What’s Changed between 1962 and 2022? The Answer May Surprise You
In December 1962, John F. Kennedy was President of the United States. Only two months before, he’d faced down Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev, resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis after two tense weeks while the world held its breath in anticipation of nuclear war. By December, Cuba began returning US prisoners captured in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
This was also the month when Mariner 2 became the first American spacecraft to do a fly-by of another planet—Venus. The US government continued a series of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. What else is changed in the intervening 60 years? Read on to find out.
1962 was less diverse but economically robust
The 28th Heisman Trophy went to Oregon State’s Terry Baker, who became the first player from the West Coast to be so honored. While Baker was white, the previous year’s 1961 Heisman recipient, Ernie Davis of Syracuse University, was the first Black winner. Movie audiences thrilled to the premiere of David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. Theatergoers enjoyed the remaining performances of I Can Get It for You Wholesale, the musical that made Barbra Streisand a star.
How was the economy in December 1962? For one thing, the top federal individual income tax rate stood at a whopping 91 percent. (Something that should at least make today’s anti-tax pundits thankful.)
In an address to the members of the Economic Club of New York on December 14, President Kennedy noted that the House Ways and Means Committee was set to consider his proposed tax cuts in the New Year. The Revenue Act of 1964, as signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, reduced the top-bracket federal individual income tax rate to 70 percent.
In 1962, the median income for an American family was about $6,000 a year, twice the median in 1947. (On the other hand, consumer prices had risen substantially over that 15-year period.) The median price of a single-family home was about $19,500. And in the 1960s, it was still possible to get a secure job in manufacturing that paid a decent wage.
Racial tensions were high
It was also fairly simple for middle-class families and to buy a house—if they were white, and especially if they were buying a new home in the suburbs. Beginning in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration insured private loans for new home construction over 25-30-year periods. But less than 2 percent of the $120 billion in financing the FHA and the Veterans Administration distributed from 1934 to 1962 went to homebuyers of color.
In 1962, the NAACP held its annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia, where most public accommodations were still segregated. Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia picketed outside the convention site.
Also that year, James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi. More than 100 federal marshals were protecting him, but the crowd of segregationists became violent.
In December 1962, anyone who had heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speak three months earlier at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City would have remembered the ringing words. King talked about the unfulfilled promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, noting the “schizophrenic personality” of the country where definitions of freedom changed depending on the color of an individual’s skin.
The anxieties and progress of 2022
Fast-forward 60 years (a term not even coined 60 years prior). In December 2022, we closed out a year of economic uncertainty, rapidly shifting international relationships, and violence that was often fueled by white supremacy. Many of us saw fears of nuclear annihilation revived with Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
The top-earning movies of 2022 gave us an escape, offering a slew of superhero and action films like Top Gun: Maverick and Thor: Love and Thunder. We also got to enjoy some much-needed representation in the rich universe of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which never would have happened in 1962.
Today we also have video games, often filled with artistically stunning worlds, make-believe violence, and apocalyptic landscapes. Some of the most popular and critically praised games of 2022 included the combat game Sifu, Marvel’s Snap, and the eerily beautiful Horizon Forbidden West. There’s plenty of pointed social commentary in some of these games, too. The premise of this newest Horizon game is that wealthy “tech bros" make themselves immortal in outer space as all living things on Earth become extinct.
Whereas Americans in 1962 were excited by the budding space program, in today’s IRL dystopia, we’ve become both inured to and increasingly critical of the downside of tech. Our grandparents could hardly have imagined the massive surveillance industry that threatens our privacy and our civil rights, and the polarizing alternate universe of social media.
In December 2022, the median American income was about $54,000 a year. Thanks to inflation, the cost of living was more than 9.5 times that of 1962. The median price of a home at the beginning of 2022 was more than $420,000, putting home ownership out of reach for a far greater percentage of families than in 1962. In fact, American home prices increased 30 percent from 2020 to 2022. And, with the slow demise death the domestic manufacturing sector, it’s much harder than it was in 1962 to enter and stay in the middle class.
Americans are more polarized than we were in the early ‘60s. Republicans and Democrats started moving farther apart politically in the early ‘70s, with Republicans drifting farther toward the extreme right than Democrats have toward the extreme left.
Analysts say there are only a few dozen members of Congress who could be considered “moderate” today, whereas in the early ‘70s there were more than 160. Demographically, the parties today also look very different. Today, close to half the Republicans in Congress come from Southern states. Nearly half of Democrats are BIPOC.
Turmoil and life-changing struggle
We are the heirs of the Civil Rights movement, which has demanded Black Americans be able to access educational, economic, and social opportunities. Today, the Black Lives Matter movement is working to continue the work of the Civil Rights movement and prior generations, which has barely begun.
Now that our cell phones can capture and instantly transmit images from everyday microaggressions to police brutality against Black people in this country, many white Americans are just now learning just how deep the racism cuts.
Added to this new tech that can highlight injustice, we now have the first Black woman Vice President and the first Black woman Supreme Court justice to help right some of those wrongs. In 2022, there were three Black Senators and 58 Black members of the House of Representatives in the 117th Congress. In 1962, the 87th Congress included only four Black members, all of them in the House.
Another point of pride in 2022: USC quarterback Caleb Williams became the 37th Black recipient of the Heisman Trophy.
Soaring prices and stagnant wages make many Americans of all backgrounds in 2022 feel like they just can’t get ahead. The economy still hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic, and immense structural inequalities still exist. Saturated in digital media and social media platforms, people talk past one another politically and culturally. And sometimes it feels like we’re constantly at one another’s throats.
Going forward we need to live up to our potential
However, 2022 America could stand to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Dr. King in September 1962. Talking about his faith in the movement toward justice, he said that we could “adjourn the councils of despair [and] transform the jangling discords [into] a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
We need to take that as a challenge, not a foregone conclusion, and put every shoulder to the wheel towards engaging with that process.