's real family entertainment, isn't it? - how cool though? like you go from gilligan's island in the decade before to norman lear, a tv creator actually attracting the ire of nixon, the president. like, i think that is when we knew tv had arrived. (upbeat music) - [narrator] and it evolved. "all in the family" spinoff "the jeffersons" and other sitcoms like "sanford and son," and "good times" continued to break boundaries.

tv families started looking more like the people a lot of us grew up with. those shows were, to quote the great jimmy walker. - dyn-o-mite! (audience laughing) (upbeat music) ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ woah, limu! we're in a parade. everyone customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. and you have this dream every night? yeah, every night! hmm... i see. (limu squawks) only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

mom where's my homework? mommy! hey hun - sometimes, you just need a moment. self-care has never been this easy. gummy vitamins from nature made, the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. (traffic sounds) (police sirens blaring) - [tv reporter] five men were arrested early saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment at the democratic national committee. - [narrator] at first they might have seemed like a run of the mill break in, but the place that got hit was the dnc. and we learned in the months that followed the burglars had direct ties to the white house. - in recent months, members of my administration and officials of the committee for the re-election of the president, including some of my closest friends and most trusted aids, have been charged with involvement

in what has come to be known as the watergate affair. (intense music) (police siren blaring) (indistinct police radio chatter) - we are beginning these hearings today in the atmosphere of utmost gravity. - i mean, it was the most flagrant sort of corruption. and there it was on television every day and the world stopped. washington stopped. this was must see tv. - i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. - did somebody not watch watergate? it was unbelievable. and if you were an anti-nixon person like me, it was a kind of gleeful experience of watching everything you imagined to be true be shown to be worse than you imagined. - sure, you couldn't help it. first of all, i would come home and turn on the tv to watch what i wanted to watch, and forgot the hearings were going up. so i had to watch that. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [narrator] virtually every baby boomer

remembers the watergate hearings. 85% of the country tuned in. for 51 days they were carried live on all three networks. - {john chancellor] good evening, the biggest white house scandal in a century. the watergate scandal broke wide open today. - [committee member] mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? - i was aware of listening devices, yes sir. - [narrator] everything that happened in the oval office almost 4,000 hours of conversation was on tape. - [man] now, on the investigation, you know the democratic break-in thing. that the way to handle this now is for us to have walters call pat gray, and just say, "stay the hell out of this." - [nixon] all right, fine. - [narrator] that conversation ended the nixon presidency. two years after the infamous break-in nixon resigned. - to leave office before my term is completed

is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. but as president, i must put the interests of america first. - it was only the tapes that actually provided what was called the smoking gun that led to the forced resignation of the president. - therefore, i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow, vice president ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. - [michael] he marches out to the helicopter with his wife, pat and with the fords. and he raises his two arms in the victory sign. pat nixon said, "it was like a funeral in the helicopter." - i watched the nixon resignation speech with my parents in their room on the black and white tv. we jumped around, we were happy. ding-dong, the witch is dead. - [narrator] nixon leaving on that chopper was kind of the end of an era and man, (chuckles) what an era it was.

we watched one president die, another refused to run and a third resigned. by this point, boomers were working, starting families, raising the kids that would become the next generations. and just as their parents once did, a lot of those kids would grow up and find fault with the older generation. - there is a very strong perception that baby boomers did extremely well and then they just disregarded younger generations. they pulled up the ladder after climbing it, is the way that this is often put. - the baby boomers are basically kind of our parents. i think there are mixed feelings towards that group of people. i think they did enact a lot of social change but i think we also saw them sort of, i wanna say, sell out the social change, when they were able to sort of buy nikes and bmws and stuff like that. - it's easy to hate on the boomers because they are these like gorgons just squatting on this ill-gotten gain.

- every generation hates baby boomers, 'cause baby boomers think that they're just the be all and end all of everything. - [narrator] maybe some boomers did sell out but one thing you can't take away from my generation is that we changed the world. now it's up to the next generations to leave their own mark. - there was a mixture of us but i'm proud to have been part of that generation. the woodstock generation, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement. i feel privileged to have been part of all of that and i feel terrible that this new generation has to go back and fight for a lot of those rights today. - we as a generation, maybe we didn't do such a good job, as evidenced by everything. so, (laughs) so it's up to you. maybe our parents thought the same thing as well that it was gonna be up to us. - it is going to be fascinating to see what happens with a generation

that are losing rights right now. and i have full confidence that if we support them and believe in them, them that they can meet this moment. but it is going to be their fight. (uplifting music) (uplifting music) (music tones) there is something happening. >> so much happening in the world. bringing relief if many