"There was a sense that the music of different cultures and communities could be brought together," said Graeme M. Boone, professor of music at Ohio State University. "It was tremendously liberating."
Ramsey, author of "Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop," says the flow of black music into the mainstream of popular culture increased white sympathies for the civil-rights movement.
"Beginning in the 1940s, the popularity of black popular music exploded because of shifting demographics [black Southerners migrating to Northern cities]," Ramsey said. "Coupled with a proliferation of independent record labels that sought out new forms of music and entertainers, the scene was ripe for mass-mediated black images.
"This continued into the 1960s. Together with the sudden appearance of civil-rights-era images of marches, protests, dogs barking at and fire hoses trained on black citizens, a moral authority began to shift toward African-Americans."
It was into this milieu that Motown appeared: Berry Gordy's assembly line of pop songs with infectious beats, glamorous images, succinct and catchy lyrics and precise musical arrangements.
"Gordy and all he symbolized did much to open up a space for Americans to think that civil rights for all was a perfectly reasonable goal for which to strive," Ramsey said.
More barriers fell as artists like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and the Beatles (who had the year's No. 1 hit with "Hey Jude") defied distinctions by absorbing a wide range of influences.
Someone like Janis Joplin, for example, transcended her image as a white female and embraced the legacy of the great, black blues songstresses of the 1920s, Ramsey said.
