• Organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961• Purpose was to test whether Southern bus terminals would

obey the Supreme Court’s ban on segregation• Few problems in the upper South; violence in the deep South

The Freedom Rides

• Influenced by Gandhi and Thoreau

• Used demonstrations, marches, public disobedience

• Media coverage gave movement impact and support

• Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr. andNonviolent Resistance

• Nation of Islam (NOI)• Advocated black

separatism, militancy against “white oppression”

• Malcolm X• Break with Elijah

Muhammad and the NOI

• Malcolm X assassinated in 1965

The Black Muslims and Malcolm X

Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Beginnings with JFK

• LBJ gets the act passed• Provisions

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Affirmative Action

• Fulfilled a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Special consideration given to disadvantaged groups in order to overcome present effects of past discrimination

• “Reverse discrimination,” the Bakke case

• Passed in response to King’s Selma to Montgomery voting rights march

• Protected minority right to vote and promised to punish those who stood in the way of minority registration

The Voting Rights Act of

1965President Johnson and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Rachel Carson’s

Silent Spring

• Carson was a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist

• Silent Spring focused on the effects of DDT on the environment

• LBJ’s domestic agenda• Composed of several

measures• New programs/reforms• “Great Society” fell

victim to Vietnam War

The Great Society

• “Flower Power”• Reactions against the Vietnam

War

“Flower Power” and the Anti-War Movement Kent State

• 1968• The “silent majority,”

Kent State, and the end of the antiwar movement

“Flower Power” and the Anti-War Movement (continued)

Kent State

Soldiers stand guard in Washington, D.C. following riots in the aftermath of Dr. King’s

assassination

• Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique

• Feminism deals with “gender politics” and inequalities

• Beginnings of the women’s movement/NOW

• Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

• Backlash

Feminism and the

Women’s Movement

Betty Friedan

Gloria Steinem

Cesar Chavez

• Helped to organize farm workers

• United Farm Workers (UFW)

• California grape boycott

• Chavez’s legacy

Earth Day

• Senator Gaylord Nelson• First Earth Day held in

1970• Nationally sponsored

environmental activities• Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA)Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson

• Détente: “Easing of tensions”

• Realpolitik: “Political realism”

• Benefits for both the U.S. and USSR

• Relations with China

Détente and Realpolitik

President Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

Nuclear Arms Reduction

• Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)

• SALT I (1972): limits on ABMs

• SALT II (1979): limits on number of new arms produced

• Senate opposition sinks SALT II

The 1979 SALT talks

• Reagan inherits double-digit inflation, high unemployment

• “Trickle-down” economics/lower taxes

• “Supply-side” economics

• Deficit spending• S & L deregulation

“Reaganomics”

• President Reagan called for a system to protect the U.S. from an enemy missile attack

• “Star Wars”: opponents of SDI

• Never implemented

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

• September 11, 2001• Bush: the U.S. would go after

any nation that supported terrorists

• Preemption• Unilateral action• “Strengths beyond challenge”• Extending the “rewards of liberty”

The Bush Doctrine