Are You Still Listening?: 1969 Stories & Essays

1969 stood as the final year of a tumultuous decade, shattering domestic tranquility with epic events and cultural upheaval.

In January, The Beatles gave their final public performance on the rooftop of Apple Corps in London. In July, NASA’s Apollo 11 space mission launched Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong beyond earth’s gravitational grip to a successful moon landing, fulfilling President John Kennedy’s inaugural pledge “to go to the moon in this decade.” In August, Woodstock attracted over 400,000 rock ‘n’ roll fans, hippies, peaceniks, and sixties’ music icons to a four-day countercultural gathering. Joni Mitchell described the music and art fair as “a spark of beauty” where half-a-million young people “saw that they were part of a greater organism.”

The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, in October, was the largest peaceful protest of a war in American history, flooding the nation’s capital and including more than 2,000,000 antiwar protesters nationwide. As the decade closed, the war raged on. Just months into the following year, the Kent State shootings shook the nation, bringing violent suppression of free expression to a U.S. college campus.

On the fiftieth anniversary of 1969, seven professional writers join author Brent Green to share their coming-of-age experiences and vivid memories of that raucous, electrifying year. Are You Still Listening? delivers eyewitness accounts, personal tales, uncommon confessions, and fictional stories by eight witnesses to a transformative decade.

One question resonates throughout this book: Are you still listening? The book inspires contemplation about our social and political progress fifty years later. Do we see greater national unity? Do we hear lingering discord? Do we sense progress toward equal treatment and opportunity for all?

For those who experienced 1969 firsthand, this book will stir memories and invite reflection about a momentous year. For those who were born later and are curious about the myths and realities of 1969, the book reveals truths concerning a rebellious time and an engaged generation that proclaimed a new vision for America.