John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation

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John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation

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Title: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation

1
John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation

With his New Frontier program, Kennedy promised
to get America movingagainthrough vigorous
governmental activism at home and abroad.

Kennedy campaigned on the issues of civil rights
legislation, health care for the elderly, aid to
education, urban renewal, expanded military and
space programs, and containment of communism
abroad.
Poised to become the youngest man ever elected to
the presidency and the nations first Catholic
chief executive, Kennedy practiced what became
known as the new politics, an approach that
emphasized youthful charisma, style, and
personality more than issues and platforms.

A series of four televised debates between
Kennedy and Nixon showed how important television
was becoming to political life voters who
listened to the 1960 presidential debates on the
radio concluded that Nixon had won, and those who
watched it on TV felt that Kennedy had won.
Kennedy won only the narrowest of electoral
victories, receiving 49.7 percent of the popular
vote to Nixons 49.5 percent a shift of a few
thousand votes in key states would have reversed
the outcome.

4
The Kennedy Administration

A host of trusted advisors and academics the
Best and the brightest flocked to Washington
to join the New Frontier. Not everyone was
enchanted though, and the new administration got
into hot water.

Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio
Batista in 1959 Cuban relations with Washington
deteriorated after Castro nationalized
American-owned banks and industries and the
United States declared an embargo on Cuban
exports.
Isolated by the United States, Cuba turned to the
Soviet Union for economic and military support.
In early 1961, Kennedy attempted to foment an
anti-Castro uprising the CIA-trained invaders
were crushed by Castros troops after landing at
Cubas Bay of Pigs on April 17.

Kennedy went before the American people and took
full responsibility.

The Peace Corps, the Agency for International
Development, and the Alliance for Progress
provided food and other aid to Third World
countries, bringing them into the American orbit
and away from Communist influence.

Funding for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and its Mercury program won
support on May 5 1961, Alan Shepard became the
first American in space, and, in 1962, John Glenn
manned the first U.S. Space mission to orbit the
earth.

Kennedy could not mobilize public or
congressional support for his New Frontier
agenda he managed to push through legislation
raising the minimum wage and expanding Social
Security benefits, but a conservative coalition
of southern Democrats and western and midwestern
Republicans effectively stalled most liberal
initiatives.

After Kennedys assassination, the Tax Reduction
Act (the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut, 1964) marked a
milestone in the use of fiscal policy to
encourage economic growth.

11
New Tactics for the Civil Rights Movement

One of the most notable failures of the Kennedy
administration was its reluctance to act on civil
rights.
After the Woolworths lunch counter sit-in, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
helped to organize the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee in order to facilitate
sit-ins by blacks demanding an end to segregation.

The Congress of Racial Equality organized freedom
rides on bus lines in the South to call attention
to segregation on public transportation the
activists were attacked by white mobs.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent federal
marshals to Alabama to restore order most
southern communities quietly acceded to the
Interstate Commerce Commissions prohibition of
segregated interstate vehicles and facilities.

When thousands of black demonstrators, organized
by Martin Luther King Jr. marched to picket
Birmingham, Alabamas department stores,
television cameras captured the severe methods
used against them by Bull Connors.
President Kennedy responded to the incident on
June 11, 1963, when he went on television to
promise major legislation banning discrimination
in public accommodations and empowering the
Justice Department to enforce desegregation.
Black leaders hailed Kennedys speech as the
Second Emancipation Proclamation, yet on the
evening of the address,Medgar Evers, the
president of the Mississippi chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), was shot and killed.

To rouse the conscience of the nation and to
marshal support for Kennedys bill, civil rights
leaders launched a massive civil rights march on
Washington in 1963, which culminated in the I
Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr.
Kings eloquence and the sight of blacks and
whites marching together did more than anything
else to make the civil rights movement acceptable
to white Americans it also marked the highpoint
of the civil rights movement and confirmed Kings
position as the leading speaker for the black
cause.

Southern Senators continued to block the civil
rights legislation, and violence by white
extremists shocked the nation when the bombing of
a church in Birmingham, Al. killed four black
Sunday school students.

16
Kennedy Cold Warrior

A resolute cold warrior, Kennedy proposed a new
policy of flexible response measures designed to
deter direct attacks by the Soviet Union, which
resulted in the defense budget reaching its
highest level as a percentage of total federal
expenditures in the Cold War era and greatly
expanding the military-industrial complex.

U.S.-Soviet relations further deteriorated when
the Soviets built the Berlin Wall in order to
stop the exodus of East Germans the Berlin Wall
remained a symbol of the Cold War until 1989.
The Cuban missile crisis was the climactic
confrontation of the Cold War, which occurred in
October 1962, when American reconnaissance planes
flying over Cuba photographed Soviet-built bases
for ICBMs, which could reach U.S. targets as far
as 2,200 miles away.

In a televised address, Kennedy confronted the
Soviet Union and announced that the United States
would impose a quarantineon all offensive
military equipment intended for Cuba.
After a week of tense negotiations, both Kennedy
and Khrushchev made concessions the United
States would not invade Cuba, and the Soviets
would dismantle the missile bases.
After the Cuban missile crisis Kennedy
softened his Cold War rhetoric and began to
strive for peaceful coexistence in 1963 the
United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet
Union agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons in
the atmosphere, in space, and underwater
underground testing would continue.

A new Washington-Moscow telecommunications hot
line was established so that leaders could
contact each other quickly during potential
crises.
Despite efforts at peaceful coexistence, the
preoccupation with the Soviet military threat to
American security remained a cornerstone of U.S.
policy the Cold War, and the escalating arms
race that accompanied it, would continue for
another twenty-five years.

20
The Kennedy Assassination

On November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, President
Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald
Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president.
Kennedys youthful image, the trauma of his
assassination, and the sense that Americans had
been robbed of a promising leader contributed to
a powerful mystique that continues today.
This romantic aura overshadows Kennedys mixed
record of accomplishments he exercised
leadership in foreign affairs, but some remain
critical of his belligerent stance toward the
Soviet Union and lack of attention to domestic
issues

21
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society

The Momentum for Civil Rights

Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide and
used his energy and genius for compromise to
bring to fruition many of
Kennedys stalled programs as well as many of his
own. Those legislative accomplishmentsJohnsonsG
reat Societyfulfilled and in many cases
surpassed the New Deal liberal agenda of the
1930s.

On assuming the presidency, Lyndon Johnson
promptly pushed the passage of civil rights to
appeal to a broad national audience and to
achieve an impressive legislative accomplishment,
which he hoped would place his mark on the
presidency.
The Civil Rights Act passed in June 1964 its
keystone, Title VII, outlawed discrimination in
employment on the basis of race, religion,
national origin, or sex.

The Civil Rights Act forced desegregation of
public facilities throughout the South, yet
obstacles to black voting remained.
To meet this challenge, civil rights activists
mounted a major civil rights campaign in
Mississippi known as Freedom Summer,which
established freedom schools, conducted a voter
registration drive, and organized the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party.

The reaction of white southerners to Freedom
Summer was swift and violent fifteen civil
rights workers were murdered, and only 1,200
black voters were registered.
To protest these murders, in March, 1965, King
and other civil rights activists staged a march
from Selma to Montgomery the marchers were
attacked by mounted state troopers with tear gas
and clubs, all of which was shown on national
television that night.

Calling the episode an American tragedy,
President Johnson redoubled his efforts to
persuade Congress to pass the pending
voting-rights legislation.
On August 6, Congress passed the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, which suspended the literacy tests
and other measures most southern states used to
prevent blacks from registering to vote.

The Twenty-fourth Amendments outlawing of the
federal poll tax, combined with the Voting Rights
Act, allowed millions of blacks to register to
vote for the first time.
In 1960 in the South only 20 percent of blacks of
voting age had been registered to vote by 1964
the figure had risen to 39 percent, and by 1971
it was 62 percent.

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More than a quarter of a million Americans,
including 50,000 whites, gathered on the Mall in
the nation's capital on August 28, 1963, to
pressure the government to support African
Americans' civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr.
mesmerized the crowd with his "I have a dream"
speech.
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Enacting the Liberal Agenda

When Johnson beat out Republican senator Barry
Goldwater for the presidency in 1964, he achieved
one of the largest margins in history 61.1
percent of the popular vote.
Johnson used this mandate not only to promote the
civil rights agenda but also to bring to fruition
what he called The Great Society.

Wherever he acted, Johnson pursued an ambitious
goal of putting an end to poverty in our time
the War on Poverty expanded long-established
social insurance programs, welfare programs (like
Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Food
Stamps), and public works programs.
The Office of Economic Opportunity, established
by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, created
programs such as Head Start, the Job Corps,
Upward Bound, Volunteers in Service to America,
and the Community Action Program.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 authorized 1 billion in federal funds to
benefit impoverished children the Higher
Education Act provided the first federal
scholarships for college students.
Federal health insurance legislation was enacted
the result was Medicare for the elderly and
Medicaid for the poor.

The creation of the National Endowment for the
Arts and the National Endowment for the
Humanities in 1965 supported artists and
historians in their efforts to understand and
interpret the nations cultural and historical
heritage.
Another aspect of public welfare addressed by the
Great Society was the environment Johnson
pressed for expansion of the national park
system, improvement of the nations air and
water, and increased land-use planning.

At the insistence of his wife, Lady Bird,
President Johnson promoted the Highway
Beautification Act of 1965.
Liberal Democrats brought about significant
changes in immigration policy with the passage of
the Immigration Act of 1965, which abandoned the
quota system of the 1920s.

By the end of 1965, the Johnson administration
had compiled the most impressive legislative
record of liberal reforms since the New Deal it
had put issues of poverty, justice, and access at
the center of national political life, and it
expanded the federal governments role in
protecting citizens welfare.
By the end of the decade, many of its programs
were under attack limits that confronted it were
the political necessity of bowing to pressure
from various interest groups and limited funding
for its programs.

The results of the War on Poverty were that the
poor were better off in an absolute sense, but
they remained far behind the middle class in a
relative sense.
Democratic support for further governmental
activism was hampered by a growing conservative
backlash against the expansion of civil rights
and social welfare programs.
After 1965, the Vietnam War siphoned funding away
from domestic programs in 1966 the government
spent 22 billion on the war and only 1.2
billion on the War on Poverty. As Martin Luther
King Jr. put it, the Great Society was shot down
on the battlefields of Vietnam.

America in Vietnam From Truman to Kennedy
Into the Quagmire, 19451968

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America in Vietnam From Truman to Kennedy

Beginning in the 1940s, the United States became
interested in supporting an anti Communist
government in Vietnam. U.S. policymakers feared
that the loss of any pro-Western government
would prompt a chain reaction of losses in the
region, termed the domino effect.

President Kennedy increased American involvement
in the region, but after his assassination, top
U.S. advisors argued that a full-scale
deployment was needed in order to prevent the
defeat of the South Vietnamese. President
Johnson moved toward the Americanization of the
war with Operation Rolling Thunder, a protracted
bombing campaign that failed to incapacitate the
North Vietnamese.

Vietnam was once a part of a French colony but
was occupied by Japan during World
War II after the Japanese surrendered in 1945,
Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh proclaimed Vietnam
an independent nation, which began an eight-year
war the Vietnamese called the French War of
resistance.
Ho called on President Truman to support the
struggle for Vietnamese independence,
but Truman ignored his pleas and instead offered
covert financial support to the French.

Trumans reasons for supporting the French were
concerns that newly independent countries might
align with Communists maintaining good
relations with France, whose support was crucial
to the success of the new alliance the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the
strategic roles Indochina was seen to play in
reindustrializing Japan.

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In 1950, Soviet and Chinese leaders recognized
Ho Chi Minhs republic in Vietnam in turn, the
United States recognized the French-installed
government of Bao Dai.
Truman and Eisenhower provided military support
to the French in Vietnam Eisenhower argued that
aid was necessary in order to prevent
non-Communist governments from collapsing in a
domino effect.
The 1954 Geneva accords partitioned Vietnam
temporarily at the seventeenth parallel and
committed France to withdraw its forces from the
area north of that line and provided that voters
in the two sectors would choose a unified
government within two years.

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To prevent a Communist victory in Vietnams
election, Eisenhower saw to it that a
pro-American government took power in South
Vietnam under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Realizing that the popular Ho Chi Minh would
easily win in both the North and South, Diem
called off the reunification elections that had
been scheduled for 1956, a move the United
States supported.

Ngo Dinh DiemFirst President of the Republic of
Vietnam

After France removed itself from the region in
1956, America replaced it as the dominant foreign
power in the region.
Though Vietnam was too small a country to upset
the international balance of power, Eisenhower
and subsequent U.S. presidents viewed Vietnam as
a part of the Cold War struggle to contain the
Communist threat to the free world.

Between 1955 and 1961 the Eisenhower
administration sent Diem an average of 200
million a year in aid and stationed approximately
675 American military advisors there.
In 1960, North Vietnam organized opponents in
South Vietnam into the National Liberation Front
(NLF) Kennedy increased the number of American
military advisors, but sent no line troops, and
also sent economic development specialists.

Kennedy adopted a new military doctrine of
counterinsurgency soon the Green Berets of the
U.S. Armys Special Forces were being trained to
repel guerrilla warfare.
President Kennedy saw Vietnam as an ideal
testing ground for the counterinsurgency
techniques that formed the centerpiece of his
military policy.

President Kennedy saw Vietnam as an ideal
testing ground for the counterinsurgency
techniques that formed the centerpiece of his
military policy.
In 1960, North Vietnam organized opponents in
South Vietnam into the National Liberation Front
(NLF) Kennedy increased the number of American
military advisors, but sent no line troops, and
also sent economic development specialists.

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American economic aid did little good in South
Vietnam, and the NLFs guerrilla forces
(Vietcong) made considerable headway against
Diems regime.
Anti-Diem sentiment flourished among peasants,
who had been alienated by Diems strategic
hamlet program, and Buddhists, who charged the
government with religious persecution.

As opposition to Diem deepened, Kennedy decided
the leader would have to be removed in a
November 1963 U.S.-supported coup, Diem was
driven from office and assassinated by South
Vietnamese officers.
When Johnson became president, he continued and
accelerated U.S. involvement in Vietnam to
prevent charges of being soft on communism.

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Escalation The Johnson Years

After the removal of Diem, Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara and other top advisors argued
that a full-scale deployment of forces was needed
to prevent the defeat of the South Vietnamese.

Johnson knew that he needed congressional support
or a declaration of war to commit U.S. troops to
an offensive strategy, so he told the nation that
North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on
American destroyers in international waters in
response to South Vietnamese amphibious attacks.

On August 7, 1964, Congress authorized the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed Johnson to
take all necessary measures to repel any armed
attack against the forces of the United States
and to prevent further aggression.
The Johnson administration moved toward the
Americanization of the war with Operation Rolling
Thunder, a protracted bombing campaign that by
1968 had dropped a million tons of bombs on North
Vietnam

Operation Rolling Thunder intensified the North
Vietnameses will to fight the flow of their
troops and supplies continued to the south
unabated as the Communists rebuilt roads and
bridges, moved munitions underground, and built
networks of tunnels and shelters.
A week after the launch of Operation Rolling
Thunder, the United States sent its first ground
troops into combat by 1968, more than 536,000
American soldiers were stationed in Vietnam.

Vietnams countryside was threatened with
destruction the massive bombardment plus a
defoliation campaign seriously damaged
agricultural production and thus the economy.
The dramatically increased American presence in
Vietnam failed to turn the tide of the war yet,
hoping to win a war of attrition, the Johnson
administration assumed that American superiority
in personnel and weaponry would ultimately
triumph. C. American Soldiers Perspectives on
the War

Approximately 2.8 million Americans served in
Vietnam, at an average age of only nineteen some
were volunteers, including 7,000 women enlistees.
Many soldiers served because they were drafted
until 1973, when the nation shifted to an
all-volunteer force, the draft stood as a
concrete reminder of the governments impact on
the lives of ordinary Americans.

Blacks were drafted and died roughly in the same
proportion to their share of the draftage
population black and white sons of the poor and
the working class shouldered a disproportionate
amount of the fighting.
Young men from more affluent backgrounds were
more likely to avoid combat through student
deferments, medical exemptions, and appointments
to the National Guard, thus making Johnsons
Vietnam policy more acceptable to the middle
class.

Rarely were there large-scale battles, only
skirmishes rather than front lines and conquered
territory, there were only daytime operations in
the areas the Vietcong controlled at night.
Racism was a fact of everyday life many soldiers
lumped the South Vietnamese and the Vietcong
together in the term gook.

65
Lieutenant Colonel John P. Vann (left) shown
during his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1963,
discussing a tactical decision.
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Fighting and surviving under such harsh
conditions took its toll cynicism and bitterness
were common and the pressure of waging war under
such conditions drove many soldiers to seek
escape in alcohol or drugs.
As Womens Army Corps (WACs), nurses, and
civilians serving with organizations such as the
United Service Organization (USO), women
volunteers witnessed death and mutilation on a
massive scale.

67
The Cold War Consensus UnravelsPublic Opinion
on Vietnam
68

By the late 1960s, public opinion began to turn
against the war in Vietnam television had much
to do with these attitudes as Vietnam was the
first televised war.
Despite glowing statements made on television, by
1967, many administration officials privately
reached a more pessimistic conclusion regarding
the war.
The administration was accused of suffering from
a credibility gap in 1966, televised hearings
by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee raised
further questions about U.S. policy.

Economic developments put Johnson and his
advisors even more on the defensive the costs of
the war became evident as the growing federal
deficit nudged the inflation rate upward,
beginning the inflationary spiral that plagued
the U.S. economy throughout the 1970s.
After the escalation in the spring of 1965,
various antiwar coalitions organized several mass
demonstrations in Washington participants shared
a common skepticism about the means and aims of
U.S. policy and argued that the war was
antithetical to American ideals.

70
The button on this fatigue hat belonging to a
veteran who served two tours of duty demonstrates
veterans' response to the many Americans who just
wanted to forget the war that the United States
failed to win. Because their war was so different
from other American wars, Vietnam veterans often
returned home to hostility or indifference. The
POW-MIA pin refers to prisoners of war and those
missing in action. This man was unusual in
serving two tours of duty in Vietnam most
soldiers served only one year.
71
Soldiers in previous wars had served "for the
duration, but Vietnam warriors had one-year
tours of duty a commander called it "the worst
personnel policy in history, because men had
less incentive to fight near the end of their
tour, wanting merely to stay alive and whole. The
U.S. military inflicted great losses on the
enemy, estimated at more than 200,000 by the end
of 1967. Yet it could claim no more than a
stalemate. In the words of infantryman Tim
O'Brien, who later became an award-winning
author, "We slay one of them, hit a mine, kill
another, hit another mine. . . . And each piece
of ground left behind is his the enemy's from
the moment we are gone on our next hunt.
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Abe Fortas, a distinguished lawyer who had argued
a major civil rights case, Gideon v. Wainwright
(1963), before the Supreme Court, was a close
friend and adviser to President Lyndon Johnson.
This photograph of the president and Fortas taken
in July 1965 illustrates how Johnson used his
body as well as his voice to bend people to his
will.
73
Student Activism

Youth were among the key protestors of the era.
The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in
their manifesto, the Port Huron Statement,
expressed their disillusionment with the consumer
culture and the gulf between the prosperous and
the poor and rejected Cold War ideology and
foreign policy.
The founders of SDS referred to themselves as the
New Left to distinguish themselves from the
Old Left of Communists and Socialists of the
1930s and 1940s.

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At the University of California at Berkeley, the
Free Speech Movement organized a sitin in
response to administrators attempts to ban
political activity on campus.
Many protests centered on the draft, especially
after the Selective Service system abolished
automatic student deferments in January 1966 in
public demonstrations of civil disobedience,
opponents of the war burned their draft cards,
closed down induction centers, and broke into
Selective Service offices and destroyed records.

Much of the universities research budget came
from Defense Department contracts students
demanded that the Reserve Officer Training Corps
be removed from college campuses.
The Johnson administration had to face the
reality of large-scale opposition to the war with
protests like Stop the Draft Week and the
siege on the Pentagon.

79
The Counterculture

The hippie symbolized the new counterculture, a
youthful movement that glorified liberation from
traditional social strictures.
Popular music by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob
Dylan expressed political idealism, protest, and
loss of patience with the war and was an
important part of the counterculture.

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Beatlemania helped to deepen generational divide
and paved the way for the more rebellious,
angrier music of other British groups, notably
the Rolling Stones.
Drugs and sex intertwined with music as a crucial
element of the youth culture as celebrated at the
1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which
attracted 400,000 young people.

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In 1967, at the worlds first Human Be-In at
San Franciscos Golden Gate Park, Timothy Leary,
urged gatherers to turn on, tune in, and drop
out the year 1967 was also the Summer of Love
in which city neighborhoods swelled with young
dropouts, drifters, and teenage runaways dubbed
flower children.

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Many young people stayed out of the
counterculture and the antiwar movement, yet
media coverage made it seem that all of American
youth were rejecting political, social, and
cultural norms.

89
The Widening Struggle for Civil Rights

Once the system of legal, or de jure, segregation
had fallen, the civil rights movement turned to
the more difficult task of eliminating the de
facto segregation, enforced by custom.

Outside the South, racial discrimination was less
flagrant, but it was pervasive, especially in
education, housing, and employment for example,
Brown outlawed separate schools, but it did
nothing to change the educational system where
schools were all-black or all-white because of
residential segregation.

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As civil rights leaders confronted northern
racism, the movement fractured along generational
lines older, established civil rights activists
supported the nonviolent efforts of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), while younger activists
questioned the very goal of integration into
white society and some embraced Black separatism

Black rage had expressed itself historically in
demands for racial separation, espoused in the
late nineteenth century by the Back to Africa
Movement and in the 1920s by Marcus Garvey

Black separatism was revived by a religious group
known as the Black Muslims, an organization that
stressed black pride, unity, and self-help and
was hostile to whites.
The Black Muslims most charismatic
figure,Malcolm X, advocated militant protest and
separatism, although he condoned the use of
violence only for self-defense.
Malcolm X eventually broke with the Nation of
Islam and was assassinated by three Black Muslims
while delivering a speech in Harlem in 1965.

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A more secular black nationalist movement calling
for black self-reliance and racial pride emerged
in 1966 under the banner of Black Power the
same year, the Black Panthers organization was
founded to protect blacks from police violence.
Among the most significant legacies of black
power was the assertion of racial pride as
exhibited by many blacks insisting on the usage
of Afro-American rather than Negro and the
adoption of African clothing and hairstyles to
awake interest in black history, art, and
literature.

101

Support for civil rights by white Americans began
to erode when blacks began demanding immediate
access to higher-paying jobs, housing, and
education, along with increased political power,
and when a wave of race riots began in 1964,
primarily over the issue of police brutality.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (the Kerner Commission) released a 1968
report on the riots and warned that the nation
was moving toward two separate and unequal
societies one black, one white

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On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, setting off
an explosion of urban rioting in more than 100
cities with his assassination, the civil rights
movement lost the leader best able to stir the
conscience of white America.

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The legacies of the civil rights movement were
that segregation was overturned, federal
legislation ensured protection of black
Americans civil rights, southern blacks were
enfranchised, and black candidates entered the
political arena, yet more entrenched forms of
segregation and discrimination persisted.

106
The Rights Revolution

The black civil rights movement provided an
innovative model for other groups seeking to
expand their rights.
The situation of Mexican Americans changed when
the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA)
mobilized support for Kennedy and worked with
other groups to elect Mexican American candidates
to Congress.

107

Younger Mexican Americans rejected the
assimilationist approach of their elders in
1969, 1,500 students met in Denver to hammer out
a new nationalist political and cultural agenda.
They coined the term Chicano and organized a
new political party, La Raza Unida (The United
Race), to promote Chicano political interests.

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Chicano strategists also pursued economic
objectives César Chávez organized the United
Farm Workers (UFW), the first union to represent
migrant workers successfully.
North American Indians suffered the highest
levels of unemployment and poverty, the most
inadequate housing, and the least access to
education.
Some Indian groups became more assertive, taking
the new label of Native Americans, embracing the
concept of Red Power, and organizing protests
and demonstrations. In 1968, the militant
American Indian Movement (AIM) was organized.

110

As a method of protest, in 1969 Native Americans
seized and occupied Alcatraz for over a year.
Later, protesters occupied the Federal Bureau of
Indian Affairs in Washington.
In February, 1973, AIM activists began an
occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the
site of an army massacre of the Sioux in 1890.
The seventy-one-day siege, in which the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) killed one
protestor and wounded another, alienated many
whites, but it spurred government action on
tribal issues.

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1968 A Year of Shocks

The Johnson administrations hopes for Vietnam
evaporated when the Vietcong unleashed a massive
assault, known as the Tet offensive, on major
urban areas in South Vietnam.
The attack made a mockery of official
pronouncements that the United States was winning
the war and swung public opinion more strongly
against the conflict.

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Launched by the North Vietnamese in January 1968,
the Tet Offensive took the war to major cities
for the first time. NLF troops quickly occupied
Hue, the ancient imperial city, and held it for
nearly a month. Supported by aerial bombing, U.S.
marines finally took back the city, street by
street.
Nonetheless, the Tet Offensive was considered a
psychological and propaganda victory for the Viet
Cong, as it exposed the falsities previously set
forth by General William Westmoreland and the
Johnson Administration, and increased domestic
opposition to the war.

113

Antiwar Senator Eugene J.McCarthys strong
showing in the presidential primaries reflected
profound public dissatisfaction with the course
of the war and propelled Senator Robert Kennedy
into the race on an antiwar platform.
On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation by
announcing that he would not seek reelection he
vowed to devote his remaining months in office to
the search for peace, and peace talks began in
May 1968.

114

The year 1968 also witnessed the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. and its ensuing riots
students occupied several buildings at Columbia
University a strike by students and labor that
toppled the French government and the
assassination of Robert Kennedy, which shattered
the dreams of those hoping for social change
through political action.
The Democratic Party never fully recovered from
Johnsons withdrawal and Robert Kennedys
assassination.

115

At the Democratic convention, the political
divisions generated by the war consumed the
party outside the convention yippies
demonstrated, diverted attention from the more
serious and numerous activists who came to
Chicago as delegates or volunteers.

116

The Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard J.
Daley, called out the police to break up the
demonstrations. In what was later described as a
police riot, patrolmen attacked protestors at
the convention with Mace, teargas, and clubs as
TV viewers watched, which only cemented a popular
impression of the Democrats as the party of
disorder.

117

Democrats dispiritedly nominated Hubert H.
Humphrey and his running mate Edmund S.Muskie and
approved a platform that endorsed continued
fighting in Vietnam while diplomatic means to an
end were explored.

118
Backlash

The turmoil surrounding the civil rights and
antiwar movements strengthened support for law
and order many Americans were fed up with
protest and dissent.
George Wallace, a third-party candidate,
skillfully combined attacks on liberal
intellectuals and government elites with
denunciations of school segregation and forced
busing.

119

Richard Nixon tapped the increasingly
conservative mood of the electorate in an amazing
political comeback, winning the 1968 Republican
presidential nomination.
On October 31, 1968, Johnson announced a complete
halt to the bombing of North Vietnam Nixon
countered by intimating that he had a plan for
the end of the war, although he did not.

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121

On election day, Nixon received 43.4 percent of
the vote to Humphreys 42.7 percent, defeating
him by only 510,000 votes out of the 73 million
that were cast, and Wallace finished with 13.5
percent of the popular vote.

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