Cold War and Impacts of WWII

Impacts of WWII:

• Japanese-americans are put into internment camps and racism against them increases (called the yellow peril)

  • Causes economic rivalry mainly rooted in the west coast, where there is a history of racism against asians (chinese exclusion act, gentlemen's agreement, etc)

• In WWII, african americans are paramount to the war effort in the military, but are still faced with racism when they return

• Economy:

  • 10 times more costly than WWI

  • Wage increases to help cut inflation

  • Unions increase but the smith-connally act prevents strikes

    • blow to unions after the wagner act

• Women worked during WWII and were paramount to war production but were expected to go back to the home once the war ended

• The office of science and research development creates penicillin and develops the atomic bomb

• Radio is used to get war information → very popularized

• School enrollment decreases, teachers leave, but women involvement increases

Harry Truman: 33rd President

• Missouri, last US president to not get a college degree

• He was a WWI artillery officer

• He was not an involved vice president to FDR and was kept in the dark about a lot of subjects (including the atomic bomb)

• Handles VE day, VJ day, Potsdam (future of europe), and makes the decision whether to use the a-bomb 

• His first major task was to demobilize (go from wartime to peacetime)

  • Transition wartime factories into consumer factories

  • Getting veterans home and getting them jobs

  • Demobilizing society

• Tried to make a global economy → the bretton woods conference tied the US dollar to international currency

  • International Monetary Fund (IMF) + International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank)

Truman’s Fair Deal:

1. Improve Public Housing - succeeds

   1. How?: New Housing Act

2. Increase Minimum Wage - succeeds

   1. How?: increased to 75c per hour

3. More support for farmers/agriculture - fails

4. New TVA project - fails

5. Increase Social Security - succeeds

   1. How?: Social Security Act of 1950

6. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act - fails

7. Ease Immigration Restrictions - sorta succeeds

   1. How?: Passes Immigration Acts (like Displacement Act) but is not  able to remove the Immigration Quota

8. Increase Civil Rights - succeed

   1. First president to push forward Civil Rights

   2. How?: sends Civil Rights message to Congress and desegregated military/congress

Yalta Conference:

• February 1945, an resort on the Black Sea

• Final Meeting of the Big 3

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt (U.S)

  • Winston Churchill (Britain)

  • Stalin (Soviets / Russia / USSR)

• #1. Laid the foundations for the postwar division of power in Europe

  • A divided Germany and territorial concessions to the Soviet Union

• #2. Stalin agreed that these countries should should have a representative government based on free elections -- a pledge he soon broke

  • Poland (with revised boundaries)

  • Bulgaria

  • Romania

• #3. Created the United Nations: new international peacekeeping organization

• #4. Roosevelt and Stalin’s plans for Japan (“Asian War”)

  • To decrease American losses, Stalin would pin down Japanese troops in Manchuria and Korea

  • In return, Stalin would receive:

    • Southern half of Sakhalin Island (was lost to Japan in 1905)

    • Japan’s Kurile Islands

    • Control over the railroads and 2 key seaports in China’s Manchuria

GI bill of rights = Sent Veterans to college and gave them greater skills → more skilled jobs to help the economy grow

USSR vs US Post-WWII Visions:

USSR vs US Ideologies:

Each believed in the universal applicability of its own particular ideology: democracy or communism

The Cold War = An ideological war between the US and USSR from 1945 -1991

• Fueled by George S. Kennan’s “long telegram” (kennan was a US diplomat in the USSR)

  • It said that the US cannot expect permanent peace with the USSR since Stalin will not stop until he achieves world domination

  • Kennan proposes containment -- do not stop communism entirely, just contain it where it is

    • this becomes the US foreign policy for the next 45 years

• Also fueled by Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech

  • Churchill speech in missouri

  • Claimed that an “iron curtain” had fallen over the continent separating western democracies from eastern communist states

Containment Doctrine:

• America’s strategy against the Soviet Union based on the ideas of Kennan

  • George Kennan: young diplomat and Soviet specialist

• Doctrine declared that the Soviet Union and communism were inherently expansionist and had to be stopped from spreading through both military and political pressure

• Containment guided American foreign policy throughout most of the Cold War

Truman doctrine = Stated that the US will support worldwide democracies in the fight against communism, helps rebuild many countries into democracies

• Created because Britain needed money to support Greece and Turkey

Marshall plan = Helped european countries recover economically because the US did not want them to be vulnerable, since vulnerable states are more likely to succumb to communism

• Huge success!

  • Helps US economy by building things to send over

  • Keeps communism out of western europe

  • Keeps trade markets flowing

• The CIA stole $$ from the marshall plan since it did not initially have a budget

The first major conflict of WW2: The Berlin Airlift

• West Berlin was a democratic haven which irked Stalin

• [June 1949] Berlin Blockade -- Stalin cut Berlin supply lines

  • Since the US did not want to smash the blockade nor act weak by negotiating, they flew supplies into Berlin -- called the Berlin Airlift

    • At the apex, supplies arrived every 3 minutes

[1949] The USSR gets the atomic bomb

• Shocked the US because the atomic bomb was the major US advantage

• Everyone realized that there must be somebody leaking US secrets → caused a communist witch hunt

  • “Loyalty” Program (1947):

    • Launched by Truman because many citizens feared that communist spies were undermining the government and misdirecting foreign policy

    • Attorney general drew up a list of 90 supposedly disloyal organizations, none of which was given the opportunity to prove its innocence

  • Alger Hiss Case - accused by Richard Nixon of being a communist agent

  • Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg

  • McCarran Internal Security Bill

  • McCarthyism: Refers to the political practices and tactics associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy, who led a campaign to root out alleged communists and Soviet sympathizers

• Nuclear Bomb Race:

  • Inorder to outpace Soviets in nuclear weaponry, Truman ordered the development of the “H-bomb” (hydrogen bomb)

  • 1000x more powerful than the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, former scientific director of the Manhattan Project and current chair of the Atomic Energy Commission

NATO → an attack on one is an attack on all NATO countries

• The Warsaw Pact → soviet NATO

• Germany was divided into west and east

General Douglas MacArthur:

• Program for Democratization of Japan: top Japanese “war criminals” were tried in Tokyo 1946-1948, 18 prisoned + 7 hanged

• MacArthur-dictated constitution (1946):

  • Renounced militarism

  • Provided for women’s equality

  • Introduced Western-style democratic government

  • Paved path for economic recovery

National Security Council Memorandum Number 68 (NSC-68):

• National Security Council recommendation to:

  • Quadruple defense spending

  • Rapidly expand peacetime armed forces to address Cold War tensions

• Reflected a new militarization of American foreign policy, but the huge costs of rearmament were not expected to interfere with what seemed like the limitless possibilities of postwar prosperity

• Marked a major step in the militarization of American foreign policy

[1950-1953] Korean War

• Inchon Landing (Sept. 1950)

  • MacArthur’s decided to launch a landing at Inchon on Sept. 15th, 1950

  • Led to the retreat of North Koreans behind the thirty-eighth parallel

• US Crossing 38th Parallel

  • Truman’s intention was to restore South Korea to its former borders

  • MacArthur will cross the thirty-eighth parallel

• Chinese Warning

  • Chinese warn against approaching Yalu River boundary

  • MacArthur dismisses predictions of Chinese intervention

• Chinese Intervention (Nov. 1950)

  • Chinese “volunteers” attack UN forces, pushing UN forces back towards the thirty-eighth parallel

• MacArthur fired on April 11th, 1951!!

  • MacArthur desires for a blockade of the Chinese coast and bases ** suggests to use nuclear weapons on China - America refuses

  • MacArthur began to criticize the president’s policies publically, Truman had no choice but to remove the general

Taft-Hartley Act:

• Republican-promoted, anti union legislation passed over President Truman’s vigorous veto that weakened many of labor’s New Deal gains

• “Slave-labor” law included:

  • Banning the “closed” (all-union) 

  • Made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves

  • Required union leaders to take a noncommunist oath

    • Which purged the union movement of many of its most committed and active organizers

Split of Democratic Party - Election of 1948:

Levittown: suburban communities with mass-production tract house, from potato field, typically inhabited by white middle-class people who fled the cities in search of homes to buy for their growing families

The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1945): by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Instructed millions of parents during the ensuing decades in homely wisdom that was once transmitted naturally from grandparent to parent

Life In The 50’s

Social and Economic Transformation:

• Social Mobility

• Paved the way for the eventual success of the civil rights movement

• Funded vast new welfare programs (like Medicare)

• Gave Americans the confidence to exercise international leadership in the Cold War

Postwar Consumer Culture:

• Standard of comfort shifted from “a chicken in every pot” to aspirations like 2 cars, swimming pools, vacation homes, and recreational vehicles

• More Americans in middle-class (60%)

• By 1950s, many American families owned cars, washing machines, and TVs

• More Americans had houses (60%)

Impact on Women:

• Employment opportunities for women in urban offices and shops

• Despite workforce participation, popular culture continued to glorify traditional feminine roles, speaking a clash between prescribed suburban housewifery and realities of employment

  • Clash ignited a feminist revolt in 1960s

Permanent War Economy and Military Spending:

• Critics noted that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s relied heavily on colossal military budgets

• Pentagon dollars fueled high-tech industries including aerospace, plastics, and electronics, boosting the U.S. over foreign competitors

• The Cold War military budget funded significant scientific research and development, contributing to economic growth

Role of Cheap Energy:

• Abundant petroleum from the Middle East contributed to low prices

• Americans doubled their consumption of inexpensive oil, leading to significant economic growth

• Low-cost fuels led to the construction of highways, widespread use of air-conditioning, and substantial increase in energy-generating capacity

Productivity Levels Increase:

• Rising education levels, 90% of the school-age population enrolled by 1970, contributed to productivity gains

• Mechanization and consolidation led to giant agribusinesses, reducing the family farm to a small percentage of working Americans

• Rising Productivity doubled the average American standard of living in the postwar quarter-century

• Led to postwar golden age

Role of Science and Technology in Economic Growth: 

• Invention of the Transistor in 1948 revolutionized electronics and computers, leading to miniaturization and increased computational speed

• Growth of IBM

  • Transformed age-old business practices like billing and inventory control

  • Opened new frontiers in areas like airline scheduling, high-speed printing, and telecommunications

  • Eventually began to decline in the 1980s as much smaller personal computers penetrated the information-processing market

    • Younger companies like Apple and Microsoft

Aerospace Industry grows

The Feminine Mystique:

• Written by Feminist Betty Friedan

• Gave focus and fuel to women’s feelings in 1963

• Challenged women to move beyond the drudgery of suburban housewifery

• Helped launch what would become second-wave feminism

• Launched the modern women’s movement

Diner’s Club and Plastic Credit Cards: Diner’s Club introduced the plastic credit card in 1949, contributing to the expansion of consumer credit

Fast-Food Culture: Rise of fast-food culture with the opening of McDonalds in 1948 and a shift in dining habits

Television with Consumerism: Advertisers spent alot of money on television, influencing consumer behavior

Televangelists: Celebrity preachers like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts utilized television to spread the Christian gospel

Westward and Southward Movement: Population shifts toward the West and South led to the relocation of sports franchises, including baseball teams like the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers

Rock ‘n’ roll:

• “Crossover” musical style that rose to dominance in the 1950s - Merging black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country

• Famous Artists: Elvis Presley + the Beatles

Marilyn Monroe + Playboy Magazine: popularized new standards of sensuous sexuality in the 1950s

Checkers Speech: 

• Nationally televised address by VP candidate Richard Nixon

• He defended himself against allegations of corruption (who he had accepted illegal donations from)

• saved his place on the ticket by saying the only campaign gift he had received was a cocker spaniel named Checkers (Election 1952)

Environmental Rights Movement:

• In the late 1950’s, Rachel Carson began researching and writing “Silent Spring” which was published in 1962

• Silent Spring instigated the environmental rights movement that began gaining traction in the 1970s

Dwight D. Eisenhower: 34th President

• Tackled the issue of Mexican immigration

  • Operation Wetback - A government program to round up and deport 1 million+ illegal Mexican migrant workers in the US + Promoted in part by the Mexican government and reflected concerns about non-European immigration to America

• Sought to cancel the tribal preservation policies (Native Americans**) of the “Indian New Deal”

  • Proposed to terminate the tribes as legal entities and to revert to the assimilationist goals of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

  • Most Indians resisted the termination policy + abandoned in 1961

• Federal Highway Act (1956) - more investment in roads (used defense as an excuse to put money)

• 1952 campaign - promises to end Korea conflict, create peace

  • After victory, he goes to Korea and is unsuccessful

  • 1953 - Eisenhower ended Korean War after Stalin died

• Tried to curb the TVA by encouraging a private power company to compete with the massive public utility

• Farewell Address: Warns about Industrial war complex - US is putting too much money into defense + propelling economy + Warns how much power the Defense industry is getting

Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy:

• Brinkmanship - the art of getting as close to nuclear war without actually getting into a nuclear war

• New Look Defense -

  • Cut forces - create traditional army / navy

  • Increase airforce and nuclear weapon spending

  • Use the CIA more

• Put the brakes on Truman’s enormous military buildup, though defense spending still soaked up 10% of GNP

National Security Act of 1947:

• Creates the CIA

  • 1945-1949 - Steals money from Marshall Plan

  • 1949 - Write charter for CIA

    • Not allowed to operate on US grounds (from FBI)

  • 1949-1953 - CIA is still a mess

    • Many double spies

  • 1953 - New Director of CIA Allen Dulles

    • Allen Dulles is brother of John Foster Dulles

    • As brothers, Allen Dulles gets what he wants through president power

• Creates the airforce (new branch)

• New Security Council

• New Secretary of Defense Position (No Secretary of War)

Policy of Boldness (1954):

• By Secretary of State - John Foster Dulles

• Believed in changing the containment strategy to one that more directly engaged the Soviet Union and attempted to roll back communist influence around the world

• Policy led to the buildup of America’s nuclear arsenal to threaten “massive retaliation” against communist enemies

  • Would relegate the army and the navy to the backseat

  • Would build up the Strategic Air Command’s airfleet of superbombers equipped with city-flattening nuclear bombs

  • Sought to calm down the Cold War through negotiations with the new Soviet leaders who came to power after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953

Agriculture:

• Farm Population Decreases

• Rachel Carson: kicks off modern day environmental movement

• Increase in size of farms and chemical fertilizers

“Keeping up with the Jones”: meaning that if your next door neighbor got a new car, then you get a new car → keeping up with society norms (conformity)

Beatniks: Beatniks - liberal, anti-war, and support for desegregation (wanted to influence American society after World War II)

Civil Rights Movement

Emmett Till Lynching (1955): 

• 14-year-old Emmett Till lynched for allegedly leering at a white woman

• Symbolized racial violence and injustice

• Till’s killers were later acquitted by an all-white jury, highlighting the flawed justice system

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):

• Pushed the Supreme Court to rule the Sweatt v. Painter that separated professional schools for blacks failed to meet the test of equality

Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1943):

• Supreme Court’s ban in 1948 on court enforcement of racially restrictive housing covenants 

• Supreme Court acts against racially restrictive covenants and repeals of state-level anti-miscegenations laws

• Signaled the decline of legal discrimination against not only African Americans but other racial and ethnic minorities

Rosa Parks:

• College-educated black seamstress, been active in the NAACP

• Made history in Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955

• She boarded a bus, took a seat in the “whites only” section, and refused to give it up

• Arrested for violating the city’s Jim Crow statutes

  • Sparked a black boycott of city buses

  • Served notice that throughout the South, blacks would not be suppressed by segregation

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956):

• Protest by black Alabamians against segregated seating on city buses

• Sparked by Rosa Parks and her defiant refusal to move to the back of the bus

• Boycott lasted December 1st, 1955 to December 26th, 1956

• One of the foundational moments of the Civil Rights Movement

• Led to the rise of MLK Jr. + Supreme Court’s decision opposing segregated busing

Martin Luther King Jr.:

• Pastor at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

• Raised in a prosperous black family in Atlanta and educated partly in the North

• Devoted to the nonviolent principles of India’s Mohandas Gandhi

“To Secure These Rights” Report:

• President Harry Truman was horrified about the lynching of black war veterans in 1946, called for the report

• Truman in 1948 ended segregation in the federal civil service and the armed forces

Civil Rights Support from Parties:

• Yet the conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats in Congress refused to pass civil rights legislation

• Eisenhower had not interest in racial issues

• In the 1950s, it was the Supreme Court that assumed political leadership in the civil rights struggle

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954):

• Chief Justice Earl Warren - former Republican governor of California

• Landmark Supreme Court Case decision that:

  • Abolished racial segregation in public schools

  • Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) -- that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional 

• Court reasoned that “separate” was inherently “unequal”, rejecting the foundation of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the South

• Decision was the first major step toward the legal end of racial discrimination and a major accomplishment for the civil rights movement

“Declaration of Constitutional Principles” (1956): southern congressional representatives and senators had to sign this pledge to follow unyielding resistance to desegregation

Little Rock’s Central High School: Governor Orval Faubus (governor of Arkansas) prevents black students from enrolling in LRCHS, forcing Eisenhower to send troops to escort them

Civil Rights Act of 1957:

• First Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction

• Sets up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): 

• Formed by MLK Jr. in 1957

• Aimed to mobilize the vast power of black churches on behalf of black rights

• Interesting strategy because the churches were the largest and best-organized black institutions that had been allowed to flourish in a segregated society

Sit-in Movement (1960):

• Started in February 1960 by 4 black college freshmen in Greensboro, NC

• They demanded services at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter

  • Even black waitresses refused to serve them

  • Kept their seats and returned the next day with more classmates 

• Greensboro sit-in sparks a wave of protests for equal treatment in many areas

• Leading to the formation of the SNCC

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC):

• Youth organization founded by southern black students to promote civil rights

• In its early years, coordinated demonstrations, sit-ins, and voter registration drives

• Guided by Civil Rights activist Ella Baker

Freedom Riders:

• Organized mixed-race groups who rode interstate buses deep into the South to draw attention to and protest racial segregation

• Effort to challenge racism

• Incident:

  • White mob torched a Freedom Ride bus in Alabama in May 1961

  • Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s personal representative was beaten unconscious in another anti-Freedom Ride riot in Montgomery

Voter Education Project:

• Effort by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights groups

• To register the South’s historically disenfranchised black population

• A common strategy of civil rights movement - sought to counter racial discrimination by empowering people at grassroot levels to exercise their civic rights through voting

Incident at the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”):

• Problem: Integrating Southern universities faced challenges similar to voter registration for African Americans. 

• Protagonist- James Meredith, 29 year old air force veteran

• Meredith faced violent opposition when attempting to register at Ole Miss in October 1962

• Kennedy intervened in the crisis - dispatched federal marshals and troops to enroll Meredith in his first class, specifically in colonial American history

Kennedy’s Speech to the Nation (June 11th, 1963):

• Kennedy terms racial inequality a “moral issue”

• Committed his personal and presidential prestige to find a solution

• Called for new civil rights legislation to protect black citizens

March on Washington (August 1963):

• Massive Civil Rights Demonstration in support of Kennedy-backed legislation to secure legal protections for African Americans

• MLK Jr. said his famous “I Have a Dream” speech

Freedom Summer of 1964:

• Voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by a coalition of civil rights groups

• Campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the North

• Late June 1964 - Abduction and murder of 3 such workers at the hands of white racists

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (NFDP):

• Political Party organized by Civil Rights Activists in 1964

• Challenged Mississippi’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, who opposed the civil rights planks in the party’s platform

  • Demanded to be seated at the convention but were denied by party bosses

  • Only some black Mississippians succeeded registering to vote

• Setback to the civil rights activism in South

MLK’s Voter Registration: In Selma, Alabama

March from Selma to Capital: 

• State Troopers assaulted King’s demonstrators with tear gas as they marched peacefully to the state capital at Montgomery

• Boston Unitarian minister was killed

• Few days later, a white Detroit woman was shotgunned to death by Klansmen on the highway near Selma

Voting Rights Act of 1965:

• Legislation pushed through Congress by President Johnson that prohibited ballot-denying tactics such as literacy tests and intimidation

• Was a successor to the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Sought to make racial disenfranchisement explicitly illegal

Riots in Watts:

• Watts is a predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles, California

• On Aug. 11th 1965 - after word spread that an act of police brutality had been  committed against a black man, riots erupted in Watts

• Left 34 people dead and 1000+ people injured

• Did not follow MLK’s policy of nonviolence 

Malcolm X / Malcolm Little:

• Young black leader + preacher

• Inspired by the militant black nationalists in the Nation of Islam, with leader Elijah Muhammed

• Changed his surname to reclaim his lost African identity in white America

• Eventually distanced himself from Elijah Muhammed’s separatists ideas and moved toward mainstream Islam

Black Panther Party:

• Socialists

• Organization of armed black militants formed in Oakland, California

• Made to protect Black Rights

• Represented a growing dissatisfaction with the nonviolent wing of the civil rights movement and signaled a new direction to that movement after the legislative victories of 1964 and 1965

Doctrine of Black Power:

• Preached by Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• Doctrine of militancy and separatism that rose in prominence after 1965

• Black Power activists rejected MLK’s pacifism and desire for integration - rather they promoted pride in African heritage and often militant position in defense of their rights

• People took a separatist meaning of the doctrine

  • Promoted “Afro” hairstyles and dress

  • Shed their “white” names for new African identities

  • Demanded black studies programs in schools and universities

Campaigning for LGBTQ+

Mattachine Society:

• Founded in Los Angeles in 1951

• Pioneering advocate for gay rights

Stonewall Rebellion:

• Uprising in support of equal rights for gay people sparked by an assault by off-duty police officers at a gay bar in NY

• Rebellion led to a rise in activism and militancy within the gay community and furthered the sexual revolution of the late 1960s

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS):

• Campus-based political organization founded in 1961 by Tom Hayden

  • Became an iconic representation of the New Left

• Originally geared toward the intellectual promise of “participatory democracy”

• Emerged in: Civil Rights, Anti Poverty, Antiwar

• Had conservative counterpart in Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)

• Spawned a terrorist group called the Weather Underground

Vietnam War

John F. Kennedy:

• DOMESTIC AGENDA - NEW FRONTIER: 

  • Military - Building more missiles + special forces unit the military 

    • Green Berets: First specials forces unit in the US

    • Peace Corps: promoted voluntary service by Americans in foreign countries + provide labor power to help developing countries improve their infrastructure + postwar liberals promoting American values through productive exchanges

  • Tax Cutting - Wants to reduce income taxes and corporate taxes

    • Noninflationary wage agreement (1962)

  • Aerospace Vision - Wants to increase spending on space program

    • Speech in 1962 at Rice University - says that he wants to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade (Apollo Mission!!)

    • Creates NASA

• FOREIGN POLICY - FLEXIBLE RESPONSE:

  • Wants more than one option to deal with international crisis

  • Economic Assistance Programs - where US is helping developing countries

    • Food for Peace Program

    • Alliance for Progress Program

    • Peace Corps (1961)

• [November 22nd] Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald

South becomes more republican after 1964 - previously JFK got votes from south, LBJ didn’t

Lyndon B. Johnson:

• DOMESTIC AGENDA - GREAT SOCIETY

  • Aimed to extend the postwar prosperity to all people in American society by promoting civil rights and fighting poverty

  • Billed as a successor to the New Deal

  • The War on Poverty

  • Expanded Social Security System: Creating Medicare and Medicaid for the aged and poor

• GOALS DURING PRESIDENCY:

  • End of Racial Discrimination

  • Expand Health and Welfare Programs

  • Abolition of Poverty

  • Major new public investments in education and the arts

• LEGISLATIVE ACHIEVEMENTS:

  • Aid to education

    • Directly to students instead of institutions

  • Medical care for the elderly and indigent

    • Medicare = elderly

    • Medicaid = the poor

  • Immigration reform

    • Immigration Nationality Act of 1965

  • New voting rights bill

    • Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Congress doubled the appropriation of the Office of Economic opportunity to $2 billion

• LBJ prodded Congress into creating 2 new cabinet offices:

  • Department of Transportation

  • Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

    • Named the first black cabinet secretary - Robert C. Weaver

• Established the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities

  • Designed to lift the level of American cultural life

Barry Goldwater:

• Ran in Election of 1964 against LBJ - Republican representative

• Pro-conservatism

• From Arizona (Southwestern state)

• Attacked (against*):

  • Federal income tax

  • The Social Security system

  • The Tennessee Valley Authority

  • Civil Rights Legislation (Civil Rights Act of 1964)

  • Nuclear test-ban treaty

  • Great Society

• Lost election

George Wallace:

• From American Independent Party (Third Party)

• Ran in Election of 1968 vs Nixon (Republican) + Humphrey (Democrat)

• Pro-segregation

• In 1963 - stood in the doorway to prevent 2 black students from entering University of Alabama

• Proposed smashing North Vietnam with a bomb

Richard Nixon:

• Made a name for himself in the Alger Hiss Trials 

• Made the “Checkers Speech” 

• Was sent by Ike to south America on a goodwill tour as VP and was not well-received

  • He also met with Kruschev in Moscow and engages in the Kitchen Debates → this makes him look good and also strengthens his foreign relations skills

War Timeline:

• [June 1954] US secretly places troops in Vietnam

• [July 1954] Geneva Conference splits Vietnam at the 17th parallel

• [Nov 1963] Diem is assassinated

• [Aug 1964] Tonkin Gulf Incident + Resolution (under LBJ) 

• [March 1964] Operation Rolling Thunder 

• [Jan 1968] Tet Offensive

• [May 1968] My Lai Massacre

• [May 1970] Kent State Protest

• [Jan 1973] Representatives coordinate a peace agreement

• [Mar 1973] Last troop leaves

McGovern:

• Democratic candidate in 1972

• Promised to pull US troops out of Vietnam in 90 days

• His VP, Thomas Eagleton, was undergoing psychiatric care, which doomed his candidacy

Important Court Decisions

Chief Justice Earl Warren: had led the Court into a series of decisions that drastically affected sexual freedom, the rights of criminals, the practice of religion, civil rights, and the structure of political representation

• Was at first a conservative but later led the most liberal court of all time

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965): 

• Court struck down a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives, even among married couples

• Proclaimed a “right of privacy” that soon provided the basis for decisions protecting women’s abortion rights

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): All criminal defendants were entitled to legal counsel, even if they were too poor to afford it

Escobedo (1964) & Miranda v. Arizona (1966): ensured the right of the accused to remain silent, consult an attorney, and enjoy other protections

Miranda Warning: a statement of an arrested person’s constitutional rights, which police officers must read during an arrest (individuals must understand their constitutional rights)

Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963): justices argued that the 1st Amendment’s separation of church and state meant that public schools could not require prayer or Bible reading

Warren E. Burger:

• Succeeding chief justice after Earl Warren’s retirement

• Proved reluctant to dismantle the “liberal” rulings of the Warren Court

• Produced the most controversial judicial opinion of modern times

  • Roe v. Wade (1973): legalized abortion

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971): 

• the justices prohibited intelligence tests or other devices that had the effect of excluding minorities or women from certain jobs

• Court strongly suggested to employers that they only sure protection against charges of discrimination was to hire minority workers or admit minority students to their population

China + Soviets + US Relations

• Soviet Union and China (2 communist powers) were dueling over their rival interpretations of Marxism

• Even fought battles to figure out who is better

• Nixon thought this was a great time for US to create a play off between the 2 nations to gain new flexibility and leverage on world stage ++ even aid of both powers to pressure North Vietnam into peace

Henry A. Kissinger:

• Had reached America as a youth when his parents fled Hitler’s anti-Jewish persecutions

• Former Harvard professor

• Begun meeting secretly on Nixon’s behalf with North Vietnamese officials in Paris to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam

• Was preparing the president’s path to Beijing (China) and Moscow (Russia)

Nixon’s Travel to China (Feb 1972):

• Visit with Shanghai Communique - the two nations agreed to normalize their relationship

• Important part of America’s acceptance was implying a lessened American commitment to the independence of Taiwan

Nixon’s Travel to Moscow (May 1972):

• Alarmed over the possibility of rivalry with an American-backed China, were ready to deal

Detenté:

• From the french for “reduced tension”

• The period of the Cold War thawing when the US and Soviet Union treaties under Nixon, Ford, and Carter

• Marked a departure from the policies of proportional response, mutually assured destruction, and containment that had defined the earlier years of the Cold War

Oil Conflicts

Six Day War:

• War between Israel and Syria + Egypt

  • US helped Israel win this war

• This war paved the way for future conflicts between Israel and Palestine

Arab Oil Embargo:

• As a result of the US support for Israel in the Six Day War, OPEC countries put an embargo for the US on oil

  • The US hadn’t realized how dependent it had become on oil

    • post-ww2 boom in cars and AC usage

• The embargo dramatically impacted the US economy

• Made the US realize how dependent it really was

• Even after the embargo was lifted, oil prices were still high. Oil is still a point of high tension.

New US Amendments

22nd - no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice (2 terms)

23rd - giving District of Columbia rights of voting

24th - abolished poll taxes during federal elections

25th - if the president dies, the vice president becomes president

26th - reduced mandatory voting age to 18 years