U.S. History II
Lecture 12, Chapter 29:
The 1960’s

No decade in American history ranks higher than the 1960’s in the scope of changes that racked the nation. The tranquility of the 1950’s prepared no one for the wars that raged both at home and abroad in the ‘60’s.

Kennedy entered the White House to great acclaim. Kennedy was the first president born in the 20th century. As Kennedy himself said in his inaugural address, “the torch has been passed to a new generation.” Young people answered the call.

Kennedy brought numerous Ivy League scholars to Washington to advise him; 15 of his advisors had been Rhodes Scholars. Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s defense secretary, had served as president of Ford Motor Company.

Foreign Policy

Kennedy began his presidency by working on domestic issues, but Congress often blocked his efforts. Kennedy succeeded in implementing the Peace Corps in March 1961, but he did so by executive order. Based on the CCC of Franklin Roosevelt, the Peace Corps sent thousands of volunteers to third-world countries to work in schools and hospitals.

Kennedy also proposed a space program to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. He wouldn’t live to see it, but Neil Armstrong would step on the moon in July 1969.

The decade started with the Russians ahead in the space race. Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in April 1961; Alan Shepard of the U.S. flew 300 miles in May. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the globe in February 1962 in the Mercury program capsule Friendship 7.

Kennedy’s first foreign crisis came from a program he inherited from Eisenhower. On 17 April 1961, 1,500 CIA-trained soldiers — mainly Cuban exiles — invaded Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Communist government. Kennedy refused to support the landing with air or naval support. The exiles were captured or killed. Most Latin American nations were furious with the U.S. anyway, feeling that Cuba’s internal affairs were Cuba’s business. Cuba’s affairs would become America’s business before long.

In Jun 1961, Kennedy met Khrushchev in Vienna. Khrushchev tried to force Kennedy to pull American forces and support from West Berlin. The capitalist sector of West Berlin was considered a huge embarrassment to the Soviets, primarily because so many East Germans sought to live there to escape the economic morass of Communism. When Kennedy refused to stop supporting West Berlin, the Communists began constructing a wall around it. In August 1961, the Berlin Wall surrounded West Berlin with 28 miles of concrete, barbed wire, and machine guns. Emigration from East Germany dropped from 2.5 million in the years of 1949 to 1962 to less than 5,000 over the next 7 years.

In October 1962, the worst crisis of Kennedy’s presidency occurred in Cuba. A U-2 spy plane flew over the island and photographed Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. This put Russian missiles within 90 miles of Miami. Kennedy responded quickly and decisively by implementing a naval blockade of Cuba.

Kennedy told the nation about the missiles in a nationwide TV broadcast on 22 October. He also demanded that the Soviets remove the missiles already installed, while warning the Soviets that any missile fired from Cuba would be considered an “attack by the Soviet Union on the United States” and would trigger a “full retaliatory response.” While the world watched, Soviet ships neared Cuba and the blockade.

At the last moment, Khrushchev blinked. On 26 October, Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles if the U.S. pledged not to invade Cuba. Kennedy agreed, but he also sent word to the Soviets that the missiles would be destroyed if not removed within 48 hours. Khrushchev accepted the agreement on 28 October.

Khrushchev was forced to resign in October 1964; the Cuban missile crisis was one reason for his ouster. Kennedy’s reputation grew immensely. However, the closeness of nuclear war led the U.S. and the USSR to install a “hot line” between Washington, D.C. and Moscow in 1963.

Vietnam

Kennedy also inherited a stalemate in Vietnam from Eisenhower. Washington sought to preserve South Vietnam as a capitalist, democratic bulwark against Communist North Vietnam. Unfortunately, South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem was the wrong man at the helm. A U.S.-educated Catholic, Diem could not connect with the Buddhist majority in South Vietnam. Even worse, when protests broke out over his policies, Diem responded violently. On 1 November 1963, Diem was overthrown in a military coup; he and his brother were shot in the process, a move that intensely bothered Kennedy. The Americans had known of the coup and done nothing to stop it.

Civil Rights under Kennedy

Back home, the civil rights struggle from the 1950’s continued. During the 1960’s, many of the children who had first attended integrated schools in the 1950’s would join the movement as college students intent on ending segregation in the nation.

The first sign of protest came before Kennedy’s inauguration. On 1 February 1960, 4 black students, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), sat at a lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina and refused to leave until they were served. The campaign quickly spread throughout the nation.

CORE then announced plans to test the Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting racial segregation in bus terminals, train stations, and airports. In May 1961, 13 “freedom riders” left Washington on a Greyhound bus going to New Orleans. The riders intentionally tested segregated facilities at each stop along the way. Trouble hit them in Anniston when the bus was firebombed. The riders were dragged from the bus and beaten severely by a white mob; one rider was critically injured. The rest of the riders attempted to continue the trip, but they met serious problems in Birmingham in the person of Eugene “Bull” Connor, the police chief. The group almost gave up, especially when attorney general Robert Kennedy (JFK’s brother) asked CORE to abandon the effort to avoid embarrassing the president in his meeting with Khrushchev. Instead, new freedom riders replaced the injured, and Kennedy sent federal marshals to escort them to New Orleans. In September 1961, the federal government banned interstate carriers from any terminal that practiced segregation.

In 1962, the war moved to Mississippi. A federal court ruled that Ole Miss was required to admit James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran. Mississippi’s governor, Ross Barnett, had committed one black man to a mental institution to prevent his enrollment at Ole Miss. Barnett declared that Mississippi would ignore all federal rulings.

Kennedy responded by sending hundreds of federal marshals to Ole Miss. A mob of more than 2,000 whites met the marshals, and the battle was on. By the time the fighting stopped, 2 people were killed and hundreds injured, including 28 marshals who had been shot. Kennedy sent troops into Oxford. 23,000 soldiers patrolled the campus of Ole Miss while Meredith was enrolled.

Birmingham was next. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in town with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to end segregation in Alabama’s largest city. Bull Connor was ready for the challenge, using fire hoses and attack dogs on schoolchildren dressed in their Sunday best. Hundreds of blacks were arrested, including King. When local white church leaders called on King to end the protests, King responded with the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, criticizing the leaders for not joining the fight against segregation.

Tuscaloosa also played a role in the conflict. In June 1963, Wallace stood at the door of Fosters Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood from enrolling at the University. When federal marshals intervened, Wallace stepped aside, and Malone and Hood were enrolled.

Personal note: Back in the early 1990’s, I met a former Guardsman from Tuscaloosa who swore the whole event at the University was staged. He claimed that Wallace and Nicholas Katzenbach, Deputy Attorney General, met at a Tuscaloosa armory the night before and planned the event to prevent the kind of violence that raged at Ole Miss. Was he right? Who knows?

In June 1963, Kennedy sent his first civil rights bill to Congress. The bill would ban discrimination in employment, federally assisted programs, and public accommodations. The Southerners in Congress were furious, as were conservatives who disliked segregation but also disliked federal intervention in what they saw as solely private economic affairs. When the bill stalled, 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and heard Martin Luther King’s famous speech entitled, “I Have a Dream.”

Kennedy would never see the passage of the Civil Rights Bill. On 22 November 1963, as he and Jacqueline rode through Dallas in an open car, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository. Kennedy was hit and killed. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination, only to be shot himself two days later by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.

Johnson’s Presidency

Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as president on Air Force One in Dallas later that day. Johnson was almost the exact opposite of Kennedy; raised in near-poverty in Texas, the antithesis of Kennedy’s Massachusetts upbringing in the wealth of the Kennedys.

As Senate Majority Leader prior to his election as Vice-President, Johnson had learned the art of arm-twisting in politics. This skill helped him immensely in Washington, but it proved catastrophic when Johnson’s tactics failed on the international scene.

Johnson continued to fight for some of Kennedy’s programs, including a huge tax cut that Congress passed in February 1964. Johnson also met with Martin Luther King, Jr. and promised to work for the Civil Rights Bill. The bill passed the House in February and the Senate (over intense Southern support) in June. Johnson signed the bill into law on 2 July 1964.

Johnson could sign a civil rights bill, but opposition to civil rights continued nationwide, more fiercely than ever. When volunteers began going south to register blacks to vote, many were met with violence. In Mississippi, 3 workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — disappeared on 21 June; their bodies were found 5 weeks later in an earthen dam.

In July, riots broke out in Harlem, Philadelphia, Paterson (New Jersey) and Rochester (New York). At the Democratic National Convention, trouble erupted when two delegations from Mississippi — one all white and the other integrated — showed up and demanded representation. Fannie Lou Hamer, representing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (the integrated delegation), said, “I was beaten till I was exhausted... All of this on account we wanted to register, to become first class citizens. If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America.” In a compromise that pleased no one, Johnson moved Senator Hubert Humphrey (his running mate) to offer the Freedom Party 2 voting delegates and the promise of integrated delegations at future conventions. Hamer left.

The Republicans fared no better. At an acrimonious convention, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was nominated as the presidential candidate, with William Miller of New York as his running mate. Goldwater stirred the nation with his acceptance speech, saying “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Johnson benefitted from an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam when 2 Navy destroyers were attacked by North Vietnamese boats. Johnson ordered U.S. planes to bomb North Vietnam for the first time in retaliation. Problem is, no one can say for certain the ships were attacked. Congress gave Johnson full authority to repel “further aggression” in an act known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. After the Resolution was passed, Johnson promised on the campaign trail, “We don’t want to get tied down in a land war in Asia.”

Although Goldwater lost, his campaign laid the groundwork for future wins by conservatives in the GOP and in America. One of those benefactors would be Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Johnson’s Full Term

Johnson didn’t want an expensive war because he had other ideas for federal budgets. LBJ had always admired FDR, especially the New Deal. Johnson now saw an opportunity to mimic his hero with a “War on Poverty.” Several new programs were created to end poverty, including food stamps and Head Start. Johnson also herded legislation through Congress creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs, federal medical assistance for elderly Americans and (via matching grants to the states) for welfare recipients.

The War on Poverty became part of Johnson’s “Great Society.” The Great Society included immigration reform, including a ban on Asian immigrants dating to 1924.

Johnson would not be remembered for his War on Poverty or his Great Society. In spite of his best efforts, the Vietnam War escalated to a full-scale war in his term.

In some ways, the U.S. government failed to realize the true nature of the Vietnam War. To Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnamese leader, the war was not over Communism vs. Capitalism; this was a war of independence and unification of Vietnam.

Johnson feared spending too much on the war, but he also was painfully aware that no American president had ever lost a war and didn’t plan to be the first. Johnson also realized the American people would not stand for a loss against Communism.

As Communists in the south (the Viet Cong) increased their attacks, Johnson faced pressure to do something. By this time in the war, the North Vietnamese were sending soldiers as well as supplies to their southern counterparts. American planes bombed the North, but the bombings accomplished little because the North Vietnamese had so little to bomb.

In March 1965, Johnson ordered the first ground forces into South Vietnam. Two marine battalions arrived at the U.S. Air Force base at Da Nang. As American involvement increased, so did the number of young American men seeking draft deferments for college or service in the National Guard. By the end of Johnson’s term, American forces would total more than 500,000 in South Vietnam.

The Americans tried bombing the North, but due to political considerations the capital of Hanoi was hardly touched. B-52’s dropped tons of bombs on the “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” a jungle path from the north to the south of Vietnam used by the Communists to filter men and material into the Souht. American troops went on “search and destroy” missions to find and kill Viet Cong guerillas. The Viet Cong targeted both American troops and Vietnamese officials. The Vietnamese were traditionally a rural people, but Viet Cong activity in the rural areas forced thousands of Vietnamese into urban areas such as Saigon.

Johnson continued to seek to spend no more than necessary in Vietnam to preserve his domestic agenda. However, the costs continued to escalate. In July 1965, Johnson calculated the conflict would total $2 billion in the next year (nearly $12 billion in 2005 dollars). Instead, the nation spent nearly $8 billion in 1966 (nearly $48 billion in 2005 dollars). The war escalated to $21 billion in 1967 ($121 billion in 2005 dollars).

The debate in Washington was termed as “guns and butter.” Could the nation afford both domestic programs and an overseas war? In terms of the gross national product, the Vietnam War in 1967 was far cheaper than either WWII or the Korean conflict. Johnson tried to hide the costs of the war, but he was forced in August 1967 to ask for a 10% tax surcharge on individual and corporate incomes. Congress balked, sending the budget deficit in 1968 to $30 billion (over $173 billion in 2005 dollars).

The American public still supported the war, regardless of what they thought about Vietnam itself. The public saw the war in terms of Communism’s spread and supported containment.

Civil Rights under Johnson

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, people began pushing for voting rights for blacks. The SCLC was in the forefront of the battles.

In March 1965, King led a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL to demand voting rights for disenfranchised blacks in the state. The marchers were attacked on 9 March, which became known as “Bloody Sunday.” When protesters made a second attempt, King stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, enraging many in the crowd. Johnson approached Congress on 15 March with a new voting rights bill. In his speech to Congress, Johnson quoted the spiritual, “We Shall Overcome.” The march successfully finished at Montgomery on 25 March.

The violence grew worse. On 11 August, a riot occurred in Watts, a black section of Los Angeles, when a black motorist was arrested by white policemen. At least 34 people were killed, 1,000 injured, and 4,000 arrested in battles that were suppressed only with the help of 14,000 National Guard troops. What concerned most people was the intensity of the violence, especially given the nonviolent tactics preferred by the civil rights leaders.

Younger black leaders lost all patience with King’s approach. The head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Stokely Carmichael, raged at one rally attended by King and ended his speech with the cry, “Black Power! Black Power!” Carmichael became a strong advocate of racial separation rather than racial integration, the ideal pushed by the NAACP and SCLC.

Other blacks followed Malcolm X, the Muslim leader assassinated in 1965 by followers of Elijah Muhammad of the Black Muslims. Malcolm X once said, “I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence.” On another occasion, Malcolm X told someone when asked about non-violence, “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” When JFK was assassinated, Malcolm X attributed it to “chickens coming home to roost” — meaning Kennedy had failed to stop the violence that would eventually claim his life.

Armed struggle in the civil rights movement found its greatest adherents in the Black Panther movement. However, law enforcement officials targeted the movement with massive retaliation. At least 28 Black Panthers and 11 policemen died in conflicts across the nation.

The worst event happened in April 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. had travelled to Memphis to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers. In a sermon on 3 April, King said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop.... I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land.” King’s allusion to Moses was eerily prescient. The next day, King was shot while he stood on a hotel balcony. James Earl Ray was convicted of King’s murder. King was only 39.

Riots raged across the nation in protest to King’s assassination. At least 45 people died nationwide in the riots. With King’s death, an era of civil rights progress died with him. The movement had no one to replace him.

Vietnam

1968 proved to be Johnson’s undoing. On 31 January, the Vietnamese New Year (known as Tet), a massive Communist uprising enveloped South Vietnam. The Viet Cong attacked across the nation, even brazenly infiltrating the American embassy in Saigon. The Viet Cong killed thousands of Vietnamese officials and civilians when they captured the ancient capital city of Hue. More than 5,000 Communists were killed in the recapture of Hue, along with 400 South Vietnamese troops and 150 Americans.

At the American base of Khesanh, more than 40,000 North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded 6,000 Marines in a battle that resembed Dien Bien Phu. The American commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, announced, “We are not, repeat not, going to be defeated at Khesanh. I will tolerate no talking or even thinking to the contrary.” Over the next nine weeks, American B-52 bombers poured more than 75,000 tons of explosives on the North Vietnamese surrounding Khesanh. When the battle ended in American victory, more than 10,000 Communists had died to only 500 U.S. Marine deaths.

The worst damage occurred in the U.S. Even though Tet wiped out the Viet Cong and ended the Communist threat in much of South Vietnam, a nation that had been hearing only of imminent victory was stunned by the strength of the uprising. Johnson was as surprised as everyone else, especially at the attack on the embassy.

The press were even more virulent. To this point, the press had mostly supported the war, mostly because the public did. However, when American military officials in Saigon tried to downplay the Tet offiensive, columnist Art Buchwald compared Westmoreland to General George Custer, stating that “the battle of Little Big Horn had just turned the corner.”

Tet marked a turning point in the war. Ironically, just as the American military was winning in South Vietnam, public opinion turned against Johnson, with his approval rating dropping to 36% virtually overnight.

The 1968 Elections

Johnson had watched Truman lose any hope of re-election because of Korea, and now he saw himself in the same situation over Vietnam. He faced intense opposition from Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. McCarthy opposed the war and proposed an immediate cessation of hostilities. Antiwar sentiment spread across the nation, especially on college campuses. College students rallied to McCarthy’s campaign.

When McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary of 1968, Johnson knew he would never win the general election. Four days later, Robert Kennedy entered the race as an immediate frontrunner. On 31 March, Johnson announced, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the race on Johnson’s urging.

Kennedy may have been the front-runner, but his success was short-lived. In June 1968, only a few months after King’s death, Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary. As he celebrated in a Los Angeles ballroom, Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab nationalist. Kennedy’s assassination rocked the country.

With Kennedy’s death, the Democratic convention was doomed from the start. The convention would be held in Chicago. Mayor Richard Daley warned antiwar protesters they would not be welcome in the city. Across the nation, antiwar protesters were often beaten by Americans who didn’t want to think of the nation’s losing a war.

On some campuses, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) took over buildings to demonstrate against the war. One especially notable incident closed Columbia University.

As the convention approached, antiwar demonstrators made their way to Chicago in spite of Daley’s warnings. 6,000 soldiers, 5,000 National Guard troops, and hundreds of Chicago riot police awaited them. Speakers from the Black Panthers and SDS joined with other protesters to denounce the events of the convention. One group, calling itself the Youth International (“Yippie”) Party, held classes on LSD production.

On 28 August, demonstrators tried to approach the convention area; the TV cameras rolled and broadcast the events nationwide. The demonstrators and policemen met with clubs and tear gas flying everywhere. Hundreds of protesters were beaten as they shouted, “The whole world is watching; The whole world is watching!” Daley was incensed, cursing the protesters and their supporters on nationwide television on the convention floor. Delegates chose Hubert Humphrey as their candidate and quickly left the city. Humphrey’s ties to Johnson would follow him throughout the campaign.

The GOP chose Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s Vice-President. Nixon ran on a platform of “peace with honor” in Vietnam, “law and order” at home, and as the spokesman for America’s “silent majority:” those who paid their taxes, went to church, and respected the nation, in contrast to the demonstrators in Chicago.

There was a wild card in the 1968 election. George Wallace ran as a third-party candidate, promising to end “liberal judges,” “welfare cheats,” and “pot-smoking freaks in their beards and sandals.” Wallace found a nationwide sympathy vote for his platform, mostly in white working-class areas of the North, South, and West.

On election day, Nixon beat Wallace and Humphrey, carrying 32 states and 43.4% of the votes.

The 1960’s weren’t over, but the worst was behind the nation. Unfortunately, the nation would suffer the after effects of the decade for years to come.