"The American Overhaul"picks up in 1960 with the country awakening from the self-induced coma that was the "Fabulous" Fifties and realizing that the past 10 years had done nothing but distract it from major social and political issues that required immediate attention. Minority groups, which had been pushed aside and ignored for decades, were primed for a change so powerful it would rattle the nation to its very core. A simple act of defiance in Montgomery, Alabama soon sparked the world's most powerful movement for civil rights.
A century after Lincoln's prophetic comments that "a house divided against itself cannot stand", America underwent yet another major overhaul. Presidential initiatives, judicial rulings, and social protest during the 1960s created a climate of rebellion, confrontation, and upheaval not seen since the American Revolution. This new generation of Americans rejected conformist lifestyles, battled race discrimination, expanded free expression, challenged tradition, blasted the placidity of the previous decade, and, for better or worse, dispelled the widespread respect for government that had prevailed since World War II.
With such restlessness at home, the U.S. struggled to remain superior to the Soviets as it battled communism around the globe. When a devastating conflict in Southeast Asia limped to an ignominious end in 1975, America found itself on the eve of its Bicentennial... but rather than celebrate 200 years of freedom, the country found that its once rising sun was beginning to set.