ch 38 outline

Ch 38

Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit
--->President Kennedy, the youngest president to take office, assembled one of the youngest cabinets, including his brother Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, who planned to reform the priorities of the FBI

The New Frontier at Home

--->In 1962, he negotiated a noninflationary wage agreement with the steel industry

--->When the steel industry announced significant price increases, promoting inflation, President Kennedy erupted in wrath, causing the industry to lower its prices

Rumblings in Europe

--->President Kennedy met with Soviet leader Khrushchev at Vienna in June 1961

--->In August 1961, the Soviets began to construct the Berlin Wall, which was designed to stop the large population drain from East Germany to West Germany through Berlin

---> Focusing on Western Europe, Kennedy secured passage of the Trade Expansion Act in 1962, authorizing tariff cuts of up to 50% to promote trade with Common Market countries

--->President of France, Charles de Gaulle, was suspicious of American intentions in Europe and in 1963, vetoed British application for Common Market membership, fearing that the British "special relationship" with the United States would allow the U.S. to indirectly control European affairs

Foreign Flare-ups and "Flexible Response"

--->In 1960, the African Congo received its independence from Belgium and immediately exploded in violence

--->In 1954, Laos gained its independence from France and it, too erupted in violence

--->Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pushed the strategy of "flexible response"

Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire

--->The doctrine of "flexible response" provided a mechanism for a progressive, and possibly endless, stepping-up of the use of force (Vietnam)

--->In 1961, Kennedy increased the number of "military advisors" in South Vietnam in order to help protect Diem from the communists long enough to allow him to enact basic social reforms favored by the Americans

--->In November 1963, after being fed up with U.S. economic aid being embezzled by Diem, the Kennedy encouraged a successful coup and killed Diem

Cuban Confrontations

--->In 1961, President Kennedy extended the American hand of friendship to Latin America with the Alliance for Progress, called the Marshall Plan for Latin America

--->On April 17, 1961, 1,200 exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs

---> In October 1962, it was discovered that the Soviets were secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba

---> Instead, on October 22, 1962, he ordered a naval "quarantine" of Cuba and demanded immediate removal of the weapons

---> October 28, Khrushchev agreed to a compromise in which he would pull the missiles out of Cuba

--->In late 1963, a pact prohibiting trial nuclear explosions in the atmosphere was signed

--->In June 1963, President Kennedy gave a speech at American University, Washington, D.C.

--->encouraging Americans to abandon the negative views of the Soviet Union

The Struggle for Civil Rights

--->In 1960, groups of Freedom Riders spread out across the South to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers

----> A white mob torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama in May 1961, when southern officials proved unwilling to stop the violence, federal marshals were dispatched to protect the freedom riders

--->For the most part, the Kennedy family and the King family (Martin Luther King, Jr.) had a good relationship

--->SNCC and other civil rights groups inaugurated a Voter Education Project to register the South's historically disfranchised blacks

--->In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated big city in America

---> President Kennedy delivered a speech to the nation on June 11, 1963 in which he dedicated himself to finding a solution to the racial problems

--->In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peaceful "March on Washington" in support of the proposed new civil rights legislation

The Killing of Kennedy

--->On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed as he was riding in an open limousine in Dallas, Texas

---> The alleged gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald who was shot and killed by self-appointed avenger, Jack Ruby

The LBJ Brand on the Presidency

--->After prodding from President Johnson, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public

---> Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to eliminate discrimination in hiring --->1965, President Johnson issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors to take "affirmative action" against discrimination. 

Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964

--->The Democrats nominated Lyndon Johnson to run for president for the election of 1964

---> The Republicans chose Senator Barry Goldwater

--->In August 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. Navy ships had been cooperating with the South Vietnamese in raids along the coast of North Vietnam

---> On August 2th and August 4th, two U.S. ships were allegedly fired upon

--->Lyndon Johnson overwhelmingly won the election of 1964.

The Great Society Congress

--->Congress passed a flood of legislation, comparable to output of the Hundred Days Congress --->Escalating the War on Poverty, Congress doubled the funding of the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion

---> Congress also created two new cabinet offices

---> the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

---> The National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities was designed to lift the level of American cultural life

--->The Big Four legislative achievements that crowned LBJ's Great Society program

---> aid to education, medical care for the elderly and poor, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill

--->1965 came Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor

---> The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system that had been in place since 1921

Battling for Black Rights

--->The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government more power to enforce school-desegregation orders and to prohibit racial discrimination in all kinds of public accommodations and employment

--->The 24^th Amendment, passed in 1964, abolished the poll tax in federal elections, yet blacks were still severely hampered from voting

---> Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning literacy tests and sending federal voter registers into several southern states

Black Power

--->Days after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, a bloody riot erupted in Watts, a black ghetto in Los Angeles

--->The Watts explosion marked increasing militant confrontation in the black struggle

---> Malcolm X deepened the division among black leaders

--->In 1965, he was shot and killed by a rival Nation of Islam.

--->The violence or threat of violence increased as the Black Panther party emerged, openly carrying weapons in the streets of Oakland, California

--->On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres

--->In April 1965, President Johnson sent 25,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to restore order after a revolt against the military government started

--->In February 1965, Viet Cong guerrillas attacked an American air base at Pleiku, South Vietnam, prompting Johnson to send retaliatory bomb raids and, for the first time, order attacking U.S. troops to land

---> By the middle of March 1965, "Operation Rolling Thunder" was in full swing - regular full-scale bombing attacks against North Vietnam

--->The South Vietnamese watched as their own war became more Americanized

--->By 1968, Johnson had put more than 500,000 troops in Southeast Asia, and the annual cost for the war was exceeding $30 billion

Vietnam Vexations

--->In June 1967, after numerous military threats presented by Egypt, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt's airforce, starting the Six-Day War

----> Senator William Fulbright staged a series of televised hearings in 1966 and 1967 in which he convinced the public that it had been deceived about the causes and "winnability" of the war

--->By early 1968, the war had become the longest and most unpopular foreign war in the nation's history

---> Casualties, killed, and wounded had exceeded 100,000, and more bombs had been dropped in Vietnam than in World War II

--->In 1967, Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on domestic antiwar activists

Vietnam Topples Johnson

--->In January 1968, the Viet Cong attacked 27 key South Vietnamese cities, including Saigon

---> The Tet Offensive ended in a military defeat for the VC, but it caused the American public to demand an immediate end to the war

--->Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy both entered the race for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination

--->On March 31, 1968, President Johnson issued an address to the nation stating that he would freeze American troop levels and gradually shift more responsibility to the South Vietnamese themselves

The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968

--->On June 5, 1968, the night of the California primary, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed by an Arab immigrant resentful of the candidate's pro-Israel views

-->Hubert H. Humphrey, vice president of Johnson, won the Democratic nomination

--->The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon for president and Spiro T. Agnew for vice president

--->The Republican platform called for a victory in Vietnam and a strong anticrime policy

--->The American Independent party, headed by George C. Wallace, entered the race and called for the continuation of segregation of blacks

Victory for Nixon

--->Richard Nixon won the election of 1968 as Humphrey was scorched by the LBJ brand

The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson

---> By 1966, the Vietnam War brought dissent to Johnson, and as war costs sucked tax dollars, Great Society programs began to wither

The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s

--->One of the first organized protests against established authority took place at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, in the Free Speech Movement

---> Leader Mario Savio condemned the impersonal university "machine"

--->The 1960s also witnessed a "sexual revolution."

---> Mattachine Society, founded in 1951, was an advocate for gay rights

--->Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had, by the end of the 1960s, spawned an underground terrorist group called the Weathermen

--->The upheavals of the 1960s could be largely attributed to the three Ps

---> the youthful population bulge, protest against racism and the Vietnam War, and the apparent permanence of prosperity.