1960s

fig25_09.jpgLyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president on the plane taking him to Washington from Dallas. On the left is Lady Bird Johnson, and on the right, Jacqueline Kennedy.

I. Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency

• he was a tough, cocky, crude former Senate majority leader, Southerner (Texas)

• had the arm-twisting ability and Democratic New Deal credentials to get things done

• Guns v. Butter (funding Vietnam War v. funding for social programs)

The Presidential Election of 1964 • pg. 991

The Presidential Election of 1964

• The Great Society – Johnson outlined the most sweeping proposal for

governmental action to promote the general welfare since the New Deal

– social programs meant to capitalize on the prosperity of the mid-1960s to benefit all aspects of social

– Unlike the New Deal, however, the Great Society was a response to prosperity, not depression

• The nation had the wealth to end poverty

• Immigration Reform – Immigration Act of 1965 gives preferences to relatives

• Asian and Latin America dominate immigration over the next 40 years

I. Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency (con’t)

• The War on Poverty – The centerpiece of the Great Society crusade to

eradicate poverty • Michael Harrington’s The Other America influenced

– In the 1960s, the administration attributed poverty to an absence of skills and a lack of proper attitudes and work habits

– The War on Poverty concentrated on equipping the poor with skills and rebuilding their spirit and motivation

• Office of Economic Opportunity

Figure 25.1 • pg. 994

I. Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency (con’t)

• Freedom and Equality – Johnson resurrected the phrase “freedom from

want,” all but forgotten during the 1950s – Johnson’s Great Society may not have achieved

equality “as a fact,” but it represented a remarkable reaffirmation of the idea of social citizenship

– Coupled with the decade’s high rate of economic growth, the War on Poverty succeeded in reducing the incidence of poverty from 22 percent to 13 percent of American families during the 1960s

II. The Changing Black Movement

• Economic Freedom – With black unemployment twice that of whites and

average black family income little more than half the white norm, the movement looked for ways to “make freedom real” for black Americans

• “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” • Freedom Budget

– In 1966, King launched the Chicago Freedom Movement, with demands quite different from its predecessors in the South

• The movement failed

fig25_02.jpgSit-in movement begins in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960

fig25_03.jpg

Freedom Riders bus is bombed outside Anniston, Alabama

A fireman assaulting young African-American demonstrators with a high-pressure hose during the climactic demonstrations in Birmingham, June 1963. Broadcast on television, such pictures proved a serious problem for the United States in its battle for the “hearts and minds” of people around the world and forced the Kennedy administration to confront the contradiction between the rhetoric of freedom and the reality of racism.

fig25_14.jpg

A semblance of normal life resumes amid the rubble of the Watts riot of August 1965.

III. Vietnam and the New Left

• Critics of the War – As casualties mounted and American bombs

poured down on North and South Vietnam, the Cold War foreign policy consensus began to unravel

– Opposition to the war became the organizing theme that united all kinds of doubts and discontents

• The burden of fighting fell on the working class and the poor

• The Antiwar Movement – SDS began antiwar demonstrations in 1965

• Carl Ogelsby

IV. The New Movements and the Rights Revolution

• The Reawakening of Feminism • The Feminine Mystique

– The public reawakening of feminist consciousness came with the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique

– The immediate result of The Feminine Mystique was to focus attention on yet another gap between American rhetoric and American reality

– The law slowly began to address feminist concerns – 1966 saw the formation of the National Organization for

Women (NOW), with Friedan as president

IV. The New Movements and the Rights Revolution (con’t)

• Women’s Liberation – Many women in the civil rights movement

concluded that the treatment of women in society was not much better than society’s treatment of blacks

– The same complaints arose in SDS – By 1967, women throughout the country were

establishing “consciousness-raising” groups to discuss the sources of their discontent

– The new feminism burst onto the national scene at the Miss America beauty pageant of 1968

• “bra-burners”

fig25_25.jpg


• Personal Freedom – Women believed that “the personal is political,” thus

permanently changing Americans’ definition of freedom

– Radical feminists’ first public campaign demanded the repeal of state laws that underscored women’s lack of self-determination by banning abortions or leaving it up to physicians to decide whether a pregnancy could be terminated

IV. The New Left• defining New Left

– anti-racism/anit-Vietnam War– mixed group of liberals including

Marxists/socialists/pacifists• Mao Zedong/Castro become symbols to some

– Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) – formed in 1962

• predominately white, middle-class Univ. students• Port Huron Statement ~ open up Amer. society econ/pol. to

all, anti-big corp.– Tom Hayden (eventually married to Jane Fonda)

• March on Pentagon ‘67 - 100,000 protest the war in Vietnam• Dow Chemicals protest – they made napalm• Weathermen ‘69 ~ splinter group uses bombs to attack

symbols of America’s capitalist system

IV. The New Left

• Berkeley Free Speech Movement ‘64 – ban on political literature and the continued

military recruitment on campus was challenged

– Mario Savio leads series of free speech exercises to challenge ban on pol. Lit.

~ “I’m tired of reading history, I want to make it!”

Mario Savio, a leader of the Free Speech Movement, addressing a crowd on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in November 1966.


• Gay Liberation – Gay men and lesbians had long been stigmatized

as sinful or mentally disordered – The 1960s transformed the gay movement

• Stonewall Bar

• Latino Activism – The movement emphasized pride in both the

Mexican past and the new Chicano culture that had arisen in the United States

• Cesar Chavez

Part of the Gay Liberation Day demonstration in New York City in June 1970.

fig25_27.jpgCésar Chavez leading a march of striking Chicano farm workers in 1967.


• The New Environmentalism – The new environmentalism was more activist and youth-

oriented, and spoke the language of empowering citizens to participate in decisions that affected their lives

– Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring spurred the movement – Despite vigorous opposition from business groups that

considered its proposals a violation of property rights, environmentalism attracted the broadest bipartisan support of any of the new social movements

• April 22, 1970—Earth Day


• Consumer Activism – Closely related to environmentalism was the consumer

movement, spearheaded by the lawyer Ralph Nader

• The Rights Revolution – Under the guidance of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the

Supreme Court vastly expanded the rights enjoyed by all Americans

– The Court moved to rein in the anticommunist crusade in 1957 on what is known as “Red Monday”

– The Court continued to guard civil liberties in the 1950s and 1960s


• The Right to Privacy – The Warren Court outlined entirely new rights in

response to the rapidly changing contours of American society

• Griswold v. Connecticut • Roe v. Wade

– Griswold and Roe unleashed a flood of rulings and laws that seemed to accept the feminist view of the family as a collection of sovereign individuals rather than a unit with a single head

V. 1968

• A Year of Turmoil – The 1960s reached their climax in 1968, a year

when momentous events succeeded each other with such rapidity that the foundations of society seemed to be dissolving

• Tet Offensive • LBJ withdrew from 1968 election • Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated • Columbia University student strike • Robert Kennedy was assassinated • Chicago Democratic National Convention

1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago

(Hubert Humphrey nominated)

• Democrats divided on the war• Hippies come to protest the Party’s participation

in continuing the Vietnam War – Jerry Rubin (became a “Yuppie” entrepreneur during

the 1980s) & Abbie Hoffman (60s radical who stayed true to his roots) lead protests

– Mayor Daley orders “shoot to kill” as students defy police bans on marches

– CT Sen. Abe Ribicoff calls it “gestapo tactics in the streets” and gets shouted down while at the podium by a furious Mayor Daley

Protestors in Chicago, 1968

V. 1968 (con’t)

• Nixon’s Comeback – The year’s events opened the door for a

conservative reaction – Richard Nixon campaigned as the champion of the

“silent majority” – Southern strategy use states’ rights beliefs in

South/anti-civil rights to pull Southern voters to Republican party (South is their base today!)

• The Legacy of the 1960s – The 1960s produced new rights and a new

understanding of freedom

The Presidential Election of 1968 • pg. 1019

The Presidential Election of 1968

News & Politics

1960s