Traveling Soul by Todd Mayfield

Author:Todd Mayfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2017-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

As the year wore on, more heavy changes came over the world. In July, humanity broke its bond with Mother Earth and put its first footprints on the moon. In August, the biggest gathering of peace-loving hippies in history took place on Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York. The Woodstock concert marked the climax of the 1960s. Thirty-two of the decade’s most influential acts performed for four hundred thousand people, and the concert was captured in a film that encapsulated the spirit of the times—the escapism into drugs, the belief that music and love could stop war, the certainty that the youth (at least, white youth) would change the world.

Hendrix closed the festival with a new band he called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, later shortened to Band of Gypsys. On a cold Monday morning, he ripped into a version of the “Star Spangled Banner” that became a haunting epitaph for the era. He put every moment of the brutal, wonderful decade through his guitar, making the national anthem by turns tragic, gorgeous, and jarring—sometimes it sounded like war, like sirens wailing and bombs dropping; sometimes it sounded like rock ’n’ roll, like hallucinogenic drugs and free love; sometimes it sounded like chaos, like riots and assassinations.

The next month, the Chicago Seven went on trial for inciting the riot at the DNC the year before, and a new group called the Weathermen committed acts of terrorism intended to cripple the American government. Meanwhile, the movement remained without leadership except for the Panthers, who crumbled under pressures from within and without.

Anger in the militant black community surged as conservative white America became more entrenched against it. The pendulum King had started swinging to the left in the late 1950s, toward black people’s rights, toward equality, now swung almost all the way back. The Panthers’ violent image only helped it swing faster. Even liberal whites began distancing themselves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.