The Shattering: America in the 1960s

On 4 July 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighbourhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, rioting and the blowback of a "silent majority" mobilised by an emerging right, left a fragmented political landscape.