I, Too, Speak of the Rose (Historical Context)

Historical Context

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Just like Charles Dickens’s description of the French Revolution, so too were the 1960s in the United States. The Democratic-controlled government made bold strides towards trying to deal with poverty and racism. The year 1965 was the year when the term “The Great Society” was coined and large appropriations were made to provide for programs to help the poor. And although concerned on paper with poverty at home, the U.S. government discouraged companies from selling wheat to the Soviet Union, which had experienced a devastating crop failure, by mandating that half of sales would have to be shipped in U.S. owned vessels. This would make the wheat significantly more expensive. Civil Rights legislation that had been passed was supported by concerned citizenry confronting racists and segregationist practices, forcing the government to deal with it. Sometimes, however, these protests took very violent turns resulting in the death of civil rights workers. At other times race riots in cities left lives lost and property destroyed.

But while the U.S. government was making attempts to better things for the poor within U.S. boundaries, it was at the same time engaging in a growing military action in southeast Asia, an initiative that was uninvited and was denounced by some countries as being clearly imperialistic. This war in Vietnam was not without opposition in the United States as well as in other parts of the world, with much of the protest coming from students and from the arts community. The Civil Rights movement and the anti-war movement grew throughout the 1960s, creating a sense that some sort of revolution could happen within the borders of the United States, not just in less stable countries like those South of the border.

I, Too, Speak of the Rose creates a view of life on the lower levels of society in that tumultuous decade in the country right to the South. And while Timothy Leary was pushing psychedelic drugs meant to alter reality, the play is questioning what people perceive and what reality is. In popular culture, the rock group The Rolling Stones had major success with the song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” The Grateful Dead started in San Francisco and was soon connected with both psychedelic drugs and psychedelic colors. Other popular singing groups included the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Sonny and Cher, Bob Dylan, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin. The message behind much of the music was either a criticism of society, or an attempt to escape it.