1960-1969
“The Sixties” was a decade of extremes. The Cold War escalated to new heights during the Cuban Missile Crisis; the country lost three of its most promising leaders, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, to assassins’ bullets; the U.S. became mired in Vietnam; and students across the nation protested war, marched for Civil Rights, and burned draft cards and brassieres to underscore their cultural liberation from the “establishment.”
At the University of Florida, President Stephen C. O’Connell (LLB 40) grappled with the changes of this social revolution, insisting on civil decorum and respect for authority in the face of outspoken rejection by UF students for the social values of their elders.
These changes washed across the country on the tsunami of Baby-Boomers coming of age. UF Law Dean Frank E. Maloney recognized the wave of Boomers entering undergraduate work at UF would lead to an increased number of applicants to law school in four years. He immediately began planning for a new law school facility designed on the concept of the Inns of Court in England. That facility, upon completion, would be named Holland Hall.