The times, they are not a-changin'

America is a hot mess. We are polarized over non-existent election fraud, vaccines, gender politics, how to teach about race, an ex-president, and the list goes on. People say we haven't been this divided since the Civil War. But you don't have to go back that far to find the dis-United States. Look to the 1960s for a nation beset by political violence, cultural convulsions and rage in the streets.

NPR tracked down people who were activists and witnesses of the anti-war movement and the civil rights struggle, who today are watching with dismay as the country is again torn asunder. We asked them to reflect on 2020s America compared to 1960s America.

In general, figures from the counterculture movement cited pervasive misinformation as a striking feature of the new divide. Participants in the civil rights movement are alarmed at the setbacks to hard-earned racial progress: police and civilian shootings of unarmed Black people, the massacres of Black worshippers in Charleston, S.C., and Black supermarket shoppers in Buffalo, N.Y., a White House that courted white nationalism, the Confederate battle flag paraded through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and new state voting restrictions transparently aimed at Democrat-leaning Black communities.

, 75, former student activist at Columbia University, member of the Weather