Politics and the Rights Revolution in the 1960s-70s

John F Kennedy

• 35th President of the US

• Served at the height of the Cold War

• The majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba

• Assassinated on November 22, 1963

Lyndon B Johnson

• The 36th president of the US

• Enacted the Great Society program that aimed to expand civil rights, public broadcasting, access to health care, aid to education and the arts, urban and rural development, consumer protection, environmentalism, and public services

• Passed the Social Security Amendment, Medicare and Medicaid, the Higher Education Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act

Cuban Missile Crisis

A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in the United Kingdom, Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba from October 16-28, 1962 and is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.

The Great Society

A series of domestic programs enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States between 1964 and 1968, aimed at eliminating poverty, reducing racial injustice, and expanding social welfare in the country

Public opinion about the war in Vietnam

• Many Americans opposed the war on moral grounds, appalled by the devastation and violence of the war.

• Others claimed the conflict was a war against Vietnamese independence or an intervention in a foreign civil war;

• Others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be unwinnable

Vietnam War protests

A movement in opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War that mostly took place during the 1960s and 1970s

Student movements

Focused on opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War and a call for greater personal freedom

Women’s liberation movement

A political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism who proposed that economic, psychological, and social freedom were necessary for women to progress from being second-class citizens in their societies

Chicano movement

A social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation

Tet Offensive

A major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War in which the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and its Viet Cong (VC) launched a surprise attack on January 30-31, 1968 against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the United States Armed Forces

North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN)

The national military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the armed wing of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), specifically of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War

Viet Cong

An epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam

South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)

The armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam/South Vietnam during the Vietnam War

Prominent assassinations of the 1960s

• President John F. Kennedy: November 22, 1963

• Medgar Evans: June 12, 1963

• Malcolm X: February 21, 1965

• Martin Luther King Jr.: April 4, 1968

• Robert F. Kennedy: June 5, 1968

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

A joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964 that gave U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia

Berkeley Free Speech Movement

A massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley and was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s in which students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom

Ho Chi Minh

A Vietnamese revolutionary and politician who served as the founder and first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969 and founded the Communist Party of Vietnam