American Experience: 1964 DVD

What is past is prologue. So many movements and ideas formed or took root in this one year, half a century ago, in the U.S. For all the changes that began that year, some things have not changed enough. Racism is still so very alive and festering in our country half a century since that year. The neo-conservative movement has only grown and spread with the Tea Party, promoted daily by by Fox News an d right wing radio and TV commentators doing so much to drive wedge iues deep into the national consciousne, and pa of their very agenda-driven subjective point-of-view as as fair balanced news. They still complain about a liberal biasin the news media, when in fact, what most people watch for news today is the Fox brand of conservative opinion. In 1964 there were three major networks and NO cable news channels at all. People were opposed to Pay TV on principle. There were the Big 3 television networks: ABC, CBS ad NBC. No PBS for another five years. This outstanding programs covers so much of what too place that year, in politics, activism, popular culture, sports and TV. For those of us who lived through it, it was a reminder of the start of a tumultuous decade. When we were living through that year, we really did not understand the profound long term effects that would down through time from events that took place in 1964. Just as we have no idea if anything of significance from 2014 will be remembered and put into a documentary about THIS year, half a century from now in 2064. We may think the continuing racial strife in Ferguson, Miouri and the growing threat of posed by global climate change and an Ebola pandemic would be remembered as significant events of this year 50 years in the future from today. One important omiion from the documentary was the still un-solved October 12, 1964 close-range handgun murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer while she was out taking a walk in a secluded area of Washington, D.C. along the Baltimore Ohio canal towpath near the Georgetown neighborhood where she lived. She was a 43 year old artist, socialite, intimate friend and confidante of President Kennedy, ex-wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer (who oversaw the CIAs program Operation Mockingbird which cultivated Agency-sympathetic reporters in every major city and college newspaper, magazine, radio and television outlet in the country). She read the Warren Report when it came out three weeks before her own murder. She was very upset by its conclusions and intended to go public with her objections -EUR and with her insider knowledge. This would have made her the first whistleblower to go public with critical objections to the Report. She had first met JFK when they both were in prep school in 1936. She was social friends with the Kennedys in the 1950s. After her divorce from Cord Meyer, when she became intimate friends with then-President Kennedy she kept a diary (1961-63). Her diary has never surfaced publicly. Her life and murder has been extensively documented in two non-fiction books, one from 1998, A Very Private Woman by Nina Burleigh; and another from 2012, Marys MOsaic by Peter Janney. Her still-unsolved murder in 1964 still haunts us today, and it remains part of the many significant events of that very unforgettable and violent year in American history. Her life and death were unknown to most Americans in 1964, yet she lived through the Kennedy years and died in that year of 1964. Many people believe she was a potential whistle-blower who was neutralized before she could act on her convictions. Newspapers at the time did not mention her connection to CIA officer Cord Meyer or her relationship with President from 1961 until his aaination in November 1963. Even though her sister was married to another important power broker in D.C., Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post newspaper empire. She continues to be written out of the history of 1964. No documentary has been made about her. A brief reference to her in the film would be an important revision to include EUR and would complete the many significant events of that year covered in the film. Nonethele, 1964 is an outstanding documentary. It captures vividly one of those rare years in which so much comes together which would have a profound effect on the next 50 years. Yet at the time, we couldnt poibly be aware of the long term importance of the events as we lived through them.

If you were like me, you were looking at high school graduation soon. Your father was a WWII vet, and - aside from the draft - you thought it was wholly natural that you expected to go in the service thereafter or certainly after college. But this puzzling international event was evolving in some place called Veeyet Nam that wasnt looking much like your fathers war. Out of the jumble of my memories, American Experiences 1964 effectively extracted all the background and context of those times against and within which my adult life experiences began to form. PBS does such a superlative job of re-creating those times that I had to obtain a copy to show all my adult children, to try to give them as full a sense as possible of what it was like, what I was/we were seeing and how those times form the lives and perspectives and beliefs we possess today. If you were of that era, 1964 will take you right back there as well.

There are so many similarities in 1964 and 2016. This is an excellent documentary DVD that facilitates learning about todays issues.

Great film! 1964 is the last year of Americas sense of invincibility and the beginning of a new political awareness and activism on the extreme far right that later dominated society.

Fantastic DVD! A must see for all!

This film covers a variety of events and situations that have shaped the America we know today. It is incredibly educational and yet, still has a powerful emotional impact. Personally, I was not alive during this time, 1964, but I am very pleased to be able to see the multiple experiences that previous Americans went through. Overall, I recommend this product to anyone who would like to learn, and share, knowledge about one of Americas most precious turning points.

This is the perfect history lesson for kids and grandkids of the bay-boomer generation because it shows how so many things that happened in 1964 have shaped the world we live in in 2014.

Fabulous historical programming by PBS. This type of programming shows the true and unique contribution that Public Television makes to our society. This should be shown in every U.S. History class in every high school in America.

I was an undergraduate student in 1964 and only one year before my wife and I were married. This video shows much of what I watch most nights on TV News as a teenager growing up in South Carolina and through-out college and continued through 1969. The first years the same unrest continued. While a student of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY my wife and I watching local TV to witness two of our long time friends being arrested and thrown in a police paddy wagon in Louisville, KY, while they were demonstrating for civil rights in the downtown. I am purchasing American Experience: 1964 DVD by PBS so I can pass it on to my children and grandchildren for them to better understand the history their parents lived while a teenager through becoming a young adult. I think they need to know what happened in the 1960s and early 1970s concerning civil rights and freedom of speech.