The Psychedelic Sixties: a Social History of the United States, 1960-69

Copyright © 2013 by Richard T. Stanley.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-9116-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9117-8 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/22/2013

Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE       TWILIGHT OF THE EISENHOWER YEARS

CHAPTER TWO       THE NEW FRONTIER

CHAPTER THREE       THE PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION

CHAPTER FOUR       CRISES IN CAMELOT

CHAPTER FIVE       CIVIL RIGHTS VS. SEGREGATION

CHAPTER SIX       THE TRAGEDY IN DALLAS

CHAPTER SEVEN       FROM MILLBROOK TO HAIGHT-ASHBURY

CHAPTER EIGHT       THE GREAT SOCIETY

CHAPTER NINE       GOING TO THE MOVIES

CHAPTER TEN       RIOTS, ASSASSINATIONS, AND WAR PROTESTS

CHAPTER ELEVEN       A TRIBUTE TO LADY BIRD

CHAPTER TWELVE       THE SUMMER OF LOVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN       IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN       TELEVISION AND MUSIC

CHAPTER FIFTEEN       SPECTATOR SPORTS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN       BUSINESS AND EDUCATION

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN       LITERATURE: FICTION AND NON-FICTION

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN       DAWN OF THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY

CHAPTER NINETEEN       1969—A SPACE ODYSSEY

EPILOGUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all Americans who came of age during the decade of the 1960’s. Somehow, many of us (your humble author included) managed to not only survive, but thrive during those turbulent years of the Psychedelic Sixties.

PREFACE

I was nineteen years old and a sophomore history major at Long Beach State College (soon to be renamed California State University at Long Beach) on January 1, 1960. That particular New Year’s Day still stands out in my memory for what happened on a famous football field in nearby Pasadena, California. On that very special sunny afternoon in Pasadena, a one-eyed junior quarterback for the University of Washington Huskies named Bob Schloredt led his underdog team to a one-sided 44 to 8 victory over the heavily-favored Wisconsin Badgers in the Rose Bowl before 100,000 shocked spectators and millions more watching on national TV. Being a West Coast football fan, I became increasingly ecstatic as the game progressed to its splendid conclusion. Why so ecstatic? Except for January 1953, when USC defeated Wisconsin 7 to 0 in the Rose Bowl, Big Ten teams had won every Rose Bowl game dating back to 1947, when I was just six years old. To paraphrase the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, West Coast football got NO RESPECT! Following the Husky’s blowout of the Badgers in the 1960 Rose Bowl, many sensed a new era was about to begin. But no one I knew at the time had a clue about how many changes of all sorts—not just in football—would soon profoundly affect our lives in the coming years.

On the very next day, January 2, 1960, United States Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Having read his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage, and having seen him several times before on television, I was intrigued by his idealism, his apparent youthful energy, and his family’s obvious wealth and political connections. Then, exactly one week later, on January 9th, President Eisenhower’s young Vice President from California, Richard M. Nixon, announced his candidacy for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Richard Nixon’s candidacy came as no surprise to me; a potential title for a book I might write if Nixon won in 1960 had already formed in my mind: From Whittier to the White House. Regardless, as a history major and a political science buff, I became excited about the upcoming 1960 presidential campaign. Frankly, to me at least, both leading candidates for their respective party’s nomination seemed reasonably qualified to become the next President of the United States. And, while the continuing challenges of the Cold War—the USSR and Communist China vs. the United States and our European Allies—remained omnipresent, most people I was familiar with that January seemed optimistic about America’s future—regardless of who was elected President that November. Certainly, I knew of no one who accurately predicted the radical cultural shifts, the bloody race riots in the North and far West, the anti-Vietnam War protests across the land, the rampant drug usage, and the many other examples of social mayhem that would soon rock American society and change us forever. Who knew then that the Eisenhower Years of America’s Happy Days, steady-as-you-go, conformist mentality would soon morph into the helter-skelter crazy quilt of idealism, radical thought, and antiestablishment behavior that may best be described as the Psychedelic Sixties?

CHAPTER ONE

TWILIGHT OF THE EISENHOWER YEARS

Dwight D. Eisenhower was nearing the end of his second term in office as the thirty-fourth President of the United States in January, 1960. As the Republican Party’s candidate for President, Eisenhower, who projected to the public a seemingly unbeatable combination of heroism and credibility, won both the 1952 and 1956 Presidential elections by landslide margins. His victories came in spite of the fact that, except for 1953-55, the Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress by relatively comfortable majorities. Eisenhower’s chief campaign slogan during both Presidential elections—I Like IKE!—united not only Republican voters; it also appealed to most Independents and many Democrats as well. To Ike’s credit, following both elections, he managed to maintain cordial and respectful relationships with most members of the opposition party in Congress, including the powerful Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson, and the no-nonsense Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Sam Rayburn of Texas. As a result, whenever President Eisenhower really wanted important legislation passed by Congress, his wish was generally granted, including Ike’s proposed National Highway System (the largest public works project in American history) and his huge joint-venture with Canada, the St. Lawrence Seaway. With a few notable exceptions (including Ike’s 1956 proposal for increased Federal aid to education), the Eisenhower Years witnessed a degree of cooperation between the White House and Capitol Hill that some history buffs might liken to a new Era of Good Feelings. Certainly, during the Eisenhower Administration the national interest generally trumped partisan politics when it counted most.

To be sure, however, Dwight Eisenhower had his critics, including members of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, the conservative Republican Senator from California, William Knowland, the highly-controversial Republican Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Arizona, Republican Barry Goldwater, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy, the Liberal Washington journalist and biographer, Marquis Childs, and an assortment of conservative and liberal political pundits. To ultra-conservatives, Ike was too liberal. To ultra-liberals, Ike was too conservative. Critics at both extremes—and even many of Ike’s supporters—eventually came to view President Eisenhower as a nice but lazy, relatively weak Chief Executive who was more interested in his golf game than in leading the nation. Why? Eisenhower believed in limited government at home and covert operations abroad. Ike was the philosophical and administrative opposite of FDR.

Since 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, expanding upon the aggressive management style of his cousin Theodore, favored big government and an activist approach to the Presidency. FDR’s activism eventually became the model in the general public’s eyes for how Presidents were supposed to govern. For FDR and his New Deal, his one-man-band management style, including his frequent appeals directly to the American public for support for his policies, often through fireside chats on the radio, came to be the expected modus operandi for American Presidents by which his eventual successors would also be judged. Activism, informality and administrative flat had worked for FDR. But Ike marched to a different drummer. Ike was the consummate organization man. Ike’s leadership style worked for him and the Allies while he meticulously organized and directed the largest invasion force in the history of mankind during World War II, avoiding the spotlight whenever practical. Ike saw no reason to change his management style as President.

During his Presidency, Eisenhower scheduled weekly meetings of his full Cabinet. Ike made it clear to each Secretary—from John Foster Dulles, his Secretary of State, to Ezra Taft Benson, his Secretary of Agriculture—that the information they shared and each recommendation they made regarding their respective departments was important to him. Ike made it a point to listen. Eisenhower was no micromanager. He delegated authority, held his managers accountable, and offered a guiding hand (on occasion, an iron fist) when he deemed it necessary.

As President, Dwight Eisenhower followed the same basic management style that had made him so successful as a military commander of millions: Appoint the best and brightest advisors and delegate authority, while reserving the right of ultimate decision making. His primary focus as President was foreign policy due to his philosophy of smaller government at home and the demands of the Cold War abroad. During his first six years as President, Eisenhower also delegated enormous power to his White House Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, the former Republican Governor of New Hampshire, so he could concentrate on major issues, and still have time for an occasional round of golf.

As has often been the case with two-term Presidents, Eisenhower’s second term in office was generally viewed by his contemporaries as less successful than his first. Events unfolded in September 1957 at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, that caused President Eisenhower to send Federal troops to integrate the troubled school against the wishes of Arkansas’ Governor and his fellow segregationists, sparking a nation-wide controversy and adding fuel to the growing culture war, Civil Rights vs. Segregation. The Russians’ launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the world’s first space satellite to orbit the earth, shocked most Americans. Why wasn’t the United States the first to do so? What did President Eisenhower plan to do about the Russians’ lead in the space race? The John Birch Society, founded in 1958 by a wealthy Massachusetts entrepreneur and candy maker named Robert Welch, began to accuse Ike of being a dupe of the global communist conspiracy because of his too liberal domestic and foreign policies. In September 1958, Ike’s Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, was forced to resign as a result of the so-called Sherman Adams Affair involving allegations that he used the influence of his position in exchange for money and gifts. And the final blow to Ike’s reputation was the news in May 1960 that an American spy plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union. The U-2 Affair, as it came to be called, raised the question, Has the Eisenhower Administration lied to the American people?

President Eisenhower, by his decisive action regarding the crisis at Central High School in Little Rock, ultimately brought about the integration of the public schools in all fifty states (Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union as the 49th and 50th states in 1959). The United States, in response to Sputnik 1, launched Explorer 1 just three months later, and Ike finally convinced the Democratic-controlled Congress to increase Federal aid to education in the interest of national defense. The John Birch Society, as a result of its paranoid extremism, eventually faded away. Sherman Adams, Ike’s former Chief of Staff, was never convicted of a crime. And America’s U-2 spy planes had existed for some time as a very necessary, highly successful, and classified secret weapon in America’s Cold War arsenal. Nevertheless, as the Presidential campaign of 1960 began, calls for change resonated with a growing number of Americans. To them, it was time for the Eisenhower era to end.

Numerous forces contrary to the family values associated with American society during President Eisenhower’s years in the White House steadily gained influence, especially with younger generations of Americans. For example, a young magazine entrepreneur named Hugh Hefner, through his publication Playboy, planted more than a few seeds that eventually sprang forth as the Sexual Revolution during the 1960’s. Glorifying the human body and consensual sex for the pure sake of liberating pleasure, Hef, as he liked to be called, increasingly poked fun at America’s Victorian morals through his magazine’s articles and editorials that evolved into The Playboy Philosophy. In a nutshell, Hef preached, If it feels good, do it!

Meanwhile, Elvis Presley, the newly-crowned King of Rock ’n’ roll, flaunted the norms of acceptable on-stage behavior through his sexually seductive pelvic gyrations. Elvis in particular, and rock ’n’ roll performers in general, created a popular revolution in the music industry through the explosion of Rock D.J. programs on radio, and phenomenal sales of concert tickets and records. Increasingly, rock ’n’ roll artists, led by Elvis, challenged the status quo from New York City to Hollywood, California, regarding how singers should perform on stage. Television networks, including the industry’s leader, CBS, refused to broadcast Elvis below the waist on national TV in order to prevent harming the morals of America’s youth. CBS and all the other networks, including NBC, ABC, and DuMont, in accord with FCC regulations, strictly barred from America’s airwaves any references to certain parts of the human anatomy such as a man’s penis or a woman’s vagina. And they most certainly barred any ads regarding such vulgar medical conditions as erectile dysfunction. Uttering the infamous abbreviation of Fornication Using Carnal Knowledge on the air absolutely was taboo. So were such expletives as Shit!, Hell!, Damn!, and a host of other choice words. And even married couples in comedy sitcoms or dramas were never shown in the same bed together on TV.

America during the 1950’s was a center-right nation with strict moral norms. Unwed mothers were socially ostracized. Pre-martial sex was publicly frowned upon. And, in many circles, openly condemned. According to many clergymen, the prime purpose of sex even within marriage was procreation; sex without the desire to create a child was sinful lust. And unmarried couples who chose to live together were shacking-up and living in sin. No wonder Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy caused such a growing stir. Still, during the decade of the 1950’s, marriage, motherhood, family life, and moral values were generally glorified on television and in motion pictures as the accepted norm for American society. Even most psychologists agreed with A woman’s place is in the home.

During the Eisenhower Years, a majority of Americans attended church services on Sunday mornings. The unwritten Sunday morning church-going dress code of suits and ties for gentlemen, and hats, gloves, hose, heels, and, of course, dresses for ladies was generally observed, and was immortalized by America’s most beloved artist, Norman Rockwell, in many of his illustrations painted during that period as magazine covers for the Saturday Evening Post. And the greatest church-going dress-up day of all was Easter Sunday. Every American of faith seem obliged—males as well as females—to buy a new outfit to wear to church on Easter.

During the Eisenhower Years, Americans generally conformed to certain traditional social and religious norms. For Catholics, Fridays were fish days. Why? Because the Church said so. Those Catholics who disliked fish dreaded Friday dinners. Fish-loving Protestants, on the other hand, looked forward to Fridays as the one day of the week when even restaurants devoted to serving only steaks and chops were compelled to offer seafood entrees to accommodate Catholic customers. To this day, clam chowder is still the soup most often served on Fridays in restaurants and coffee shops across the United States.

During the 1950’s, the ideal diet according to most nutritionist experts included daily servings of whole milk, eggs, butter, cheese, bread, and red meat, chicken, or fish, along with fruits and vegetables. And, of course, eight glasses of water. Even the Boy Scout and Girl Scout Manuals said so. Perhaps the most popular healthy meal during the 1950’s included a thick and juicy pan-fried steak with a baked Idaho potato smothered in butter and chopped green onions, sliced tomatoes or an iceberg lettuce salad topped with blue cheese dressing, rolls and butter, and a dessert of apple pie a la mode. During the 1950’s, soy beans were cattle food. Raw fish was bait. And tofu was something only foreigners might eat.

At the dawn of the 1960’s, while President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie still resided in the White House at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue, few Americans sought radical change at home or in Washington, D.C. Most Americans at that point in our nation’s history were optimistic about the future. They were grateful for the fact that, once Ike had put an end to the unpopular war in Korea, not a single American soldier had been killed in combat. True, the United States was locked in a deadly-serious Space Race with the Soviet Union. And yes, the Cold War against the Russians and the Chinese could heat up at any moment. But so far, in spite of the horrific possibility of nuclear obliteration, Ike and his administration had somehow kept the nation free from external harm. But would our luck last?

On the home front, growing domestic unrest in the form of The Civil Rights Movement was beginning to shake most Americans from their complacency. After twenty years of change in the form of revolutionary New Deal programs and the most horrific war in world history during FDR’s watch, and then the use of atomic bombs and a UN Police Action in Korea under President Truman, most Americans were psychologically—if not physically—exhausted. In 1952, they sought peace and normality with Eisenhower. Most were happy to experience a more traditional, more conservative America. By 1960, however, it was obvious to even the most complacent Americans that growing discontent was spreading across the land, especially in the Old South.

A slow-moving political and social tornado began gathering force in Washington, D.C., and in the Old South way back on May 17, 1954, when the United States Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that separate but equal public schools were unconstitutional. At the time, all schools in the South were segregated. Chief Justice Earl Warren, an Eisenhower appointee, led the Court to its unanimous decision that would eventually transform American society. Initially, however, Brown v. Board of Education was met with great resistance in the segregated South. By 1956, several Southern states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia had passed additional segregation laws in direct defiance of the Warren Court and the Federal government. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black resident of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat in the Whites Only section of a public bus. Locally, outraged Black leaders, including a young minister named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., responded by organizing non-violent protests and boycotting Montgomery’s city bus line. National news media began to cover their protests.

In September 1957, disturbing news photographs and television transmissions of law enforcement officers holding clubs and snarling dogs on leashes in their efforts to prevent a local Federal court’s order to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, shamed many Americans in the North and West to sympathize with the plight of a few Black youngsters seeking admission to the all-White school amidst the threatening jeers of angry, hateful mobs. Those same photos, news reports, and TV transmissions caused many pro-segregation and States’ Rights advocates in the South to strengthen their resolve to resist integration. Following President Eisenhower’s Executive Order on September 24, 1957 to enforce Federal law by sending Army troops to integrate Central High School, civil rights marchers and segregationists continued to clash in nationally-televised confrontations in various other parts of the South. Some civil rights marchers were murdered. Reports that the Ku Klux Klan was involved circulated widely. Such reports were unsettling to many peace-loving Americans—liberals and conservatives. Meanwhile, the new culture war, Civil Rights vs. Segregation, was picking up steam. So too was the slightly more subtle, more intellectual issue of Federal law vs. States’ Rights. Could even more-troubling times lay ahead?

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEW FRONTIER

On January 9, 1960, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, Ike’s running mate during both of his successful campaigns for President, publicly announced he was seeking the Republican Party’s nomination as their Presidential candidate in the upcoming November election. Nixon’s announcement came as no surprise to the American public. Vice President Harry S. Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt following FDR’s sudden death in 1945. Vice President Calvin Coolidge replaced Warren Harding under similar circumstances in 1923. Both men, who were later elected to their own terms in office by the people, had become Presidents by constitutional mandate. Prior to holding the highest office in the land, neither Truman nor Coolidge had openly expressed any great ambition to become President. Nixon had. He did so as a child. And he certainly did so as an undergraduate student at Whittier College. Nixon was fixated on the Presidency. His ambition to become President became common knowledge to folks everywhere following the rapid spread throughout the nation of a popular sick joke nearly five years earlier, beginning in the fall of 1955, after Ike’s mild heart attack that September in Denver. The joke, with numerous variations, of course, went something like this:

Vice President Nixon was anxiously waiting at the White House to greet President Eisenhower after he was released from the hospital following his heart attack. When Ike arrived at the entrance to the White House, Nixon greeted him by saying, "We’re all glad to have you back home, Mr. President. May I race you up the stairs?"

The Democratic Party had its own list of potential Presidential candidates in 1960. Chief among them was a young and well-connected Senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was young and wealthy, handsome and charismatic, and he had been a naval hero during the war. Lacking in notable legislative achievements, first as a Congressman and then as a Senator, young Jack more than made up for his lack-luster record on Capitol Hill by his sophisticated yet boyish charm, and his much-publicized Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage. Plus, Jack had the full support of his powerful father, the wealthy entrepreneur and former Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, who would continue to spend whatever it took to make his son the first Irish-Catholic President of the United States.¹

Both Dick Nixon and Jack Kennedy had long aspired to become President of the United States one day. Both had served as naval officers during World War II. Both were elected to the House of Representatives in 1946. Both served as U.S. Senators—first Nixon, beginning in 1951, and then Kennedy, starting in 1953. Both men became friends. Both were destined to seek the highest office in the land. May the better man win.

Of course, both men also had obvious differences. Dick Nixon was a Republican, and he was relatively poor. Jack Kennedy was a Democrat, and he was independently rich. Nixon, growing up, had attended public schools in California; a young Kennedy attended prestigious private prep schools on the East Coast. Kennedy had no need for a scholarship in order to attend Harvard; Nixon was too poor to accept a scholarship offer from Harvard, and so he attended his hometown school, Whittier College, while also working early each morning by supplying his father’s tiny grocery store with fresh produce. Nixon went on to Duke University Law School on a scholarship, and he saved money by living in a converted chicken coop near the campus; Kennedy toured Europe. Both men served in the United States Senate—Kennedy as one of two Senators from Massachusetts; Nixon, in his constitutional role as Vice President, presided over that august chamber. Now, in 1960, both men faced each other as equals in a race for the Presidency. God Bless America.

But did both men have an equally realistic chance to win in November? In January 1960, conventional wisdom gave the edge to Nixon. Nixon had arguably been the most active Vice President since Theodore Roosevelt. And, unlike T.R., Nixon had the PR advantages of modern air travel and television. Nixon’s frequent exposure on national TV in various regions of the United States and during official trips to Latin America and Europe, including video tapes of his famous Kitchen Debate with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, during his visit to Moscow in July 1959, provided excellent PR for promoting an image of statesmanship. As a result, Richard Nixon had become familiar to most Americans for nearly a decade due to his frequent exposure, often favorable, in the media. By comparison, John Kennedy was less well-known in January 1960.

What the public did know was that Kennedy was a Catholic. And no Catholic, in this primarily Protestant country, had ever been elected President. The only Catholic in American history who was nominated by a major political party as its candidate for President was the highly popular Democratic Governor of New York, Al Smith. That was thirty-two years earlier, in 1928. That November, a triumphant Herbert Hoover clobbered poor Al at the polls. Prior to the election, rumors circulating coast-to-coast had the Pope in Rome with his bags packed and ready to move to Washington, D.C., to run the country if Governor Smith was elected President. And the Ku Klux Klan warned, A vote for Al Smith is a vote for the Pope. Could Kennedy overcome similar rumors and charges in 1960? Most pundits had their doubts.

Also contributing to doubts about Kennedy—or any Democratic nominee’s chances of being elected President in November—was the undeniable fact that Eisenhower was still very popular with the American people. Pundits reasoned that Ike’s endorsement of his Vice President, Richard Nixon, would surely give him a distinct advantage with the voters, especially with Independents and border-line Democrats whose votes would swing the election. Ike and Dick had led the nation through the Fabulous Fifties—a period of peace, prosperity, and unparalleled growth in spite of the Cold War. Tough, seasoned, and intelligent, Dick Nixon was prepared to extend Ike’s legacy of leadership. Richard Nixon began the 1960 campaign as the favorite to win both his party’s nomination and the Presidency.

By 1960, the growing importance of Presidential primaries in American politics demonstrated the evolution of two significant changes in how the major parties choose their presidential candidates: (1) Profound increases in the costs of running for office (as fellow Democrat Hubert Humphrey discovered in West Virginia when he was overwhelmed by the avalanche of Kennedy dollars), and (2) the concomitant decline in the importance of the national conventions in the actual selection process for the top of the ticket. By 1960, presidential primaries had nearly reduced the quadrennial national party conventions of both the Democrats and the Republicans to rubber stamp status—mere obligatory party referendums on the People’s choices. This was certainly true of the campaign of 1960 prior to the major party conventions. Realistically, both Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy won the nominations to head the tickets of their respective parties by winning in various key state primaries prior to convention time. On July 11th, when the Democratic National Convention began at the new Sports Arena adjacent to the University of Southern California campus near downtown Los Angeles, John Kennedy had the nomination in the bag. Only the TV audience was truly uncertain of the ultimate outcome. Kennedy’s main obstacles during the primary campaign had been two: (1) Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, and (2) the fact that he was a Roman Catholic (if elected President, would he be subservient to the Pope in Rome?). Kennedy proved he could beat the more-liberal Hubert Humphrey in Humphrey’s own mid-Western backyard when he defeated him in Wisconsin’s Democratic Primary. And JFK proved a Catholic candidate could win in the predominately Protestant South when he came out on top in West Virginia. With the momentum of these and other primary victories (and a huge war chest of dollars from his dad, whom many accused of making his initial fortune by importing Scotch whiskey to Canada and then smuggling most of it across the border into the United States during Prohibition), JFK was poised to accept the nomination of his party on the first ballot in Los Angeles. So too was Richard M. Nixon in Chicago. While Vice President Nixon had no Daddy Warbucks for a father (he grew up poor), he had begun his political career with the financial backing of a number of wealthy Californians, including the owner/publisher of the powerful Los Angeles Times, Norman Chandler. Since he first became Vice President, Tricky Dick had been scheming for this opportunity. Over eight years, he had built up substantial party support, including a sizeable war chest. Dick Nixon was poised for his party’s nomination on the first ballot in Chicago.

For the national television audience, the Democratic National Convention that met in Los Angeles on July 11, 1960, was high drama. There were enthusiastic demonstrations and speeches for Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Lyndon Johnson of Texas, as well as those favoring John Kennedy of Massachusetts. Would the one-time play boy of the United States Senate and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Profiles in Courage win the nomination? Yes. On the first ballot.

John F. Kennedy proved to be far more politically expedient than even his loyal brother Bobby would have liked. Soon after accepting his party’s nomination for President, JFK chose Lyndon Johnson—one of his chief political rivals and a Southerner—for his Vice Presidential running mate. Frankly put, Kennedy had long been closer to Nixon than he had been