THE NEW FRONTIER

• Kennedy tried to create an imposing and popular image for his administration– The New Frontier

• Put together a brilliant group of advisors– Robert Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk,

McGeorge Bundy, and others– “the best and the brightest”

• Also emphasized “toughness” in foreign affairs

CASTRO

• Fidel Castro overthrew Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1959

• He originally had support within the United States but, between 1959 and 1961, he began to nationalize foreign-owned businesses in Cuba and move the country towards communism

• Eisenhower administration reacted strongly by imposing an embargo against Cuban products– Castro responded by linking

himself diplomatically and economically to the Soviet Union

BAY OF PIGS

• By 1960, Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba and CIA began to train anti-Castro Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and rally population to overthrow Castro– Kennedy inherited this place

and authorized it with the understanding U.S. soldiers would not be involved.

• Invasion took place in April 1961– Cuban population did not rise

up and invaders had to surrender

REPERCUSSIONS

• Castro moved even closer to the Soviet Union– Convinced that the U.S.

would try to invade Cuba again

• Kennedy’s prestige suffered– Attacked by enemies for not

actively supporting the invasion with U.S. air power

• Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, became convinced that Kennedy was a weak leader and that he could exploit that weakness to score a major diplomatic victory

THE CRISIS BEGINS

• Khrushchev began to build nuclear missile bases in Cuban– Would have put 75%

of the continental U.S. within range of medium-range missiles

• American spy planes discovered missile sites and found them nearly operational

KENNEDY TAKES A STAND• Kennedy saw missiles as challenge to

American security and U.S. leadership in Latin America– Viewed it as test of his character– Opted for public confrontation

• Announced that U.S. would not tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba– Would destroy sites with air strikes if

Soviets did not remove them – Placed U.S. nuclear missiles on red alert– Imposed naval blockade around Cuba

with orders to prevent additional Soviet missiles from reaching Cuba

– Appeared on TV to tell Soviets to remove missiles from Cuba

CRISIS RESOLVED

• Nuclear war would have most likely resulted if Khrushchev had ignored Kennedy’s threats– But Khrushchev backed

down after 6 days of tension– Ordered ships carrying

additional missiles to turn back and agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from Cuba

• In exchange for American promise to never invade Cuba again

MEDIOCRE DOMESTIC RECORD

• Kennedy revived many of Truman’s old “Fair Deal” proposals– Aid to education– Medicare– Extension of Social

Security benefits– Most died in Congress

due to stubborn opposition of southern Democrats and Republicans

ASSASSINATION• Kennedy’s motorcade was

moving through downtown Dallas when a volley of shots hit his open-topped limosine– November 22, 1963– Texas governor, John

Connally, was seriously wounded

– Kennedy had the top of his head blown off

• Pronounced dead shortly thereafter

• Vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson sworn in

LEE HARVEY OSWALD

• Police arrest Lee Harvey Oswald for Kennedy’s murder– Former Marine who

had lived in the Soviet Union and was married to a Russian woman

• Oswald shot and killed by Jack Ruby, Dallas nightclub owner with ties to organized crime, before he could be put on trial

WARREN COMMISSION

• Many questions about assassination– Was Oswald part of a bigger

conspiracy, perhaps organized by Castro?

– Was Ruby a hit man sent to kill Oswald before he could talk?

– Were the Dallas police, the FBI, or the CIA somehow involved?

• To answer questions, Johnson set up a blue-ribbon commission– Headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren– Worked on project for 10 months– Determined that Oswald had acted

alone and was not part of a larger conspiracy

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

• Former senator from Texas

• Did a good job handling transition from Kennedy administration

• Easily elected president for a full-term in 1964

– Over Republican Barry Goldwater of Arizona

• Popularity declined after 1964 due to escalating American military involvement in Vietnam

GREAT SOCIETY• Passed much important legislation

– Tax Act of 1964• Cut taxes and sparked an

economic boom– Medicaid and Medicare– Improved aid to education– Civil Rights Act of 1965– Creation of Department of

Housing and Urban Development– War on Poverty Program

• Head Start• Work Study• Jobs Corps• All designed to eliminate

poverty in the U.S.

CONTINUING STRUGGLE

• New groups appeared during the late 1950s and early 1960s to continue battle for racial equality– Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC)• Headed by Dr. Martin Luther King

– Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)• Led by James Farmer

– Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• All adopted strategy of nonviolent protest– Marches, economic boycotts, and

peaceful violation of segregation laws

KENNEDY• Civil Rights leaders initially

encouraged by election of Kennedy– He had criticized Eisenhower’s

reluctant support for integration and had promised to open a “new frontier” for African-Americans

• Once elected, Kennedy did appoint a number of prominent African-Americans to federal jobs and supported the passage of a new civil rights act – But he also moved more slowly

than he had promised• Hampered by the powerful

resistance of Southerners in his own party and by blatant lack of cooperation from J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the FBI

FREEDOM RIDES• African-American activists seized

initiative and forced Kennedy administration to follow– CORE and SNCC organized “freedom

rides” that defied segregation laws on buses and terminals

• Provoked violence against freedom riders which was broadcast on TV

– Forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to protect freedom riders

– Also prompted President Kennedy to prohibit segregation on all interstate transportation vehicles and facilities

KING’S NONVIOLENT STRATEGY

• Faced with hesitancy by federal government, civil rights groups would nonviolently break various local segregation laws in the South– This would usually prompt a violent

reaction that, publicized by the press, would ultimately force the federal government to intervene to protect protestors and end they laws they challenged

• Ultimately culminated in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964– Outlawed racial, religious, and

sexual discrimination in private businesses that served the general public

TURNING POINT• After 1964, strategy of

nonviolence was increasingly questioned– After brutal murder of 3 civil

rights workers in Mississippi in late 1964

– And because many African-Americans thought that the 1964 Civil Rights Act had not gone far enough

• Began to demand compensation for years of discrimination, economic assistance, and increased political power

WATTS RIOT• In August 1965, a confrontation

between a white policeman and a black motorist exploded into four days of rioting in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts– 34 people dead and $20

million in property destroyed• Touched off several years of

urban violence– In Newark (NJ), Chicago, and

Detroit• People wondered why such

violence was taking place during a period of undeniable racial progress

Several commissions investigated the urban violence and came up with two opposing

theories

THEORY #1

Riots were caused by a small core of “misfits” and “troublemakers.” Riots were not protests against legitimate grievances but were simple acts of

senseless violence

THEORY #2

Riots included broad cross section of black community, not just a few “misfits.” Violence was not senseless and aimless, since rioters avoided attacking black owned businesses and instead focused on white

owned businesses that traditionally exploited black customers and employees and on white police who victimized African-Americans. Riots were protests

against legitimate grievances

Government unfortunately adopted the first theory. It did increase expenditures to help

African-Americans but also increased money to improve and

enlarge local law enforcement agencies and to train the

National guard in riot control

Basic problems of poverty,

unemployment, police brutality,

hopelessness and lack of meaningful

political power remained

untouched

MALCOLM X• Argued that blacks were superior to

whites and that white civilization was rotten to the core– Therefore African-Americans should

strive to create their own institutions and civilization without whites

• Although his views were extreme, his ideas did help to generate pride among African-Americans in being black– Many began to see that the goal of

the civil rights movement should not be to think and act like whites but that African-Americans should retain and be proud of their own heritage and customs

• Also rejected nonviolence as a strategy

BLACK POWER• The influence of Malcolm X and the

persistence of racism and inequality gave birth to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s– Had various tactics– Aimed at promoting a fundamental

and sweeping transformation of American society

• One that would redistribute economic and political power and permanently alter the foundation of the US so that racism would disappear forever

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1968• Last piece of major civil rights

legislation passed in the 60s• Represented a step in the right

direction but did not initiate the fundamental transformation advocated by leaders of Black Power movement– Prohibited discrimination in

housing and opened the door to integration of white neighborhoods in cities and suburbs

– Also contained provision which allowed government to harass and arrest black radicals when they used interstate facilities to travel and organize

SUMMARY (1)

• Civil Rights Act of 1968 summarized the entire civil rights movement of the 1960s

– Much progress had been made, mainly due to the initiative of African-Americans themselves

• Legalized segregation was dead

• African-Americans guaranteed equal access to both public and private facilities

• All legal obstacles that had been used to prevent African-Americans from voting in the South were removed

• African-Americans were now free to live anywhere they wanted to

SUMMARY (2)• However, centuries of brutal treatment and

discrimination had left African-Americans far behind whites in an economic sense– African-Americans were economically worse off,

less educated, and more poorly housed than whites• Response of the government was to throw money at

the problem– But never enough of it to make a real difference– Refused to take the courageous steps necessary to

remove the structural obstacles to African-American progress and implement programs designed and managed by African-Americans themselves

• Moreover, racist stereotypes and ideas remain strongly implanted in the minds of many

VIETNAM• Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh

had defeated the French and won independence for the northern half of Vietnam by 1954– But the United States blocked him

from also liberating the South by placing Ngo Dinh Diem (a Roman Catholic and former Japanese collaborator) in power there

• Vain attempt to create viable political alternative to Ho

• But his support was limited to the army and a narrow circle of landlords and urban Catholics

MILITARY ADVISORS• Kennedy and advisors knew of Diem’s

weaknesses and Ho’s strengths– But he was also determined to

demonstrate American power and steadfastness

• Selected Vietnam as the site to prove “that the U.S. was willing to keep promises to its allies, to be tough, to take risks, get bloodied, and hurt the enemy badly”– He therefore increased the number of

“military advisors” in the South to 16,000 by the end of 1963

• To keep Diem in power and prevent Ho from seizing the South

ESCALATION

• On the basis of a spurious naval clash in the Gulf of Tonkin (near North Vietnam), President Johnson secured the “Gulf of Tonkin” from Congress– Gave him a blank check to conduct

the war in Vietnam in any way he saw fit

– Opened the way for a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam and for the introduction of large numbers of U.S. ground troops into the conflict

– Summer 1965

SELECTIVE SERVICE

• The military draft, or selective service, was very selective– College students initially enjoyed deferments and escaped

first years of the draft• Even if they did end up in the army they usually served as

officers or in noncombat jobs– Poor Americans (white, black, and Hispanic) were much more

likely to be drafted and assigned to combat• Draftees represented 88% of infantry riflemen in Vietnam

and 66% of all combat deaths• VA Survey: “…while minority Americans may have suffered a

disproportionate share of exposure to combat and combat fatalities, their suffering was the product not of racial discrimination, but of discrimination against the poor, the uneducated, and the young”

HIGH TECH WAR?• Ever since World War II, the navy and air

force had dominated American military– It was thought that big ships, fast

planes, and lots of bombs could hold the peace or win a war

• Vietnam strategy assumed the expensive technology and sophisticated organization would substitute for the blood and sweat of ground combat

• Day after day, U.S. bombers piloted by young college-educated officers bombed Vietnam, Laos, and, after 1970, Cambodia– U.S. dropped four times more bombs on

Vietnam than it had used during all of World War II

• Mostly on civilian targets

GROUND WAR

• Air war proved unable to stop infiltration of personnel and supplies from the North into South Vietnam– Also did not destroy

southern bases of the Viet Cong

• To accomplish these goals, the war had to be fought by individual soldiers operating in small units in unfamiliar and dangerous jungle terrain

SEARCH AND DESTROY• After July 1965, U.S. marines began

to be used to search out the enemy in a series of “search and destroy” operations– But it was hard to find and

engage the enemy because they avoided pitched battles with U.S. forces

• Frustrated military leaders then came to define victory not by the capture of territory or even the defeat of enemy battalions– But simply by the physical

annihilation of individual enemy soldiers

DANGEROUS ATTITUDE• War of attrition led to bureaucratic

fixation on “body count”– Soldiers were soon reporting any

Vietnamese person killed by U.S. firepower as an enemy fatality

• No distinction made between civilians and combatants

• As a guerilla army, the Viet Cong blended in with the population– Soldiers could not tell who was

an enemy and who was not so their attitude became “Kill Them All and Let God Sort Them Out”

MY LAI

• Even though no enemy fire was received, an American platoon destroyed village of My Lai with grenades and machine gun bursts– 1968– 350 villagers murdered in

one day– Only one American casualty

• A private who shot himself in the foot out of disgust at what he was witnessing

TET OFFENSIVE• At the beginning of January

1968 the Viet Cong launched a massive offensive against towns and cities across South Vietnam– During the holiday of Tet

• Televised reports of offensive undermined Johnson’s claim that there was “a light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam

• Revealed to American public the limits of U.S. power and the difficulty in achieving victory in Vietnam– Gave strength to the anti-war

movement

THE MEDIA TURNS• Before Tet, media coverage of the

war had been largely favorable– After Tet, news media greeted

official government pronouncements with skepticism and gave antiwar activity increased coverage and respect

– Life magazine published cover which had the pictures of 247 servicemen killed in fighting one week in June 1969

JOHNSON IN TROUBLE• Eugene McCarthy of

Minnesota announced that he was going to challenge Johnson for 1968 Democratic nomination– Anti-war platform– Prospects seemed marginal

until Tet• Then media spotlighted

his campaign and student volunteers pour in the work for him

– Surprised Johnson with a near upset victory in the New Hampshire primary

ANOTHER KENNEDY

• New York senator Robert F. Kennedy sensed Johnson was vulnerable and announced his candidacy for president– Called for halt of

bombing of Vietnam and revival of the War on Poverty

DEMOCRATS MOVE LEFT• McCarthy and Kennedy

demonstrated that Democratic voters would select a candidate committed to de-escalation of the war

• McCarthy was an inept campaigner– But his willingness to challenge

Johnson won him the fierce loyalty of anti-war activists

• Kennedy was a traditional liberal and a latecomer to the anti-war cause– But he became a passionate

advocate of social justice and won the hearts of many Hispanic, African-American, and working-class white voters

JOHNSON QUITS• Powerful lawyers, bankers, and

State Department officials came to the conclusion that the war weakened the nation and sapped America’s global strength– Urged that we get out of the

war• As a result of this pressure,

Johnson announced that he would stop bombing North Vietnam, canceled a planned troop increase, and stated that he would not run for re-election– March 31, 1968

GOOD AND BAD• The anti-war movement had split the Democratic

Party and forced a powerful president to repudiate his own foreign policy and virtually withdraw from office– This could have opened the way for America to

make a decisive turn toward real and meaningful change• But this didn’t happen

–Because within two months of Johnson’s announcement both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered by assassins and the movement for fundamental reform in America fragmented

DEATH OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

• King went to Memphis to organize support for striking African-American garbage workers– Shot by white ex-

convict on motel balcony right before he was to lead a march on city hall

• April 4, 1968• Black ghettos across

the U.S. exploded in riots

DEATH OF ROBERT KENNEDY

• Kennedy won California primary in June 1968– Put him in a good position

to win Democratic nomination for president

• Shot and killed during victory celebration at Los Angeles hotel by Sirhan Sirhan– Deranged Jordanian

immigrant who was upset about Kennedy’s support for Israel

UNREST

• Murders of King and Kennedy plus campus anti-war rebellions at Columbia University and many other colleges created sense of confusion and social instability in the country– Left liberals dazed and

confused and created a political vacuum that was soon filled by the right-wing

SUMMER 1968• Chicago police beat anti-war

demonstrators in front of Democratic National headquarters

• Vice-president Hubert Humphrey gets nomination– With solid backing of urban

political bosses and organized labor

– But he could not unite Democratic voters because he was burdened by national anger over the violence in Chicago and his support for an unpopular war

NIXON REBORN

• Republicans nominate Richard Nixon– Had resurrected himself

after 1960 defeat– Aimed campaign at white

southerners who were upset at Democrats for supporting civil rights and at the “silent majority of forgotten Americans, the nonshouters, the nondemonstrators”

– Also declared he had a “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam

GEORGE WALLACE• George Wallace was third party candidate

in 1968– Former governor of Alabama– Vietnam “hawk” and a racist – Polls showed him with 21% of the

popular vote in late September– Greatest source of support was among

white Southerners, the lower middle class, and blue-collar workers in the North

• Attraction of northern workers was due their sense of alienation and social resentment

Nixon’s narrow victory set the stage for four

years of political stalemate

His secret plan to end the war in Vietnam turned out to mean 7 more years of war, American-led invasions of Cambodia and Laos, and a slow reduction in combat

roles for U.S. troops

On domestic issues, Nixon encouraged the conservative mood of the electorate. He

nominated conservative judges, escalated the

government’s underground war against political activists and began a series of well-

publicized but unsuccessful prosecutions of prominent

radicals

Also forced to make concessions to liberals: linked

Social Security benefits to cost-of-living index, continued desegregation of southern

public schools, and pioneered occupational health and safety

legislation