Week Four: ‘Get Together’

In 1992, Rodney King, a black motorist who had been beaten by white police officers, asked “Can we all just get along?” as riots raged in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the police officers. In the 1990s, when it came to race or violence, most people shook their heads at King’s timeless question, and some of that sense of frustration and hopelessness can be seen in the reaction to events in Ferguson and Staten Island. In the 1960s, when the Youngbloods sang the song “Get Together,” there may have been more belief in the power of individual people to change their hearts and thereby change society. The song’s chorus was a hopeful exhortation: “Come on people now/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try to love one another/Right now.” It wasn’t snarky or ironic. Young people might not have trusted Authority or anyone over 30, but they believed that they held the key to a better world. The 1960s is regarded as one of three great American ages of Reform, and like the Antebellum Reform era, it was founded in part on a view of the perfectibility of humanity and, by extension, human society that was often highly emotional.