Week 12:
The "Long Sixties" -- From the New Frontiersmen to the President's Men
1) 1960: first televised debates help Kennedy win very close election; first (and only) Catholic president; challenges nation to “bear any burden” for freedom around the world.
2) Cold War heats up in 1961: Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, tense Vienna Summit with Khrushchev, Berlin Wall.
3) Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviets withdraw missiles after U.S. non-invasion pledge and secret deal to remove American missiles from Turkey; ambiguous legacy: Limited Test Ban Treaty and the “Hotline” vs. intensified nuclear arms race.
4) JFK sends 16,000 military “advisers” to South Vietnam: declares Vietnamese must win their own war but U.S. should not withdraw; Diem overthrown and killed.
5) JFK American University speech: calls for rethinking Cold War assumptions dominating U.S. foreign policy since 1945.
6) Civil rights crises: Freedom Riders, confrontations at the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama; Kennedy calls civil rights a “moral issue” and submits comprehensive bill to end segregation; March on Washington and King’s “I have a dream” speech.
7) Space Program and Peace Corps stimulate idealism by the young (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”)
8) Medical care for seniors, cabinet department of urban affairs and federal aid to education fail in Congress.
9) JFK’s televised press conferences attract huge audiences; first TV president.
10) Assassination in Dallas: the Warren Commission and the enduring controversy.
2: Lyndon Johnson: the Great Society and the Vietnam War
1) 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws segregation and discrimination in public accommodations and employment based on race and gender.
2) 1965 Voting Rights Act establishes full legal equality for black Americans for the first time in American history.
3) Great Society: War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, federal housing and urban renewal, aid to elementary and secondary schools, immigration reform, etc.
4) Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964); bombing of North Vietnam (1965) and buildup of U.S. troops (to more than 500,000).
5) Anti-war movement (especially on college campuses); televised war coverage, increasing casualties and the credibility gap diminish public support for the war.
6) Tet Offensive (1968) leads to LBJ’s withdrawal from presidential race.
7) Massive military costs, in blood and treasure, divide the nation and lead to significant cuts in Great Society programs.
3: The Upheaval of the Sixties:
1) Urban riots sweep through American cities; Kerner Commission warns of “two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.”
2) Collapse of the bi-racial civil rights coalition; demand for “black power” spurs a white backlash for “law and order”.
3) The new feminism and the women’s liberation movement (National Organization for Women); new Hispanic, Native American and Gay rights militancy; the new conservatism (Young Americans for Freedom).
4) The campus counterculture: attack on traditional academic disciplines and requirements; emergence of Black Studies, Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, etc.
5) 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy; police “riot” at Chicago Democratic National Convention.
6) Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy”; wins close election with appeal to law and order, “the silent majority” and a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War.
7) George Wallace’s American Independent party captures nearly 10 million votes and ends “the solid South” for Democrats.
4: The Nixon Era:
1) Nixon’s foreign affairs master plan: shift combat role in Vietnam to the Vietnamese; improve relations (détente) with communist world and reduce burdens of Cold War.
2) “Ping-pong diplomacy” and breakthrough to China; Nixon visits Beijing.
3) Moscow summit leads to economic cooperation and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
4) “Vietnamization” and expanded bombing and mining of North Vietnam; negotiated settlement signed in 1973.
5) Nixon’s domestic master plan: build on middle class anger over liberal social policies and the welfare state to make GOP majority party for first time since Great Depression.
6) Uniform national standards for food stamps, cost of living increases for Social Security and extension of coverage to elderly blind and disabled.
7) The Clean Air Act, Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
8) “Benign neglect” in civil rights; opposition to court-ordered busing and support for the courts and the police.
9) Watergate scandal and release of secret tapes force Nixon’s resignation after three articles of impeachment; Gerald Ford becomes only vice president and president not elected to either office (through 25th Amendment).