Hey, 70s leisure suits were okay for about a minute on the cultural landscape...

I agree. In the 80's it seemed the national mood had shifted. Personally the 80's were a good time for me. Graduated college. Got married. Started my career.

I first read a few of these comics in 1974 or '75 (age 8 or 9) and they left a strong impression on me (the "crucifixion" issue especially - I was genuinely shocked by GL's violent, sudden destruction of the jet). Yes, O'Neil is terribly didactic in this run but, as others have noted, this was generally par for the course then. His take on systemic, institutional racism was powerful for a lot of young, white readers during a time in which you could count all of the black superheroes in both Marvel and DC comics on one hand. Certainly it's a product of it's time, touching on the "go-find-yourself-and-the-real-America" spirit of Easy Rider and the "reluctant-hero" vs. "The Man" mythos of Billy Jack. Both of these films seem anachronistic now, especially Billy Jack, and so too do these GL/GA comics. I feel that they remain of interest today more because of Adams' art and less because of O'Neil's writing. But, whatever their flaws, they are still a darn sight better than some other, even more ham-fisted attempts at "relevance" during this period:

I was too young to really "experience" the 60s (born in Nov 66). My earliest memories date from around 1970 and are pretty strong through the entire decade. For me it was a mix. I was mostly oblivious to Vietnam, until after the main fighting. I recall footage of the POWs returning and vague notions of protesting and the news of Kent State (didn't really process it, since I seem to recall hearing about it on the radio, since I didn't watch the tv news, at that age). I do recall Watergate (interrupted by morning viewing of Space Angel and Underdog!) and Nixon's resignation. Much of it seemed dark, especially in my neck of the woods, as the recession hit the decatur area hard. I do recall social consciousness permeating entertainment, from these comics to the Norman Lear shows, to things like Room 222 and the Waltons. It seemed like messages were everywhere, though the early half of the decade. The latter half seems a mix of disco, Star Wars and Saturday Night Live and the recognition that Jimmy Carter inherited a mess. He seemed an honest man, who tried and then we ended with the Hostage Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where he seemed incapable of accomplishing anything (cemented by the fiasco of the rescue mission, that ended in fire).

I found the 80s to be a similar mix. There was much talk of pride; but, if you paid attention, you saw the seamy underbelly of of the Reagan years, with proxy wars in Central America and Afghanistan, sabre rattling and Nationalism, and rampant greed culture. I came from humble circumstances and the differences between haves and have nots was rather vivid. Politically, I was socially liberal, though probably still conservative on defense, aided by an overly romantic ideal of the military and the Vietnam Guilt Complex. Part of that led to my NROTC Scholarship and my time in the military was a real political awakening, as I could see closer up how America's foreign policy worked. The Gulf War really opened my eyes about the corporate media and how coupled the government was with big business and business had been getting bigger and bigger through the Reagan and Bush years.

These stories certainly fit in with what I saw on tv in the early 70s, as much as companies like Eclipse and some of the other indies would reflect much of what I was seeing in the 80s. In both decades, I saw darkness and light, pride and shame; but, nothing like how the culture seemed to turn with Millennial Fear and the 9/11 attacks and aftermath. It's been almost 20 years and the country still feels like it is in the grips of fear and acting stupidly because of it, listening to the people stoking it for personal gain, on either side, rather than thinking things through and applying reason. Entertainment and comics are filled with metaphors of random violence and catastrophic events, fear of invaders, and armies of crazies or a quiet neighbor suddenly snapping. When I was a kid, you might fear the school bully, a test, or the day's lunch menu; but, you didn't have thoughts of one of your classmates opening fire on you with automatic weapons, or some adult doing the same. You also didn't have the entire media shoving such things in your face, even during the reporting of Vietnam. There was some decorum. I think the shooting of an ABC reporter, by the Nicaraguan security forces, during the uprising against Samosa, was my first real shocking visual event, to be followed by the attempted shooting of Ronald Reagan. The death of John Lennon was something that was heard, not seen again and again, on the evening news and for weeks to come. That seemed to come with the 24 hour news.

For all of the clunkiness and ham-fisted preaching, I see more positive in these stories, than the violent 9/11 metaphors of today's comics. I see far more attempts at trying to change the world for the better, than reflecting and magnifying the darkness of it, as I too often see today. Comics could use a few more muckrakers.

Time compression is a challenge in many forms of pop fiction. Think of all the movies or comic books or TV shows in which a romance is distilled into a few representative encounters following stereotyped beats (the meet-cute, the date, the kiss, the misunderstanding, the wistful regret, the reconciliation, the wedding) when real relationships take a lot more time and work.  Fiction wants to show things that can happen (e.g. an insensitive person gains insight and empathy for others beyond their own demographics), but compressed manner of the telling can generate false expectations about how easily and rapidly these things happen.

The premise was based on the experiences of two journalists, Ray Sprigle and John Howard Griffin.

Sprigle, who had won a Pulitzer for his expose of Justice Hugo Black's KKK membership in who in 1959, tried everything to dye his skin so that he could pass as a black man, but nothing worked. Sprigle merely shaved his head and got as deep a suntan as he could. 

In the late 50s, Griffin underwent sun lamp treatments and took a drug to darken his skin. He also did what Sprigle had, and traveled the South as a black man.

It didn't take long in either case for them to experience what "separate but equal" (read: American apartheid) truly meant. I have only read about Sprigle's experience, but I read Griffin's Black Like Me and it was harrowing on virtually every page. Both men were profoundly affected, and though neither could have come close to understanding and/or portraying the effects of centuries of institutional racism on the life of an individual, I do think they were able to at least give white America a cold hard slap in the face and a way to start looking at themselves and their position in this society a little more honestly.

Script by Denny O'Neil, pencils by Neal Adams, inks by Frank Giacoia.

Black Canary is on the road on her motorcycle and is attacked by a biker gang and left behind unconscious. 2 weeks later GL, GA and the Guardian come thru the same town which is on an Indian reservation. There they are also attacked by the same gang and find BC's motorcycle. They search for her and find her nearby. However she appears to be under the influence of a cult led by a Joshua. He "hypnotizes" her to shoot GA but her mind "breaks thru" and Joshua ends up shooting himself in the ensuing fight.

This issue touches on how poorly this country has/still treats the native population. I wish O'Neil had gone into more detail about this. He also tries to touch on cults as well. Unfortunately both topics suffer from too much brevity. Cult leaders don't really use hypnosis to "control" their followers. But I digress. I think O'Neil did a decent job showing how dangerous cults can be and at the very least spent a moment on poor treatment of the Native Americans. Again I wish he had more pages to devote to these topics. He also spends a page recapping Black Canary's "origin" which at that time was that she was the original BC from the JSA and she had "migrated" from Earth-2 to Earth-1. Mostly because of the death of her husband Larry Lance.