This Is America? The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas

Winner of the Edward H. Tihen Historical Publications Award from the Kansas State Historical Society Communities across America were thrown into upheaval during the 1960s, when thousands of young people began to publicly question the status quo. Grassroots social movements sprung up on hundreds of college campuses and often spread to surrounding towns, where participants debated race, the role of government, Vietnam, feminism, the cold war, and other issues of the day. Yet this dynamic did not occur in a vacuum: Americans that supported the status quo came together to oppose the activists, and joined a national debate on the meaning of citizenship and patriotism. Rusty L. Monhollon uncovers the voices of ordinary people on all sides of the political spectrum in the university town of Lawrence, Kansas. He reveals how Americans from a range of ideological and political perspectives responded to and tried to resolve political and social conflict in the 1960s. By focusing on a single community, Monhollon vividly demonstrates that the war at home reached deep into the nation's core, and affected the lives of ordinary citizens on a daily basis.

Rusty L. Monhollon is assistant professor of history at Hood College.