The Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War, Domestic Policies of Johnson and Nixon

Civil Rights Leadership

"It was one of the most eloquent, profound, and unequivocal pleas for justice and freedom of all men ever made by any president." Martin Luther King Jr. telegraphed these words to President Kennedy in June of 1963, after Kennedy's civil rights address to the nation, and just months before King himself would deliver a speech that became the hallmark of the American civil rights movement. Kennedy and King each played key roles in bringing about profound changes in racial equality that transformed the nation in the 1960s. As president, Kennedy proposed some of the most important civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Yet it was King and his companions who had pushed Kennedy and Congress to defend civil rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. King became the fourth generation of Baptist preachers in his family when he was ordained in 1948, in his final year at Morehouse College. He would go on to receive his doctorate from Boston University. King's activist roots were almost as deep as his religious ones; both his father and maternal grandfather, with whom his family lived, were leaders in Atlanta's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as prominent clergymen.

Watergate

A criminal investigation, Congressional hearings, and an investigation by reporters for the Washington Post ensued. While Nixon was cleared of knowing anything about the actual break-in, he was found to have been involved in the subsequent cover-up. His attempts to avoid revealing incriminating evidence were made difficult when it was found that a secret White House taping system recorded most Oval Office conversations. The Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege did not give President Nixon the right to withhold evidence if it related to possible criminal activity. The "smoking gun" tape showed that Nixon had, indeed, played an active part in the attempted cover-up of the Watergate break-in. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and contempt of Congress. A proposal that the secret bombing of Cambodia be included in the articles was voted down, probably due to the embarrassing fact that five key members from both political parties had known at the time and had not done anything about it. Republican leaders bluntly informed Nixon that impeachment and removal from office were foregone conclusions, and said he should resign. President Nixon did so in early August 1974.

Christmas Bombing

A plane drops bombs on enemy forces in Vietnam. In 1971, the leak of a secret Defense Department study, now known as the Pentagon Papers, confirmed what many Americans had feared. From the beginning, the government had not told the whole truth about Vietnam. The US ally in South Vietnam, the ARVN, was militarily ineffective; US involvement in the war had been costly but still would not prevent a North Vietnamese conquest of the South. The alternately stalled and started peace talks in Paris made Americans think at times that peace was "at hand," and at other times that the war would be endless. The war reached a crescendo with the intensive "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor, ordered by President Nixon to force a negotiated settlement. Finally, the two sides agreed to a cease-fire, and the last US combat troops left Vietnam in 1973. Two years later the North would finally conquer the South, and Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

African Americans in Montgomery rally to end Jim Crow segregation by refusing to ride the city's buses. Martin Luther King Jr. becomes a leading voice in the movement. Meanwhile, discontent over discrimination was brewing in the general populace. In December, 1955, a woman famously sat for what she believed in and changed history. In Montgomery, Alabama, an African American seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a bus in December 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white man, and in so doing, disobeyed the law. She was arrested, and her action set off the nationwide civil rights movement. The black community rallied around her. That evening, a group met at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor. They decided to boycott the buses to protest segregation. Hundreds of thousands of black residents and others who were sympathetic to the cause joined in. The Montgomery bus boycott was a massive, collective public action taken by blacks to protest discrimination. The struggle was no longer behind the closed doors of the courts but out in the streets. As a result, more people joined in, and boycotts sprung up in other cities as well. The community remained strong, refusing to use the buses for a whole year until the courts ruled segregated public transportation illegal. This successful protest, begun by the courageous action of Mrs. Parks, launched the civil rights movement.

Intro 2

After World War II, African Americans began to speak out against their treatment as second-class Americans. Their new impetus came from returning World War II veterans, the movement of blacks from the South to the North and into the cities, and a rising black middle class. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was the main political organization pushing for change early on. In a series of court cases from 1946 to 1950, Thurgood Marshall won rulings to desegregate public schools and universities. In 1954, with Brown v. Board of Education, segregation in education was outlawed. The years 1954 through 1957 saw a flurry of activity to advance equal rights for African Americans: the Montgomery bus boycott, the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Convention (SCLC), and the integration of Little Rock Central High School. These gains were well-fought and hard-won. African Americans advanced their civil rights immensely, in legal terms, during these years. But social change did not follow quickly, and many schools remained segregated for decades.

Little Rock Confrontation

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defies the US Supreme Court and prevents the Little Rock Nine, a group of African American students, from starting high school.`

Robert Kennedy

As attorney general in John F. Kennedy's administration, Robert Kennedy pressed for federal enforcement of civil rights laws. The president's brother as well as a member of his cabinet, Kennedy also fought for new laws to ensure civil rights. Kennedy was instrumental in providing federal protection for civil rights activists in the South. He sent troops to protect the freedom riders, as well as black students who wanted to attend schools and universities.

The Great Society

As president in 1964, Johnson announced an "unconditional war on poverty in America." Based on the findings of Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962), a task force had set to work under President Kennedy to develop anti-poverty programs. LBJ built on this work with a wide range of programs to offer "a hand up, not a handout." The War on Poverty was a three-pronged attack on the causes and conditions of poverty, emphasizing education, income maintenance, and job creation. To combat poverty, LBJ established the Office of Economic Opportunity, and aimed first at rural poverty in Appalachia. This was followed by more War on Poverty programs, which included a Job Corps to train young people in marketable skills; Project Head Start for disadvantaged preschoolers; work-study programs for college students; the school breakfast program; help for employers who hired the chronically unemployed; Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic Peace Corps; and Community Action Programs to help neighborhood organization in poor areas. In the spring of 1964, in a commencement address at the University of Michigan, LBJ expanded his social agenda to call for the creation of a "Great Society." See President Johnson giving the speech and then read the text. What are the characteristics of the Great Society that LBJ called for?

Impact part 2

Asian Americans were one group that fought for change. Students demonstrated in favor of creating Asian American studies courses in colleges. They also called for restitution payments for Japanese citizens who were interned in US camps during World War II. Like African Americans and other minority groups, American Indians fought for equality. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) called for "red power" as it occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, reasserted ignored treaty rights, and developed cultural heritage programs. The Gay Liberation Front formed in New York City in 1969 in reaction to the Stonewall riots, a series of clashes between the gay community and police at the Stonewall Inn. The Gay Liberation Front pushed for equality and gay rights. Women also began to organize and push for equality. With the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW), women pursued equal rights and economic opportunity in the workplace.

Kennedy Vietnam

By 1963, Buddhist monks were setting themselves on fire to protest Diem's oppression. Finally, Diem was murdered by his own officers, backed by the CIA, in November 1963. After Diem, the South had nine different leaders in five years. Meanwhile, Kennedy had increased the number of military advisers to 16,000. He condoned the use of napalm (jellied gasoline) and Agent Orange and other herbicides and defoliants. What Kennedy would have done in Vietnam is an open and hotly debated question; but after President Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson would have to decide how to handle this conflict.

Ending Segregation in Education

Ending Segregation in Education Like other parts of US society, some states carried out racial discrimination and segregation in public schools as well. In the 1950s, civil rights leaders began targeting public schools for equality. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas has achieved iconic status, and rightfully so. It knocked down the legal wall erected by the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that for more than 50 years separated blacks and whites in our nation's schools. The lawyer who argued and won that case was Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908 and attended Lincoln University, an all black college. He then applied to the University of Maryland Law School but was rejected because he was black. So, he attended law school at Howard University in Washington, DC, the jewel of the black college system. Marshall's first legal triumph must have been especially sweet to him; in 1933, he represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black student who was suing the University of Maryland Law School for admission. Marshall won, and Murray studied law alongside his white colleagues there.

An American Dilemma

Gunnar Myrdal's report on social, economic, and political conditions of black US citizens is published. The study, An American Dilemma, brought attention to the stark contrast between American ideals and the unequal treatment of blacks.

Introduction

Imagine going out to eat at a restaurant with your family or friends on a Friday night. You aren't sure where to go, but you see a restaurant crowded with many smiling customers, so you decide to try the food there. After waiting in line for 20 minutes like everyone else, you ask for a table. The manager scowls and tells you the restaurant won't serve you and that you have to leave. What would your reaction be? African Americans faced this discrimination every day in the United States until the mid-1900s. Although the Civil War had abolished slavery, many states, particularly in the South, began passing laws that persecuted blacks and other minorities. In the South, the Jim Crow system of laws and traditions relegated blacks to second-class status. For a time, after the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, the government permitted racial segregation as long as states provided public and private establishments of equal quality for whites and blacks. But the quality of white and black establishments was far from equal. This level of discrimination in the United States prompted African Americans and others to push for civil rights and equality, thus beginning the civil rights movement.

A Rising Leader

In 1955, King was selected to head the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which protested Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. King's first major protest exhibited many of the qualities that would characterize the civil rights movement under his leadership. King effectively mobilized Montgomery's black population while also garnering support from whites and outside organizations. Most important, King was determined to follow Gandhi's example of nonviolent protest. King's role in the civil rights movement soon grew, and he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a major player in coordinating civil rights protests throughout the South. It was the nonviolence of these protests, in the face of shocking brutality from Southern leaders and law enforcement, that won support from people across the nation. In April 1963, when King was arrested at a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, he wrote a letter explaining this philosophy of nonviolent protest. Read more about King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Southern Leadership Conference

In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr., along with some colleagues, formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate protests, raise funds, and train black leaders in nonviolent direct action. The SCLC worked closely with other civil rights groups, including the NAACP, which helped to bring civil rights cases to court.

Birmingham Campaign

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC helped local organizations in Birmingham, Alabama, launch a massive campaign against segregation. Throughout the series of nonviolent protests, Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor, a staunch segregationist, met the protesters with cattle prods, fire hoses, tear gas, and attack dogs. The image of the peaceful protesters, some of them children, not striking back against these police attacks outraged the nation. President Kennedy stated, "The civil rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He has helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln."

Federal Job Discrimination ends

In July 1948, President Truman issues an executive order barring all racial discrimination for all federal employment.

Battles in Court

In the 1930s, the NAACP launched a series of legal attacks to take down Plessy v. Ferguson. The group set its sights on integrating education, with Thurgood Marshall arguing the cases as the NAACP's chief counsel. Three key victories advanced the cause: Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 1938 Marshall racked up a first win in this Supreme Court case. The court ruled that if Missouri denied blacks entrance to its law school, then it had to create a fully equal institution for blacks to provide access to education. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 1950 African American law student George McLaurin had been admitted to the University of Oklahoma (Oklahoma didn't want a repeat of the Gaines ruling and have to build a new university), but he was not allowed to eat or study with the white students. The NAACP's challenge was successful: the Supreme Court ruled this practice unconstitutional. Sweatt v. Painter, 1950 The NAACP had brought a similar case involving a student at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. The administrators there had relegated Herman Sweatt to a basement room, denying him access to the campus itself because he was black. The Supreme Court also ruled this treatment unconstitutional.

Introduction

In the Vietnam War, a conflict that lasted nearly two decades, the United States fought to defeat Ho Chi Minh and the communist forces of North Vietnam. The war had a tremendous effect on the United States. By its end, 60,000 US soldiers had been killed in action and another 300,000 were wounded. The government had spent about $150 million. Under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, military advisers were sent to South Vietnam to help train soldiers; however, neither president ordered ground troops to the area. That all changed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. By the end of 1965, just two years into his term, more than 180,000 US combat troops were fighting in Vietnam. In 1966, that number doubled. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were being killed and antiwar sentiment was growing throughout the United States. With the war becoming increasingly unpopular and Johnson's credibility fading fast, the president announced to the public that he would not seek a second term. Richard Nixon, who campaigned on bringing the war to an end, won the 1968 presidential election. Nixon adopted a policy known as Vietnamization, a process involving the gradual withdrawal of US troops while the South Vietnamese assumed more of the fighting. By the beginning of Nixon's second term, US troops were coming home. To this day, Vietnam is the only US military defeat, and it left a deep and lasting impact on Americans.

Freedom riders

In the summer of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent a mixed group of black and white nonviolent "freedom riders" to travel by bus through the South, testing federal bans on segregated transportation. All went well until the group reached Alabama. There, segregationists bombed a bus carrying freedom riders, and the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham attacked riders as they left the bus. In Montgomery, riders were attacked again, prompting US Attorney General Robert Kennedy to call in federal troops to protect them. In Mississippi, over the course of the summer, more than 300 riders were arrested and jailed. The riders triumphed when the Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregation in interstate trave

Brown v. Board of Education

In this momentous case, the US Supreme Court strikes down Plessy v. Ferguson and its "separate but equal doctrine" in all public education, from kindergarten through university. School segregation is outlawed.

Voting Rights

Johnson followed up the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act put an end to discriminatory practices, such as the poll tax and literacy tests, that had kept African Americans from voting. Federal government oversight now put a stop to the disenfranchisement that had begun in the Jim Crow era following Reconstruction.

Marshall

Later, Marshall's career took him to New York, where he became chief counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Here, he became a key architect of early civil rights advances from 1938 to 1957, arguing all the significant cases in the struggle for equality. His outstanding track record defending the rights of minorities drew both national and international attention. The United Nations asked him to help draw up the constitutions of two newly independent countries in Africa, Ghana and Tanzania. In the 1960s, President Kennedy appointed Marshall to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and in 1965 he became the US Solicitor General, the most powerful lawyer in the federal government. A gifted and eloquent debater, Marshall argued and won more cases before the Supreme Court than any other lawyer in history. In 1967, he reached the pinnacle of his profession, gaining a seat on the US Supreme Court. Marshall resigned from the court in 1991. He died in 1993.

Johnson's Domestic Agenda

Lyndon Baines Johnson, often called LBJ, was born in 1908 in the rural hill country of south-central Texas. In his twenties, Johnson worked as a teacher and as state director of the New Deal's National Youth Administration. Early on LBJ found his natural home in politics. In 1937, he was elected to Congress before the age of 30. He moved on to the Senate in 1948, where he became the most able negotiator of compromises between opposing sides since Henry Clay. Johnson won passage of proposed legislation by courting allies and neutralizing foes. He joked in those years that, without his help, the Republicans and President Eisenhower wouldn't be able to pass the Lord's Prayer through Congress. He applied the "LBJ treatment" to friend and enemy alike, using his personality and physical presence to dominate others. A prize-winning biography of LBJ, Master of the Senate (2002), details this phase of Johnson's career. You can read the review of the biography.

Environment and Consumer Safety

Lyndon Johnson was the first president to send a special message about the environment to Congress. Air and water pollution were addressed in legislation such as the Clean Air Act, and measures were taken to preserve wilderness and endangered species. Laws were passed regulating meat and poultry inspection, and requiring truth in packaging and truth in lending, so consumers would know the contents of food and drugs and the terms of mortgages and car loans.

SCLC Established

Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to continue the popular movement to end legal segregation and gain full civil rights.

SCLC and Little Rock 9

Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott concluded with a US Supreme Court ruling that declared the bus segregation laws in Alabama unconstitutional and illegal. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference In 1957, after the success in Montgomery, King and other black leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to continue to push for full civil rights. Key platform planks of the SCLC were that true democracy is incompatible without civil rights for all, and that mass nonviolent action was the most potent strategy to achieve this. The SCLC worked with local organizations nationwide to advance their progressive agenda, and it remains active today. The Little Rock Nine In 1957, school desegregation was still moving very slowly. Resistance ran through all levels of white society. When nine black students, who had enrolled in a white school as ordered by the court, tried to enter Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus brought out the National Guard to stop them. But even after a court ordered the removal of the National Guard, the students weren't able to attend classes. A crowd of angry whites harassed and threatened them to the extent that local police had to remove the students for their safety. In the end, President Eisenhower had to send in 1,000 US paratroopers to keep the peace. It was the first time a president had sent federal troops into a state since Reconstruction. For a full year, those nine black students went to school under the protection of federal soldiers.

Great Society Part 2

Measurable gains were made by the Great Society. Poverty and infant mortality declined, and African American family income rose, although it still was only 60 percent of white family income. Programs to improve the health, education, and nutrition of poor Americans had an impact. So did efforts to clean up air and water pollution and increase access to college. Medicare dramatically reduced poverty among older Americans. Civil rights and voting rights that had been promised in the Constitutional amendments after the Civil War were finally achieved. Perhaps, though, the greatest success of the Great Society was the hope it gave to the disadvantaged that they could also contribute to and benefit from the promise of America. Great Society programs have been criticized for being oversold and underfunded. Martin Luther King Jr. said that the War on Poverty was "shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam." Certainly that escalating Asian war diverted attention and tax dollars from the domestic social programs of the Great Society. Joseph Califano was a special assistant to President Johnson, serving as his top aide for domestic affairs. Later, from 1977-79, Califano was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Read his assessment of the success of the Great Society.

Health Care

Medicare was established in 1965 to provide health insurance for Americans over age 65. Before this time, the lack of health care coverage was a financial drain on many older Americans. Medicaid provided similar health care coverage for the poor.

March on Washington

On August 28, 1963, over 200,000 people of all races, more than double the expected number, marched in Washington, DC, in support of Kennedy's civil rights bill. In one of the most enduring speeches of the day, Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream for racial equality with the crowd. March organizer A. Philip Randolph characterized the gathered crowd: "We are not a pressure group, we are not an organization or a group of organizations, we are not a mob. We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom."

Greensboro Sit In

On February 1, 1960, four black college students sat down at the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to move until they had been served. Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond returned each day and sat at the counter until closing. Slowly, others joined them, until protesters occupied all the seats at the counter and also at a nearby Kress store, while protesters picketed out front. Soon the sit-ins spread to other parts of the South, at parks, libraries, and other segregated places. Five months after the Greensboro Four started the sit-in, Woolworth agreed to desegregate their lunch counters nationwide.

President John F. Kennedy

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised speech advocating for civil rights reform. Martin Luther King Jr. called Kennedy's speech "one of the most eloquent, profound, and unequivocal pleas for justice and freedom of all men ever made by any president." Soon after his speech, Kennedy proposed a civil rights bill to Congress that would ban segregation in public places and withhold federal funds from discriminating programs. The bill remained stuck in Congress until after Kennedy's death, but in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through an even stronger version of the bill.

Nixon and Vietnam part 2

One step that Nixon was unwilling to take was to let North Vietnam dominate all of Indochina. This decision stalled the Paris peace talks and led Nixon to widen the war as he tried to force a negotiated settlement on the North Vietnamese. In 1969, Nixon secretly authorized the intensive bombing of Cambodia. Covertly targeted by US bombing raids since 1965, Cambodia, an officially neutral country, was heavily bombed. By the end of the war over two million tons of ordnance had devastated the country. In the spring of 1970, the United States joined ARVN (South Vietnam) forces in a ground invasion of Cambodia. President Nixon ordered this "incursion" without consulting Congress. This invasion and other events deepened public disgust with the war. Americans had only recently learned about the 1968 massacre in the village of My Lai, where US forces killed more than 300 unarmed civilians. New waves of student protests in the spring of 1970 closed hundreds of colleges and universities. At Kent State University in Ohio, the National Guard was called out to quell the unrest. The poorly trained guardsmen opened fire on the protesting students, killing four. Two weeks later, two students were killed by police fire at Jackson State in Mississippi.

Nixon and Vietnam

Opposition to the war was a major political issue during the 1968 presidential election. Richard Nixon, running as the Republican candidate, won the election largely due to his campaign promise to end US involvement in the war and bring the troops home. It was widely reported that he had a secret plan, although Nixon never said it outright. As president, he faced the dilemma that had haunted Johnson: how to end an unpopular and draining war. Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger promised Americans "peace with honor," but was that goal achievable? The Nixon administration pursued two policies, Vietnamization and de-escalation, to calm the antiwar feelings at home. Vietnamization meant that South Vietnamese troops would take over most combat missions with the support of US money, weapons, training, and advice. De-escalation meant a slow but steady withdrawal of US troops. The number of troops dropped from about 550,000 in 1969 to 50,000 in 1973. Nixon also tried to quiet student protests with changes in the draft law, judging that college students wouldn't protest so loudly once their own lives were less affected. In 1969, the draft became a lottery, and it ended altogether in 1973. At Nixon's urging, the nation moved to an all-volunteer military.

Johnson and Vietnam

President Johnson's actions need to be understood in the context of the cold war containment policy and in terms of the policy of escalation. With his advisers, Johnson judged that a steady, incremental increase in US involvement and troops was the only way to bring North Vietnam to the negotiating table, prevent victory by the PAVN and Viet Cong, and end the war. The miscalculation in this approach was in understanding the DRV's goals. North Vietnam was fighting a total war for survival. It was fighting for independence, for unification under northern leadership, and to expel the United States. They just had to match and outlast the limited war pursued by the Americans. In early August of 1964, North Vietnamese forces fired on US ships in an event known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In reaction to the news and at Johnson's urging, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president the power to mobilize US troops even without a formal declaration of war. In 1965, the first US troops reached South Vietnam. The United States also began a sustained bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder. But the bombing did little to stop northern troops and supplies from reaching South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail. By the end of the year, 184,000 US troops were in South Vietnam. By the end of 1966, the number was 385,000. By the end of 1967, 485,000. The United States was locked into a grisly stalemate, pursuing a war of attrition against an enemy that would accept devastating casualties.

1972 Presidential Term

President Nixon was reelected in a triumphant landslide, but it wasn't long before his presidency began to unravel. Nixon's electoral victory was so great in 1972 that only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia cast their electoral votes for his opponent. After the Watergate scandal had broken, T-shirts and bumper stickers began to appear with the statement "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts!" In his first term in office, Nixon became troubled by the significant intelligence leaks that occurred (the Pentagon Papers and the New York Times story about the secret bombing of Cambodia). Leaks were a particular problem for Nixon, since many of his objectives were being pursued by clandestine means - Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese and with China are just two examples. So in 1971 a group of men, the "plumbers," were organized to work covertly out of the White House to stop leaks of classified information to the news media. Soon, the plumbers joined forces with the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP or CRP). When five men were arrested in June 1972 trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex, they were revealed to be working for CREEP. In the midst of the widening investigation and scandal, Vice President Agnew was forced to resign for taking bribes and, in the first use of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Gerald Ford was appointed to replace Agnew.

Terminology

Read and review the following terms to get background on concepts important to understanding the US role in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese Communist Party − founded by Ho Chi Minh and others in 1930. In Vietnam, the ideas of nationalism and communism were intertwined; the primary objective of the Vietnamese Communist Party at its beginning was to rid Vietnam of French control and achieve national self-determination. Viet Minh − the League for the Independence of Vietnam, a national movement for Vietnamese independence, first from French rule, then from Japanese control during World War II. During World War II, the Viet Minh were supported by the United States and the Republic of China, as well as by the Soviet Union. Later, the Viet Minh worked against the French reoccupation of Vietnam and then against the United States and South Vietnam. Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) − North Vietnam; its capital was Hanoi. Republic of Vietnam − South Vietnam; its capital was Saigon. Viet Cong − the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, or NLF; this political organization and army in South Vietnam and Cambodia fought against the South and the United States. It had guerrilla and regular army units, and politically organized the peasants in the territory it controlled. During the war it was portrayed as a movement indigenous to South Vietnam, but it always contained some northerners as well. People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) − also called NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) − the forces of South Vietnam, which also included, under separate command, an air force and a navy

Rosa Parks arrested

Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man when the bus driver asks her to. Her stand triggers the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama.

March on Washington

Singing "We Shall Overcome," more than 200,000 people of all races marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. The marchers had gathered to show their support for civil rights and to urge Congress to pass President Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill. The March on Washington was the biggest and most important demonstration of the early 1960s, and the largest civil rights demonstration in US history. The most enduring speech of the day was Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King's words that day are considered one of the greatest US speeches ever given. Experience the march and speech through movie footage and a second time via audio recording. First, watch some footage of the demonstration. Then, listen to the audio alone. Take notes, and use what you see and hear to complete the Lesson Activity.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

The 1956 Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating schools energized black students. In 1960, students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize nonviolent direct action protests, such as sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives. The SNCC worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which had formed in 1957. The SNCC developed the "jail, no bail" strategy to highlight its cause and put the burden of the costs on their oppressors.

Introduction

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great change in the United States, one in which movements and politicians altered the domestic landscape of the country. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed numerous acts and laws that forever changed many aspects of American life. Johnson's broad approach included his Great Society, a term used to describe his goals to help the unfortunate and end racial injustice in the United States. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forever impacting how minorities were treated, particularly in the workplace. Title VII of the act prohibits "discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." In 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Some states were still using literacy tests and poll taxes to prevent minorities from voting. The Voting Rights act made it illegal to have unequal voter registration requirements. The 1970s were also a time of great political scandal, one that has yet to be paralleled. President Richard Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment. He remains the only president in US history to do so.

1969 Presidential Election

The 1968 presidential election between Republican candidate Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate Hubert H. Humphrey was extremely close. Television networks weren't able to declare Nixon the winner until the following morning. In the key states of California, Ohio, and Illinois, Nixon led by 3 percent or less. Had Humphrey carried all three states, he would have won the election. Had the Democrats carried any two, no candidate would have received an electoral college majority, and the decision would have gone to the House of Representatives. Nixon and Humphrey split the popular vote almost evenly, with less than a percentage point separating them. Wallace took almost 14 percent of the popular vote, and carried five southern states. He would continue to be a force to reckon with in American politics. With Wallace in the race, Nixon's southern strategy was not decisive, but courting and winning southern whites would be a key to Republican victories going forward. President Johnson had clearly been correct when he said that signing civil rights and voting rights into law would cost the Democratic Party the South for a generation. For almost 40 years, a New Deal coalition had powered the Democrats, but 1968 marked the end of their run. Humphrey received less than 40 percent of the white vote and not even close to 50 percent of the labor vote. The Democrats did win about 95 percent of the black vote; African Americans clearly saw the other two candidates as appealing to white fears and racist sentiments. As for Nixon, he did not carry a single major city. He started his time in office as a president elected by a minority of the country, and with no Republican majority in Congress. Division, fear, and anger seemed to have triumphed in the 1968 election. The Republican victory in 1968 constitutes a realignment in American politics. The Democrats had been the majority party from 1932 through 1964. During that time, they won seven out of nine presidential elections. With Nixon's election, the situation was reversed. From 1968 through 2008, the Republican Party was the majority party, and won seven out of ten presidential elections. Only two Democrats won the presidency in that period: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Both of these men were native southerners. It wasn't until 2008 and the election of Barack Obama that a northern Democrat would be elected president again.

Cold War and Vietnam

The Cold War had pitted former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, in a conflict of philosophy. The United States supported capitalism, while the Soviet Union advocated for communism. In the 1950s, the United States developed a foreign policy based on containment, which meant working to prevent the spread of communism in the world. Containment was the strategy behind US initiatives such as the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949). US involvement in Vietnam began as an instance of the United States following this policy. In 1954, President Eisenhower explained this involvement using a domino analogy. "Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences." This explanation became known as the domino theory, and it guided the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson in the early years of the Vietnam War. These presidents were determined to continue the containment policy and refused to be the president who "lost" Southeast Asia to communism.

Urban Renewal

The Department of Housing and Urban Development was established in 1966. It was headed by the first African American cabinet secretary, the economist Robert Weaver. Programs included "model cities," low- and middle-income housing, and slum clearance and rehabilitation. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, part of the Civil Rights bill of that year, ended discrimination in selling or renting houses and apartments.

Transportation

The Great Society brought the United States safety standards for auto and highway design, the National Transportation Safety Board to increase airline safety, urban mass transit projects such as MARTA in Atlanta and BART in San Francisco, and a cabinet-level Department of Transportation.

Immigration

The Immigration Act of 1967 ended the discriminatory quota system that had operated since 1924. Asian and Latin American immigration greatly increased after 1965.

Missouri v. Canada

The NAACP wins the first of three important desegregation cases. Missouri now had to provide an equal education in law for African Americans, even if that meant creating a whole new institution.

Arts and Culture

The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities were created to support projects that bring cultural achievements and opportunities to Americans. Institutions such as museums and colleges, as well as individual scholars or artists, can receive funding. Public broadcasting via television and radio—the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR)—began as Great Society programs. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art were also Great Society achievements.

Paris Peace Accords

The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 ended direct US involvement in fighting in Vietnam. By 1975, most troops had left the country, although the United States still had a presence in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, the NLF and the regular North Vietnamese army entered and captured the city. US Marines evacuated the embassy and the United States completely left the country. This video clip shows a news report filed by reporters who were a part of the evacuation of Saigon. Watch the clip and consider the impact of Americans abandoning the embassy.

Brown v. Board of Ed

The Supreme Court ruling that finally struck down Plessy v. Ferguson came in 1954. Cases challenging school segregation in four states—Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia—and in the District of Columbia had come before the Court, which considered them together in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Clearly, racial discrimination in the public realm was an issue that had to be addressed. This time, the court decided unanimously in favor of the black plaintiffs. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the landmark opinion. In ruling on Brown, Warren went directly back to Plessy, using recent NAACP wins in cases such as Sweatt, McLaurin, and Gaines. What is striking in the decision is that he concludes that segregated schools by their very nature can't be equal. Even if the facilities, the teachers, and the books were of the same quality, denying blacks the opportunity to learn with whites in itself implies inequality between the races. Warren concludes, "In the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The Brown decision was the beginning of a major social change—integrated public schools all over the nation. Discrimination in education was finally outlawed, but changing the hearts of a segregated society would take time and painstaking effort.

Impact part 3

The civil rights movement of the 1960s inspired further changes, particularly through legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 stopped states from turning away voters based on their race. The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968 secured more rights for minorities by preventing discrimination. Also, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prevented states from requiring voters to pay a poll tax when voting. Southern states had used this method to discourage black and minority voters. The legal and political achievements of the civil rights movement led to more political activism in the decades that followed. For example, since 1968 African Americans have become increasingly more likely to vote in US presidential elections. The US presidential elections of 2008 and 2012 showed the importance of minority voting. Latinos and African Americans voted overwhelmingly for President Barack Obama, helping him secure victory in both elections. In the 2012 US presidential election, 59 percent of white voters chose Mitt Romney while 93 percent of black voters, 71 percent of Hispanic voters, and 73 percent of Asian-American voters chose Barack Obama.

Impact of the Civil Rights Movt

The general success of the civil rights movement in bringing about political and legal changes inspired other minority groups to argue for equality. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, many groups started to organize, following the examples of the civil rights and black power movements. Latinos, Asians, American Indians, and women are a few groups who began to independently organize and demonstrate for equality and more rights. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association that later became the United Farm Workers. These organizations focused on the struggles of migrant farm workers but were also part of a broader movement for Latino rights. The activist Hector Perez Garcia and the political party La Raza Unida also pushed for Latino and Mexican-American rights.

Eisenhower

The hoped-for reunification of Vietnam in 1956 did not happen. The United States had helped install President Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. He was an anti-communist Catholic who led a largely Buddhist country. Eisenhower hoped for land reform and democratic changes, but Diem became autocratic. He also refused to take part in the reunification election in 1956. Eisenhower admitted afterward that the populace would have overwhelmingly chosen Ho Chi Minh. "Losing" a country to communism, whether in a war or by the ballot box, was not acceptable. So the United States supported Diem even as he began to use force against his opponents. Eisenhower eventually sent 700 military advisers and considerable funds to the South Vietnamese.

Turning Point during Vietnam

The turning point of the war came in 1968. The number of US troops in Vietnam peaked that year, as did the number of US combat deaths. In late January, on the first day of the Vietnamese New Year (Tet), the Viet Cong and PAVN launched a wave of surprise attacks in the South, even temporarily occupying the US embassy grounds in Saigon. The Tet Offensive was a military defeat for the North, but it was a psychological victory. It demonstrated the truth of the "credibility gap" between the upbeat picture US commanders presented the public and the reality people saw on their televisions. It fanned the fires of opposition to the war. Mainstream news magazines ran antiwar editorials. Walter Cronkite of CBS, the most trusted US newscaster, observed that at best the war would end in a stalemate. Losing Cronkite, thought Johnson, meant "it's over. I've lost Mr. Average Citizen." Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was coming apart. Senator Eugene McCarthy opposed Johnson in the New Hampshire primary as the antiwar candidate, and came in a close second. Soon after, Robert Kennedy announced that he, as well, was running for the presidency to challenge Johnson's Vietnam policy. On March 31, Johnson surprised his television audience by announcing that he would not run for reelection. Instead, he halted the bombing of North Vietnam and began the search for a resolution to the war. The Paris Peace Talks began in May, 1968.

Little Rock 9

This video discusses the integration of Little Rock Central High School and the national crisis that ensued. After sending in troops, President Eisenhower gave a televised speech. He explained that the United States is a nation of laws and that states must obey the Supreme Court. But he did not urge the citizens of Arkansas, or the nation, to recognize the injustice of desegregation, embrace unity, and denounce racism. After the first year of forced integration, the federal troops left. But Little Rock did not become integrated. Rather than follow the court ruling, the governor closed the school. It wasn't until 1959 that Little Rock Central High School was desegregated. The school is now a national historic landmark that symbolizes the difficult struggle for equality. From 1938 to 1958, blacks made significant political and social advances toward equality. It took a concerted effort, with mass popular involvement and a savvy legal strategy.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma

This year, on the same day, the NAACP won two more victories on the road to school desegregation. The US Supreme Court ruled that the Oklahoma Law School could not force a black student to eat and work separately from whites. The court also stated that the University of Texas Law School could not bar a black student from its main campus.

Poverty and Economic Opportunity

Through the Office of Economic Opportunity, War on Poverty programs were expanded or made permanent in the Great Society—Job Corps, VISTA, Upward Bound, food stamps, Community Action Programs, and more. The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1966 addressed the deep poverty in remote areas of this mountain region.

Background

Vietnam is made up of three separate provinces in what was the French colony of Indochina, which also included Laos and Cambodia. The French ruled Indochina as a colonial possession from the 1890s until the Japanese occupied it during World War II. France tried to re-establish its colonial control after the war, but was defeated in 1954. This colonial war had become a cold war conflict, with the United States supporting the French and the southern part of the country, and communist China and Russia supporting the northern part of the country. A peace conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland, attended by the Vietnamese as well as Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the new People's Republic of China. The Geneva Accords, in 1954, temporarily partitioned Vietnam at the 17th parallel and called for national elections in 1956 to reunite the country.

James Meredith

When James Meredith applied to the University of Mississippi in 1961, he was denied admission. With the help of the NAACP, Meredith sued, and the court ruled in his favor. In September 1962, the Supreme Court ordered the university to let Meredith attend. Two weeks later, when Meredith went to enroll, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett refused to let him. Robert Kennedy sent 500 US marshals, supported by the military, to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling. On October 1, amidst riots that left two dead, James Meredith became the first African American student at Ole Miss.

Significant Events of the Civil Rights Movt

When John F. Kennedy gave his inaugural address in January of 1961, millions of African Americans in the South lived as second class citizens, unable to drink from the same water fountains as whites, eat at the same restaurants, or attend the same schools. Though the 14th Amendment made African Americans full citizens of the United States after the Civil War, Jim Crow laws throughout the South—backed by the "separate- but-equal" Supreme Court ruling of 1896—mandated segregation. Yes, African Americans were citizens, but in the South, they were decidedly second class ones. Though the 15th Amendment had enfranchised black men nearly a hundred years before, racist polling laws and violent intimidation made it extremely difficult and dangerous for African Americans in the South to exercise those voting rights. Yet by Kennedy's death in 1963, the tide was finally turning. Martin Luther King and the other civil rights leaders were using nonviolent direct action to draw the nation's attention to the grave violence and injustices in the South. In the Kennedy Administration, particularly in Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, blacks finally found federal authorities who were willing to act.

Malcom X and the Black Panthers

While Martin Luther King Jr. focused on a nonviolent, peaceful civil rights movement, Malcolm X believed African Americans needed a militancy to achieve equality. Malcolm X stated that blacks should use all means necessary to defend their communities. In his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm X compared African Americans in the United States to American colonists fighting British rule before the Revolutionary War. He argued that without equality African Americans should use violence to fight modern oppression. Also, unlike King, who favored racial integration for equality, Malcolm X pushed for racial separation and black nationalism, where African Americans would separate themselves and form their own self-governing communities. Malcolm X became a Muslim temple leader in various cities in the Northeast, including New York City. He spoke passionately about racial discrimination and felt King's nonviolence movement was misguided. With his intelligent, powerful speeches, Malcolm X became a civil rights leader. After visiting Mecca for a holy Muslim pilgrimage, Malcolm X began to change his views about aggression and racial separation. Sadly, three Muslim men who disagreed with Malcolm X's changing political and social views assassinated him while he made a speech in New York City in 1965. Nevertheless, Malcolm X left a lasting, important legacy. Inspired by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, formed in Oakland, California, in 1966, openly voiced a position of aggression and violent self-defense. This organization's membership was primarily agitated African American males who favored black nationalism. Although the Black Panthers did not drive the civil rights movement, they did represent one important view that favored aggression and self-defense.

Television, Protest and Vietnam

elevision played a major role in shaping the opinions of the American public during the war. Prior to the Vietnam War, Americans had seen little news footage of war. During the Vietnam War, however, Americans saw war on a daily basis on their TV screens. For this reason, opposition to the war grew tremendously throughout the 1960s. After 1965, teach-ins, marches, turning in or burning draft cards, and demonstrations grew in number and impact. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the war in 1967, noting that it was draining much-needed resources from domestic programs. The administration was spending 6,000 times as much to kill an enemy soldier in Vietnam as it was on each individual in poverty in the United States. King also expressed concern about the high proportion of African American casualties. At that time, a disproportionate number of African American soldiers were assigned to combat units, and black casualty rates had risen to 20 percent of the total. By 1968, those Americans identifying as "doves" on the war outnumbered those calling themselves "hawks." Opposition to the war, or at least concern about how it was being conducted and whether it could ever be won, became widespread.

Education

ll ages of students were helped by federal aid and federal programs, including Head Start for disadvantaged preschoolers; aid for elementary and secondary school textbooks, library books, and student programs; and grants, scholarships, low-interest loans, and work-study opportunities for college students. Bilingual education and special education received federal attention for the first time with the Great Society. The Teacher Corps worked to recruit and retain teachers in needy school districts.

George Wallace

n his January 1963 inauguration speech, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" That summer, Wallace tried to uphold his promise by physically blocking the door to keep the University of Alabama from being integrated. Kennedy forced the governor to back down. Wallace's racist attitude made such an impression that Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned him in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.