Vietnam Eisenhower (1954): Dien Bien Phu, (French defeat/surrender) Geneva Accords (17 th...

Vietnam• Eisenhower (1954):

• Dien Bien Phu, (French defeat/surrender)• Geneva Accords (17th parallel)

-US supports South Vietnam• Kennedy: Military Advisers (early 1960s)• Johnson: Golf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964 • Ho Chi Minh Trail / Viet Cong• Americanization, 1965 (American ground forces)• Tet offensive, 1968• 1968 Nixon- “Peace with Honor”• My Lai massacre, 1968 (1970)• Vietnamisation, 1969• 1970 – invasion of Cambodia• 1973 – War Powers Resolution Act (Congress Limits Pres.)• 1975 – Saigon Falls (Vietnam is reunified under communism)

ASSESSING THE EISENHOWER PRESIDENCY

•He wielded the veto 169 times, only twice overrode•Economic prosperity•1959, Alaska and Hawaii become states•Greatest failing: no crusade on civil rights•As a Republican, he supported the New Deal +Fair Deal•Restraint in the use of military power: failed in goal of ending the arms race with the Soviets•He had ended the Korean War and avoided others

Election of 1960• Kennedy vs Nixon• First televised debate: Who won the debate?

Kennedy as President

• New Frontier• Flexible Response (vs. Massive Retaliation)

– Peace Corps– Special Forces– Conventional Forces

• Bay of Pigs• Third World

– Alliance for Progress• Berlin Wall• Cuban Missile Crisis• Space Race

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TRAGEDY IN DALLAS: JFK Assassinated 22 November 1963: while visiting Dallas,

Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald Before being brought to trial, Oswald was

killed by Jack Ruby, owner of a Dallas nightclub

Many people believed a conspiracy was behind the Kennedy assassination and a special commission under Chief Justice Earl Warren was established to investigate

Concluded Oswald had acted alone

Lyndon B. Johnson November 22, 1963 –1969

Johnson sought election as president in his own right in 1964 Championship of civil rights garnered him almost

unanimous support of blacks His tax policy attracted the well-to-do and business

interests War on poverty held the allegiance of labor and other

traditionally Democratic groups Down-home southern antecedents counterbalanced

his liberalism on race in the eyes of many white Southerners

Johnson declared war on poverty and set out to create a Great Society In 1960, between 20 and 25 percent of American

families—about 40 million people—lived below the poverty line

Prosperity and advancing technology had changed the definition of poverty; yet, as living standards rose so did the educational requirements of many jobs

Pearson Education, Inc, publishing as Longman © 2008

THE GREAT SOCIETY Medicare and Medicaid January 1965: Johnson proposed a compulsory hospital insurance system,

Medicare, for all persons over 65 Part A: hospital insurance for retired (funded by increase in Social Security) Part B: a voluntary plan covering doctors’ bills (paid for in part by the

government) Also provided for grants to the states to help pay medical expenses of poor

people regardless of age—Medicaid In the end, it provided medical treatment for millions of people but gave

doctors, hospitals and drug companies the ability to raise fees without fear of losing customers

Economic Opportunity Act of 1964: created a mixture of programs that combined the progressive concept of government with the conservative concept of individual responsibility Job Corps

which was supposed to provide vocational training to help people get better jobs, was almost a complete failure

Community action program to finance local antipoverty efforts System for training the unskilled unemployed and for lending money to small

businesses in poor areas

Civil Rights: We shall overcome!

• 1890s-1920s-Booker T. Washington

-W.E.B. DuBois

-Marcus Garvey

• 1896 Plessy v Ferguson

Civil Rights: “We shall Overcome!”• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

– Thurgood Marshall (NAACP)

• Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC)– Non violence– Integration– Montgomery Bus boycott (1955)– Marches (Selma, Birmingham, and on

Washington

Rosa Parks, 1955

Seeds of the Civil Rights Movement

Freedom Riders Montgomery Alabama, 1961Rosa Parks’ bus, 1955

“I just decided I was not going to be moved out of that seat.”

Central High School, Little Rock Arkansas integrated, 1957

Little Rock Arkansas

Desegregation

I have a Dream!

SNCC• Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee

– Sit-ins (“Greensboro Four” Civil Rights Act (1964) - outlawed discrimination by employers against blacks and also against women Broke down legal barriers to black voting in southern states Outlawed racial segregation of all sorts in places of public

accommodation Johnson made sure the act was enforced

– Freedom Riders Voting Rights Act of 1965:

provided for federal intervention to protect black registration and voting in six southern states and applied to state and local as well as federal elections

Civil Rights Movement:“Shoot Don’t Loot!”

• Black Power!- “Nation of Islam” and Malcolm X- Carmichael Stockley- “Separation not Integration”

-Self-determination

Civil Rights Movement

• Other effects of Brown v. Board of Ed.– Bussing– Affirmative Action

• Example to other groups fighting for their rights:– Women

• Minorities–environmentalists

Election of 1968