CHAPTER 29: CIVIL RIGHTS, VIETNAM, AND THE ORDEAL OF LIBERALISM

BY: LUCY LOPEZ, KARLEIGH PALMETER, GABRIEL DORAME

The Election of 1960

Richard Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy Republican

Democrat

THE ELECTION OF 1960

•The election of 1960, in the popular vote was at least, one of the closest in American History.

•Kennedy was strong on the industrial Northeast and the largest industrial states of the Midwest. Was also able to retain a portion of his party’s traditional strength in the South and Southwest.•Nixon swept most of the Plains and Mountain states. And also made an impact into the upper south and carried Florida.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

•The 1960 election claimed to offer the nation active leadership

•His appealing public image was at least as important as his political positions in attracting popular support.

•Kennedy campaigned promising a set of domestic reforms more ambitious than any since the New Deal; program he called the “New Frontier”

•His thin popular mandate and the Congress being dominated by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats frustrated many of his hopes.

•But he did manage to win approval of tariff reductions his administration had negotiated, and he began to build an ambitious legislative agenda.- including a call for a significant tax cut to promote economic growth.

Assassination of JFKIn November 22, 1963 Kennedy had traveled to Texas with his wife and Vice President Lyndon Johnson for a series of political appearances

While the President’s motorcade rode slowly through the streets of Dallas , shots rang out.

Two bullets struck the president-one in the throat, the other in the head. He was spread to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Lee Harvey Oswald an embittered Marxist was arrested for the crime later that day, and then was mysteriously murdered by Dallas night club owner, Jack Ruby.

In later years, Americans came to believe that the Warren Commission report had ignored evidence of a wider conspiracy behind the murders.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Came to into office after Kennedy’s assassination and most of the country took comfort in his personality.

Between 1963 and 1966, he had compiled the most impressive legislative record of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the November 1964 election, the president received a larger plurality, over 61%, than any other candidate before.Now there was a record majority in both Houses of Congress (ensured President would be able to fulfill many of his goals).

Because of all the emotion after the death of JFK , Johnson was able win support for many New Frontier proposals. Was also able to construct a reform program of his own- the “Great Society”

In the 1960s, the federal government took steps to create important new social welfare programs:

Medicare: a program to provide federal aid to the elderly for medical expenses

- it avoided the stigma of “welfare” by making Medicare benefits available to all elderly Americans, regardless of need. The program also defused the opposition of the medical community by allowing doctors serving Medicare patients to practice privately and to charge their normal fees.

The Centerpiece of this “war on poverty” was the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)- created an array of new educational, employment, housing, and health-care programs and it was controversial because of its commitment to the idea of “Community Action”

THE ASSUALT ON POVERTY

Community Action Program

Community action was an effort to involve members of poor communities themselves in the planning and administration of the programs designed to help them.

It also provided many jobs for many poor people and gave them valuable experience in administrative and political work.

Despite its achievements, the Community Action approach proved impossible to sustain because of administrative failure and apparent excesses of few agencies damaged the popular image of the program.

Spent nearly $3 billion in its first 2 years and it helped reduce poverty but didn’t eliminate it because of the weakness of the programs and the funding for the programs as well.

Cities & Schools

There were Federal efforts to promote the revitalization of decaying cities and to strengthen the nation’s schools.

- The Housing Act of 1961- offered $4.9 billion in federal grants to cities for the preservation of open spaces, the development of mass-transit systems, and the subsidization of middle income housing.

In 1966 Johnson established a new cabinet agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and inaugurated the Model Cities program, which offered subsidies for urban redevelopment pilot programs.

-Americans feared that aid to education was the first step toward federal control of the schools, and Catholics insisted that federal assistance must extend to parochial as well as public schools.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965- the bill extended aid to both private and parochial schools and based the aid on the economic conditions of the students, not on the needs of the schools themselves.

The Johnson administration supported the Immigration Act of 1965snd it maintained a strict limit on the number of newcomers admitted to the country each year (170,000), but it eliminated the “national origins” system established in the 1920s, which gave preference to immigrants from northern Europe over those from other parts of the world.

Continued to restrict immigration from some parts of Latin America, but it allowed people from Europe, Asia, and Africa enter the United States.

By the early 1970s, the character of American immigration had changed, with new national groups- particularly large groups of Asians- entering the United States and changing the character of the American population.

IMMIGRATION

Legacies of the Great Society

The Great Society reforms meant a significant increase in federal spending. In 1964, Johnson managed to win passage of the $11.5 billion tax cut that Kennedy

had first proposed in 1962. The cut increased the federal deficit, but substantial economic growth over the next several years made up for the revenue originally lost.

The high cost of the Great Society programs , the failures of many of them, and the inability of the government to find the revenues to pay for them contributed to allowing disillusionment in later years with the idea that federal efforts to solve social problems.

- Many Americans believed that indeed government programs to solve social problems could not work.

Despite many failures it did have some significant achievements. It reduced hunger in America and it made medical care available to millions of elderly and poor people who would otherwise have had great difficult affording it.

It also contributed to the greatest reduction in poverty in American history.

The Battle for Racial Equality

JFK was sympathetic to the cause of racial justice, but was not very committed to it. He had helped release Martin Luther King Jr. from a Georgia prison, but feared alienating southern Democratic voters and congressmen.

He set out to contain the racial problem by expanding enforcement of existing laws and supporting litigation to overturn existing segregation statutes, hoping to make modest progress without creating politically damaging divisions.

Protests began in Greensboro, North Carolina- staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter and then spread across the South. Those who participated formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which worked to keep the spirit of resistance.

Groups of students, working with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began “freedom rides.” They met savage violence at the hands of enraged whites that the finally dispatched federal marshals to keep the peace.

Other protest groups formed such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which created citizen-education and other programs to mobilize black workers, farmers, housewives, and others to challenge segregation, disfranchisement, and discrimination.

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. helped launch a series of nonviolent demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama.

Eugene “Bull” Connor supervised a brutal effort to break up the peaceful marches , arresting hundreds of demonstrators and using attack dogs, tear gas, electric cattle prods, and fire hoses as much of the nation watched televised reports in horror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0lD37bq8YI

Birmingham, Alabama

To generate support for legislation, and to dramatize the power of the growing movement, more than 200,000 demonstrators marched down the mall in Washington D.C., IN August 1963 and gathered before the Lincoln Memorial for the greatest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history.

Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a Dream"

The assassination of President Kennedy 3 months later gave new impulses to the battle for civil rights legislation. 

Johnson was able to muster up two-thirds majority necessary  to close the debate and pass the most comprehensive civil rights bill in the nation's history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V57lotnKGF8

A National Commitment

The Battle for Voting Rights

The Civil Rights movement shifted its focus to voting rights. During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights workers, black and white, northern and southern, spread out through the South to work on behalf of black voter registration and participation. Campaign was known as "freedom summer"

Freedom summer also produced the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and challenged the regular party's right to its seats at the Democratic National Convention that summer.

MLK organized a major demonstration in Selma, Alabama, to press the demand for the right of blacks to register to vote. Selma sheriff Jim Clark led local police in a brutal attack on the demonstrators Two Northern whites participating in the march were murdered-one, a minister, was

beaten to death in the streets of the town; the other, a Detroit housewife, was shot as she drove along a highway at night with a black passenger in her car.

The national outrage helped Lyndon Johnson to propose and win passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, better known as the Voting Rights Act, provided federal protection to blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote.

Although the economic condition of much of American society was improving, in the poor urban communities in which black population was concentrated, things were getting significantly worse.

By the mid-1960s the issue of race was moving out of the south and into the rest of the nation The battle against school desegregation had moved beyond the initial

assault on de jure segregation (segregation by law) to an attack on de facto segregation (segregation in practice, as through residential patterns.)

Lyndon Johnson gave his tentative support to the concept of "affirmative action" in 1965 and over the next decade, affirmative action guidelines gradually extended to all institutions doing business with or receiving funds from the federal government. this movement's new direction led to Organizers of the Chicago

campaigned hoped to direct national attention to housing and employment discrimination in northern industrial cities in much the same way similar campaigns had exposed legal racism in the South. Failed to arouse national conscience in the way the events in the South had

The Changing Movement

Urban Poverty came to national attention when the Watts section of Los Angeles began to riot. A white police officer struck a protesting black bystander with his club

which triggered a storm of anger and a week of violence. 10,000 people participated in the violence-attacking white motorist,

burning buildings, looting stores, and sniping at policemen. 34 people died during the Watts uprising, which was eventually quelled by the National Guard.

Televised reports of the violence alarmed million and gave a growing sense of doubt among many of the whites who embraced  the cause of racial justice only a few years before.

Lyndon Johnson created the Commission on Civil Disorders- the commission issued a celebrated report in the spring of 1968 recommending massive spending to eliminate the abysmal conditions of the ghettos. Many white Americans thought there was a need more for stern measures to stop violence and lawlessness.

Urban Violence

Philosophy of "black power" suggested a move away from interracial cooperation and toward increased awareness of racial distinctiveness. It also instilled racial pride in African- Americans, who lived in a society whose dominant culture saw blacks inferior to whites. it encouraged the growth of black studies in schools and universities helped stimulate important black literary and artistic movements and a new

interest among many African Americans in their African roots  some blacks began to adopt African styles of dress, even to change their names.

Also black power created a schism within the civil rights movement Groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and King's Southern Christian

Leadership Conference-  now faced competition wit radical groups these groups were calling for radical change and occasionally violent action

against racism of white society and were openly rejecting the approaches of older, more established black leaders.

Whites were alarmed by organizations that existed outside the mainstream civil rights movement. Black Panther Party- from Oakland, California promised to defend black rights

with violence and wore weapons openly and proudly.

Black Power

Nation of Islam (founded by Elijah Poole)- taught blacks to take responsibility for their own, to live by strict codes of behavior, and to reject any dependence on whites. The most celebrated of the black Muslims was Malcolm Little, a former

drug addict and pimp who had spent time in prison and had rebuilt his life after joining the movement. (adopted the name Malcolm X)

Malcolm X was influential to younger blacks, as a result of his intelligence, his oratorical skills, and his harsh, uncompromising opposition to all forms of racism and oppression. did not advocate violence, but insisted that black people had the right to

defend themselves, violently if necessary, from those who assaulted them.

Malcolm died in 1965 when black gunmen, presumably under orders from rivals within the Nation of Islam, assassinated him in New York.

Had been working on a book before his death (the Autobiography of Malcolm X) attracted wide attention after his publication in 1965 and spread his reputation broadly through the nation.

MALCOLM X

Kennedy administration was convinced that the United States needed to be able to counter communist aggression in more flexible ways than the atomic-weapons-oriented defense strategy

Kennedy also favored expanding American influence through peaceful means repaired the detoriating relationship with Latin America, he

propose an "Alliance for Progress."-made a series of projects for peaceful development and stabilization of the nations region

also inaugurated the Agency for International Development (AID) to coordinate foreign aid.

Also established the Peace Corps, which sent young American volunteers abroad to work in developing areas

Diversifying Foreign Policy

The first policy ventures of the Kennedy administration was a disastrous assault on the Castro government in Cuba. Eisenhower administration began the project and by the

time Kennedy took office the CIA had been working for months to train a small army of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Central America.

On April 17, 1961- 2,000 of the armed exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. They expected American air support and then a spontaneous uprising by Cuban people on their behalf (received neither).Kennedy withdrew the air support , fearful of involving the United States to directly in the invasion.

Well-armed Castro force easily captured the invaders, and within two days the entire mission had collapsed.

Bay of Pigs

Kennedy traveled to Vienna in June 1961 for his first meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was particularly unhappy about the

mass exodus of residents of East Germany to the West through the easily traversed Berlin.

On August 13, 1961, the East German Government, complying with direction from Moscow, began constructing a wall between East and West Berlin. The Berlin Wall served as the most potent physical symbol of the conflict between the communist and non-communist world.

Confrontation with Soviet Union

On October 14, aerial reconnaissance photos produced clear evidence that the Soviets were constructing sites in Cuba for offensive nuclear weapons. placing missiles in Cuba probably seemed a reasonable way to counter

the presence of American missiles in Turkey. To Americans the missile sites represented an act of aggression by the Soviets toward the United States.

On October 22, he ordered a naval and air blockade around Cuba. On October 26, Kennedy received a message from Khrushchev implying that the Soviet Union would remove the missile bases in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Cuba.

The Political Challenge In the summer of 1967, dissident Democrats tried to mobilize

support behind antiwar candidate who would challenge Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 primaries. Asked Robert Kennedy but he declined. Turned to Senator Eugene

McCarthy Minnesota. Robert Kennedy He finally entered the campaign, embittering many McCarthy

supporters, but bringing his own substantial strength among blacks, the poor, and workers to the antiwar cause.

Robert Kennedy quickly established himself as the champion of the Democratic primaries, winning one election after another. But Vice President Hubert Humphrey, entered the contest and began to attract the support of party leaders and of the many delegations that were selected by state party organizations.

The Political Challenge

Kennedy continued his campaign for the presidential nomination. Late on the night of June 6, he appeared  in the ballroom of a Los Angeles hotel to acknowledge his victory in that day's California primary. 

As he left the ballroom, Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian apparently enraged by pro-Israeli remarks Kennedy had recently made, emerged from a crowd and shot him dead.

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr., who had traveled to Memphis,

Tennessee, to lend his support to striking black sanitation workers in the city, was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of his motel

The assassin was James Earl Ray and he had been hired by others to do the killing, but he himself never revealed the identity of his employers and doubts about his role in the assassination continued after his death in prison, in 1998.

Robert Kennedy and MLK Assassination

The turbulent events of 1968 persuaded many observers that American Society was in the throes of Revolutionary change.

The most visible sign of the conservative backlash was the surprising success of the campaign of the segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace for presidency. He became a third-party candidate for president, basing his campaign on a

host of conservative grievances, not all of them connected to race A more effective effort to mobilize the "silent majority" in favor of order

and stability was under way within the Republican Party.

Richard Nixon reemerged as the preeminent spokesman for what he called "Middle America"

Nixon recognized that many Americans were tired of hearing about their obligations to the poor, the sacrifices necessary to achieve racial justice, judicial reforms that seemed designed to help criminals.

By offering a vision of stability, law and order, government retrenchment, and "peace with honor" in Vietnam, he captured the Republican presidential nomination.

The Conservative Response

Presidential election of 1968

Nixon wins the election of 1968, but the election made clear that a majority of the American electorate was more interested in restoring stability than in promoting social change.