The Sixties:

1
The Sixties

• Toward the Great Society

2
John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier

• John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)
• Background
• Irish-Catholic
• Service in the Pacific during WWII (PT 109)
• House of Representatives, 1947-1953
• U.S. Senate, 1953-1961

3
The Election of 1960 Kennedy campaigned on slogan
of a New Frontier appealed to idealism of
young people blacks an important voting bloc,
so civil rights movement had to be taken
seriously had to reassure voters they had
nothing to fear from a Catholic president
first televised debates enhanced the
importance of image in politics positive
response by many voters to Kennedys appeal
that they do something for their country
4

• Kennedys Economic Policies
• Had repeatedly promised during 1960 campaign to
  get the country moving again
• Trade expansion (with Europe)
• Tax credits for modernization of industry
• Combat inflation
• Increase military and space program spending
• Tax cut to spur economic growth

5

• Cold War Moments
• The Cold War Consensus
• Liberals and conservatives were committed to
  belief in a monolithic Soviet-directed communist
  movement and the need to confront it anywhere
• They disagreed on how to conduct the Cold War and
  how much to spend on it
• Flexible Response and Crisis Management
• Democrats had criticized Eisenhowers foreign
  policy
• Ike was too old and his policy was in drift
• U.S. was falling behind in technology and
  prestige
• Sputnik
• Alleged missile gap
• U.S. not in a position to negotiate from strength
• More creative options needed in relation to Cuba
  and other Third World hot spots
• U.S. needed to have flexible response to the
  many varieties of communist threats

6

• Bay of Pigs, April 1961
• Background
• Castro revolution in Cuba, 1959
• Eisenhower admin. Plan for CIA-sponsored invasion
  by Cuban exiles
• Landing at Bay of Pigs
• Poor intelligence
• No insurgency
• No U.S. air cover
• JFK took full responsibility

7

• Berlin Crisis, 1961
• JFK responded to Soviet threats by
• Calling up reserves, expanding the draft
• Additional defense spending and missiles
• Denial of a missile gap
• Soviets
• Sealed off East Berlin with Berlin Wall (to
  prevent further defections to the West by East
  Berliners)
• Signed treaty with East Germany

8

• Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962
• Existence of Soviet missile bases missiles
  confirmed by U-2 flights over Cuba
• JFK demanded removal threatened naval blockade
• War averted with acceptance of first Soviet
  message removal of missiles in exchange for U.S.
  promises not to invade Cuba (U.S. missiles later
  removed from Turkey)
• Aftermath
• Kremlin-White House hot line
• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1963
• Escalation of arms race

9
The Second Reconstruction

• The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern
  Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Committed to non-violent resistance and civil
  disobedience
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• Younger, more impatient activists who often
  challenged dominant position of the SCLC
• Committed to non-violent direct action, moving
  beyond boycotts and efforts at moral suasion

10

• Civil Rights Activists and the Kennedy
  Administration
• Sit-In Campaign, 1960
• Began in Greensboro, NC, with four college
  students
• Spread to other cities in North Carolina and
  Virginia
• Resulted in eventual formation of SNCC

11

• Freedom Rides, 1961
• Meant to demonstrate non-compliance by Southern
  bus lines of federal administrative and court
  rulings against segregation on public interstate
  transportation
• CORE the primary group involved
• Importance of television, which showed results of
  violent attacks on Freedom Riders

12

• Birmingham, 1963
• Massive campaign of civil disobedience filled
  jails
• Police turned fire hoses and German shepherds
  loose on peaceful marchers
• JFK gave speech to the nation, announcing that
  morality demanded justice for black Americans in
  the South
• Administration more committed to aiding passage
  of civil rights legislation

13

• The March on Washington, August 28, 1963
• Kings I Have a Dream speech
• Kennedy administration worked behind the scenes
  to prevent movement from becoming radicalized

14

• The Broadening Rights Revolution
• The Rebirth of Feminism
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
• Dissatisfaction of middle-class women with narrow
  roles of wife and mother
• Expressed desire of many women to have careers
  and identities separate from domestic
  responsibilities
• National Organization for Women (NOW), 1966
• Fought gender discrimination in the workplace and
  lobbied for equal opportunity
• Supported revival of the Equal Rights Amendment

15

• Hispanic Rights
• The Chicano Movement
• Emerged among college students with heightened
  sense of ethnic pride and solidarity
• Protests against discrimination, demands for
  improvements to schools, promotion of Hispanic or
  Chicano studies

16

• César Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW)
• Insisted on non-violent tactics, allied UFW with
  organized labor and religious groups
• Strikes and nationwide consumer boycotts led to
  recognition and collective bargaining contracts
  with growers

17

• Native American Activism and Change
• Termination, 1950s-1960s
• Another shift in federal policy, away from Indian
  sovereignty and cultural autonomy and back to
  complete assimilation
• Termination of treaty relationships with tribes
• Led to withdrawal of federal services and
  contracts, additional loss of lands
• Resolution of all tribal claims for previous loss
  of lands
• Relocation of individual Native Americans from
  reservations to cities

18

• Activism and Militancy
• Mainstream, civil rights-type organizations
• National Congress of American Indians
• National Indian Youth Council
• American Indian Movement (AIM)
• Founded by more militant Sioux and Ojibwa
  activists in Minneapolis-St. Paul, 1968
• Leaders appealed to younger generation of urban
  Native Americans

19

• Direct action
• Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1969
• Trail of Broken Treaties protest and occupation
  of Bureau of Indian Affairs building, 1972
• Siege at Wounded Knee, 1973
• Tribal chairman (supported by BIA) vs. AIM (led
  by Dennis Banks Russell Means) and Oglala
  traditionalists
• Demonstration and clash at Custer County
  Courthouse
• Takeover of Wounded Knee village by AIM and
  71-day siege

20
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society

• Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)
• Gifted legislative leader
• Full-blown, big-government liberal who wanted
  to go down in history as a great activist
  president

21

• The Great Society, Part I
• Tax Reduction Act of 1964
• Spurring economic growth through a tax cut as a
  means to pay for new domestic programs
• Impressive short-term effect on the economy
• War on Poverty Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
• Ten separate programs under new Office of
  Economic Opportunity
• Head Start
• VISTA
• Job Corps
• Upward Bound
• Community Action Programs

22

• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Public accommodations discrimination within
  interstate commerce prohibited
• Voting rights protected
• School desegregation speeded up
• Illegal to use race in employment policies
• Forbade discrimination on basis of gender

23

• The Election of 1964
• Republicans divided right-wing triumphed with
  nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona
• Portrayed by Johnson campaign as an extremist on
  civil rights, communism, etc.
• Although Goldwater was crushed in the election,
  grass-roots conservatives were activated, leading
  to later successes

24

• The Great Society, Part II
• Legislation, 1965-1966
• Medicare/Medicaid (1965)
• Elementary Secondary Education (1965)
• Higher Education (1965)
• Housing (1965, 1966)
• Immigration Act of 1965 (ended national origins
  quotas)
• National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities
  (1965)
• Motor Vehicle Safety (1966)
• Truth in Packaging (1966)

25

• Civil Rights Triumphs and Tragedies
• Freedom Summer voter registration campaigns in
  Mississippi, 1964-1965
• Selma-Montgomery marches, Spring 1965
• Demonstration of continuing practices of
  disfranchisement in the South
• Violent reaction by authorities witnessed by
  nation on television

26

• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Inspired by Southern states failure to enforce
  1964 voting rights provisions
• Gave federal government larger responsibility for
  voter registration
• Federal election supervisors
• Suspended literacy tests
• Suits against state election poll taxes

27

• Black Power
• Civil rights movement becoming national
• Increasing focus on discrimination and
  segregation outside of the South
• Protest becoming more militant
• Growing dissatisfaction with King and nonviolent
  tactics
• Malcolm X
• Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) most articulate
  spokesman for black power, which encouraged
  separatism, black culture, and black pride
• Killed in 1965 by Black Muslim assassins

28

• Activists outside of the South less influenced by
  religious leaders and found revolutionary ideas
  more appealing
• Riots in northern and western cities between 1965
  and 1968 underscored national scope of racism

29

• The Warren Court
• Decisions complemented the activist tendencies of
  the 1960s
• Controversial rulings on
• Civil rights
• Voting
• Criminal justice
• Church-state relations
• Supporters interpreted Supreme Courts decisions
  as much needed and long delayed justice
  opponents saw them as unwanted and unwarranted
  federal intrusion into peoples lives

30

• The Politics of Backlash
• Growing perception on the part of many Americans
  that the liberal assumptions that had
  predominated since the New Deal were wrong and
  that liberal government made things worse
• Democrats losing support of segments of their
  traditional blue-collar constituencies union
  members in the North and white Southerners
  upset with
• Riots in the inner cities
• Protests against the Vietnam War
• Rise of feminist and gay rights movements
• Apparent destruction of traditional American
  values