AN INTENSE AND MANY-TEXTURED MOMENT

Reading through the manuscripts that have now become this Special Issue of SCIENCE & SOCIETY on "Color, Culture, and Gender in the 1960s," your Editor experienced a profound nostalgia, a being-swept-back to the enormous sense of power we felt in our veins when we were able to organize 10,000 demonstrators against the War in Vietnam in April 1965 (we could never have imagined that this number would rise to one million in 1969); to the exhilaration of joining together with not just other people but other peoples in the Civil Rights struggles (how initially awkward but eventually liberating that cultural moment was); to the electifying impact of new ideas, and the sense of solidarity with poor and exploited people around the world.

In their Introduction, guest editors Paul Mishler and Alan Wald pose questions of interpretation: were the 1960s a harbinger, or rehearsal, for fundamental social change; an anomaly; or the manifestation of a periodic social safety valve actually ensuring the long-term stability of capitalist society? Why did the magnificent democratic social energy unleashed then subsequently dissipate? The answers to these (and related) questions will depend on our evolving understanding of the contemporary hegemonic world order, as well as on detailed study of the histories of the varied sites of struggle examined in the contributions to this issue. But we learn, I think, two major lessons.

First, there was not one 1960s; there were many. Women, people of color, gays and lesbians, Third World people, materially comfortable but morally marginalized students, people from long-standing left political movements, and workers (we should not forget that the 1960s was a decade of organizing by farm workers, teachers, teamsters, many others) -- all had distinct ways of coming to consciousness, and thinking through the meaning of liberation, organization, movement goals, etc. We are still in the process of the long dialog sorting out ways to promote mutual growth and unity through this diversity of cultural and political experiences.

Second, we will always need to struggle for our collective memory -- for our heritage and our history -- against the powerful hegemonic force of the ruling ideological apparati that deny, co-opt, subvert and trivialize that history. Amnesia is not only a feature of Second Wave Feminism, and it is certainly not some sort of personal defect in the 1960s generation! It is the result of powerful structural and institutional forces arrayed against efforts to recuperate the insurgent energy of the "Years of Hope and Days of Rage," and transmit it to the next generation -- something that the capitalist establishment greatly fears, perhaps like nothing else.

Our special thanks are due to the guest editors, Paul Mishler and Alan Wald, for their devoted labors in bringing together this remarkable set of studies. As they indicate, no single collection of papers on this topic could be complete or definitive, and we hope to re-visit the 1960s moment on other occasions. Readers are invited to send in their comments, insights, disagreements and perspectives, so that we can keep the discussion going in subsequent issues.

D.L.