The Stormy Sixties

Introduction • In the 1960’s the Americans have elected a

young president who pledged to get the country

moving again. The 1960’s will bring in a

youth culture, a devastating war in

Vietnam, civil rights and a feminist revolution. By the end of the century many Americans would yearn

nostalgically for the comparative calm of the

fifties.

Kennedy’s New Frontier Spirit

• Kennedy’s Description: He was tall, elegantly handsome, speaking crisply and with staccato finger jabs at the air, Kennedy personified the glamour and vitality of the new administration. He was the youngest president ever and one of the youngest cabinets in history. Along with the youthfulness they are the most talented advisers, and these appointees made up an inner circle of the best and the brightest men around the president.

• Kennedy had the best expectations and his challenge of a New Frontier quickened many pulses. He brought in the Peace Corps with the idea to help underdeveloped countries and bring American skills with youthful volunteers.

• Kennedy was an Ivy League student from Harvard and radiated confidence in his abilities. He exuded a sense of vibrant life and humor that seemed natural.

The New Frontier at Home

• New Frontier programs such as medical assistance for the aged and increased federal aid to education were on the top of his list. Kennedy won the first round, but the New Frontier program did not expand quickly, and those bills remained stalled in Congress.

• Kennedy’s New Frontier program vision also extended to the final frontier. Early in his term, the president promoted a multi-billion dollar project dedicated to landing on the moon. 24 billion dollars later two (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin) NASA astronauts triumphantly planted their footprints and the American flag on the moon’s dusty surface. Many huddled around the TV to watch the Apollo mission live and the world never seemed so small and interconnected at the same time.

Rumblings in Europe• In June of 1961 the Soviet

leader adopted an attitude, threatening to make a

treaty with East Germany and cut off Western access

to Berlin. The President refused to be bullied and the Soviets backed off and built the Berlin Wall

in August of 1961. The wall will stand for three decades as an ugly scar symbolizing

the post-WWII division of Europe into two hostile

camps.

Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire

• The corrupt right wing government of Ngo Diem in Saigon and American dollars ruled in Vietnam in 1954. Anti-Diem agitators threatened to topple the pro-American government from power. Kennedy ordered an increase in the number of military advisors.

• American forces entered Vietnam to help with political stability, and to help Diem from the communists long enough to allow him to enact basic social reforms favored by Americans. Kennedy eventually despaired of the reactionary Diem and encouraged a successful coup against him in November 1963. Ironically, the United States and Kennedy still told the South Vietnamese that it was their war and now had dangerously deep political commitments.  

Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire• The modernization theory provided the underpinnings for US foreign policy in the

underdeveloped world. They believed that traditional societies of Asia, Africa, and Latin

America could develop into modern industrial and democratic nations by following the West’s own

path. Though this theory would be under attack, modernization theory offered a powerful

intellectual framework for policy makers ensnared in the Cold War.

Cuban Confrontations• In 1961 Kennedy extended the hand of

friendship with the alliance plan for progress, which was like the Marshall Plan for Europe. Their primary goal was the help good neighbors to close the gap between the rich and the poor. The results were disappointing there was little alliance and even less progress, and they had little positive impact on Latin America’s intense social problems.

• Kennedy struck a first blow on April 17, 1961 some 12 hundred exiles landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs was a mission to invade Cuba with anti-communists exiles and when the invasion got bogged down Kennedy stood fast and a band of anti-Castroites’ surrendered.

• President Kennedy assumed full responsibility for the failure. The Bay of Pigs and continuing efforts to assassinate Castro and over throw his government was leading the Cuban leader even further into the Soviet embrace.

Cuban Confrontations• In October of 1962 American spy planes revealed that the

Soviets were secretly and speedily installing nuclear weapons to shield Castro and to blackmail the United States into backing down in Berlin and other trouble spots.

• Kennedy and Khrushchev began to play a game of nuclear chicken. In October of 1962 Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of Cuba and demanded immediate removal of the weapons. He also said that any attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the Soviet Union and the United States would retaliate if necessary.

• Americans for anxious weeks waited while Soviet ships approached while US ships were just off the island of Cuba. Only in 1991 did the US finally realize that the Soviets already had nuclear weapons at their disposal and were authorize to launch them if attacked.

Cuban Confrontations• On October 28 Khrushchev finally flinched and compromised and

would pull out the missiles. The United States would agree to end the quarantine and not invade the island. The Americans also agreed that it would remove their missiles from Turkey.

• The Fallout from the Cuban Missile Crisis was considerable. Khrushchev was hounded out of the Kremlin, and Moscow vowing never to be humiliated again. The Soviets vowed to catch up when it came to the arms race.

• However, Kennedy after prolonged negotiations in Moscow, a pact prohibiting trial nuclear explosions in the atmosphere was signed in late 1963. Kennedy then talked to the American people and told them to abandon a view of the Soviet Union as a devil ridden land filled with fanatics and instead to deal with the world as it is and what it might have been if things had been different. Kennedy tried to lay down a peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union which will become known as détente (Relaxation of tension).

Struggle for Civil Rights

• Kennedy campaigned with a strong appeal to black voters. He had pledged to eliminate racial

discrimination in housing “with a stroke of the pen.” Kennedy was slow in keeping his campaign

promises due to the fact that he needed the support of the southern legislators to pass his economic and social legislation, especially his

medical and educational bills. He believed that those measures would eventually benefit black

Americans at least as much as specific legislation on civil rights.

Freedom Riders • In the early 1961-1962,

groups of freedom riders fanned out to end segregation in facilities serving interstate

bus passengers. Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s own personal representative

was beaten unconscious in an anti-freedom ride riot in

Montgomery, Alabama. When southern officials proved

unwilling or unable to stem the violence, Washington

dispatched federal marshals to protect the freedom riders.

University Integration• Integrating southern

universities threatened to provoke wholesale slaughter.

Some desegregated painlessly, but the

University of Mississippi was a nightmare. 29 year old

air force veteran James Meredith encountered violent

opposition when he attempted to register in

October 1962. President Kennedy was forced to send in 400 federal marshals and

3,000 troops to enroll Meredith in his first class.

Martin Luther King Jr. • In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. started a campaign

against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated big city in America. Previous attempts to crack the city’s racial barriers had produced more than 50 cross burnings and 18 bomb attacks since 1957. King told his supporters to expect violence. King was right.

• Television watchers around the nation saw peaceful civil rights marchers repeatedly repelled by police with attack dogs and electric cattle prods. Some marchers, including children, were bowled over by the high-pressure water hoses.

• Kennedy was jolted by these vicious confrontations. He called for new civil rights legislation to protect black citizens.  

• In August of 1963, King led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peaceful march on Washington, D.C. in support of the proposed legislation. In perhaps his most famous speech, King declared,

• “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Assassination of JFK• On November 22, 1963, in Dallas,

Texas, President Kennedy was shot in the head and killed while riding in an open limousine. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself shot to death in front of television cameras by a self-appointed avenger Jack Ruby. With these bizarre events, even the official investigation conducted by Chief Justice Earl Warren could not quiet all doubts and theories about what had really happened.

• Vice President Johnson was promptly sworn in aboard Air Force One and flown back to Washington with the late president’s body. Johnson pledged to continue with Kennedy’s policies.

LBJ- Brand on the Presidency

• the House of Representatives in 1937. Johnson was an ardent supporter of the New Deal. He ran for and won a Senate seat in 1948. Once in the Senate, Johnson developed into a masterful wheeler-dealer. He became the Democratic majority leader in 1954.

• He became known for the “Johnson treatment”—a flashing display of backslapping, flesh-pressing, and arm-twisting that overbore friend and foe alike. His ego and vanity were legendary. On a visit to the Pope, Johnson was presented with a precious 14th century painting from the Vatican art collection; in return, LBJ gave the Pope a bust—of LBJ.

• Johnson pressed hard for Kennedy’s civil rights legislation. Congress at last passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act banned racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public, including theaters, hospitals, and restaurants. It strengthened the federal government’s power to end segregation in schools and other public places. It also created the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to eliminate discrimination in hiring.

LBJ- Brand on the Presidency

• Johnson also launched his own domestic program called the “Great Society.” This program was a sweeping set of economic and welfare measures aimed at transforming the American way of life.• 1964 Presidential Election- Johnson Battles Goldwater

• The Democratic Party nominated Johnson for president in 1964.• The Republican Party nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

Goldwater was ultra-conservative and his supporters began to proclaim “In your heart you know he’s right.” The Democrats mocked this by saying “In your guts you know he’s nuts!”

• Democrats exploited the image of Goldwater as a trigger-happy cowboy who would “Barry us” in the debris of WWIII.

• Johnson had military issues of his own to deal with in 1964. Two U.S. destroyers were “fired upon” while on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam. Johnson called the attack unprovoked and ordered a limited retaliatory air raid against the North Vietnamese bases. He also used the incident to spur Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution virtually gave war-declaring power to the president and handed him a blank check to use further force in Southeast Asia.

• Johnson won a spectacular victory in November 1964. Electoral votes were 486 for Johnson to 56 for Goldwater.

The Great Society Legislation

• Congress doubled the money set aside for the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion and set aside $1 billion for redevelopment of Appalachia. Johnson also prodded Congress into creating two new cabinet level offices: the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Johnson also appointed the first black cabinet secretary in the nation’s history to HUD. Johnson also established the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities designed to lift the level of American cultural life.

• Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor were passed in 1965. These programs provided healthcare for many people who could not afford it previously. These programs improved the lives of millions of Americans—but also eventually undermined the federal government’s financial health.

Voting Rights Act, 1965

• Early in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. resumed the voter-registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, where blacks made up 50% of the population but only 1% of the voters. State troopers with tear gas and whips assaulted King’s demonstrators as they marched peacefully to the state capital at Montgomery.

• President Johnson gave a televised speech soon after the events in Alabama. He said that the events in Alabama concerned all Americans. He followed his words with actions as he pushed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress then signed it into law. The new law outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registrars into several southern states.

• The act did not end oppression overnight but it placed great power for change in the hands of blacks: the ballot. White southerners began to court black votes and business as never before.

Black Power• Just five days after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act into law, a

bloody riot erupted in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles. Blacks were enraged by police brutality burned and looted their own neighborhoods for nearly a week. When it ended, 31 blacks and three whites were dead, more than a thousand people had been injured and hundreds of buildings stood charred and gutted. The Watts explosion ushered in a new phase of the black struggle—increasingly marked by militant confrontation led by radical and sometimes violent spokespersons aiming for black separatism. 

• Martin Luther King, Jr. began to come under heavy criticism from younger black leaders. One of those leaders was the Nation of Islam’s Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a gifted preacher who trumpeted black separatism and told blacks to fight against the “blue eyed white devils.” Eventually Malcolm X’s message mellowed as he moved away from the Nation of Islam and closer to mainstream Islam. Unfortunately, early in 1965 while giving a speech in New York City, Malcolm X was assassinated by a Nation of Islam gunman.

Black Power• On the west coast, the Black

Panther Party openly brandished weapons in the streets of Oakland, California. The phrase “Black Power” began to be used and increased violence threatened. African Americans began to emphasize their distinctiveness by promoting “Afro” hairstyles and dress, shed their “white” names for new African identities and demanded black studies programs in schools and universities.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. was silenced by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. The nation exploded once again in violence that cost over 40 lives.

Combating Communism in Two

Hemispheres• In February 1965, LBJ ordered bombing raids on North

Vietnam in retaliation for an attack on a U.S. airbase in South Vietnam. Before 1965 ended, nearly 184,000 American troops were on the ground in Vietnam. Johnson and his advisors felt that a gradual escalation of the American force would drive the enemy to defeat with minimal loss of life on both sides. The bombardment only strengthened the Viet Cong will to fight their guerrilla war.

• The South Vietnamese were increasingly becoming spectators in their own war as more and more U.S. troops became involved. Washington spokesmen defended the military action as simply fighting to prevent the spread of communism (domino theory). By 1968, the U.S. had half a million troops in Southeast Asia and the annual cost of the war was exceeding $30 billion

Combating Communism in Two

Hemispheres• As the war dragged on, antiwar protests blossomed. The

protests had begun small but had grown very large. As the draft called more men into the military, many chose to flee to Canada or to publicly burn their draft cards. “Hell no, we won’t go!” and “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” became the popular chants of the protests.

• Within the administration itself, doubts were deepening about the wisdom of the war in Vietnam. In 1966, LBJ ordered a halt to the bombing in an attempt to lure the Viet Cong to the peace table.

• By early 1968, the Vietnam War had become the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history. The government had failed to explain to the American public what was supposed to be at stake in Vietnam. Casualties already exceeded 100,000 and more bombs had been dropped on Vietnam than on all enemy territory in WWII.

Tet, 1968• In January, 1968 the Viet

Cong launched the Tet offensive. This action was a coordinated attack on 27

key South Vietnamese cities. The attack was

eventually stopped and the attackers were forced to retreat but it showed the American public that

the war was far from over. American public opinion began to call loudly for a speedy end to the war

1968 Presidential Election

• The Democrats held their convention in Chicago under bitter and frustrating circumstances. Inside the convention, Humphrey rolled easily to the nomination. Outside however, many demonstrators protested and clashed with Chicago police. Police brutally broke up the demonstrators with tear gas and clubs. All of this was televised nationally.

• The Republicans held their convention in August and chose Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew as their ticket. The nation voted to raise Nixon to the highest office in the land.

• LBJ began to feel sharp challenges from within his own party. One of the biggest challengers was Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy was a “dove” (wanting peace) when it came to Vietnam and was becoming very popular among workers, African Americans, Hispanics, and young people.

• The president dropped a bombshell on the American public on March 31, 1968 when he announced that he would freeze troop levels in Vietnam and gradually shift more responsibility to the South Vietnamese for fighting the war. At the end of the speech, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

• Three days later, North Vietnam expressed a willingness to talk about peace.

• Johnson’s heir was Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Bobby Kennedy and other Democrats battled in primary elections across the nation. On June 5, 1968, Kennedy’s campaign was ended when an assassin shot and killed him after winning the California primary.

• The Democrats held their convention in Chicago under bitter and