Post Day 88 Reading Quiz

Black nationalism

Varied depending on the person. Pride in one’s community to total separatism, from building African American-owned businesses to wearing dashikis in honor of African traditions. Taking pride in racial heritage.

Nation of Islam

The leading exponent of black nationalism. Fused a rejection of Christianity with a strong philosophy of self-improvement.

Black Muslims

Adhered to a strict code of personal behavior including dark suits, white shirts, and ties. They preached an apocalyptic brand of Islam, anticipating the day when Allah would banish the white “devils” and give the black nation justice.

Malcom X

Preached a philosophy of militant separatism, only advocated for violence in self-defense. X had little interest in changing the minds of hostile whites, instead he wanted to strengthen the black community.

Organization of Afro-American Unity

Promote black pride and to work with traditional civil rights groups. X was inspired by Muslims of all races worshipping together.

Black Power

SNCC and CORE activists, led by Stokely Carmicheal, began to call for black self-reliance under the banner of Black Power. Believed that African Americans should build economic and political power in their own communities which would lead to a less dependent relationship on white America

War on Poverty

Setting up day care centers, running community job training camps, and working to improve housing and health care in urban neighborhoods. Sought to open jobs in the police and fire departments, and in construction and transportation. Also worked to end police harassment and get black entrepreneurs small-business loans

Black pride

Led to people wearing African clothing, natural hairstyles, and celebrating black history, art, and culture. The Black Arts Movement thrived and musical tastes shifted to soul music.

Black Panther Party

A radical nationalist group founded in Oakland, California in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (college students). It was a militant organization dedicated to protecting African Americans from police violence. They opposed the Vietnam War and declared affinity for Third World revolutionary movements and armed struggle

“What We Want, What We Believe”

Panthers outlined their Ten Point Program for black liberation

Panther’s community-organizing programs

free breakfast program for children and a testing program for sickle-cell anemia, an inherited disease with a high incidence among African Americans

What did the Panther’s radicalism and belief in armed self defense lead to?

violent clashes with the police and the FBI disrupting party activities

Young Lords Organization (YLO)

Young Puerto Ricans inspired by the Black Panthers. It was later renamed the Young Lords Party. YLO activists sought self-determination for Puerto Ricans in the US and abroad. Focused on improving neighborhood conditions such as city garbage collection

Women in the YLO

Active, protesting the sterilization campaigns against Puerto Rican women and fighting to improve access to health care

Richard Hatcher and Carl Stokes

Black Power inspired African Americans to work in the political system which made real changes like when residents of Gary, Indiana and Cleveland, Ohio elected the first black mayors of large cities in 1967. Their campaign teams register thousands of black votes and made alliances with enough whites to create a working majority

National Black Political Convention (1972)

Brought together radicals, liberals, and centrists. The debate centered on whether to form a third political party. The delegates decided to give the Democratic Party one more chance and issued the National Black Political Agenda

National Black Political Agenda

Included calls for community control of schools in black neighborhoods, national health insurance, and the elimination of the death penalty

The first “long hot summer”

July 1964 in NYC when police shot a black criminal suspect in Harlem. Angry youths looted and rioted there for a week. Police brutality set off riots in dozens of cities.

The riots of 1967

Engulfed 22 cities in July and August. 43 people were killed in Detroit alone, nearly all of them black, and $50 million worth of property was destroyed. President Johnson called in the National Guard and the US Army troops, many of whom had just returned from Vietnam, to restore order.

Kerner Commission Report (1968)

Stated the nation was moving into two separate societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal. The report did not excuse the brick-throwing, firebombing, and looting of the previous summers but it placed the riots in sociological context.

MLK’s response to the riots

Expanded his vision beyond civil rights to confront the deep-seated problems of poverty and racism in America as a whole. He criticized President Johnson and Congress for prioritizing the war in Vietnam over the fight against poverty at home. Planned the Poor People’s Campaign to fight economic injustice.

United Farm Workers (UFW)

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta concentrated on the agricultural region around Delano, California before founding a union for migrant workers

1965 grape pickers’ strike

UFW called a nationwide boycott of table grapes which gained backing from the AFL-CIO and huge publicity. Chavez staged a hunger strike to gain attention for a struggle, which he ended after 28 days with Senator Robert F. Kennedy at his side to break the fast. In 1970, California grape growers signed contracts recognizing the UFW

Unique concerns of Mexican Americans

Spanish language in schools and immigration policy

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)

Worked alongside the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project to carry the fight against discrimination in Washington, D.C. and mobilized Mexican Americans into an increasingly powerful voting bloc

Mexican American Political Association (MAPA)

Mobilized support for John F. Kennedy and worked successfully with other organizations to elect Mexican American candidates such as Edward Roybal of California and Henry Gonzalez of Texas to Congress

Brown Berets

Rejected their elder’s assimilationist approach. Fifteen hundred Mexican American students met in Denver in 1969 to hammer out a new political and cultural agenda. They proclaimed a new title: Chicano and Chicana instead of Mexican American.

La Raza Unida (People United)

Promoted Chicano interests

Las Hijas (The Daughters)

Founded by young Chicana feminists. They organized women both on college campuses and in the barrios

What did Chicano students do?

Staged demonstrations to press for bilingual education, hiring more Chicano teachers, and the creation of Chicano studies programs

“Great Society”

From President Johnson. Abundance and liberty for all including an end to poverty and racial injustice

Johnson’s vision during his presidency

A New Deal for a new era. He wanted to push to renew American education, rebuild cities, and restore and natural environment

Politics of expectation

President Kennedy embodied this concept. Inspiring a younger generation to a spirit of liberal reform

Kennedy’s legislative record

Not good because of congressional partisanship and resistance. He wanted health insurance for the aged, a new antipoverty program, a tax cut, and a civil rights bill (after pressures from civil rights leaders and Birmingham)

Kennedy mystique

Kennedy’s youthful image, traumatic assassination, and the nation’s sense of loss. The country canonized Jack and Jackie Kennedy as an ideal American marriage (despite JFK’s obsessive womanizing) and JFK the picture of health (he had Addison’s disease)

How was Johnson different than Kennedy?

Johnson was a seasoned Texas politician with modest origins and prowess in negotiation skills despite not having Kennedy’s style

Why did Johnson push civil rights legislation?

Johnson pushed civil rights legislation to prove he was a president for the people. He also wanted to make a mark on history.

What would happen to the Democratic Party if Johnson pushed civil rights legislation?

Johnson would please the Democratic Party’s liberal wing but most northern African Americans already voted Democrat so he wouldn’t gain many votes and southern white Democrats were likely to revolt

What did Johnson think was a national disgrace?

That 1/5 of the country (in Appalachia, urban ghettos, migrant camps, and Indian reservations) lived in poverty

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964

Created a series of programs to reach Americans in poverty. Johnson called it the War on Poverty.

Examples of legislation for the War on Poverty

• Head Start which provided free nursery schools to prepare disadvantaged preschoolers for kindergarten

• The Job Corps and Upward Bound provided young people with training and employment

• Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) modeled on the Peace Corps, offered technical assistance to the urban and rural poor

What US president did Johnson liken himself to?

FDR

Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Platform

Ran on an anticommunist, antigovernment platform. He represented a genuinely conservative alternative to liberalism rather than an echo of liberalism offered by the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He campaigned against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and promised more vigorous Cold War policy

Who won the 1964 election?

Johnson won in a landslide while promising to fulfill Kennedy’s legacy

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Johnson’s first big success, breaking the congressional deadlock on education and healthcare in April 1965. Authorized $1 billion in federal funds for teacher training and educational programs

Higher Education Act

Providing federal scholarships for college students

Medicare

A health plan for the elderly funded by a surcharge on Social Security payroll taxes

Medicaid

A health plan for the poor paid for by general tax revenues and administered by the states

The Great Society’s agenda

Expanded national park system, improvement of the nation’s air and water, protection for endangered species, stronger land-use planning, and highway beautification

Examples of Johnson’s successes

• Created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

• won funding for hundreds of thousands of units of public housing; made investments in urban rapid transit such as the new Washington, D.C. Metro and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system

• child safety and consumer protection laws

• created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the work of artists, writers, and scholars

The Immigration Act of 1965

Abandoned the quota system that favored northern Europeans, replacing it with numerical limits that didn’t discriminate between nations. To promote family reunification, the law also stipulated that close relatives of legal residents in the United States could also be admitted outside the numerical limits

Pros and Cons of the Great Society

The Great Society dramatically improved the financial situation of the elderly, reached millions of children, and increased the racial diversity of American society and workplaces BUT entrenched poverty remained, racial segregation in the largest cities worsened, and the national distribution of wealth remained highly skewed

Equal Pay Act (1963)

Established the principle of equal pay for equal work. Pushed for by “labor feminists”, women who found for equality and dignity in the workplace and belonged to trade unions

“Double day”

Women were expected to earn a paycheck and then return home to domestic labor

The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan

Targeted college-educated, middle-class women who found themselves stifled by their domestic routine. Friedan convinced middle-class women that to live fulfilling lives they needed education and work outside the home

Presidential Commission on the Status of Women

Appointed by Kennedy in 1961. In 1963 they published a report documenting job and educational discrimination.

What win for women was included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Congress added the word s*x to categories protected by discrimination

National Organization for Women (NOW, est. 1966)

Modeled on the NAACP, NOW intended to be a civil rights organization for women. Membership grew to fifteen thousand by 1971.

What did US presidents think would happen if we lost Vietnam?

We would lose credibility

What did Kennedy think about Ngo Dinh Diem?

In the fall of 1963, Kennedy made it clear that the US would support a military coup against Ngo Dinh Diem, the dictator of South Vietnam. Kennedy hoped that a more popular leader than Diem would create a stable government, strong enough to repel the South Vietnam National Liberati on Front (NLF)

What preceded the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

Summer of 1964: President Johnson got reports that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on the US destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. The attack wasn’t very crushing however he thought wider war was inevitable and issued a call to arms

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Gave Johnson the freedom to conduct operations in Vietnam as he saw fit

What forms did Johnson’s escalation to Vietnam take?

Deployment of American ground troops and intensive bombing of North Vietnam

Operation Rolling Thunder

a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam that began in 1965 and continued for three years. The US dropped twice as many tons of bombs on Vietnam as the allies dropped on Europe and the Pacific during all of WWII. The bombing strengthened the North Vietnamese’s resolve and they just kept rebuilding infrastructure.

What made Americans stop supporting the Vietnam War?

The carnage of war and the images of dead and fighting Americans on their television screens each night

“Credibility Gap”

Journalists claimed that the Johnson Administration was concealing bad news about the war’s progress

What was causing further issues in America about the Vietnam war?

Television coverage of hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which raised further questions about the administration’s policy and economic problems that would send the US into an inflationary spiral.

Antiwar movement

Groups of students, clergy, civil rights advocates, and antinuclear proponents began to protest. They had an April march of 15,000 people in Washington.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

Founded by students in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1960. They held their first national SDS convention in Port Huron, Michigan in 1962.

Port Huron Statement

From the SDS, penned by Tom Hayden. The manifesto expressed the student’s disillusionment with the nation’s consumer culture and the gulf between rich and poor.

New Left

Founders of SDS called it this to distinguish from communists and socialists

Example of New Left demonstrations

Fall of 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley after administrators banned student political activity on university grounds. In protest, student organization formed the Free Speech Movement and organized a sit-in at the administration building

Response to the military’s Selective Service System

In 1967, they abolished automatic student deferments. To avoid the draft, young men enlisted in the National Guard or applied for conscientious objector status; others left the country, burned their draft cards, picketed induction centers, and broke into Selective Service offices and destroyed records

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)

Conservative students asserted their faith in “God-given free will” and their concern that the government accumulated power. It defended free enterprise and supported the war in Vietnam. They outlined their principles in the Sharon Statement, drafted in Sharon, Connecticut.

Hippies

Identified by blue jeans or army fatigues, flowing skirts, shirts, and blouses, beads and long unkempt hair. They symbolized a counterculture. Composed largely of white youth alienated from the staid predictability and formality of an older generation. They turned to folk music for inspiration.

What further deepened the gap between youths and adults

American youths embraced the Beatles (Beatlemania) as well as the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Doors. They also embraced recreational drugs such as marijuana and LSD/acid

The Tet Offensive

January 30, 1968, Vietcong unleashed an assault on South Vietnam, timed to coincide with Tet (the Vietnamese new year). Psychologically, the imagery of the American embassy under siege and the Saigon police chief placing a pistol on the head of a Vietcong suspect and executing him disturbed the masses. Made a mockery of official pronouncements that the US was winning the war and discredited Johnson

Aftermath of James Earl Ray shooting Martin Luther King Jr.

Riots erupted in more than a hundred cities including Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington

1968 Democratic National Convention

In Chicago. Political divisions generated by the war consumed the party.

Youth International Party (“Yippies”)

Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman nominated a live pig, Pigasus, for president to mock the Democrats. Their stunts were geared towards maximum media exposure. Other protestors also wrought havoc, causing the Democrats to get a reputation as the party of disorder

Who did Nixon think was wavering on their support for the Democratic party?

Working-class white voters and southern whites of all social classes. As well as northern blue-collar voters and Catholics.

George Wallace

1968. Wallace wanted to carry the south as a segregationist and a jerk in order to deny a major candidate an electoral majority and force the election into the House of Representatives

Southern Strategy

Aimed at attracting southern white voters still smarting over civil rights gains by African Americans. Nixon won Strom Thurmond via this strategy.

What did Nixon campaign on?

Lighter enforcement of civil rights, against the antiwar movement, urban riots, and protests, called for strict adherence of law and order, and pledged to represent the quiet voice of Americans

Chicano Moratorium Committee

Organized demonstrations against the war. Chanted “Viva la Raza, Afuera Vietnam” (Long live the Chicano people, Get out of Vietnam). Marched in LA against the war. The Black Panther Party and the National Black Antiwar Antidraft League spoke out against the war also

Women’s liberation

Loosely structured, comprising an alliance of collectives in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and other big cities and college towns. It went public in 1968 at the Miss America pageant. Demonstrators carried posters of women’s bodies labeled as slabs of beef, implying society treated them as meat. Sought to end the exploitation of women. New terms like sexism and male chauvinism began to emerge

The national Women’s Strike for Equality

August 1970. Brought hundreds of thousands of women into the streets of the nation’s cities for marches and demonstrations

Radical women’s key feminist goals

Child care, equal pay, and reproduction rights

Liberal feminists key goals

Equal opportunity, the culture regarded women as nothing more than sexual objects and helpmates to men and that had to change

Feminism in minority communities

Combahee River Collective and the National Black Feminist Organization arose to speak for the concerns of black women, they criticized sexism but were reluctant to break completely from black men and the struggle for racial equality. Chicana feminists came from Catholic backgrounds where motherhood and family were held in high regard

Sexual politics

Liberationists, along with black and Chicana feminists, argued that unless women had control over their own bodies, they could not freely shape their destinies. They campaigned for reproductive rights, access to abortion, and railed against a culture that blamed women for their own sexual assault and turned a blind eye on sexual harassment.

Title IX

Congress broadened the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include educational institutions, prohibiting colleges and universities that received federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. It required comparable funding for sports programs and formerly male institutions like Yale and Harvard began admitting women

Stonewall Inn

A local gay bar in Greenwich Village was raided by the police in the summer of 1969. Its patrons rioted for two days, setting the establishment on fire and battling with police in the narrow streets of the Village. Celebrated as a symbolic demand for full citizenship

Result of Stonewall

The National Gay Task Force and other national organizations were lobbying in Congress for nondiscrimination ordinances and consensual sex laws, serving as media watchdogs and advancing suits in courts by 1975

Richard Nixon

Nixon was not a part of the conservative Goldwater wing of the Republican Party. He was an anticommunist but also shared Eisenhower traits like basic acceptance of the government’s role in economic matters

Silent majority

What Nixon called his followers. Placed himself on the side of ordinary Americans against the rabble-rousers and troublemakers.

Vietnamization

Nixon began delegating the ground fighting to the South Vietnamese to neutralize criticism at home. American casualties dropped but Vietnamese casualties rose.

Vietnam Moratorium

November 1969, one of the largest protests ever held in the capital.

American campus protests as a result of the Vietnam War

American campuses exploded in outrage (students died) as a result of a secret bombing campaign on April 30, 1970 against Vietcong supply lines, American troops destroyed enemy bases in neutral Cambodia. At Kent State University in Ohio the National Guardsmen wounded 11 and killed 4

My Lai (1968)

U.S. Army troops had executed nearly 500 people in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai including a large number of women and children. The massacre was known only to the military until 1969 when Seymour Heersh broke the story and photos of the massacre appeared in Life magazine. William Calley, despite not being the only participant, was the only soldier convicted (low ranking second lieutenant)