It was the year that Harold Wilson became Prime Minister, The Sun newspaper went into circulation and the Beatles began their first world tour.
In 1964, as the US struggled to recover from the shock of the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the Civil Rights Bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history, was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
The Bill created equal rights in voting, education, public accommodation, union membership and in federally assisted programmes – regardless of race, colour, religion or national origin.
Following the signing of the Bill in the White House, President Johnson shook hands with civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King.
“Let us close the springs of racial poison,” President Johnson urged afterwards in a television broadcast - poignant words, half a century later, as protests erupt across the US over police involvement in the deaths of two unarmed black men.
In Britain, exactly 50 years ago tomorrow, on December 6 1964, and just five months after the momentous signing of the Civil Rights Bill, St Paul’s Cathedral drew worldwide publicity when Dr King preached a sermon there.
The civil rights leader had been on his way to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize and had broken his trip in the UK where he delivered the Evensong address, The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, within the grand surroundings of St Paul’s in front of a 3,000-strong congregation.
In Leatherhead, Surrey, a 16-year-old boy, Garth Hewitt, who had seen Dr King on television, caught the train to London to hear the civil rights leader in St Paul’s. He had seen Dr King, prominent in the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, on television and was already deeply impressed.
Now an Anglican priest, a singer and songwriter, and founder of the Amos Trust, he shared his memories at a St Paul’s event this week commemorating the 50th anniversary and hosted in partnership with the Runnymede Trust.
The event, with speakers including Baroness Doreen Lawrence, was attended by a number of groups including the Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns (CMEAC) .
“I had been watching Martin Luther King on the television, I had been fascinated, here was a man who would kneel on the street and they would turn the water cannon on him, set the dogs on him,” Rev Hewitt said.
“I thought ‘what courage, what an interesting person’ - it seemed obvious to me that the struggle was the right struggle, and I wanted to hear him.”
He said he loved the “complete and rounded message” in the sermon delivered by Dr King that day.
“For me it made sense of Christianity, that was a very important moment for me and I have tried to live out those aspects, particularly the social justice, as part of what I have done since then. If there is a sermon that has influenced my whole life, this is the one.”