Chapter 29: Great Promises, Bitter Disappointments, 1960-1968

1. JFK and the New Frontier
   1. The New Frontier
      1. At his inauguration, John F. Kennedy spoke in idealistic terms and avoided any mention of specific programs, but promised to march against "the common enemies of man, tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
         1. He asked all Americans to participate, exhorting them to "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
         2. Despite his call for public involvement, Kennedy believed that experts would solve most national problems, with little need of public support.
      2. Kennedy’s staff and cabinet were dubbed the "best and the brightest."
         1. Recruiting from business and universities, Kennedy appointed men and women who were called the "best and the brightest"; they included Rhodes scholars and Harvard professors.
         2. JFK and his staff wanted to be activists, leading the nation along new paths of liberalism, but Congress was likely to be an obstacle, so Kennedy decided to focus on legislation within the "vital center."
         3. To spur economic recovery, Kennedy turned to "new economics" as advocated by Walter Heller, his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and called for more government spending and business and income tax cuts.
         4. The booming economy, however, created the new problem of inflation, and, as a result, Kennedy established informal wage and price guidelines for business and labor unions.
   2. Civil Rights and the Kennedys
      1. Civil rights advocates were far from satisfied with Kennedy’s actions in this area, even though he did appoint several blacks to high office and district courts.
         1. Critics noted that several of JFK’s judicial appointments went to recognized segregationists and he did not ban segregation in federal housing until 1962.
      2. Even as Kennedy assumed office, a new wave of black activism was striking at segregation in the South in the form of sit-ins and boycotts.
         1. The sit-ins remained largely a student movement supported by the more established civil rights groups, especially the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
         2. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed in April 1961 to coordinate the dramatically increasing number of sit-ins and boycotts.
         3. Sharing the headlines with those "sitting-in" were the freedom riders, who chose to force integration on southern bus lines and stations.
         4. As some predicted, violence forced the federal government to respond, and state and local protection was obtained for the riders through Alabama.
         5. Finally, in September 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission declared that it would uphold the Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting segregation, and, as a result, most state and local authorities grudgingly accepted desegregation.
      3. The Kennedy administration argued that efforts should be focused on voter registration drives and encouraged the Voter Education Project.
      4. In 1962, James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi with the protection of federal forces and became its first African-American graduate.
      5. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC focused their attention on overturning segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
         1. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" called for immediate and continuous peaceful civil disobedience, since freedom was "never given voluntarily by the oppressor."
         2. Events in Birmingham helped Kennedy conclude that the time had come to fulfill his campaign promise to make civil rights a priority, and he spoke to the nation in June 1963 about making civil rights an immediate moral issue.
         3. King’s August 28 March on Washington exceeded all expectations in its attempt to pressure Congress to act on civil rights legislation, and King enthralled his audience and the nation with his "I Have a Dream" speech.
         4. In the South, however, violence and bigotry continued.
2. Flexible Response
   1. Confronting the Soviets
      1. Flexible response included economic and military strategies.
      2. Despite the "Bay of Pigs" disaster, Kennedy vowed to continue the "relentless struggle" against Castro and Communism, including the use of covert and special operations.
      3. The building of the Berlin Wall challenged Western ideals of freedom but not its presence in West Berlin.
      4. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a far more serious threat to U.S. security.
      5. The Limited Test Ban Treaty forbade signatory nations to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space, and under the seas.
   2. Vietnam
      1. Berlin, Cuba, and nuclear weapons were some of the hot points of the Kennedy administration’s foreign policy but Southeast Asia represented one of the most significant challenges that faced the United States.
      2. South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was losing control of his nation, and the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese Communist rebels, controlled a large portion of both land and people and had brought Diem’s troops to a standstill.
         1. While military advisers argued that the use of American troops was necessary to turn the tide, Kennedy was more cautious.
         2. The Viet Cong were only part of the problem, since Diem’s administration was unpopular and out of touch with the majority of South Vietnamese.
         3. Protesting Diem’s rule, on June 10, 1963, a Buddhist monk set himself on fire, and other self-immolations followed.
         4. Diem and his inner circle had become liabilities to the U.S., and the Kennedy administration secretly informed several Vietnamese generals that it would approve a change in government; the army killed Diem.
         5. The new military government, however, brought neither political stability nor improvement in the ARVN’s capacity to fight the Viet Cong.
   3. Death in Dallas
      1. In late 1963, with his civil rights bill and tax cut in limbo in Congress, a growing military commitment in Vietnam, and a sluggish economy, Kennedy began to prepare for the 1964 presidential race.
         1. Watching his popularity drop to under 60 percent, JFK decided to visit Texas in November to try to heal divisions within the Texas Democratic party.
         2. There he was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
         3. Kennedy’s assassination traumatized the nation, and many people, in their anguish, soon canonized the fallen president.
      2. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president as he flew back to Washington on the plane carrying Kennedy’s body.
3. Beyond the New Frontier
   1. Conservative Response
      1. According to some conservatives, Johnson’s programs were destroying the traditional American values of localism, self-help, and individualism.
      2. The New Right argued that decisions of the Warren Court had tipped the scales of justice in favor of the criminal.
   2. The 1964 Election
      1. Johnson’s Great Society offered a tempting political target to the Republicans and Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.
      2. Intellectually led by William F. Buckley and the National Review,the New Right decried many of the political and social changes taking place in society because they believed traditional American values were being destroyed.
         1. From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, the Supreme Court under Warren handed down one decision after another that angered conservatives, since they believed they tipped the scales too much in favor of criminals.
   3. Shaping the Great Society
      1. To the New Right, Johnson’s Great Society programs and the Warren Court’s judicial activism fit the same mold.
         1. Both advocated social legislation and values that rewarded people the conservatives characterized as lazy and immoral at the expense of hard-working American families.
      2. Having trounced Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign, Johnson pushed forward legislation to enact his Great Society.
         1. The Great Society yielded over sixty programs, most seeking to provide better economic and social opportunities by removing social and economic barriers thrown up by health, education, region, and race.
      3. Reflecting Johnson’s own desires and responding to African-American and liberal desires, early in the new administration (1965), the president advanced the issue of civil rights.
         1. LBJ signed an executive order that required government contractors to ensure nondiscrimination in jobs.
         2. The president appointed the first African-American cabinet member, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert Weaver; the first African-American woman federal justice, Constance Baker Motley; and the first black on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.
      4. Hoping to pull the federal government behind their efforts to expand black political and social rights, civil rights leaders targeted Alabama and Mississippi.
         1. The result was "the Freedom Summer of 1964," led by the SNCC’s Bob Moses, in which whites and blacks went to Mississippi to open "Freedom Schools" and to encourage African Americans to vote.
         2. The Freedom Schools taught basic literacy and black history and stressed black pride and achievements.
         3. Civil rights violence in Mississippi occurred almost daily from June through August of 1964, but the crusade registered nearly 60,000 new voters.
      5. Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act had made discrimination illegal, clearly it was still practiced throughout much of the South, and civil rights leaders were just as clearly determined to eliminate it.
         1. Martin Luther King told reporters that change would occur because nonviolent demonstrators would go into the streets to exercise their constitutional rights and be attacked by racists, "unleashing violence against them."
         2. King and other civil rights leaders selected Selma, Alabama, as their target because the white community there vehemently opposed integration.
         3. As expected, Sheriff Jim Clark confronted protesters and arrested nearly two thousand of them before King called for a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery to increase the pressure.
         4. Television coverage of the onslaught of local authorities stirred nationwide condemnation of Clark’s tactics and support for King and the marchers.
      6. Johnson also used the violence in Selma to pressure Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which banned a variety of methods states used to deny blacks the right to vote, including Mississippi’s literacy test.
      7. At the top of Johnson’s priorities were health and education, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) was the first general educational funding act by the federal government.
      8. Johnson’s Medical Care Act (1965) established Medicare, which helped the elderly cover their medical costs, and Medicaid, which provided funds to states to provide free health care for those on welfare.
      9. Despite the flood of legislation, by the end of 1965, many Great Society programs were underfunded and diminishing in popularity.
         1. An expanding war in Vietnam, white backlash to urban riots, and partisan politics were forcing reductions in the budget of the War on Poverty.
4. New Agendas
   1. New Agendas
      1. By the end of 1965, federal legislation ended de juresegregation and voting restrictions.
         1. De factosocial discrimination and prejudice remained, and African-American frustrations - born of raised expectations, poverty, prejudice, and violence - soon changed the nature of civil rights protests and ignited northern cities.
      2. During the 1960s, more than a million African Americans left the South each year, seeking a better life.
         1. By the mid-1960s, the nation’s cities were primed for racial violence, and while minor riots occurred throughout the country, the Watts riot shook the nation.
   2. New Voices
      1. The Watts Riot
         1. What started as a simple arrest soon mushroomed into a major riot as a crowd of onlookers gathered and scuffling began.
         2. When firemen and police arrived to restore order and put out the flames, they had to dodge snipers’ bullets and Molotov cocktails.
         3. The Watts riot shattered the complacency of many northern whites who had supported civil rights in the South while ignoring the plight of the inner cities, and it demonstrated a gap between the attitudes of northern blacks and many civil rights leaders.
      2. More deadly urban riots followed, and a new, militant approach to racial and economic injustices erupted: the Black Power movement.
         1. New voices called on blacks to seek power through solidarity, independence, and if necessary violence, since blacks needed to use the same means as whites.
         2. The new leadership, with Stokely Carmichael at the helm, exalted Black Power, which established roots in inner cities across the nation.
         3. Among those more receptive to the militant approach were the Black Muslims, including Malcolm X, who proclaimed the ideals of black nationalism and separation and rejected integration with white society.
         4. As the 1968 presidential campaign began, law and order replaced the Great Society as the main issue.
   3. The Challenge of Youth
      1. Nearly as alarming to many Americans were the changes taking place among the nation’s youth.
         1. Although the majority of young adults maintained the typical quest for a traditional American life, some took up social concerns and personal fulfillment as alternatives as the decade progressed.
         2. Many students began to question the role of the university and the goal of education, particularly at huge institutions.
         3. Campus activists denounced course requirements and restrictions on dress, behavior, and living arrangements.
         4. Aside from politics, the youth movement’s discontent with social and cultural norms found expression in what was labeled the counterculture: the Hippies who spurned the traditional moral and social values of the fifties.
         5. The counterculture had a lasting impact on American society - on dress, sexual attitudes, music, and even personal values - but it did not reshape America in its image.