Unit 8: 1960s

Chapter 24: Cold War America, 774-777 (1945-1963)

• John F. Kennedy and the Cold War: Roosevelt was a war hero, Massachusetts senator, Harvard grad, and came from a line of previous politicians. He used his good looks and charisma on TV to campaign himself. Despite him being catholic, he was able to neutralize this “con”. His experience in the senate helped him get elected as well. When he was president, he combined ingenuity and cold war power politics. 

  • The Election of 1960 and the New Frontier: Richard Nixon was JFK’s opponent and he was not as good looking so on TV, people thought JFK was a better candidate but on the radio, they thought Nixon was better. JFK won only by a little (45.7-45.5) and gained votes from African American, Catholics, and laborers. His VP drew in votes from the southern democrats. JFK brought in younger people to help him in congress. He came up with the saying the “New Frontier” to describe the problems the nation was having. The new administration immediately had issues though

  • Crises in Cuba and Berlin: The Soviets said that they would aid in revolutions anywhere in the world so when Fidel Castro, a left winger, created a revolution, Kennedy had to intervene. He tried to send invaders, Cuban exiles trained by the CIA, but they were unprepared and were crushed by Castro’s troops. The soldiers pleaded for an air strike but JFK refused and took responsibility for the loss. Tensions kept growing between the USSR and US. In Berlin, Krushchev halted movement between Eastern controlled Berlin and the western sector. JFK responded by sending 40,000 more troops to Europe. Then, to stop people from fleeing the communist side of Berlin, Krushchev built the Berlin Wall and put guards there under “shoot to kill” orders. JFK responded with a speech. The US heard news of the Soviets putting missiles in Cuba and he got the US’s arms ready. Both didn’t do anything and the tensions softened slightly at coming close to the edge of war. 

    • Bay of Pigs: The CIA trained a group of invaders who were Cuban exiles to intervene in Cuba but they were ill prepared, losing at the Bay of Pigs.

    • Cuban Missile Crisis: the USSR ordered missile bases in Cuba and JFK retaliated by getting US arms ready. Neither made a move until the USSR ships with the missiles turned away with the US agreeing to never invade Cuba. They also had to remove their missiles in Turkey

  • Kennedy and the World: The US created a low-cost weapon to the Cold War which showed others that there was an alternative to communism. Also, Kennedy was determined to beat the Soviets to the moon and increased spending for NASA. This determination was seen when America landed a man on the moon before the USSR.

    • Peace Corps: a volunteer program where citizens of the US would sign up to help people in other countries like providing clean water for African Americans or teaching Filipinos how to speak english.

• Making a Commitment in Vietnam: JFK inherited Eisenhower’s commitment to Vietnam but took a different approach than threatening nuclear warfare. He sent troops to southern Vietnamese and trained their troops how to fight in unconventional, small-group warfare tactics. North Vietnam tried to persecute Diem and made him look bad. The northern vietnamese staged self-immolations that were broadcast on TV and this shocked audiences, highlighting the dilemmas of the US in Vietnam. In order to defeat the communists in Vietnam, the US had no choice but to support the Authoritarian government in the south. The US brought defeat to the North even closer with their determination

Chapter 27 Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and Conservative Rebirth, 844-850 (1961-1972)

• Liberalism at High Tide:  Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech at UMich saying that they would be moving to a society with no poverty and no social injustice. He wanted to renew education, rebuild cities, and help the environment.

  • Great Society: A society where there was little poverty and no racial injustice

  • John F. Kennedy’s Promise: JFK tried to appeal to the new generation and encourage the spirit of liberal reform. He had big plans for the country like a tax cut, civil rights bill, healthcare for the elderly, and anti poverty organizations, but these ideas were shot down by the conservatives in congress. JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas. JFK had great publicity which set a precedent for other presidents to do the same.

  • Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society: LBJ was the opposite of Kennedy in the sense that he worked in the back rooms with power and scrambled his way to the top but he was able to use his negotiating powers to revitalize JFK’s policies that were formerly shut down. LBJ was previously against Civil rights but he pushed for it in memorial of JFK. It was risky because it would split the democratic party but he wanted to be a president for all and he went forward with it. LBJ was mostly concerned about poverty, He wanted to abolish it altogether and created different programs to help with that. These programs however, mostly provided services instead of jobs so people argued it did little

    • Economic Opportunity Act of 1964: was created to combat poverty. Created the Head Start (free nursery schools), Job Corps and Upward Bound (provided young people with training and employment), and VISTA (volunteers offered technical assistance to those who needed it)

    • The 1964 Election: LBJ ran against Barry Goldwater, a major conservative who ran against Civil RIghts and for a more aggressive cold war strategy. LBJ won by a landslide because he was running for JFK and there was still sentiment for him after the assassination. He also gained a congressional majority which is what he needed to push forward with his plan. Next on his plan was to help the environment by creating national parks, helping endangered animals, etc. He created public housing as well and continued to help children and supported artists and writers. He also got rid of discriminatory immigration acts which helped diversify the nation.

    • Great Society Initiatives: LBJ’s first step was to take advantage of the congressional majority and pass education and healthcare acts that JFK and him wanted to pass. 

      • Elementary and Secondary Education Act: provided $1 billion for training teachers and other educational programs

      • Higher Education Act: provided scholarships for college students

      • Medicare and Medicaid: Medicare helped the elderly by creating a health plan funded by a surcharge on SS payroll taxes. Medicaid helped the poor by taking state taxes and paying for their healthcare. 

      • Immigration Act of 1965: got rid of the quota that favored Europeans and just made a numeric limit that did not discriminate among nations. Relatives of citizens could also immigrate and they were exempt from the numeric limit

    • Assessing the Great Society: Liberals thought that they were headed in the right direction as poverty dropped and diversity increased. Conservatives believed that the Great Society was a flop and that the programs did not help poverty, but the economy rather did. While the Great Society reached many children, gave the poor and elderly the healthcare they needed, and increased diversity, the bottom 20% of the population stayed there, their lives improving little if at all, and the programs did little to nothing for them.

Chapter 26: Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 810-823 (1941-1973)

• The Emerging Civil Rights Struggle, 1941-1957: The Civil Rights movement had two tracks, one a grassroots reform and the other a government institutional movement. Organizations, churches, etc. all helped gain support for the movement. The movement also had the legality of the Constitution which they would work to restore the legitimacy of.

  • Life Under Jim Crow: African Americans were exploited economically and racially segregated. There were laws in place restricting what they were able to do. Most African Americans (⅔ of them) lived in the south where there were heavy segregation laws (Jim Crow). These laws gave African Americans the worst jobs, separated them in restaurants, buses, etc., and disenfranchised them giving the white population in the South more of a voice than they should have gotten. Racial segregation was also prominent in the North. Although they could vote and participate publicly and after 1960, there were no segregation laws, they got the worst jobs and lived in the deteriorating cities.  Even highly educated men could not get proper jobs. Compared to the South, the segregation in the North and West was not as bad but it was still there. In cities, some white people would try to deter African Americans from living near them. Racial inequality was a national, not regional, problem.

  • Origin of the Civil Rights Movement: Although there was plenty of racial injustice before the mid 20th century, the movement really picked up then because of WWII. The war fought facism and racist Nazi ideology abroad and this brought attention to the inequality at home with many criticizing the hypocrisy. The growing middle class also helped the movement. People were more educated and they were less reliant on white patronage so they were less vulnerable to their retaliation. Labor union workers also helped. They were more willing to push for equality than other groups. The TV helped a lot as well. The streamed cases of segregation helped people realize the violence that white supremacists put African Americans through.

  • World War II: The Beginnings: During the war, African Americans were segregated in military jobs and it magnified the awareness of Black people of how they were being treated.

    • Executive Order 8802: A group of activists were planning to march to Washington but FDR shut it down by issuing the executive order saying there could be no discrimination in defense industries. This was not enforced well but it set a precedent that pressure from the movement would cause federal intervention. This was one of the strategies to defeat racism at home

      • Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: 

    • The Double V Campaign: The other strategy to defeat racism was the double V campaign. It called for fighting facism abroad while also peacefully but emphatically fighting against racism at home. This idea spread quickly across black communities in the country. The Double V campaign met opponents. In factories, white laborers would go on strike because they didn’t want to work alongside other black workers. In Detroit, white workers were taunting african americans and this led to a riot that killed 34 people. The federal troops had to intervene to stop this. During the war years, the generations took action by boycotting buses. They embraced nonviolent ways of protesting. They also used the GI bill to take advantage of the benefits they got.

      • Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): An organization that embraced nonviolent direct action

  • Cold War Civil Rights: People like Jackie Robinson gave symbolic victories to the movement. However, the most influential thing that propelled the movement forward was the increase in voting of African Americans in Northern states and cities. The people who voted in the north were liberal democrats giving them leverage. This awakened the other northern liberals to become allies of the movement. The Cold War produced mixed results as it opened doors for certain parts of the movement while closing others.

    • Civil Rights and the New Deal Coalition: African Americans were worried about how Truman would handle things with the Civil Rights movement because even though he was a New Dealer, he used offensive language towards Black people. He did support the Civil Rights movement though. He knew that it was key to obtain the votes from African Americans in key northern states. People who supported the movement pressed Truman to act. Truman was unable to get stuff passed through congress so he turned to executive action. Truman first desegregated federal agencies and then desegregated the military. He took the most aggressive approach to equality since reconstruction. Southern white democrats didn;t like what Truman was doing so they went to support Thurmond. This was the first sign that there would be a split in the democratic party

      • “To Secure These Rights”: called for strong federal action to ensure black equality 

      • States’ RIghts Democratic Party: the dixiecrats led by strom thurmond

    • Race and Anticommunism: The cold War helped and hurt the civil rights movement. It helped it because they had to present themselves as a unified front against the soviets since the soviets used the US’s issue with racism to discredit them abroad. This strengthened and pushed civil rights movement leaders. It hurt the movement because McCarthysm and the hunt for subversives caused southerners to accuse african americans and civil rights activists of being pro communism and anti american. 

  • Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans: The African Americans were not the only ones to experience discrimination. Mexicans and Mexican Americans were put into a caste system similar to Jim Crow laws. Also, they were barely above poverty and barely had water, electricity, and public transportation. They were unable to get better wages because of cheap labor across the border. Labor activism produced a new generation of leaders and they were also able to negotiate higher wages. After WWII when many came back after fighting for their country, they were determined to gain first-class citizenship rights and many were in the middle class so they were able to do this. Mexican Americans started at local injustices like segregated cemeteries but soon broadened their horizons and worked at the legal level. They were able to win in a case that had Mexicans segregated into a different school. They also had constitutional protection against discrimination. The Japanese also questioned the constitutionality of their property being taken away and not given back and they were able to then gain citizenship and their land.

    • American GI Forum: protested the poor treatment of Mexican american soldiers and veterans

    • Community Services Organization (CSO): addressed specific local injustices

  • Fighting for Equality Before the Law: WIth congress being filled with southern democrats opposing the civil rights movement, they had two pathways: Appealing to state legislatures and going to federal courts. Segregation in northern schools was an issue but job and housing discrimination was worse. Leaders worked hard to try and get laws passed to stop job discrimination. Civil rights activists paired with labor unions and liberal organizations. The road to pass anti housing discrimination laws was even worse. It was a very slow process that not many knew about but it was essential in the process of civil rights.

    • Thurgood Marshall: In the south, African Americans were denied the right to vote so they could not put the same pressure on the state legislatures that the north had. They had to appeal to the supreme courts instead. Marshall, Hastie, and Houston all worked together to put cases together that did not uphold the 14th amendment. Marshall graduated from a prestigious african american university and applied to the University of Maryland law school but was denied admissions because he was black. He went to Howard University instead and met Houston and they formed an intellectual bond and friendship. This was a slow and tedious process that did not impact black people's lives immediately but it showed that the civil rights attorneys were on the right track.

    • Brown v. Board of Education: The decision was that schools that were separate were not equal and the justices called for desegregation at deliberate speed. Southerners were extremely unhappy saying that the courts were abusing their power and that these rulings were communist and totalitarian. They revitalized old tactics of intimidation and the KKK even resurfaced using violence seen in the 1920s. Eisenhower in the White house complicated things because he took the decision as the law of the land but thought it was a mistake. When 9 black kids tried to enroll in an all white school, they were taunted and harassed until Eisenhower sent federal troops to protect them. He was the first president to send troops to protect African American rights but this also showed southern governors loyalty to their customs rather than the law.

      • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: overturned the separate but equal doctrine in a unanimous decision

JFK:

• During JFK’s presidency:

  • Cold War tensions are high

    • U2 incident

    • Fidel Castro established communist state 90 miles off the coast of Florida in Cuba

      • Fear of communism in the western hemisphere and USSR influence in the world

    • Space Race

  • Civil Rights: 

    • Southern states strongly resisted desegregation schools

      • Supreme court had no power to ensure the decision of Brown v. Board of Ed was carried out

    • Brown v. Board of Education

      • Overturns Plessy v. Ferguson 

      • Specifically applied to schools

    • Montgomery Bus Boycott

  • New era of American politics

    • First president to be televised which helped him defeat Nixon in the 1960s election

      • Used the television to his advantage

        • Nixon looked nervous and fidgety, also looked sick

        • JFK let the producers put a bit of makeup on him and he looked more poised

    • Youngest and first Irish catholic president

      • Shows that the Irish catholics had fully integrated themselves after all those years of discrimination and not being seen as white

    • VP Lyndon B. Johnson helped win the southern votes

      • Balanced the ballot

    • Inaugural speech saying that it was up to all Americans to express their patriotism

  • JFK’s New Frontier: 

    • A massive liberal system which called for aid to education, federal support of health care, civil rights legislation

      • Lacked support from conservative congress

        • Most of these acts were passed under Johnson though

      • President’s Commission on the Status of Women led to Equal Pay Act (1963)

        • Equal pay for equal work

        • Does not mean he was a big advocate for women’s rights

      • Civil rights political maneuvering - wanted to delay CR bill until his second term

        • He wanted to wait because he wanted to appease civil activists but not alienate democrats and republicans

        • He fears if he pushes it too much in his first term, he might not be reelected for a second term

    • Return to deficit spending

      • Increased defense spending and technology spending

        • Funds space race → race to the moon

      • Spent money on education and healthcare

  • Bay of Pigs:

    • Pushes the Cubans closer to the Soviets because the Americans had to admit to invading and trying to overthrow the government

    • Makes the US look weak to Kruschev since JFK is inexperienced and young

      • Occurred within the first few months of JFK’s presidency

  • Berlin Wall:

    • Views JFK and the US as weak and ill equipped to governing the US effectively

    • Kruschev had formerly worried about  Berlin but when he realized that America was weak, he thought it was his chance to build the wall

    • Built to stop the migration from east Berlin to West Berlin to maintain communism

    • Symbol of oppression

    • Cold War symbol of the control and power the Soviets exerted over the satellite nations

    • JFK responds with a speech but it shows that he is standing by them

      • He did not have many options other than to state his support in a speech

  • Cuban Missile Crisis:

    • The closest the US and USSR get to actual nuclear warfare

      • MAD was supposed to be a deterrent to war but it almost failed

      • People were incredibly afraid of the possibility of nuclear war

    • USSR arms Cuba with nuclear weapons

    • JFK could..

      • bomb/attack → most heavily advised option

        • Bad option because it would mean that the USSR or Cuba could bomb back

      • Do nothing

        • Bad option because there was fear and it would show weakness as well as give the upper hand to the USSR militarily

      • Prepare missiles

      • Diplomacy

        • Try and come to a compromise

      • Embargo

        • Cut off Cuba from any support from the Soviets

        • A “quarantine” AKA a blockade but a blockade would mean war which the US was trying to avoid

    • Vietnam:

      • US supported Diem

        • Diem was a bad guy, religious persecution

        • The US gave the OK to assassinate Diem, thought things were getting out of control

      • Flexible response:

        • Use of conventional troops shows his move away from brinkmanship 

        • Moves away from MAD and nuclear war and shows commitment to flexible response

LBJ’s Presidency:

• JFK is assassinated

• Leads to the country being in a state of mourning

• LBJ finishes out JFK’s term and runs for his own

• Election of 1964:

  • Rise of conservatism and away from liberalism

  • Landslide election, LBJ won

  • LBJ runs against Barry Goldwater

    • Another example of the democratic party splintering because Arizona voted for Goldman

  • Goldwater’s campaign…

    • No Civil Rights

    • Limited government

    • Strong anti-communist stance

      • Using much more dangerous rhetoric and potentially wanted to return to nuclear threats

  • The Daisy Ad:

    • Tried to instill fear in the people that if they voted for Goldwater, there would be no peace

  • Gives the government and democratic administration the go-ahead to continue with the Great Society and carry on JFK’s legacy