Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit

• Kennedy was elected president in 1960

• 1960s brought forth a sexual revolution, a civil rights revolution, emergence of “youth culture”, war in Vietnam, and the beginning of the feminist revolution

• JFK had a young cabinet and his inaugural address consisted of: “Ask not, what your country can do for you …”

• JFK proposed Peace Corps (an army of idealist and mostly youthful volunteers) to bring American skills to undeveloped countries

The New Frontier at Home

• Kennedy’s social program was the New Frontier with conservative democrats and republicans threatening to kill many of its reforms

  • JFK expanded House Rules Committee, kept a lid of inflation, and maintained good economy

• JFK’s tax-cut bill chose to stimulate economy through price-cutting

Rumblings in Europe

• Soviets started to build the Berlin Wall to separate East and West Germany in August of 1961

• U.S. encouraged the Common Market (European Union) in order to keep trade barriers and tariffs low in Europe

• Charles de Gualle (leader of France) was suspicious of the U.S. and rejected Britain’s application into common Market

Foreign Flare-ups and "Flexible Response"

• African Congo got its independence from Belgium in 1960 with this erupting in violence, leading to the U.N. sending a peacekeeping force

• Laos (freed of French overlords in 1962) was threatened by communism

• The Geneva Conference of 1962 shakily imposed peace

• Secretary of Defense pushed the strategy of “flexible responses”

• Developed military options that could match the gravity of the crisis that came to hand

Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire

• American-backed Diem government had shakily and corruptly ruled Vietnam since 1945 and was threatened by the communist Viet Cong movement

• JFK, little by little, sent U.S. troops to Vietnam to “maintain order” and American troops usually fought and died despite it being “Vietnam’s War”

Cuban Confrontations

• Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress turned into the “Marshall Plan for Latin America’ with it aiming to close the gap between the rich and the poor in Latin America, and therefore stem communism

• U.S. spy planes recorded missile installation in Cuba in 1962 with it later being revealed that these were nuclear missiles aimed at America

The Struggle for Civil Rights

• Kennedy campaigned to appeal to black voters but was hesitant and unwilling in taking action when it came time to help

• Groups of Freedom Riders chartered buses to tour through South in 1960s to try to end segregation

• Kennedy encouraged establishment of SNCC, a voter education project to register South’s blacks to vote

• Martin Luther King Jr. launched a peaceful campaign against discrimination in Birmingham in spring of 1963 leading to police and authorities responding viciously and black protesters being treated with contempt and violence

  • A bomb killed 4 black girls in Birmingham church in September of 1963

The Killing of Kennedy

• JFK was shot and killed on November 22, 1963, allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald who was shot by Jack Ruby

• Johnson became president of the U.S. after Kennedy and the U.S. realized that they’d lost a charismatic, energetic, and vibrant president after JFK’s death

The LBJ Brand on the Presidency

• Johnson was very vain and egotistical

• LBJ went from a conservative to liberal as president, helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned all racial discrimination in most private facilities open to public (theaters, hospitals, and restaruants)

• Johnson created the Equal Employment Opportuinity Commission which aimed at eliminating discriminatory hiring

Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964

• LBJ was opposed by Republican senator Barry Goldwater

• Goldwater attacked the federal income tax, Social Security system, Tennessee Valley Authority, Civil Rights legislation, nuclear test-ban treaty, and the Great Society

• Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf Incident to attack Vietnam with him getting approval for Tonkin Gulf Resolution which gave him a virtual blank check on what he could do with Vietnamese affairs

  • Johnson won over Goldwater in presidential election

The Great Society Congress

• Congress doubled appropriation on Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion and granted over $1 billion to refurbish Appalachia

• Johnson created the Department of Housing and Urban Development

• LBJ wanted to give aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent immigration reform,, and new voting rights bill

Battling for Black Rights

• LBJ’s Voting Rights Act of 1965 attacked racial discrimination at polls and outlawed literacy tests and sent voter registrars to polls

• 24th Amendment eliminated poll taxes

• In “freedom summer” of 1964, both black and white students joined forces to fight discrimination and racism

  • In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. resumed his voter-registration campaign in Selma, Alabama and was assaulted with tear gas by state troopers with LBJ responding by calling U.S. to overcome bigotry, racism, and discrimination

Black Power

• 1965 consisted of violent black protests

• Black leaders urged action, even if it required violence to turn out battle cry of Malcolm X

• Black Panthers openly brandished weapons in Oakland, CA

• Stokely Carmichael led student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and urged abandonment of peaceful demonstrations

• Black Power became rallying cry by blacks seeking more rights with riots breaking out and whites retaliated

• Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968

Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres

• LBJ sent men to put down supposedly communist coup in Dominican Republic

  • Johnson slowly sent more and more U.S. men to fight the war and the South Vietnamese became spectators in their own war

• LBJ had sent more than half a million troops to Asia by 1968, pouring in $30 billion annually

Vietnam Vexations

• Israel defeated Egypt in Six-Day War and gained new territory in Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and West Bank of Jordan River, including Jerusalem

• Numerous protests in U.S. went against Vietnam War and the draft

• Johnson ordered CIA to spy on domestic anti-war activists and encouraged FBI to use its Counterintelligence Program

Vietnam Topples Johnson

• Johnson personally suffered at the American casualties

• LBJ saw Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy as a challenge for the democratic ticket

• March 31, 1968: Johnson declared that he’d stop sending in troops to Vietnam and that he wouldn’t run again in the election of 1968

The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968

• Robert Kennedy was shot fatally on June 5, 1968

• Democratic ticket consisted of Hubert Humphrey while Republicans nominated Richard Nixon

• Nixon won with him being a minority president that owed his presidency to protests over war, unfair draft, crime, and rioting

The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson

• LBJ returned to his Texas ranch and died there in 1973

• Johnson had committed Americans into Vietnam with noble intentions and overall, wasn’t a bad guy

The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s

• Youths of American experimented with sex, drugs, and defiance in the 1960s and protested against conventional wisdom, authority, and traditional beliefs

  • A so-called Free Speech Movement began at UC Berkeley in 1948

• Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s findings about incidence of premarital sex and adultery were controversial with him estimating that 10% of all American males were gay

• Manhattan Society (founded in LA in 1951) pioneered gay rights

• Upheavals of 1960s and anti-establishment movement can largely be attributed to youthful population growth, protest against racism and the Vietnam War, and the apparent permanence of prosperity (gave away to stagnation with the 1970s)

  “Counterculture” of youths of the 1960s significantly weakened existing values, ideas, and beliefs