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United States Cultural History
1960-1969

Facts About This Decade

• 179,323,175 people in the United States in 1960
  
• In 1960 9.7% of the population was foreign born.
  
• In 1965 the approximate percentage of persons 25 and older with a high school degree or higher was 46%.
  
• Harvard College Tuition 1965 $7,500.
  
• In 1960 there were 22.5 million veterans in civilian life.
  
• Between 1960-1969 there were approximately 200 executions under civil authority.
  
• In 1960 there were 127 state and federal prisoners per every 100,000 people.
  
• Approximately 25,000 new books were published in 1965.
  
• Teenage slang from the sixties
  • If you were cool, you were a member of the in crowd; you hated drags and other uncool types.  You dreaded getting zits worse than going to school - unless you were a bookbuster.
  • On Saturdays you didn't care if you looked groady or scuzzy.
    A's were aces, C's were hooks, D's were dandies or dogs, F's were frongs or keepers.
  • If you Christmas-treed it with flunkenstein on a multiple-choice test, you simply marked the answers without reading the questions, knowing you were going to fail.

References

Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks and Ben J. Wattenberg.  The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000.  Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2001.

Rollin, Lucy.  Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide.  Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999.

World Almanac and Book of Facts 2002. New York: World Almanac Books, 2002.