LBJ and the great society

LBJ Background

• Former public school teacher from Texas

  • Knows what the minority are dealing with(taught many hispanic people)

• Tenure in the U.S. Senate-1948-1960

  • Made his job to know 99 senators personally

  • Democratic

LBJ Domestic Policy

• The “Great Society” to aid people in poverty, seniors, children, minorities

• Compared to the New Deal(mainly about economic and relief to people= doesn’t apply anymore after the economy gets back up)

  • Wanted to recreate american society to get rid of poverty and hep minorities and stay there forever

• Huge legislative achievements

  • Two new Cabinet departments Dept. of Transportation (DOT)(make the taxes pay the road and make it safe to travel regulate trucking, also railroads and airline) and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)(taking care of urban decay to make it still livable and it helps with fair housing practices)

    • Fair housing practices- can’t keep certain races from a community(houses)

  • Civil Rights Act of 1964- prohibited discrimination in public places based on race(like restaurants, ect.) 

  • Voting Rights Act of 1965- created by congress and no more discrimination in voting practices(no literacy test, etc)

  • Immigration Act of 1965- abolished the quota system

    • Southeast asian came from what's happening from over there(search it up)

  • Medicare (GOV. funded healthcare for the elderly) and Medicaid(for low income families)

  • Head start preschool for low income families

  • National Endowment for the Arts, PBS(public broadcast station), and NPR(national broadcast station)

  • And so much more…

Conservative Opposition

• Barry Goldwater

  • Wanted limited the power and scope of the federal government

  • Believed citizens needed to be self-reliant rather than expect the government to ensure their economic well being

  • Credited with sparked resurgence of conservatism

  • Pro-nukes→ ppl scared  

• Election of 1964

  • Both houses of congress go democratic by ⅔

    • He can do wtv he wants

Legacy of the Great Society

• Many programs undercut by money needed for Vietnam

  • Many died

• “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam” -MLK, 1967

Civil Right Movements

• Reconstruction

  • 13(no slavery) 14(civil right) 15 amendment(voting right)

  • White league and KKK

  • Voter disenfranchisement 

  • Plessy vs Ferguson and Jim Crow Laws –separate but equal

• Progressive Era gains

  • Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells

  • NAACP- native association advancement and colored people

  • Great migration

  • 1920s setbacks and hope

  • Lynchings, race riots, second wave of KKK

  • Marcus Garvey- back to Africa

  • Harlem Renaissance

• Changes after WW1 and WW2- segregation

  • Double V campaign

  • Desegregation of the military by Executive Order 9981(1948)

Fazes of civil rights(1950 to late 60s) - af-am population(11%)

• South

• soc/cult segregation and racism

• Led by MLK, JR

• Non-violent

• Start with schools to civil rights→ voting

• SUCCESSFUL

2nd faze- late 60s to 70s (af-am have only 8%)

• Moves to north to the west

• More economic

• Few leaders

  • Stokely Carmichael

• Black panthers

• Have violence

• NOT SUCCESSFUL

3rd faze- 80s to today

• Everywhere

• Include racism in all minorities (not just african american)

• All kinds of racism

  • Not much segregation 

• Both violent and non-violent

• Police brutality

• Reverse racism

  • Black on white?

• Some successes and some failure on both sides

• NOT CLEAR CUT 

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

• Collection of 5 cases sponsored by NAACP

• Argued by Thurgood Marshall- who later became the first af-am scotus judge

• Local case- self

  • Barbara Johns led walkout at Moton high school in farmville(1951)

    • Moton high is a af-am high school

    • She led a student walkout of school to protest that their facilities were so terrible compared to the white schools

  • Oliver Hill took the case(from Richmond) he convinced that they need to file suit that they didn't help up Plessy v Furgeson 

    • Get NNCP to help them

    • Want them to be desegregated  → get rid of plessy

• Unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren

  • He desegregated schools in california 

• Schools must desegregate “with all deliberate speed”

  • IT DIDN'T WORK

Massive Resistance

• Southern states ignore Brown and justify based on federalism

  • States run the schools, but the since it is a federal decision they don’t need to follow it(supremacy clause says they need to)

• Southern Manifesto (1956)- written doc. 101 congressmen, members of southern senate and congress which says the supreme court abused its power in Brown and the south should not integrate.

• Citizens Councils- upscale KKK

  • Economically coerced black people to not integrate(bank

• Resistance in Virginia

  • Harry Flood Byrd

  • School closings- from 1959-1964)

    • No public schools for 5 years

• rESISTANCE IN THE dEEP sOUTH

  • lITTLE rOCK nINE (1957)- Orual Faubus- he said screw the public schools in arkansas to keep the af-am from attending

  • Desegregation riots at Ole Miss (1962)- fed government can’t stop in for colleges- colleges can’t be desegregation(brown only applied to k to 12)

  • Gov. George Wallace at University of Alabama (1963)

Civil Rights Movement and Nonviolent Protests

• Inspiration from earlier movements (ex:Thoreau, Gandhi)

• Why it’s necessary- only 11% of the country is af-am n need to convince the 88% to agree with you

• Whit it works- it worked because it was televised in TV

• Why it takes courage (self-purification!) - because they will face many aggression and they will just take it

• Why it works well in the 1950s/60s

Murder of Emmett Till

• Never experienced segregation

• Husband kidnaps him and beat him until he is unrecognizable and then dumped in the river

• The body was taken back to chicago for burial

• Mother had a open ceremonial

• 100 thousand attended

• Was held at a white jury court in mississippi and both were able to walk out

  • Went on TV and admitted it

Montgomery Bus BoyCott

• Sparked by arrest Rosa Parks (1955)

• Bus Boycott that lasted 13 months- led by LMK

• Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional

• Led to creation of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)- the meeting areas for the protest

• Eisenhower’s legacy: Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 *very watered down and ineffective)

“Sit Ins

• Sitting at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, NC (1960)

• Sparked demonstrations around the South, initiated by college students from HBCUs

• Richmond 34- 34 students

  • Sat in a store?? In the section for only whites

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Influence of Martin Luther King, Jr

Freedom Riders (1961)

• Designed to provoke enforcement of desegregation of buses

• Encountered white southern violence in SOuth Carolina and Alabama

• Led to Desegregation order from ICC

Birmingham Campaign (1963)

• Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull”Connor- committed segregationist

• Police response- high pressure water houses and attack dogs

• “Letter from Birmingham Jail!

• JFK proposed civil rights legislation

March on Washington (Aug. 1963)

• 250,000 people

• Ï have a dream…

Tragedies for Civil Rights

• Assassination of Medgar Evers (June 1963)

• Bombing at 16th street Baptist Church in Birmingham (spet. 1963)

• Assassination of JFK (Nov. 1963)

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education

• Prohibited segregation in public facilities and accommodations       

Selma March (1965)

• SCLC and SNCC attempts to register voters in the South meet resistance

• From Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

• Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965)

• Final March on March 21-arch 25, 1965(takes 4 days to walk all the way to there)

  • Protected by National Guard and LBJ

  • Gov’t on side of protestors

• Voting Rights Act of 1965-Signed Aug. 1966

  • Prohibits states and local governments of enacting any law discriminating against racial or language minorities

  • Outlaws disenfranchisement devices, such as literacy tests(poll taxes already outlawed by 24th Amendment in 1964)

  • Increased voter registration among african americans

  • Increase in A:frican American elected officials.

Malcolm X

• In association with Nation of Islam, promoted black separatism, black nationalism, black supremacy

• Did not support the non-violent approach of King “Bullet or Ballot” speech-Apr. 1964

• Became disillusioned with Nation of Islam and growing black militancy

• Assassinated in Feb. 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam

Black Power Movement

• Influenced by race riots and Malcolm X’s criticism of King’s nonviolent methods

• Coined by Stokely Carmichael (1966)- used to work at SNCC

• Movement with a goal of self-determination for African Americans

• Emphasized racial pride, defensed against racism and segregation

• Break from mainstream civil rights movement

Urban Riots

• Los Angeles (1965)

  • Watts neighborhood

  • 34 deaths, over 1000 injured

• Detroit (1967)

  • National Guard, federal troops, and tanks sent in

  • 43 deaths, over 1000 injured

• Kerner Commission (1967)- institutional and systemic racism for Black unrest

Black Panther Party

• Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, CA (expanded into other cities)

• Militant socialist movement to promote Black power and self-defense

• Intended to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality

• Survival Programs

  • Free Breakfast For Children Program

  • Free medical clinics

  • Home economic classes

MLK 1966- 1968 and Assassination

• 1966-1968- focus on Economic issues

  • Chicagoz, Detroit Memphis

  • Effects of Great Migration

  • Diff fight-less clear, harder to get people to back

• April 1968 in Memphis

• Riots ensued