Violence in Politics.

During the civil rights struggle Americans were horrified by the televised firebombings of Freedom Riders' buses, the use of high-pressure fire-hoses and attacks by police dogs against demonstrating children, and the beatings of protesters by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the police. Little children were killed when white supremacists bombed the churches of activist black pastors. The murders of civil rights workers Medgar Evers in 1963; Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in 1964; and Viola Liuzzo in 1965 drew national attention.

Assassination of President Kennedy.

Americans were thrown into mourning when President John F. Kennedy was struck down by an assassin's bullet on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. Kennedy was the first president to be assassinated in more than sixty years, well outside the boundaries of most living Americans' memories. Americans believed that such things happened in other countries, not...