By All That’s Interesting | Edited By John Kuroski
Whether it’s the burning monk, the JFK assassination, or Woodstock, these images are still seared into the American consciousness 50 years later.
This now iconic image of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara depicts him at the March 5, 1960 funeral for the victims of the La Coubre explosion. Guevara believed that the destruction of the French freighter in Havana harbor and the 75-100 resulting deaths were a deliberate act of sabotage on the part of the U.S. because of Cuba’s new communist government following the revolution the year before.
Guevara helped carry out that revolution before attempting to foment similar uprisings elsewhere around the world, which helped make him an enemy of the U.S. Eventually, in 1967, C.I.A.-assisted Bolivian forces captured Guevara in Bolivia and executed him.Alberto Korda/Wikimedia Commons
A dancer, decorated in fluorescent body paint and with feathers in her hair, attends an event at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom. 1967.Ted Streshinsky/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a rally for the Chicago Freedom Movement at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois on July 10, 1966. The movement, the largest civil rights campaign in the North, sought fair housing, healthcare, transportation, and so on for African-Americans.Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images (continued)