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