A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost
By Frye Gaillard
University of Georgia (NewSouth Books Imprint), 2023
Hardback: $35.00; Paperback: $29.95
Genre: American History
Reviewed by Edward Journey
I was seven years old in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. I did not quite understand what was going on, but I was aware of the somber tones of the newscasters, the hushed tones of the grown-ups, and the tension around me. In my admittedly tricky memory, I have always remembered those days as grey and overcast.
Since then, I have studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it has never come into focus as clearly as it does in Frye Gaillard’s succinct description in A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost. The whole book is like that, bringing clarity to the decade of the 1960s with probing research, personal experiences, and a sharply thorough overview.
As more distance separates us from the events of the 1960s, its considerable accomplishments and milestones seem to be discounted by some. Gaillard finds the links and makes the connections as he reminds us why that American decade is still so important. A Hard Rain, first published in 2018, has been reissued by the University of Georgia Press under its NewSouth Books imprint. Now, several years after its original publication and with a presidential election looming, it feels more timely than ever in our divided nation. The issues that roiled us then are still roiling us now, and the stakes seem even higher. Gaillard, a Mobile native, has been a reporter and writer for the past half century, covering historical events, popular culture, and his personal takes on his life and times in dozens of books. He is former writer-in-residence at the University of South Alabama.
In the preface, Gaillard references defining moments of the 1960s in which “we seemed on the brink of a different kind of greatness, rooted not only in our national might, but in our capacity for introspection.” He examines the decade year by year, providing the momentous events and tempering the narrative with reminders of what was going on simultaneously. He provides many examples of popular culture, especially music, illuminating and fueling the events of the day. As a college student, young activist, and reporter, Gaillard had the opportunity to meet many of the personalities he covers, and to interview others in later years.
A Hard Rain is a masterful book, a reflection of a lifetime of astute observation and pondering. Practically forgotten people or events take on new life and relevance in these pages. Civil rights is ever-present in the book as it transforms from a regional to a national movement after Lyndon Johnson shepherded the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964. As the decade moves on, Gaillard documents the other movements that followed in the wake of civil rights – feminism, gay rights, anti-war, the environment. The final chapter, “Redemption,” is a sensitive look at the emerging movement for Native rights. In a Washington hearing, when a member of Congress asks, “What do you Indians want?” Sioux tribal member Alex Chasing Hawk responds, “A leave-us-alone law!”
Gaillard’s stunning segues make the same connections that many readers may be making. His description of the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers pivots into Eudora Welty’s New Yorker story “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” – a story ignited by Evers’s death. Gaillard points out the startling coincidence that on June 11, 1963, the day that Evers was murdered by a white supremacist in his Jackson, Mississippi, driveway, the following events also occurred: George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to “block” segregation at the University of Alabama; John F. Kennedy presented a seminal address on civil rights; and a Buddhist monk, assuming the lotus position, set himself on fire on a busy Saigon intersection to protest the brutality of the Diem regime in South Vietnam.
Gaillard gracefully traverses the decline of Lyndon Johnson, the rise of George Wallace, and the transformation of the Republican party – formerly the “party of Lincoln” – from Barry Goldwater’s disastrous 1964 run for the presidency to the ascendance of Ronald Reagan and to the Republicans ultimately becoming the party of fear and division that we know today. He follows the “emerging sense of grievance” after the hope and optimism at the beginning of the decade.
A Hard Rain traces the growing American involvement in Vietnam along with the growing antiwar movement. In a choice that is typical of Gaillard’s fresh take on ‘60s history, he includes excerpts from James Simon Kunen’s The Strawberry Statement, the candid comments of a nineteen-year-old Columbia undergrad participating in the university’s 1968 sit-ins and campus takeovers. “I am not having good times here,” Kunen writes, musing on the possibility that he’s there “to be cool or to meet people or to meet girls (as distinct from people) or to get out of crew or to be arrested”; he admits to the possibility that he might be there “to precipitate some change at the University.”
Activist H. Rap Brown announced in the ‘60s that violence is “as American as apple pie.” In the crucible year of 1968, with assassinations, widespread protests, riots, and general unrest, Gaillard reminds the reader of that transcendent moment on Christmas Eve when Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read the creation story from Genesis. That was also the mission in which astronaut Bill Anders’s Earthrise photo, perhaps “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken,” was revealed. A friend of Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman said, “You have bailed out 1968.”
Gaillard’s narrative flow and intertextual weaving of the 1960s capture a decade that is integral to the identity of the nation. His personal insights add valuable perspective to not only the years in which he came of age but to the years in which we currently live. In the early sixties, our bogeyman was Russia’s Nikita Krushchev and his threat to “bury” us; today, our bogeyman is just as likely to be homegrown.
Edward Journey, a retired university professor and theatre professional living in Birmingham, regularly shares his essays in the online journal “Professional Southerner” (www.professionalsoutherner.com).
