Fifty Years Ago

In June of 1963, One magazine, the first gay mag in the country, which was published from 1952 to 1967, ran an article supporting "homophile marriage" - by which was meant, not legal same-sex marriage as we are fighting for today, but simply the settled, permanent state of living together with a lover -something sneered at then and now by the party boys.  Read the full article here.

It's interesting sometimes, and instructive as well, to reflect on the changes that the passing of the years brings to this old world, always spinning in circles, heedless of its course, lurching and bumping along. 

A half-century ago this week, your Head Trucker was exulting in the end of term at grade school and the beginning of summer vacation. I got my first sunburn that summer, after frolicking all day long in just a swimsuit on the beach where my family was vacationing. We never had a movie camera, nor did we ever get to California, but this film fragment will serve to show what the summer of '63 looked like on the beaches of America - and, er, some rather fetching beach boys too:



In Rome, the prelates of the Second Vatican Council were still mourning the death of their convenor, Pope John XXIII, whose funeral was on June 6th. His successor, Pope Paul VI, was elected on June 21st.



On June 11th, Alabama Governor George Wallace made his "stand in the schoolhouse door" to block integration of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Later that day, Wallace gave way when federal troops (nationalized Alabama National Guards) appeared to enforce the integration order of the federal district court; James Hood and Vivian Malone were subsequently enrolled that same day, the first black students ever admitted to a public university in Alabama.





That evening, President Kennedy delivered his landmark Civil Rights Address to the nation live on television, "transforming civil rights from a legal issue to a moral one." The Civil Rights Act he called for in the address was enacted a year later by Congress, seven months after Kennedy's assassination.



In the early morning hours after Kennedy's speech, civil-rights activist Medgar Evars was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi, shot in the back in the carport of his home. His killer, a member of the White Citzens Council, was not convicted of the murder until 1994.





Also on June 12th, the movie Cleopatra premiered in New York City. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Burton, the four-hour-long film was one of the most expensive ever made; despite being the highest-grossing film of the year, it did not earn back its production costs and nearly bankrupted its maker, 20th Century Fox.



In Washington, the Post Office Department was preparing to unveil its brand new Zip Code numbering system on July 1st, and it would take repeated cajoling in a stream of public-service ads over the next few years to get the public used to the irritation of having to add a number to the end of an envelope address:





But Hertz was willing to put you in a new car via air mail at any time, with or without a zip code:



Across the ocean, Britain was reeling from the sordid revelations of the infamous Profumo Affair. Secretary of War John Profumo had just resigned on June 5th in the wake of press allegations of his affair with a call girl who was also consorting with a Soviet spy, and it was feared that his liaison had compromised the United Kingdom's national security.



No one in America outside of music industry executives and avant-garde disc jockeys had ever heard of the Beatles, who were in the middle of a summer-long tour of nearly every town of size in England and Wales, where they were already wildly popular. The first Beatle record most Americans ever heard, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," would not be played on U. S. airwaves until December of that year.



And the number-one song this week in 1963 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was "It's My Party" by 17-year-old high school senior Lesley Gore, seen here elegantly coiffed and gowned for a television appearance: