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Chapter 27: America in an Era of Turmoil (1960– 1975)
Important Keywords
New Frontier: Group of domestic policies proposed by John Kennedy that included Medicare and aid to education and urban renewal; many of these policies were not enacted until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
Great Society: Overarching plan by President Lyndon Johnson to assist the underprivileged in American society; it included the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Head Start and Medicare programs. Some Great Society programs were later reduced because of the cost of the Vietnam War.
Civil Rights Act of 1964: Major civil rights legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in public facilities, in employment, and in voter registration.
Black power: Philosophy of some younger blacks in the 1960s who were impatient with the slow pace of desegregation; its advocates believed that blacks should create and control their own political and cultural institutions rather than seeking integration into white-dominated society.
Roe v. Wade (1973): Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal (with some restrictions).
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Congressional resolution passed in August 1964 following reports that U.S. Navy ships had been fired on by North Vietnamese gunboats off the Vietnam coast; in essence it gave the president the power to fight the Vietnam War without approval from Congress.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): Radical, activist student organization created in 1960 that advocated a more democratic, participatory society. SDS was one of the major student organizations opposing the Vietnam War
Counterculture: Movement by young people in the 1960s who rejected political involvement and emphasized the need for personal instead of political revolution. Many members of the counterculture wore long hair and experimented with various drugs, with sex, and with unconventional living arrangements.
Kent State University: Campus in Ohio where four students who were part of a 1970 protest against U.S. involvement in Cambodia were shot and killed by National Guardsmen.
Key Timeline
1960: John Kennedy elected president
Sit-ins began Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed
1961: Freedom Rides
Bay of Pigs invasion
Construction of Berlin Wall
First American travels in space
1962: James Meredith enters University of Mississippi
SDS issues Port Huron Statement
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson published
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Other America by Michael Harrington published
1963: John Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes president
Civil rights march on Washington
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan published
President Diem assassinated in South Vietnam
1964: Beginning of Johnson’s War on Poverty programs
. Civil Rights Act enacted
Free Speech Movement at Berkeley begins
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Johnson reelected
1965: Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed
Johnson sends more troops to Vietnam
Voting Rights Act passed
Murder of Malcolm X
Watts riots burn sections of Los Angeles
Medicare passed
1966: Stokely Carmichael calls for “black power”
Formation of Black Panther party
Formation of National Organization for Women (NOW)
1967: Riots in many American cities
Antiwar demonstrations intensify
1968: Martin Luther King assassinated
Robert Kennedy assassinated
Student protests at Columbia University
Battle between police and protesters at Democratic National Convention
Richard Nixon elected president
American Indian Movement (AIM) founded
Tet Offensive
My Lai Massacre
1969: Woodstock Music Festival
1970: United States invades Cambodia
Killings at Kent State, Jackson State
1971: Pentagon Papers published by the New York Times
1972: Nixon reelected
1973: Vietnam cease-fire announced; American troops leave Vietnam Roe v. Wade decision
1975: South Vietnam falls to North Vietnam, ending the Vietnam War
The 1960 Election
The 1960 election was a political turning point, even if it wasn't clear at the time.
An era of rapid and sometimes chaotic transformation began with John F. Kennedy's election.
Kennedy contrasted with Dwight Eisenhower, a septuagenarian, at 43.
Kennedy's charisma and eloquence reflected youth and vitality.
He was a senator and representative from Massachusetts.
Kennedy, the first president born in the 20th century and a Roman Catholic, promised to change the nation.
At his inauguration, he asked Americans to “Ask not what your nation can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential contender, was just four years older than Kennedy, but some voters saw him as "too linked to the past" because of his Eisenhower administration ties. Nixon also suffered from technical development.
The 1960 election saw the first presidential discussion on television.
Kennedy, whose father controlled a Hollywood movie studio, was well-made up and seemed comfortable and vibrant in the four debates, whereas Nixon had a five-o'clock shadow and looked ill at ease.
Radio listeners thought Nixon won, but TV viewers felt Kennedy did.
Nixon's problem was that more people watched TV than listened to the radio.
Kennedy won by 120,000 votes out of 34 million votes in an exceedingly tight race.
The Liberal Hour of the 1960s
President Kennedy said that America was on the threshold of a New Frontier.
Kennedy's ambitious legislative agenda was called thus by journalists.
The president built up the military as a fanatical cold fighter.
He also wanted to boost the economy and end US poverty.
Michael Harrington's 1962 book The Other America reminded Americans that many individuals were still underprivileged despite the nation's prosperity.
Healthcare, education, and urban regeneration were Kennedy's priorities.
Despite his popularity, President Kennedy failed to convince Congress to approve most of his ambitious legislative program.
Congress raised the minimum wage from $1.00 to $1.25 and approved the president's Peace Corps program, which deployed young volunteers to impoverished nations.
The space program, like the Defense Department, benefitted from cold war tensions.
Yuri Gagarin became the first person to circle Earth in 1961, humiliating the US.
John Glenn orbited Earth in February 1962, and Alan Shepard became the first American in space in May.
Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon by the decade's end after Soviet achievement.
To do this, he and Congress started funding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
President Kennedy visited Texas on November 22, 1963, to gain political support.
An ex-marine and Communist sympathizer, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot and assassinated Kennedy in Dallas.
Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, killed Oswald two days after his arrest.
The Warren Commission investigated President Kennedy's assassination after his stunning death.
Many believed Kennedy was the victim of a plot despite the commission's extensive findings.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on the presidential party's flight home from Dallas.
In 1964, Johnson, a former Senate majority leader, was able to pass most of Kennedy's delayed legislation, including a large tax reduction to boost economic development.
That year, Johnson wanted to be president. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a committed conservative, opposed him.
“Extremism in the fight of liberty is no vice,” he said, suggesting nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
In 1964, Johnson beat Goldwater with 62% of the vote.
Johnson utilized his landslide win and the strong Democratic majority in Congress to push for one of America's most ambitious legislative plans.
Johnson announced his intention to establish a Great Society in early 1965.
President Johnson believed the government could end poverty in America after years of economic, scientific, and social progress.
Johnson's arrogance in Vietnam was based on his belief in Americans' capacity to do anything.
In 1964, the president created the Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) program, which sent volunteers to aid impoverished areas.
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 created the Department of Housing and Urban Development to oversee affordable housing and $3 billion in city upgrades.
Congress also created Head Start and gave subsidies to underprivileged schools.
Medicare, which insured Americans 65 and older, was another Great Society law.
Medicaid covered Americans who couldn't afford health insurance.
The American welfare state expanded greatly during Lyndon Johnson's Great Society policies.
Medicare and Medicaid reduced poverty by 40% in the US.
Despite Johnson's optimistic prognosis, the Great Society did not alleviate poverty.
Communities that continued to slip between American prosperity's gaps were frustrated and angry.
Taxpayers were resentful of the Great Society's excessive cost.
The Great Society initiatives were accused of creating a culture of reliance among those they were meant to serve.
Congress cut or eliminated several of these measures due to Vietnam War economic pressures.
However, much of Johnson's Great Society survived until the 21st century.
The Civil Right Movement in the 1960s: From Integration to Black Power
In the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. led the civil rights movement.
After becoming famous during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King and other clergymen created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
King and the SCLC believed in peacefully achieving civil rights for African Americans.
As civil rights protests grew, they advocated nonviolence.
Young African Americans wanted to fight harder and quicker for their rights.
In 1960, these youth founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
The SNCC leaders sought rapid improvements. SNCC members included African-American and white students from Northern schools.
Civil rights protestors used sit-ins in the early 1960s.
African Americans were refused service at lunch counters, so protesters would wait there until they were served.
Despite being jeered and occasionally assaulted by furious whites, sit-ins worked.
Lunch counters were incorporated when the targeted companies lost money.
Freedom Rides in 1961 captivated the country.
In order to enforce a Supreme Court rule that bus terminals and waiting rooms should be integrated, the Congress for Racial Equality recruited groups of African-American and white volunteers to travel buses across the South.
The Freedom Riders were beaten and their bus destroyed by a white mob in Anniston, Alabama. Southbound Freedom Riders increased.
Many were mobbed or detained by Southern authorities.
Television covered much of this.
Many Americans were upset by photos of bus wrecks and Freedom Riders.
They pressured the federal government to safeguard civil rights activists.
Justice Department federal marshals were instructed to stop Freedom Riding bus assaults by the Kennedy administration.
Public opinion grew to embrace the civil rights movement after the Freedom Rides.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy ensured that the federal government enforced civil rights legislation more.
In September 1962, the attorney general defied demonstrators and the governor by sending 500 U.S. marshals to enroll James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.
Birmingham, Alabama, authorities unleashed police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights marchers, stirring public sentiment again.
Many Americans were shamed by these events and grew to despise Southern segregationists.
President Kennedy was cautious on civil rights issues because he wanted to win reelection and not alienate Southern Democrats.
In the summer of 1963, Kennedy offered Congress an ambitious civil rights package that would have eliminated federal assistance to states that promoted racial segregation.
On August 28, 1963, civil rights activists launched the March on Washington.
From the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, almost 200,000 people walked.
The crowd was motivated by Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
After President Kennedy's killing, Lyndon Johnson vowed to advance civil rights.
He delivered Congress Reconstruction's most extensive civil rights bill.
Race, sex, religion, and national origin were prohibited under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Public spaces were now discrimination-free.
To combat employment prejudice, the measure established the EEOC.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibited practices like literacy tests that had prevented African Americans from voting.
After three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi in 1964 while registering African-American voters, the Voting Rights Act gained political support.
Segregation was undermined by televised civil rights protester violence.
Attacks on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Selma marchers convinced many Americans to support Johnson's civil rights legislation.
Most legal hurdles to African-American equality in the US were removed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Despite this, many African Americans in poverty, particularly in Northern cities, felt outraged since the civil rights movement appeared to have little impact on their lives. Watts rioted in August 1965.
The next years saw terrible riots in Chicago, Newark, and Detroit.
President Johnson formed the Kerner Commission to investigate this urban turmoil.
African-American areas' poverty and desperation caused the riots, according to the Kerner Commission.
According to the panel, there were two Americas: one rich and white, the other destitute and black.
Black nationalism responded to social change's seeming slowness.
The early civil rights movement's integrationist ideals upset black nationalists.
African Americans were pushed to improve themselves by relying on their own efforts by the Nation of Islam, also known as the Black Muslims, since whites were seen as racial adversaries.
The Nation of Islam and black nationalism's most prominent spokesperson was Malcom X.
Black Muslim assassins killed Malcolm X in February 1965 when he questioned some of the Nation of Islam's racial beliefs.
Black nationalism appealed to many younger African-American SNCC members.
Stokely Carmichael removed whites from the SNCC and advised African Americans to arm.
Black power, championed by Carmichael, fostered pride in African-American history and culture.
African Americans should establish their own economic and social institutions, according to black power activists.
Black power was represented by the Black Panthers.
Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panthers in San Francisco, proudly flashing their guns.
Food programs and black nationalist schools were established in San Francisco by the Black Panthers.
Several members were slain by authorities for their illegal behavior.
Black Panthers' brutality terminated their political and social influence.
The Expansion of Rights Movements
The civil rights movement encouraged many women to fight for additional rights.
Some 1950s women were dissatisfied with the domestic position.
Several women who had participated in the civil rights struggle resented being overlooked for leadership roles.
The feminist movement was fueled by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and the emergence of women's support organizations on college campuses and in the suburbs.
Friedan founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.
NOW represented educated, upwardly mobile women who wanted equal pay in the workplace and to fight stereotypes that objectified women.
Workplace resistance to feminist ideals fell quickly.
Gloria Steinem's Ms. Magazine popularized a new word of address for women without regard to marital status in 1972.
Women enjoy the right to abortion in the first and second trimesters, with certain limits, under the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.
The feminist movement's inability to pass an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was unique.
Phyllis Schlafly and other grassroots campaigners opposed the ERA by arguing that it would lead to the draft and coed restrooms.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) promoted Native American pride and protested the policies of the U.S. government on reservations.
AIM called for the return of lands taken from Native Americans.
In 1973, a confrontation between members of AIM and government authorities led to a 71-day siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
Congress responded to this unrest by giving Native Americans more authority to govern their tribes.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Latino groups grew more self-aware.
Latino migrant agricultural laborers in California were organized by Cesar Chavez.
His United Farm Workers protested grape field labor conditions in California and received widespread support. Ecologists also spoke out.
Rachel Carson's 1962 Silent Spring warned against DDT usage.
Nuclear power opposition increased at this time.
The Stonewall Riots began in June 1969 following a police raid on a homosexual club in New York City. This fostered homosexual pride.
The Cold War Crisis
The cold war escalated in the early 1960s.
President Kennedy fought Communism with vigor.
US and USSR nuclear weapons tests continued.
Fear of nuclear war persisted.
Fail-Safe (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) warned of a nuclear war caused by an "accident."
The Eisenhower administration left President Kennedy a CIA plot to topple Cuba's Communist ruler Fidel Castro.
The CIA planned to invade Cuba with a small army of anti-Communist Cubans and American bombers.
Kennedy proceeded without Eisenhower's military competence.
In April 1961, Castro's troops killed or captured most of the anti-Communist Cuban invaders in the Bay of Pigs.
This fiasco humiliated the Kennedy administration.
The Soviet and East German authorities hated West Berlin's easy escape path for Communist refugees.
In August 1961, the Communists started erecting a concrete Berlin Wall to divide the city.
Communist dictatorship was symbolized by the Berlin Wall.
Cuba's latest crisis almost triggered a third global war.
In October 1962, American U-2 surveillance flights found Cuban Soviet missile installations under development.
The US considered Soviet short-range missiles in Cuba as a danger, while the Soviets saw them as a method to safeguard the Castro dictatorship and put pressure on the US.
President Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba and requested that the Soviet Union remove the missiles. War loomed for a while.
If the Americans attacked Cuba, the Soviets pondered using their missiles.
After almost two weeks of stress, Nikita Khrushchev removed the missiles from Cuba.
Turkey's missile installations were destroyed by the US.
Diplomacy prevented tragedy.
A Limited Test Ban Treaty was concluded by the US and USSR after the crisis.
To improve communications and prevent repeat crises, the White House and Kremlin established a "hotline."
The Vietnam War
The US has supported South Vietnam's anti-Communist dictatorship since France left Indochina in the 1950s.
The US dispatched military advisers to train the South Vietnamese army when the Vietcong, backed by Communist North Vietnam, initiated an insurgency against the government.
President Kennedy dramatically extended the function and quantity of American military advisers in Vietnam.
American authorities did little to stop a cabal of military men from overthrowing and assassinating South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem a few weeks before President Kennedy's 1963 assassination.
In Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson tried to continue his predecessor's policies.
He began to believe that the American role had to be enhanced to win.
In August 1964, Johnson announced that North Vietnamese gunboats had assaulted American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, omitting key information including that the American warships were collecting intelligence on North Vietnam and that South Vietnamese gunboats were close.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution empowered the president to "prevent future aggression" in Southeast Asia after an apparent unprovoked strike.
This resolution allowed the president to escalate the Vietnam War without congressional approval.
In 1965, Johnson sent foot combat soldiers to South Vietnam as the conflict turned against them.
In 1968, Johnson upped this military commitment until there were 540,000 American soldiers in Vietnam.
In 1965, the US bombed North Vietnam. The Vietnam War frustrated American GIs.
The Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces had to be found in forests and rice farms, where it was hard to separate guerillas from civilians.
The Communist Tet Offensive on January 30, 1968, was the war's most important military battle.
The Communists utilized the holiday ceasefire to strike throughout South Vietnam to destroy the government and weaken the US.
In Saigon, infiltrators temporarily occupied portions of the American embassy, while the Communists gained control of Hue and massacred hundreds of government loyalists.
However, the Americans and South Vietnamese regrouped and annihilated the Vietcong and North Vietnamese.
American and South Vietnamese forces won Tet militarily.
However, the Tet Offensive damaged American support for the war politically.
Many Americans worried how the enemy could launch such a large offensive when government authorities promised "victory was only around the corner."
Johnson administration officials started to doubt the war's viability after harsh press coverage.
Johnson's political career ended with the Vietnam War.
War consumed him, he was followed by antiwar demonstrators criticizing him. In early 1968, Johnson wanted to run again.
In the New Hampshire primary, peace candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota challenged him.
For a sitting president, Johnson won the primary by just 48 percent to McCarthy's 42 percent.
Disheartened by this political disgrace and the media frenzy surrounding the Tet Offensive, Johnson indicated that he would not run again.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey became the administration's presidential contender.
John Kennedy's brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, also ran.
1968 saw growing opposition to the Vietnam War.
The military's use of napalm, a combustible that could cause horrific burns, on civilian settlements upset many Americans.
The My Lai Massacre occurred in March 1968, when American forces killed 400 Vietnamese people, including children and newborns.
Some Americans questioned the war's continuation after hearing about this crime.
Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, promised a "secret strategy" to stop the war.
A student antiwar campaign was well-publicized.
Working in the 1960s civil rights struggle, many students became increasingly politically involved.
1960 saw the founding of the socialist SDS.
SDS's manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, criticized American consumerism and called for "participatory democracy."
The SDS denounced the Vietnam War.
Berkeley's 1964 ban on political activism sparked the Free Speech Movement. Student protests pushed the institution to back down.
Students demanded curricular and policy improvements. Berkeley's demonstrations inspired others.
Student involvement increased throughout the Vietnam War.
Some students opposed the war because they feared being conscripted, while others thought it was morally wrong.
Television cameras filmed antiwar protests.
An antiwar march in Central Park in 1967 drew 500,000 students.
In the 1960s, more students joined conservative political organizations than the SDS.
Politically, 1968 was chaotic.
100 cities rioted when a white supremacist killed Dr. Martin Luther King.
Angered by Kennedy's support for Israel, a Palestinian killed him.
Another Kennedy family member was assassinated, which saddened Americans.
Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey were their party' presidential frontrunners.
Both men were cornerstones of a discredited establishment to student revolutionaries.
Chicago police clashed with Democratic National Convention protesters in August, revealing the nation's political differences.
In 1968, the SDS helped organize Columbia University and other college demonstrations.
SDS started to divide when violent members founded the Weather Underground and participated in terrorism.
Some young people rejected politics and sought cultural revolution to improve American culture.
Counterculture proponents rejected their parents' middle class beliefs and advocated for free speech and personal independence.
The "hippies"' revolution consisted of growing long hair, listening to rock music, and trying new substances.
Timothy Leary, a former lecturer and LSD advocate, advised American teenagers to "tune in, switch on, and drop out."
Premarital sexual behavior became more acceptable with the birth control pill.
“If It Feels Good, Do It!” was a popular 1960s button.
The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane played "acid" rock in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury area in 1967, a hippie hangout where some dreamed for a new "Age of Aquarius."
In 1969, the "peace and love" counterculture reached its peak at Woodstock.
A fantastic array of artists performed for over 400,000 young people on a New York dairy farm.
The personal over the political was so strong at Woodstock that musician Pete Townshend drove radical activist Abbie Hoffman off the stage when he tried to steal a microphone during The Who's performance.
1968 was Nixon's year.
He Vietnamized the conflict by training and equipping South Vietnamese forces to remove more American soldiers.
American military presence in Vietnam dropped to 24,000 by 1972.
While decreasing American combat troops, Nixon increased the bombing campaign against the North.
Nixon invaded Cambodia in 1970 to eliminate Communist strongholds.
This caused the final major student demonstrations.
Four Kent State University students were killed by Ohio National Guardsmen during a rally. Jackson State University police murdered two students.
As military numbers dropped in Vietnam and the conscription ended, student involvement plummeted in the early 1970s.
Chicago police showed in 1968 that student protestors drew both support and animosity.
100,000 New York "hardhats" marched for Nixon in 1970.
The Pentagon Papers were released to the New York Times by former Defense Department officer Daniel Ellsberg in 1971.
These papers from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations showed that the government had misled to Congress and the American people about Vietnam.
These discoveries further disillusioned the people about the war.
President Nixon was furious about Ellsberg's leak, even though none of the records were from his administration.
Since 1968, the US has been negotiating peace with the North Vietnamese in Paris.
In late 1972, peace appeared possible.
After discussions faltered, Nixon bombed North Vietnam heavily.
In January 1973, a peace settlement was reached.
The US promised to leave South Vietnam in 60 days.
All American detainees would be returned by the North Vietnamese.
60,000 Americans died in Vietnam.
After the Americans left, North and South Vietnam resumed hostilities.
In late 1974, the North Vietnamese defeated the South with a military effort supported by the Soviets and Chinese.
The South Vietnamese military assistance package proposed by President Gerald Ford was rejected by Congress.
The US evacuated ambassadors and other Americans in Vietnam a day before North Vietnamese tanks entering Saigon on April 30, 1975.