Chapter 29 - War Abroad, War at Home 1965-1974

29.1: The Vietnam War

• Although the number of Military Advisor and Special Forces in South Vietnam had greatly expanded, President Kennedy, the decision to involve America in a major war was decided by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
• The Johnson administration found a basis to escalate the war at the beginning of February 1965.
  • In Pleiku on the central highlands of Vietnam, the Vietcong sent a suicide bombing team, killing seven people and wounding over one hundred Americans.
• At the time of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Johnson's popularity had risen, but quickly decreased.
  • Johnson has been working hard to stop the tide in the news media.
  • He was accused of deliberate deceit, despite his efforts.
• In the autumn of 1964, Civil Defense activists returned from the Freedom Summer in Mississippi to the campus, a collection of 27,000 students.

29.2: A Generation in Conflict

• In the autumn of 1964, civil rights activists returned to the 27000-student campus from Freedom Summer in Mississippi and decided to pick up the stores in Bay Area that were discriminated against in recruitment.

• Three weeks after Operation Rolling Thunder was announced in 1965, peace activists called for a day-long class boycott, to allow students and faculty to meet to talk about the war

• The average age of Vietnamese soldiers was around 90 years.

  • The Select Service System — the draft system — gave college students and workers in selected jobs delays by the end of 1969, while focusing recruiting the military as a vocational and social mobility provider in poor communities.

  

29.3: War on Poverty

• The Economic Opportunity Act, enacted in August 1964, was the cornerstone of Johnson's Great Society Plan.
  • The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity, which coordinated a network of community-based programs to help the poor by providing educational and employment opportunities.
• The household stock in the nation's cities declined, as new construction money was limited during the Great Depression and World War II and the suburban building boom.
• In August 1965, in Los Angeles' Watts section, the first major uprising took place. One man in three was unemployed and twelve miles from the nearest hospital.
  • The uprising, which spread fast out for five hundred miles, only took a minor arrest.

29.4: 1968: Year of Turmoil

• The Tet offensive was launched by North Vietnamese and their Vietcong allies on 30 January 1968, named for the Vietnamese lunar New Year vacation.

• Martin Luther King Jr. had been harassed by the FBI, his phones taped and malicious rumors spread over him.

• The spectacular events of the first part of the year directly affected the presidential campaign.

  • Senator RobertF. Kennedy of New York was the candidate of choice for those liberals who were not satisfied with Johnson's conduct of the War and, in particular, for African Americans who suffered the loss of their leader

• The events in Chicago around the Democratic Convention of 21–26 August have shown how far the US has divided.

• The Republicans went into the violation.

  • Presidential candidate Richard Nixon has built his heart on electoral hostility against young demonstrators and counter-culture.

  

29.5: The Politics of Identity

• The "Shop of Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, and justice" in the Black Panther Party, which was established in Oakland, California, in 1966, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
  • Their style was paramilitary and the authorities were furious.
• The best-selling Mystic Female of Betty Friedan started in 1966 to create a National Female Organisation.
• In the mid-1950s, the Mattachin Society and Daughters of Bilitis were two pioneering homophile groups that had worked against employment discrimination, the military and all aspects of social and cultural life.
• For many American people it seemed that the Chicano movement burst into the stage in 1965 when a union of migrant workers, the United Farm Workers, hit San Joaquin Valley grape growers in California
• The US Indian Movement was at the forefront of the Red Power movement.
  • AIM is mainly representing urban Indian communities and was founded in 1968.
  • She organize her young, activist leaders like Black Panthers and Brown Berets initially to monitor the practice of law enforcement.
• Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino groups began identifying as Asian Americans for the first time in 1968.

29.6: The Nixon Presidency

• Nixon had a number of surprises for conservatives despite his efforts to dismantle many of Johnson's programs for poverty.

• In 1972, he decided to win re-election and supported the establishment of an environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and supported social security benefits and subsidized homes for the poor.

• In addition to Vietnam, the Foreign Affairs of Nixon challenged both Liberals and Conservatives' expectations.

  • The US-Soviet bipolarity has been replaced with multilateral relations, including China's People's Republic, the rising world power more rigidly Communist than the Soviet Union.

• The so-called Pentagon Papers highlighted the role of Presidents and military leaders in disguising the conduct of the US in Southeast Asia by the public and congresses.

  • Nixon ordered Ellsberg to be prosecuted for comployment, espionage and theft by the Department of Justice.

• They have demonstrated an attempt to hinder the Watergate case investigations.

  • A former Nixon assistant who was a testimony to the Committee showed evidence of secret tapes of the Oval Office talks.