o 1960s brought sexual revolution, ciril rights revolution, emergence of “youth culture” Vietnam War.
Kennedy’s “New Frontier” Spirit
o youngest elected, youngest cabinet.
o Robert Kennedy attorney general.
§ Recast priorities of FBI > a lot more on “internal security” than civil rights violations.
§ Resisted by J. Edgar Hoover ex FBI director.
§ Robert S. McNamara takes over Defense Department.
o New Frontier patriotic impulses
§ Peace Corps
§ “Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country”.
The New Frontier At Home
o Small Democratic majorities.
o More cooperative congress when expanded House Rules Committee dominated by conservatives.
o New Frontier did not expand smoothly!
o ECONOMY problems > tried to v. crippling inflation.
§ Helped negotiate noninflationary wage agreementin steel industry.
§ Result: Steel = high prices = bad faith
§ Steel = attack on New Frontier, but then appealed to free enterprise ppl w/ general tax-cut bill.
o Stimulated econ by cutting taxes, putting money into private hands.
§ Very republican.
o Multi-billion project to LAND US ON MOON
Rumblings in Europe
o Khrushchev = threaten to make treaty w/ East Germany, cut off West Germany.
o Then built Berlin Wall “Wall of Shame”
o Western Europe = growth = growth of Common Market, free trade area later known as European Union
§ Trade Expansion Act tariff cuts up to 50%
· Promoted trade in Common Market
§ Kennedy Round of tariff negotiations, significantly expanded European Amer trade.
o People also wanted Atlantic Community of econ and military, but French Charles de Gaulle suspicious.
§ Vetoed British app for Common Market membership.
§ Refused US proposal to make multinational nuclear arm w/ NATO.
§ Wanted indep Europe.
Foreign Flare-Ups and “Flexible Response”
o Congo independence from Belgium.
§ US gives money but no manpower.
§ UN soon dominated by Asia and African new nations.
o Laos freed of French was dangerous/violent.
§ Eisenhower failed to clean it from communist despite money
§ Laotian civil war > Geneva Conference imposed shaky peace on Laos.
o These “brushfire wars” intensified pressure b/c was away from “massive retaliation”
§ Choice b/w humiliation or incineration.
o Therefore Defense secretary McNamara pushed “flexible response”.
§ Array of military “options” that matches gravity of crisis.
§ Result: Kennedy increased spending on conventional military forces, ^ Special Forces (Green Berets)
Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire
o Corrupt right-wing Diem government in Saigon still shakily ruled.
§ Anti-diem threatened to topple pro-American gov.
§ Kennedy > sharp increase of US troops to South Vietnam.
§ To help protect Diem from communists.
o Latin America friendship = Alliance for Progress the “Marshall Plan” for Latin America.
§ Money little impact on Latin America’s immense social problems.
§ Bay of Pigs Kennedy assumes full responsibility, “victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan”
§ Castro more into USSR embrace.
o “quarantine” of Cuba.
o Deadlock, “Soviets blinked first”.
§ Cuban Missile Crisis.
§ USSR pull missiles out, US end quarantine, not invade, pull from Turkey.
o More hardliners in Moscow.
§ Pact prohibiting trial nuclear explosions in atmosphere later signed.
§ Moscow-Washington “hot line”.
o Deal with the world “as it is, not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different”.
§ Détente est.
The Struggle for Civil Rights
o Kennedy strong appeal to blacks, but needed support of southerners to pass econ and social legislation.
o After sit ins via Freedom Riders and Robert Kennedy rep beaten by anti-Freedom Ride riot in Montgomery, southern officials unwilling to stop
o Kennedy > Voter Education Project register Southern votes.
§ “I may lose the next election … I don’t care”.
o University of Mississippi not desegregating.
§ James Meredith war veteran violently resisted when attempting to register.
§ Kennedy sends troops to let him to get to first class.
o MLK campaign in Birmingham Alabama, most segregated big city in America.
§ 15% of city’s voters, more than 50% of city population.
§ Violent facing of peaceful black riot.
§ Kennedy called this a “moral issue” and said principle at stake is “as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution”
§ Called for legislation
o “March on Washington” to support Kennedy and “I have a dream”.
§ Still more violence when Medgar Evers shot down (black civil rights worker)
§ Baptist Church in Birmingham explosion, 4 blacks killed.
The Killing of Kennedy
o Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald who was shot by Jack Ruby.
o VP Johnson sworn in plane. Retained most of Kennedy team.
LBJ Brand on the Presidency
o “Johnson treatment” getting people to do what he wants.
o Removed conservatism from his Senate > Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in most private facilities open to public and strengthened federal gov power to end segregation in school and public places.
§ CREATED the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to eliminate discrimination in hiring.
§ When attempting to add sexual claus through Title VII.
o Johnson also called for affirmative action.
o Tax bill also through Congress, with billion dollar “War on Poverty”
§ Appalachia
o Great Society is his domestic program.
§ New Dealish.
§ Public support w/ Michael Harrington’s The Other America which revealed that 20% and 40% of blacks in poverty.
Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964
o Repubs Goldwater, Democrats Johnson.
§ Goldwater attacked all New Deal stuff.
§ “In your heart you know he’s right. In your guts you know he’s nuts”
o Johnson > “limited” air attack against North Vietnam bases and wanted “no wider war”.
§ Tonkin Gulf Resolution > Congress gave war-declaring powers to president.
o Johnson voted b/c of Kennedy legacy, Great society promises, fear of Goldwater.
§ Demo majorities in both houses
The Great Society Congress
o Great Democratic majorities. Conservatives OUT.
o Escalating War on Poverty is Office of Economic Opportunity to Appalachia.
o Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban Development.
§ First black cabinet secretary Robert C. Weaver.
o National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities to lift level of US life.
o BIG FOUR legislative achievements.
§ Aid to education, medical care for elderly and indigent, immigration reform, new voting rights bill.
o Education > avoided separation of church and state by giving aid to students, not schools.
o Medicaid for poor and Medicare for elderly reality in `1965.
§ Created “entitlements”.
§ Gave certain US in perpetuity some rights.
§ Improved millions but undermined fed gov financial health.
o Immigration > Immigration and Nationality Act
§ Abolished last “national origins” system since 1921.
§ Doubled number of immigrants to enter annually.
§ Limits on immigrants from western hemisphere.
§ Admission of close relatives of US citizens.
§ Immigration from Europe to Latin America and Asia sources.
o Great Society.
§ Poverty rate went down.
§ Project Head Start another antipoverty program ^ education of underprivileged.
§ Infant mortality went down in minority communities.
Battling for Black Rights
o Voting Rights Act of 1965
§ Civil Rights Act of 1964 previously gave fed gov enforcing of school desegregation, and prohibit racial discrimination in public.
§ Voting problems > MI had largest black majority, 5% registered.
§ 24th Amendment abolished poll tax in federal elections!
o “Freedom Summer” of 1964
§ blacks joined w/ whites in massive voter-registration drive.
§ “We Shall Overcome”
o 1 black 2 white civil rights disappeared in MI.
§ white juries refused to convict whites for these murders.
§ Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party denied seating at national Democratic convention.
o MLK voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama (blacks = 50% of pop, 1% of vote) > met w/ violence.
§ Marched peacefully to Montgomery.
§ White Detriot woman shotgunned to death
§ Johnson: “we must overcome the … injustice. And we shall overcome
§ Voting Rights Act 1965 outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registerars to several southern states
o Following decade for first time blacks migrate INTO south.
Black Power
o Non-violent protest. Blacks enraged by police brutality burned and looted own neighborhoods for nearly a week.
o Watts explosion > increasing militant confrontation.
o Malcom X inspired by black nationalists in Nation of Islam (founded by Elijah Muhammed).
§ Separatism and moved towards mainstream Islam, US fastest growing religions.
o Black Panther openly used weapons
§ Later Stokely Carmichael who led Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee urged abandonment of peaceful demonstrations and promoted “Black Power”.
o Intended to describe broad-front effort to exercise political and econ rights gained by civil rights movement.
§ Interpreted as separatist.
§ Riots > white Americans angered.
§ In North Black Power focused more on econ demands than on civil rights
· Black unemployment nearly double than whites.
o MLK assassinated, martyr for justice.
§ Voters registration in South went upwards.
§ 1972 half of southern blacks in integrated classrooms, more than in North.
§ Third of black families risen economically into ranks of middle class.
Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres
o Dominican Republic > announced by Johnson as target of Castrolike coup.
§ US troops sent.
§ But little evidence of communism, Johnson widely condemned.
o Vietnam had Viet Cong guerrillas attacking.
§ Ordered retaliatory bombing raids against military installations in North Vietnam.
§ Operation Rolling Thunder full scale bombing of North Vietnam.
§ “escalated” the war.
· But bombardment strengthened their will to resist.
o Fighting became more Americanized.
o Corrupt and collapsible governments succeeded each other in Saigon.
o But feared about domino theory if US were to leave.
o So Johnson steadily escalated.
Vietnam Vexations
o Several nations expelled US Peace Corps
§ Charles de Gaulle suspicious of US soil, ordered NATO off French soil
o USSR EXPANDS INFLUENCE IN Egypt.
§ Six Day War Arab allies complained loudly.
o Vietnam War > new anti-war demonstrations with campus “teach-ins”, increased in proportion later.
§ Many draft dodgers.
§ Opposition centered in Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by William Fulbright.
· Used TV to be antiwar.
o Widening “credibility gap” between government and people.
o When Defense Secretary McNamara expressed discomfiture about events, eased out of cabinet.
o Johnson announced “bombing halts” but did not work.
§ More troops into South Vietnam, both sides
§ Gov had failed to explain what was at stake.
§ Also ordered CIA to spy on domestic antiwar activities.
o Encouraged FBI to turn counterintel program Cointelpro against peace movement!
§ Launched by J. Edgar Hoover against communist organizations.
§ Sabotaged peace groups
§ Made FBI look like state’s secret police.
Vietnam Topples Johnson
o Beaten off w/ heavy losses, Tet offensive showed victory could not be gained by Johnson’s gradual escalation.
§ Military defeat but political victory for Viet Cong.
§ US request for more troops.
o More opposition from within
§ Eugene McCarthy gathered small group of antiwar college students as campaign workers.
§ Gave McCarthy 42% of Democratic votes and made very popular.
§ Robert F. Kennedy also a “dove” on Vietnam.
o LBJ’s party deeply divided about war issue.
§ Remained committed to victory in Vietnam.
o Then announced he would stop escalating war, declared that he will not be a candidate for presidency 1968.
§ Temporary lack of opposition.
o Then North Vietnam responded w/ willingness to talk about peace, but very stalled
The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968
o Democrats > Hubert H. Humphrey VP of Johnson.
§ Support from White House.
§ McCarthy and Kennedy dueled, then Robert Kennedy shot by Arab immigrants
o Humphery > will bomb until they give up
§ As Democrats divided.
o Republicans > Richard M. Nixon VP Spiro T. Agnew.
§ Victory in Vietnam, strong anti-crime
o 3rd ticket in Independent George C. Wallace, fought for segregation.
Victory for Nixon
o little choice between Repub, Demos.
§ “honorable peace”.
§ Nixon wins landslide.
§ Not one house of Congress for his party won either.
o Democrats still 95% of the black vote.
Obituary of Lyndon Johnson
o Worked very hard for civil rights.
o Repubs made more gains in Congress.
o Great Society > soaring war costs = military machine, ends.
o War on Poverty > resistance.
§ Hawks and doves.
The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s
o Clerics abandoned churches, folk songs.
o Allen Ginsberg “beat poets”.
o Jack Kerouac both voiced dark disillusion w/ materialistic pursuits of Eisenhower era.
§ Rebel Without a Cause restless frustration of young people.
o Mario Savio condemned impersonal university “machine” in Free Speech Movement
o Because of Vietnam, many turned to drugs.
o Patriotism a dirty word.
o Sexual revolution 1960s
§ Birth control made sexual appetites easier to satisfy.
§ Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male … Female
· Sensual revelations about US sexual habits
· 10% of US males were homosexuals.
o 1960s gay men and lesbians increasingly emerging and demanding sexual tolerance.
§ Mattachine Society for gay rights.
o Worry of STDs slowed revolution.
o Youthful idealism > Students for a Democratic Society forefront of antipoverty and antiwar campaigns led to underground terrorist group formed called Weathermen.
§ Peaceful civil rights riots > urban riots.
o New “flower children”
o “greening” of America, replacement of materialism and imperialism w/ concern for human values.
o Movements of 1960s b/c of 3 Ps > youthful population bulge, protest against racism, war, and permanence of prosperity.
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