The Unravelling

Late 1960s-1970s

The Idyllic 1960s became darker

Vietnam

• confusing objectives, increase in men drafter, increase in US & Vietnamese deaths and some blame on soldiers

  • anti-war protests began with trying to bring soldiers home → sympathy for Vietnamese and some blame on soldiers

  • first televised war

    • American people were told the US was winning the war

      • in reality, more of a stalemate

• Liberal, anti-gov’t protests worldwide

  • Issues

    • 1968 - Tet Offensive

    • 1969 - My Lai Massacre

    • 1970 - Kent State

• 1968 - LBJ announced he would not run for re-election

  • RFK assassinated

  • Nixon elected in 1968

    • promised to end the war, Peace with Honor

    • Vietnamization

      • actually accelerated war into Laos and Cambodia

• 1973 - end of US forces in Vietnam

  • North Vietnam invades South Vietnam

    • Vietnam was united under communist rule

Civil Rights Movement

• MLK and Malcolm X diverged

  • MLK - civil disobedience, non-violence, desegregation, Christian

    • assassinated in 1968

  • Malcolm X - black empowerment, Black Power, segregation, Muslim

    • assassinated in 1965

• Urban Riots

  • usually a result of white police violence against Blacks

    • a result of Black poverty, civil rights becoming more militant, residual Jim Crow

Nixon

• Nixon Doctrine

  • The US would support allies financially, but without US troops

    • containment → detente

      • promoting a “thaw” freezing arms levels

        • SALT talks (strategic arms limitations talks)

      • pursued closer relations with China

• Oil crisis

  • OPEC embargo the US for intervention in the Middle East

  • This caused a shortage of gas in the States, which led to long lines at stations

• Pentagon Papers released

  • showed the war could not be won and Americans' were not told of true objectives

• Watergate

  • the White House was spying on the DNC and its donors

    • Nixon recorded all oval office conversations

    • was ordered to produce tapes

      • was going to be impeached but he resigned first

      • VP Ford became president

Deindustrialization

• moved to suburbs and eventually overseas

  • disproportionately fell upon African Americans

    • left with slum housing, inferior schools, unemployment

• decline in unions

  • labor demands not as aggressive, = cooperation over agitation

  • corporation began offering health care benefits and pensions

  • internal racism

• postwar prosperity began to decline by the mid-1970s

  • recession, international competition, corporations relocated to business-friendly states

  • the Midwest became the Rust Belt

• the rise of the Sun Belt

  • some industry moved South due to labor laws

    • some Northern workers followed

  • military installations

  • politics became increasingly conservative

ERA and other rights

• began in the 1960s

  • strict gender roles challenged

    • fewer marriages, married later, increased divorce, fewer children, children later

      • Roe v. Wade

    • failed nationally when only 35 states ratified

  • interracial marriage only recently legalized and still taboo

  • homosexuality still illegal and a mental illness (until 1973)

    • Stonewall Riots 1969

The Misery Index

• Economic problems of the 1970s

  • international economies boomed, trade deficits, cost of Vietnam, oil crisis

    • Stagflation

  • manufacturing moved overseas

    • international, cheaper products imported from rising economies

  • the Misery Index = inflation rate + unemployment rate

• Jimmy Carter (D) elected 1976

  • inherited economic and political problems

    • neither side solved economic problems: stagflation +unemployment

  • tried to move from Containment to a human-rights based foreign policy

    • “returned” the Panama Canal, Camp David Accords

• Iranian Revolution

  • the Shah was deposed in 1979

    • led to 52 Americans being held hostage in the embassy for 444 days

      • Carter could not win their release

        • failed rescue mission