The Stormy Sixties (1960-1968)

John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (1961):
- Marked a transition to a new generation of Americans.
The 1960s were characterized by:
- Sexual revolution.
- Civil rights revolution.
- Emergence of a "youth culture."
- Devastating war in Vietnam.
- Beginnings of a feminist revolution.
Many Americans yearned for the calm of the 1950s by the end of the 1960s.

Kennedy’s “New Frontier” Spirit

John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (January 20, 1961) symbolized glamour and vitality.
Kennedy was the youngest president ever elected.
Robert Kennedy, his brother, was appointed attorney general.
- He aimed to reform the FBI, which was heavily focused on "internal security" rather than organized crime and civil rights violations.
- J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, resisted Robert Kennedy's efforts.
Robert S. McNamara became the head of the Defense Department.
Kennedy assembled a team of youthful and talented advisors known as "the best and the brightest."

Kennedy in Office

Kennedy inspired high expectations, especially among the young.
Proposed the Peace Corps to bring American skills to underdeveloped countries.
Called citizens to service with the statement, “Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.”
Kennedy's personal grace and wit won him affection from citizens.
Robert Frost was invited to speak at his inaugural ceremonies.

The New Frontier at Home

Kennedy faced fragile Democratic majorities in Congress.
Southern Democrats threatened to block New Frontier proposals.
He expanded the House Rules Committee to gain more cooperation.
Key medical and education bills remained stalled.
Kennedy aimed to revitalize the economy after the Eisenhower years' recessions.
His administration negotiated a noninflationary wage agreement in the steel industry in early 1962.
Steel management announced price increases, leading to conflict with Kennedy.
- Kennedy criticized the "big steel" men.
- Steel operators eventually backed down.
Kennedy supported a general tax-cut bill to stimulate the economy.
Promoted a multibillion-dollar project to land an American on the moon.
Kennedy defended the moon project by comparing it to climbing the highest mountain or flying across the Atlantic.
In 1969, American astronauts landed on the moon.

Rumblings in Europe

Kennedy met Soviet Premier Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961.
Khrushchev threatened to make a treaty with East Germany and cut off Western access to Berlin.
The Soviets began constructing the Berlin Wall in August 1961 to stop population drain from East Germany to West Germany.
- The "Wall of Shame" symbolized the division of Europe.
Kennedy focused on Western Europe's prosperity and the growth of the Common Market (later the European Union).
Secured passage of the Trade Expansion Act in 1962, authorizing tariff cuts to promote trade with Common Market countries.
- Led to the Kennedy Round of tariff negotiations and expanded European-American trade.
Charles de Gaulle of France blocked American ambitions for a united "Atlantic Community."
- He vetoed British application for Common Market membership, fearing American control over Europe.
- De Gaulle developed his own atomic force, seeking an independent Europe free of Yankee influence.

Foreign Flare-ups and “Flexible Response”

Worldwide decolonization of European overseas possessions created problems for U.S. foreign policy.
Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and experienced violence.
- The United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force, with the U.S. contributing money.
- The U.N. became dominated by emerging nations critical of U.S. foreign policy.
Laos, freed of French colonial rule in 1954, became a concern.
- Kennedy sought a diplomatic solution at the Geneva conference, which imposed a shaky peace in 1962.
Kennedy shifted away from the doctrine of “massive retaliation” to “flexible response."
- He increased spending on conventional military forces and bolstered the Special Forces (Green Berets).

Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire

“Flexible response” could lead to escalation of force.
Kennedy increased the number of "military advisors" in South Vietnam in 1961.
The U.S. aimed to foster political stability and help Diem enact social reforms.
The Kennedy administration encouraged a coup against Diem in November 1963.
By the time of his death, Kennedy had sent over fifteen thousand American men into Vietnam.

Cuban Confrontations

Kennedy extended friendship to Latin America with the Alliance for Progress in 1961.
- The goal was to close the gap between rich and poor and quiet communist agitation.
- Results were disappointing.
Kennedy inherited a CIA-backed scheme to topple Fidel Castro from power by invading Cuba with anticommunist exiles.
In April 1961, twelve hundred exiles landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.
- Kennedy decided against direct intervention, and the invasion failed.
- The exiles surrendered and were later ransomed.
The Bay of Pigs blunder pushed Castro further into the Soviet embrace.
In October 1962, American spy planes revealed that the Soviets were installing nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba.
- The Soviets aimed to shield Castro and blackmail the United States.
Kennedy ordered a naval “quarantine” of Cuba and demanded immediate removal of the weaponry.
He warned that any attack from Cuba would trigger nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba in exchange for the U.S. ending the quarantine and not invading the island.
- The U.S. also quietly signaled it would remove missiles from Turkey.
The Cuban missile crisis led to Khrushchev's downfall and a Soviet military expansion.
A nuclear test-ban treaty was signed in 1963, prohibiting trial nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.
A Moscow-Washington "hot line" was installed for immediate communication in case of crisis.
Kennedy urged Americans to abandon a view of the Soviet Union as a Devil-ridden land filled with fanatics and instead to deal with the world “as it is."
- These were the origins of the policy of “détente.”

The Struggle for Civil Rights

Kennedy campaigned with a strong appeal to black voters but proceeded cautiously on civil rights.
Civil rights groups protested his slowness with an “Ink for Jack” campaign.
Kennedy needed the support of southern legislators for his economic and social legislation.
Events soon changed these calculations.
Following the wave of sit-ins in 1960, Freedom Riders aimed to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers.
A white mob torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama, in May 1961.
Washington dispatched federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders.
The Kennedy administration partnered with the civil rights movement.
Robert Kennedy ordered FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap King’s phone in late 1963.
SNCC and other civil rights groups inaugurated a Voter Education Project.
Kennedy said he might lose the next election because of his support for civil rights.
Integrating southern universities provoked violent opposition.
James Meredith encountered violent opposition when he attempted to register at the University of Mississippi in October 1962.
President Kennedy sent in federal marshals and troops to enroll Meredith.
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., launched a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama.
Peaceful civil rights marchers were repelled by police with attack dogs and electric cattle prods.
President Kennedy delivered a televised speech on June 11, 1963, calling the situation a “moral issue” and committing to finding a solution.
In August, King led a peaceful “March on Washington” in support of civil rights legislation.
On the very night of Kennedy’s stirring television address, a white gunman shot down Medgar Evers, a black Mississippi civil rights worker.
In September 1963, an explosion blasted a Baptist church in Birmingham, killing four black girls.
By the time of Kennedy’s death, his civil rights bill was making little headway, and blacks were growing increasingly impatient.

The Killing of Kennedy

President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, was himself shot to death by Jack Ruby.
Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president.
Johnson retained most of the Kennedy team and pledged continuity with his policies.
Kennedy was acclaimed more for his ideals than for concrete goals he had achieved.
He laid to rest the myth that a Catholic could not be trusted with the presidency.

The LBJ Brand on the Presidency

Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texan, became president.
He supported New Deal measures.
Johnson trimmed his sails to the right and secured a Senate seat in 1948.
He became the Democratic majority leader in 1954.
He used the “Johnson treatment” to influence others.
Johnson shed his conservative coloration to reveal the latent liberal underneath.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public.
It strengthened the federal government’s power to end segregation and created the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Johnson issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors to take “affirmative action” against discrimination.
Johnson rammed Kennedy’s stalled tax bill through Congress and added proposals for a billion-dollar “War on Poverty.”
Johnson dubbed his domestic program the “Great Society”—a sweeping set of New Dealish economic and welfare measures.

Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964

Johnson was nominated by the Democrats in 1964.
The Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a champion of rock-ribbed conservatism.
Goldwater attacked the federal income tax, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, civil rights legislation, the nuclear test-ban treaty, and the Great Society.
Democrats exploited the image of Goldwater as a trigger-happy cowboy.
Johnson seized upon the Tonkin Gulf episode in August 1964.
U.S. Navy ships had been cooperating with South Vietnamese gunboats in provocative raids along the coast of North Vietnam.
Two American destroyers were allegedly fired upon by the North Vietnamese on August 2 and 4.
Johnson ordered a “limited” retaliatory air raid against the North Vietnamese bases.
Johnson used the incident to spur congressional passage of the all-purpose Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Johnson won a spectacular victory in November 1964.

The Great Society Congress

Johnson’s huge victory temporarily smashed the conservative congressional coalition.
Congress poured out a flood of legislation.
Congress doubled the appropriation of the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion$ and granted more than $1 billion$ to redevelop Appalachia.
Congress created the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Other noteworthy laws established the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.
The Big Four legislative achievements that crowned LBJ’s Great Society program were aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill.
Johnson avoided the question of separation of church and state by channeling educational aid to students, not schools.
Medicare for the elderly, accompanied by Medicaid for the poor, became a reality in 1965.
- Medicare and Medicaid created “entitlements."
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished at last the “national-origins” quota system.
- It doubled the number of immigrants allowed to enter annually and set limits on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.
Great Society programs came in for rancorous political attack in later years.
The poverty rate declined measurably in the ensuing decade.
Medicare made especially dramatic reductions in the incidence of poverty among America’s elderly.
Other antipoverty programs sharply improved the educational performance of underprivileged youth.

Battling for Black Rights

With the last of his Big Four reforms, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Johnson made heartening headway against racial discrimination.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government more muscle to enforce school-desegregation orders and to prohibit racial discrimination.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in January 1964, abolished the poll tax in federal elections.
Opening up the polling booths became the chief goal of the black movement in the South.
Blacks joined with white civil rights workers in a voter-registration drive in Mississippi during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964.
In late June 1964, one black and two white civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi.
Their bodies were later found buried beneath an earthen dam.
Investigators eventually arrested twenty-one white Mississippians in connection with the killings.
Martin Luther King, Jr., resumed the voter-registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, early in 1965.
State troopers assaulted King’s demonstrators as they marched peacefully to the state capital at Montgomery.
President Johnson swiftly shepherded through Congress the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- It outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registrars into several southern states.

Black Power

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 marked the end of an era in the history of the civil rights movement.
Just five days after President Johnson signed the landmark voting law, a bloody riot erupted in Watts, a black ghetto in Los Angeles.
The Watts explosion heralded a new phase of the black struggle—increasingly marked by militant confrontation.
Deepening division among black leaders was highlighted by the career of Malcolm X.
The Black Panther party openly brandished weapons in the streets of Oakland, California.
Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), urged the abandonment of peaceful demonstrations and instead promoted “Black Power.”
Riots erupted in the black ghettos of several American cities.
A bloody outburst in Newark, New Jersey, in the summer of 1967, took twenty-five lives.
Despair deepened when Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by a sniper’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres

Discontented Dominicans rose in revolt against their military government in April 1965.
Johnson dispatched American troops to restore order.
Johnson was widely condemned for his temporary reversion to “gunboat diplomacy.”
Johnson was floundering deeper into the monsoon mud of Vietnam.
Viet Cong guerrillas attacked an American air base at Pleiku, South Vietnam, in February 1965.
Johnson ordered retaliatory bombing raids against military installations in North Vietnam and for the first time ordered attacking U.S. troops to land.
By the middle of March 1965, the Americans had “Operation Rolling Thunder” in full swing.
By 1968, he had poured more than half a million troops into Southeast Asia, and the annual bill for the war was exceeding $30 billion$ .

Vietnam Vexations

America could not defeat the enemy in Vietnam, but it seemed to be defeating itself.
World opinion grew increasingly hostile.
Overcommitment in Southeast Asia also tied America’s hands elsewhere.
Domestic discontent festered as the Vietnamese entanglement dragged on.
Antiwar demonstrations had begun on a small scale with campus “teach-ins” in 1965, and gradually these protests mounted to tidal-wave proportions.
Thousands of draft registrants fled to Canada; others publicly burned their draft cards.
Opposition in Congress to the Vietnam involvement centered in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, headed by Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas.
A yawning “credibility gap” opened between the government and the people.
Even within the administration, doubts were deepening about the wisdom of the war in Vietnam.
In 1967, President Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on domestic antiwar activists.

Vietnam Topples Johnson

Hawkish illusions that the struggle was about to be won were shattered by a blistering communist offensive launched in late January 1968, during Tet.
American public opinion demanded a speedy end to the war.
Opposition grew so vehement that President Johnson could feel the very foundations of government shaking under his feet.
Johnson was being sharply challenged from within his own party.
Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, had emerged as a contender for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.
On March 12, 1968, their efforts gave McCarthy an incredible 42 percent of the Democratic votes and twenty of the twenty-four convention delegates.
Four days later Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York threw his hat into the ring.
These startling events abroad and at home were not lost on LBJ.
The country might explode in greater violence if he met the request of the generals for more troops.
Johnson’s answer came in a bombshell address on March 31, 1968.
He announced that he would freeze American troop levels and gradually shift more responsibility to the South Vietnamese themselves.
He startled his vast audience by firmly declaring that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968.

The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968

The summer of 1968 was one of the hottest political seasons in the nation’s history.
Johnson’s heir apparent for the Democratic nomination was his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.
On June 5, 1968, the night of an exciting victory in the California primary, Kennedy was shot to death by a young Arab immigrant.
The Democrats met in Chicago in late August 1968.
Humphrey steamrollered to the nomination on the first ballot.
The Republicans convened in plush Miami Beach, Florida, early in August 1968.
Richard M. Nixon won the nomination.
The Republican platform called for victory in Vietnam and a strong anticrime policy.
A “spoiler” third-party ticket—the American Independent party—added color and confusion to the campaign.

Victory for Nixon

Vietnam proved a less crucial issue than expected.
Nixon won in 1968.
Nixon was the first president-elect since 1848 not to bring in on his coattails at least one house of Congress for his party in an initial presidential election.
Wallace did worse than expected.

The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson

Lyndon Johnson returned to his Texas ranch in January 1969 and died there four years later.
No president since Lincoln had worked harder or done more for civil rights.
But by 1966 Johnson was already sinking into the Vietnam quicksands.

The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s

The struggles of the 1960s against racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam had momentous cultural consequences.
Everywhere in 1960s America, a newly negative attitude toward all kinds of authority took hold.
One of the first organized protests against established authority broke out at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, in the so-called Free Speech Movement.
Fired by outrage against the war in Vietnam, some sons and daughters of the middle class became radical political rebels, while others turned to mind-bending drugs, tuned in to “acid rock,” and dropped out of “straight” society.
The 1960s also witnessed a “sexual revolution,” though its novelty and scale are often exaggerated.
Launched in youthful idealism, many of the cultural “revolutions” of the 1960s sputtered out in violence and cynicism.
The upheavals of the 1960s could be largely attributed to three Ps: the youthful population bulge, protest against racism and the Vietnam War, and the apparent permanence of prosperity.