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Introduction
1961, John Kennedy was sworn-in as president. This represented a generational shift in power. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Kennedys politics of idealism built into the greatest burst of liberal reform since the New Deal.
19611968: 2 Kennedys, dead. Dr. King, dead.
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John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation The New Politics The Kennedy Administration The Civil Rights Movement Stirs Kennedy, Cold Warrior The Vietnam Puzzle Assassination
Wars of Liberation
Jan. 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced support for wars of liberation wherever they would occur.
Cuba Vietnam
April 17, 1961, a force of 1400 troops trained by the CIA were defeated and apprehended in the Bay of Pigs on Cubas southern coast.
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Bold Initiatives
Peace Corps. Agency for International Development Food for Peace The Alliance for Progress a 10 year plan for the Americas. $20 billion partnership. NASA: May 5, 1961, Alan Shephard first American in space. John Glenn 1st to orbit.
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Medgar Evers, (1925 63) was a civil rights activist from Mississippi. He became active in the civil rights movement after returning from overseas service in World War II and completing secondary education.
Malcolm X, (1925 65) Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans.
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I HAVE A DREAM
Berlin Wall/Cuba
The Soviets responded with construction of the Berlin Wall. The climax came in October 1962. Kennedy announced that the Soviets had placed ballistic missiles in Cuba. Kennedy announced imposition of a quarantine on all offensive military equipment. The world held its breath for one week. Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba and Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles.
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Assassination
November 22, 1963 Kennedy was assassinated in Texas, allegedly by 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. Walter Cronkite Oswald was also assassinated a few days later. Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as Jacqueline Kennedy looked on. The aura of the Kennedy mystique was fed by his traumatic death, his youth, marriage and charisma. He actually had Addisons disease.
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Camelot
No presidency ever matched the Kennedy aura of Camelot in the tradition of the mythical King Arthur. Every president after Kennedy embraced the idea of trying to create an image through carefully managed exposure to media. Kennedys image of a martyred leader ironically produce more legislative results than if he had lived.
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Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society The Momentum for Civil Rights Enacting the Liberal Agenda
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Accomplishments
How much was achieved is in dispute. 1963-68, The proportion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 20% to 13. 1960s, the black poverty line feel by half, millions of blacks moved into the middle class. Conservatives credited the decades booming economy rather than government programs. Johnsons lofty rhetoric raised expectation and Americans were disillusioned with the War on Poverty.
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Escalation
Johnson was unwilling to level with the American people. He did not want to endanger his domestic agenda. He ran in 1964 on a pledge not to escalate the war, although he fully intended to do so. 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired at the destroyer Maddax. Total damage = only a single bullet hole. In the entire Congress, only two senators voted against the resolution.
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The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution formally declared that U.S. forces in Vietnam had been authorized to repel any hostile action taken by the North Vietnamese against them.
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American Invervention
After the 1964 election, Johnson began an American takeover of the war in Vietnam.
Deployment of ground troops Intensification of bombing against the North.
March 8, 1965, the first Marines waded ashore at Da Nang. By 1966, 380,000 soldiers in Vietnam. 1967, 485,000 1968, 536,000.
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Public Opinion
Johnson was confident of the broad Cold War consensus. Both Democrats and Republicans approved Johnsons escalation in Vietnam, and so did public opinion polls in 1965 and 1966. Public opinion began to shift as night after night Americans saw the carnage of war on their television screens. Born On The Fourth Of July: Part-8 Part-9 Kent State 1971
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1966, television coverage of hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations committee were chaired by Sen J. William Fulbright, a critic. Economic problems put Johnson on the defensive. The war cost $27 bill in 1967. Johnson asked for a 10% surcharge on income taxes. An inflationary spiral began that continued throughout the 1970s. Born On The Fourth Of July: Part-13 7 min Part-14 Miami Beach Repub convention
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SANE
An antiwar movement began to crystalize. There was a new generation of peace activists such as SANE (the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy). After 1965, they were joined by student groups, clergy, civil rights advocates. The Antiwar movement was soon capable of mass demonstrations in Washington.
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Student Activism
Inspired by the black students of Greensboro, NC, who had sparked a wave of sit-ins in the South, college students became active in the antiwar movement. June 1962, forty students from Big Ten and Ivy League schools formed the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Tom Hayden wrote the Port Huron Statement, expressing disillusionment with consumer culture and growing inequality.
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Student Activism
Fall 1964, Student groups at the University of California at Berkeley organized the Free Speech Movement. The founders of the SDS referred to themselves as the New Left to distinguish themselves from the Old Left Communists and Socialists of the1930s and 40s.
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Coming Apart
The Counterculture Beyond Civil Rights
Coming Apart
In the student demonstrations, the SDS and the Berkley Free Speech Movement were interested in more than just the antiwar movement. It was a broad based attack on the status-quo. Not only challenging the Cold War assumptions, but blasting Americas liberal consensus. The roots went back to the 1950s, to the Beats who criticized capitalism.
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The Counterculture
The New Left plotted against the political and economic system. There was also a general revolt against authority and middle class respectability. Hippies dressed in ragged jeans, tie-dyed shirts, beads, and army fatigues with long hair. These were the symbols of a new counterculture. 1960-The Hippies
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The Counterculture
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The Counterculture
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The Counterculture
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Backlash
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