The Stormy Sixties
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Transcript of The Stormy Sixties
The Stormy Sixties
1960-1968
Chapter 39
The New Frontier
• Kennedy was the youngest president to ever take office
• Assembled one of the youngest cabinets
• Named his brother Robert as Attorney General
• Created the Peace Corps. – army of youth to help underdeveloped nations
The New Frontier
• Southern Republicans and Democrats hated the New Frontier plan
• Goal was to curb inflation
• Part of Kennedy’s plan was a multi-billion dollar mission to the moon.
Rumblings in Europe
• June 1961 – Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna
• Aug. 1961 – Soviets began to construct the Berlin Wall
• Designed to stop the population drain from East to West Germany
Europe
• Western Europe was prospering from the Marshall Plan
• The Common Market – free trade was set up in Western Europe
• “Flexible Response” - developing an array of military options that could be precisely matched to the necessities of the crisis at hand.
The Vietnam Quagmire• 1961 - JFK increased the
number of “military advisors” in South Vietnam in order to help protect Ngo Dinh Diem from the communists.
• In November 1963, after being fed up with U.S. economic aid being embezzled by Diem, JFK encouraged a successful coup and killed Diem.
Cuba• April 17, 1961, 1,200
exiles landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs to try to take over Cuba
• JFK gave no direct support, thus they were defeated
• This pushed Cuba further into Soviet embrace
• Fidel Castro retains control over Communist Cuba
Cuban Missile Crisis
• Oct. 1962 – it was found (aerial photos) that USSR was installing nuclear weapons in Cuba
• Oct. 22, 1962 – JFK ordered naval quarantine of Cuba and demanded removal of weapons
• Americans waited 1 week while Soviet ships approached the naval blockade
• Oct. 28 – Khrushchev agreed to a compromise and removed the weapons – N.K. thought JFK was weak and was surprised by his response!
Civil Rights
• Freedom Riders – Blacks and Whites who rode on buses across the South to end segregation
• White mob torched a bus in Alabama in May 1961
I Have a Dream• August 1963 – Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peaceful “March on Washington” in support of the proposed new civil rights legislation.
• This was the site of the “I Have a Dream” speech
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• November 22, 1963• JFK shot and killed
while riding in an open motorcade in Dallas, Texas
• Lee Harvey Oswald arrested for the murder
• Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner
The LBJ Presidency
• After prodding by LBJ, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed
• In 1965, President Johnson issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors to take “affirmative action” against discrimination.
LBJ• LBJ dubbed his domestic
program the “Great Society”
• Sweeping set of New Deal-like economic and welfare measures aimed at transforming the American way of life.
Election of 1964
• Democrats nominated Lyndon Johnson
• Republicans chose Barry Goldwater, an ultraconservative from California
• Goldwater was against most of LBJ’s social programs
LBJ’s victory • August 1964 - Gulf of Tonkin - U.S. Navy ships
had been cooperating with the South Vietnamese in raids along the coast of North Korea.
• August 2 and 4 - 2 U.S. ships were allegedly fired upon.
• LBJ used the event to spur congressional passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution; lawmakers virtually gave up their war-declaring powers, handed the president a blank check to use further force in Southeast Asia.
• Lyndon Johnson overwhelmingly won the election of 1964.
The Great Society• A flood of legislation was
passed in the “Great Society” Congress
• Created the Dept. of Transportation and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development
• 1965 came Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor
• Hint: E= Elderly, D= Disadvantaged
Black Rights
• Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government more power to enforce school-desegregation orders and to prohibit racial discrimination.
• The 24th Amendment, passed in 1964, abolished the poll tax in federal elections, yet blacks were still severely hampered from voting.
• Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning literacy tests and sending federal voter registers into several southern states.
Black Power
• Riots broke out all over the US over civil rights
• Malcolm X deepened the division among black leaders. He was first inspired by the militant clack nationalists in the Nation of Islam.
• 1965, he was shot and killed by a rival Nation of Islam.
Black Movement
• The violence or threat of violence increased as the Black Panther Party emerged, openly carrying weapons in the streets of Oakland, California.
• April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee.
Vietnam• By 1968, Johnson had put
more than 500,000 troops in Southeast Asia, and the annual cost for the war was exceeding $30 billion.
• Casualties, killed, and wounded had exceeded 100,000, and more bombs had been dropped in Vietnam than in World War II.
LBJ and Vietnam
• January 1968, the Viet Cong attacked 27 key South Vietnamese cities, including Saigon
• March 31, 1968, President Johnson issued an address to the nation stating that he would freeze American troop levels.
• Bombing would also be scaled down. He also declared that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968.
Election of 1968
• June 5, 1968, the night of the California primary, candidate Robert Kennedy was shot and killed by an Arab immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan, who was resentful of the candidate’s pro-Israel views
Election of 1968
• Hubert H. Humphrey, vice president of Johnson, won the Democratic nomination.
• Republicans nominated Richard Nixon for president and Spiro T. Agnew for vice president
• Republicans called for a victory in Vietnam
Election of 1968
• The American Independent party, headed by George C. Wallace, entered the race and called for the continuation of segregation of blacks.
• Nixon won the Election of 1968
Cultural Upheaval
• In the 1960s America, a newly negative attitude toward all kinds of authority took hold.
• Disillusioned by the discovery that American society was not free of racism, sexism, imperialism, and oppression, many young people lost their morals.
College Commotion
• One of the first organized protests against established authority took place at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, in the Free Speech Movement.
• Leader Mario Savio condemned the impersonal university “machine.” Angered by the war in Vietnam, some middle class sons and daughters became radical political rebels.
The Sexual Revolution
• The 1960s also witnessed a “sexual revolution.”
• The introduction of the birth control pill made unwanted pregnancies easy to avoid.
• By the 1960s, gay men and lesbians were increasingly emerging and demanding sexual tolerance