US History: Kennedy to Johnson Presidency

John F. Kennedy and the 1960s

• John F. Kennedy was the Democratic President of the United States elected in 1960
• He proposed Medicare, a compulsory national health insurance plan that covered the elderly and the indigent, financed by a payroll tax
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in hotels, theaters, and buses, cut off funds to federal funds to groups that discriminate, and outlawed discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society

• Lyndon B. Johnson declared, "Let us continue" in completing the Kennedy agenda and adding an "unconditional war on poverty"
• He introduced the Great Society, a domestic plan to elevate the American people with a better quality of life and quantity of resources

Foreign Policy and Crisis

• The Bay of Pigs was a failed American CIA mission to liberate Cuba using the Cuban Exile Brigade in 1961
• The Cuban Missile Crisis was a tense standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union that almost caused a nuclear war
• Lee Harvey Oswald, a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, assassinated President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas

Vietnam War and Domestic Unrest

• The Vietnam War was a military conflict in Southeast Asia that aimed to prevent the expansion of Communism
• The Peace Corps sent volunteers to 44 countries to teach English, train native peoples in modern farming and home economics, build hospitals, and combat disease
• Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General who vigorously enforced civil rights laws

Nixon and Watergate

• Richard Nixon was the Vice-President from 1953-1961 who was defeated in 1960 for the presidency of the United States
• Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice on the Supreme Court
• The Washington Post published sensational investigative stories by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that led to the resignation of President Nixon
• The Moratorium was a national Vietnam demonstration that became one of the largest mass protests on the Washington Mall

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter

• Gerald Ford was appointed Vice-President after the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973
• Daniel Ellsberg was a Defense Department analyst who turned the Pentagon Papers over to the New York Times
• J. William Fulbright was an Arkansas senator who chaired hearings on Vietnam that stirred unease throughout the country
• Zbigniew Brzezinski was the National Security Adviser in the Carter Administration

Iran, Afghanistan, and the End of the Cold War

• Ayatollah Khomeini was the charismatic religious leader in Iran who proclaimed an Islamic Republic in January 1979
• The Strategic Defense Initiative was a high-tech weapon proposed by President Reagan to provide a defensive umbrella against nuclear attack
• Boris Yeltsin was the President of the Russian Republic who confronted the leaders of a coup in 1991 and saved Gorbachev's presidency