The Conservative Sixties

The Conservative Sixties tells «the other story» of America in the era of left-wing protests, countercultural experiments, and a civil rights revolution. Ten original historical essays focus on Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society, the Minutemen, «Moral Mothers and Goldwater Girls», «Cowboy Conservatives», «National Politics versus Community Interest», «Below-the-Belt Politics», and the «Politics of Law and Order». The Conservative Sixties demonstrates that throughout the 1960s, right-wing activists organized at the grass-roots, re-thought their priorities, discovered new allies, and prepared to defeat liberals in the political and cultural arenas. This history of the 1960s puts the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, and George W. Bush – as well as the conservative turn of Congress and the American people – into historical perspective.

The Editors: David Farber is Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of: Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (2002); The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s (2001); The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (1994); The Sixties: From Memory to History (1994); The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (1992); and Chicago ‘68 (1988). Jeff Roche is Assistant Professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio. He received his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Restructured Resistance: The Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia (1998) and Cowboy Conservatism: The Emergence of Western Political Culture: 1933-1984 (forthcoming).