The 1960s will end some time around 2050

One of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign themes is that his election will bring an end to the infighting between the factions of U.S. society who lived through the social turmoil of the late 1960s.

He thinks that choosing a president who did not come of age during the “Summer of Love” or the My Lai Massacre will allow the nation as a whole to move forward, rather than getting caught up in the continuing battles of the culture war between so-called liberals and conservatives.

Critics of the Vietnam War march along Michigan Avenue in conjunction with the 1968 Democratic Convention. These placards (below) were distributed to Chicagoans who approved of the brutal police treatment towards the protesters, which the Walker Commission labeled a "police riot." Photographs provided by Chicago History Museum.

But the degree to which the spirit of the ‘60s is embedded in the mindsets of the people (both “dove” and “hawk”) who lived through the era ensures that not even Obama in the White House could bring an end to the social squabbles that had their roots planted 40-something years ago.

The latest outburst of ’60s tensions came earlier this week when 58-year-old Joseph Pannell said he would not fight extradition to face criminal charges related to the 1969 shooting of a Chicago police officer.

Understandably, the officer who was shot, Terrance Knox, remains upset, particularly because Pannell has managed to live the bulk of his life in freedom in Canada without having to face criminal charges.

At the time of the shooting, Pannell was 19 and a sympathizer of the Black Panther Party, which saw itself as a revolutionary group willing to use force to defend the civil rights of black people. Many African-American people who lived during the times remember the Panther party as being a group offering social programs such as free breakfasts to help impoverished West and South side neighborhoods.

Knox is firmly on the other side of the culture clash, telling the Chicago Sun-Times that Parnell of the Black Panther Party, “is what I would consider in today’s terms a terrorist.”

I know Knox is not alone in that belief. When the City Council seriously considered a proposal two years ago to rename a one-block strip of Monroe Street to honor Fred Hampton (the Black Panther leader in Chicago who was killed during a Dec. 4, 1969, police raid), the Fraternal Order of Police used its clout with white aldermen to squash the measure.

Some black activists to this day insist the police raid was an assassination of a budding black leader, although prosecutors never did bring criminal charges against anyone in connection with the incident.

Law enforcement officials prefer to remember Hampton and the Panthers as a criminal element not worthy of praise. They definitely do not want to be reminded that the reason Panthers felt the need to arm themselves was because they believed African-American people back then were being harassed – rather than protected – by the police.

The presence of the Oakland, Calif.-based Black Panthers in Chicago will always be controversial, even though many of the group’s survivors have moved well into mainstream society.

Bobby Rush – who now laughingly tells the story of becoming a founding member of the party’s Illinois chapter after national Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were arrested in Chicago and knew of no one else in the city who could bail them out of jail – is possibly the biggest success story.

He has served in Congress since 1993, and currently represents the South Side and inner southwest suburbs. To some, even that is controversial.

The majority African-American city neighborhoods in his district view him as an old warrior from the ‘60s who is looking out for their interests, while some in the white suburban communities are wary of him.

In one case, former Crestwood Mayor Chester Stranczek tried to use his political influence to get his town drawn into another congressional district, saying he did not believe someone with Rush’s background could adequately represent the ideas of the white ethnics who live there.

Perhaps Obama’s presence on the political scene is a sign that, to quote Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come.”

After all, Pannell told reporters this week the reason he is now willing to return to Chicago after decades of living a peaceful life in the suburbs of Toronto is that he sees the presence of Obama and the way he is perceived by people in the United States as evidence that he might get a fair hearing in the judicial system.

But let’s be honest. While some of us like to mock Hillary Clinton’s claim many years ago that a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” was targeting her husband’s presidency, she wasn’t exactly being paranoid.

There WERE social conservatives with ample funding from sympathetic foundations who were anxiously awaiting, readying themselves to pounce on Bill Clinton the moment he dropped his pants at an inopportune moment.

The choice of Hillary Clinton as president will merely stoke the raw emotions of those people (thereby ensuring that the 2010s will be a repeat of the 1990s), their embers of anger will not die out just because of Barack Obama.

For some, the presence of a non-white man as Leader of the Free World may even cause more of an outburst than the presence of Hillary. The split caused by the ‘60s is not going to end anytime soon.

Who is winning the split is determined largely by the perceptions of the individual. Recently on MSNBC, a panel of professional political pontificators was talking about the presidential campaigns when conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said the situation in this country remained largely a battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda, “and John Wayne is winning.”

To his mindset, I’m sure he likes the idea of the tough-talking cowboy actor beating up on the 60s generation star of such films as “9 to 5” and “Barbarella” (my favorite for pure cheesiness is “Cat Ballou”) whose opposition to the Vietnam War was so intense that she is still remembered for the North Vietnamese propaganda photographs she posed for alongside an anti-aircraft gun.

But would a country where “John Wayne is winning” seriously be banning cigarette smoking in public – the way Illinois and 21 other states have? I can’t help but think that Jane has ol’ John in a headlock and has the potential to drop him for good.

Whenever I think about it philosophically, I realize the 1960s will not end until some time between the years 2050 and 2060.

Think about it. Every generation manages to produce a few members who, through good health and the luck of the draw, live past 100. So someone in the United States who was a teenager or college-age person back in the 1960s and manages to live long enough will become a centenarian at about the middle of the 21st century – similar to how the last veteran of the Civil War didn’t die until 1959.

Only when all of the children of the ‘60s are gone will the unrest that sprang up in the decade come to an end.

Of course, that leaves one question. Will the last ‘60s child be a “hawk” or a “dove?” Are we destined for the sight about 40 years from now of the last ‘60s child wearing a tie-dyed shirt and proclaiming the virtues of the flower children over a racist society?

Or is it going to be someone who supported the idea of the U.S. military in Vietnam, proclaims him or herself to be a “real American,” and thinks that his survival longer than any other of his generation is the ultimate proof that, “the hippie freaks lost.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I love the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Here are entries concerning the Black Panther Party (http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/142.html) and civil rights protests in Chicago (http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/293.html).

Here’s a Panther perspective (http://www.blackpanther.org/legacynew.htm) about the organization denounced by then-FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover as, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”