The 1960s: A Decade of Change PDF

# The 1960's: A Decade of Change ## Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency (1960) - Republicans chose Richard Nixon, gifted party leader to some, ruthless opportunist to others. - Democrats chose John F. Kennedy, who won surprisingly. - Kennedy was attacked for being Catholic, but defended hi...

# The 1960's: A Decade of Change ## Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency (1960) - Republicans chose Richard Nixon, gifted party leader to some, ruthless opportunist to others. - Democrats chose John F. Kennedy, who won surprisingly. - Kennedy was attacked for being Catholic, but defended himself and encouraged Catholics to vote. - Kennedy won by a comfortable margin, becoming the youngest president elected. ## Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit (1960) - The youngest man ever elected to the office. - The 1960s brought a sexual revolution, a civil rights revolution, the emergence of a youth culture, the beginning of a feminist revolution and a devastating war in Vietnam. - Kennedy delivered a stirring inaugural address, and assembled a very young cabinet including his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general. - Robert Kennedy tried to recast the priorities of the FBI, but was resisted by J Edgar Hoover. - Business whiz Robert S McNamara took over the Defense Department. - JFK proposed the Peace Corps, an army of idealist and mostly youthful volunteers to bring American skills to underdeveloped countries. - He was vibrant and charming to everyone. ## Foreign Flare-Ups and "Flexible Response" - **Problems:** - African Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and erupted into violence, but the United Nations sent a peacekeeping force. - Laos, freed of French overlords in 1954, was being threatened by communism, but at the Geneva Conference of 1962, peace was shakily imposed. - **Defense Secretary McNamara pushed a strategy of "flexible response":** - Developed an array of military options to match the gravity of whatever crises came to hand. - One of these was the Green Berets (AKA, "Special Forces"). ## Cuban Confrontations - **Kennedy's Alliance For Progress was dubbed the "Marshall Plan for Latin America":** - Aimed to close the rich-poor gap and stem communism but many Latin Americans felt it was too little, too late. - **Kennedy backed a U.S.-aided invasion of Cuba by rebels, but the Bay of Pigs Invasion occurred on April 17, 1961, and was a disaster because Kennedy did not bring in the air support:** - The revolt failed. - Pushed Fidel Castro closer to the communist camp. - JFK took full responsibility and his popularity actually went up. - **In 1962, U.S. spy planes recorded missile installations in Cuba:** - Revealed that these were nuclear missiles aimed at America. - **Cuban Missile Crisis** - 13 nerve-racking days and put the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and the world at the brink of nuclear war. - Khrushchev blinked, backed off of a U.S. naval blockade, looked indecisive and lost power. - Soviets agreed to remove missiles if U.S. vowed never to invade Cuba again. - The U.S. also removed their own Russia-aimed nuclear missiles in Turkey. - **A direct phone call line (the "hot line") was installed between Washington D.C. and Moscow in case of any crisis** - In June, 1963, Kennedy called for better feelings towards the Soviets and began a modest policy of détente. ## The Struggle for Civil Rights - Kennedy campaigned a lot to appeal to black voters, but was hesitant and seemingly unwilling to help them. - In the 1960s, groups of Freedom Riders chartered buses to tour through the South to try to end segregation. - White mobs often reacted violently towards the freedom riders, bringing more attention to the south and the issues associated with segregation. - Kennedy urged civil rights by encouraging the establishment of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and a Voter Education Project to register the South's blacks to vote. - Some places desegregated painlessly, but others were more resistant. - James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, but white students didn't let him. Kennedy sent 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to ensure that Meredith could enroll. - Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a peaceful campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, but police responded viciously. - High-pressured water hoses were used to "hose down" the sit-in protesters. - The entire American public watched in horror. - JFK gave a passionate speech urging immediate action towards this "moral issue." - A bomb exploded in a Birmingham church killing four black girls, further escalating tensions. ## The Killing of Kennedy - On November 22, 1963, JFK was shot and killed in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald who was then shot by self-proclaimed avenger Jack Ruby. - Lyndon B. Johnson became the new president. - The nation realized what a charismatic, energetic, and vibrant president they had lost. ## Battling for Black Rights - Johnson's Voting Rights Act of 1965 attacked racial discrimination at the polls by outlawing literacy tests and sending voting registrars to the polls.. - The 24th Amendment eliminated poll taxes. - In the "freedom summer" of 1964, both blacks and white students joined to combat discrimination and racism. - However, in June of 1964, a black and two white civil rights workers were found murdered, 21 white Mississippians were arrested for the murders, but the all-white jury refused to convict the suspects. - An integrated "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party" was denied its seat. - Early in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. resumed a voter-registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, but was assaulted with tear gas by state troopers. - LBJ responded by calling for America to overcome bigotry, racism, and discrimination. ## Black power - 1965 began a period of violent black protests, as black leaders like Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little), who was inspired by the Nation of Islam and its founder, Elijah Muhammed, urged action now, even if it required violence. - Malcolm X was killed in 1965 by an assassin. - **The Black Panthers openly brandished weapons in Oakland, California.** - **Trinidad-born Stokely Carmichael led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and urged an abandonment of peaceful demonstrations.** - Black power became a rallying cry by blacks seeking more rights, but just as they were getting them, more riots broke out, and nervous whites threatened with retaliation. - **On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. ** - Blacks registered to vote, entered integrated classrooms, and slowly built themselves into a politically powerful group. ## The LBJ Brand on the Presidency - Lyndon Johnson had been a senator in the 1940s and 50s, idolized Franklin D. Roosevelt, and could manipulate Congress very well. - As a president, LBJ went from conservative to liberal, helping to pass a Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned all racial discrimination in most facilities, including theaters, hospitals, and restaurants. - Also created was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was aimed at eliminating discriminatory hiring. - Johnson's program was dubbed the "Great Society," and it reflected its New Deal inspirations. - Public support for the program was aroused by Michael Harrington's *The Other America*, which revealed that over 20% of Americans suffered in poverty. ## Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964 - LBJ was opposed by Republican Arizona senator Barry Goldwater who attacked federal income tax, Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, civil rights legislation, the nuclear test-ban treaty, and the Great Society. - Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf Incident (in which North Vietnamese ships allegedly fired on American ships) to attack Vietnam and got approval for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving him a virtual blank check on what he could do in affairs in Vietnam. - On election day, Johnson won a huge landslide over Goldwater. ## The Great Society Congress - Johnson's win was also coupled by sweeping Democratic wins that enabled him to pass the Great Society programs. - Congress doubled the appropriation on the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion and granted more than $1 billion to refurbish Appalachia. - Johnson created the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD), headed by Robert C. Weaver, the first black cabinet secretary in the United States' history. - LBJ also wanted aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill. - Johnson gave money to students, not schools, thus avoiding the separation of church and state. - In 1965, new programs called Medicare and Medicaid were installed, which gave certain rights to the elderly and the needy in terms of medicine and health maintenance. - The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the “national origin” quota and doubled the number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. annually, up to 290,000. - An antipoverty program called Project Head Start improved the performance of the underprivileged in education. It was "pre-school" for the poor. ## Vietnam Vexations - America was floundering in Vietnam and was being condemned for its actions there. - French leader Charles de Gaulle ordered NATO off French soil in 1966. - In the Six-Day War, Israel stunned the world by defeating Egypt (and its Soviet backers) and gaining new territory in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem. - Numerous protests in America went against the Vietnam War and the draft: - Opposition was headed by Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas. - "Doves" (peace lovers) and "Hawks" (war supporters) clashed. - Both sides tried to have intervals of quiet time in bombings, but merely used those as excuses to funnel more troops into Vietnam. - Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on domestic antiwar activists and encouraged the FBI to use its Counterintelligence Program ("Cointelpro") against the peace movement. - America was trapped in an awful Vietnam War, fueling hatred and resentment towards the country. ## Vietnam Topples Johnson - Johnson was personally suffering at the American casualties. - Wept as he signed condolence letters and prayed with Catholic monks secretly. - North Vietnam had almost taken over Saigon in a blistering attack called the Tet Offensive.  - Johnson also saw a challenge for the Democratic ticket from Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, and the nation, as well as the Democratic party, was starting to be split by Vietnam. - Johnson refused to sign an order for more troops to Vietnam. - On March 31, 1968, Johnson declared that he would stop sending in troops to Vietnam and that he would not run in 1968. ## The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968 - On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot fatally. - The Democratic ticket went to Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's "heir". - The Republicans responded with Richard Nixon, paired with Spiro Agnew. - There was also a third-party candidate: George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama, a segregationist who wanted to bomb the Vietnamese to death. - Nixon won a nail-biter, and Wallace didn't do that badly either, though worse than expected. - A minority president, he owed his presidency to protests over the war, the unfair draft, crime, and rioting. ## The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s - The youth of America experimented with sex, drugs, and defiance. - Protested against conventional wisdom, authority, and traditional beliefs. - Poets like Allen Ginsberg and novelists like Jack Kerouac (who wrote *On the Road*) voiced these opinions. - Movies like *The Wild One* with Marlon Brando and *Rebel Without a Cause* starring James Dean championed the "ne'er-do-well" and the outcast. - At UC-Berkeley, in 1964, a so-called Free Speech Motion began. - Kids tried drugs, "did their own thing" in new institutions, and rejected patriotism. - In 1948, Alfred Kinsey published *Sexual Behavior in the Human Male* and had followed that book five years later with a female version. - His findings about the incidence of premarital sex and adultery were very controversial. - He estimated that 10% of all American males were gay. - The Manhattan Society, founded in L.A. in 1951, pioneered gay rights. - Students for a Democratic Society, once against war, later spawned an underground terrorist group called the Weathermen. - The upheavals of the 1960s and the anti-establishment movement can largely be attributed to the three P's: the youthful population bulge, the protest against racism and the Vietnam War, and the apparent permanence of prosperity. - As the 1970s rolled around, this prosperity gave way to stagnation. - The "counterculture" of the youths of the 1960s significantly weakened existing values, ideas, and beliefs. ## A New Team on the Supreme Bench - Earl Warren was appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and headed many controversial but important decisions: - *Griswold v. Connecticut* (1965) struck down a state law that banned the use of contraceptives, even by married couples, creating a “right to privacy." - *Gideon v. Wainwright* (1963) said that all criminals were entitled to legal counsel, even if they were too poor to afford it. - *Escobedo* (1964) and *Miranda* (1966) were two cases in which the Supreme Court ruled that the accused could remain silent. - *Engel v. Vitale* (1962) and *School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp* (1963) were two cases that led to the Court ruling against required prayers and having the Bible in public schools, basing the judgment on the First Amendment, which was argued separated church and state. - Following its ruling against segregation in the case *Brown v. Board of Education*, the Court backed up its ruling with other rulings: - *Reynolds v. Sims* (1964) ruled that the state legislatures, both upper and lower houses, would have to be reapportioned according to the human population to ensure each person's vote was weighted evenly. - Trying to end this liberalism, Nixon chose Warren E. Burger to replace the retiring Earl Warren in 1969. - By the end of 1971, the Supreme Court had four new members that Nixon had appointed.