HIST 101 PROF TUYAY FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE (CH. 25-29)

63) AIDS

a) "Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals", screamed the New York Times headline. ---In retrospect, this July 1981 headline was the first public mention of AIDS, with that name yet to come into use. The reported outbreak was of Kaposi's Sarcoma, a rare cancer developing in men younger than the norm, with some showing unusually weakened immune systems. ---As is often the case during many developing outbreaks, researchers made the wrong call from incomplete knowledge. "The medical investigators say some indirect evidence actually points away from contagion as a cause," reported the paper, quoting a doctor as saying there was no apparent danger to non-homosexuals. ---Within a few years, it became clear that AIDS was much more than a cluster outbreak. b) Of course, many rushed to find a bogeyman to blame. ---Enter "Patient Zero" - Gaétan Dugas - a flight attendant who, as the legend goes, caught HIV in either Africa or Haiti, brought it back to the States, and supposedly spread it to hundreds of men across America, even after becoming aware that he was infectious. ---Dugas died in 1984, and his nickname became widespread after its appearance in the 1987 book And the Band Played On, written by gay journalist Randy Shilts about the early days of the epidemic. ---We now know that AIDS first appeared in New York City as early as 1971. But the misconception about Dugas won't go away, despite the revelation that Dugan was called Patient O - for "Outside California" in a study - and not Patient 0. ---But David R. Fair, who ran Philadelphia's AIDS office during the '80s, told the STAR that the tabloid nature of this coverage actually served to help spread AIDS awareness. ---He said, "The first thing I did was buy 40 copies of [And the Band Played On] and give it to the mayor and department heads. It's really hard to remember how little attention was being paid to AIDS outside New York and San Francisco. The book is what led to the creation of a national AIDS activism movement." c) As AIDS became a pandemic, and information continued to be muddied by political and personal agendas, the stories of those such as Ryan White become incredibly important. ---White, a haemophiliac, contracted HIV as a 13 year-old from a blood transfusion and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984. After the diagnosis, his Indianapolis high school banned him from attending, leading to a legal battle and the support of high-profile people such as Michael Jackson and Elton John. ---Appearances on Phil Donahue's talk show and a telemovie about White (watched by over 15 million Americans), helped push the issue into living rooms across America. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed teenager helped change the attitudes of many who still perceived AIDS as a problem restricted to homosexuals or intravenous drug users. White died in 1990, inspiring the Ryan White CARE Act - the largest federally funded support program for those living with HIV and AIDS. ---The issue was finally emerging from the shadows, with an urgent push to broaden sex education classes in schools in 1986 led by US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

24) "Black Power"

a) Although African American writers and politicians used the term "Black Power" for years, the expression first entered the lexicon of the civil rights movement during the Meredith March Against Fear in the summer of 1966. Martin Luther King, Jr., believed that Black Power was "essentially an emotional concept" that meant "different things to different people," but he worried that the slogan carried "connotations of violence and separatism" and opposed its use (King, 32; King, 14 October 1966). The controversy over Black Power reflected and perpetuated a split in the civil rights movement between organizations that maintained that nonviolent methods were the only way to achieve civil rights goals and those organizations that had become frustrated and were ready to adopt violence and black separatism. b) On 16 June 1966, while completing the march begun by James Meredith, Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rallied a crowd in Greenwood, Mississippi, with the cry, "We want Black Power!" Although SNCC members had used the term during informal conversations, this was the first time Black Power was used as a public slogan. Asked later what he meant by the term, Carmichael said, "When you talk about black power you talk about bringing this country to its knees any time it messes with the black man ... any white man in this country knows about power. He knows what white power is and he ought to know what black power is" ("Negro Leaders on 'Meet the Press'"). In the ensuing weeks, both SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) repudiated nonviolence and embraced militant separatism with Black Power as their objective. c) Although King believed that "the slogan was an unwise choice," he attempted to transform its meaning, writing that although "the Negro is powerless," he should seek "to amass political and economic power to reach his legitimate goals" (King, October 1966; King, 14 October 1966). King believed that "America must be made a nation in which its multi-racial people are partners in power" (King, 14 October 1966). Carmichael, on the other hand, believed that black people had to first "close ranks" in solidarity with each other before they could join a multiracial society (Carmichael, 44). d) Although King was hesitant to criticize Black Power openly, he told his staff on 14 November 1966 that Black Power "was born from the wombs of despair and disappointment. Black Power is a cry of pain. It is in fact a reaction to the failure of White Power to deliver the promises and to do it in a hurry ... The cry of Black Power is really a cry of hurt" (King, 14 November 1966). e) As the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and other civil rights organizations rejected SNCC and CORE's adoption of Black Power, the movement became fractured. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black Power became the rallying call of black nationalists and revolutionary armed movements like the Black Panther Party, and King's interpretation of the slogan faded into obscurity.

4) Geneva Agreement

a) Chinese threats continued toward Taiwan and its offshore islands, and a "war of national liberation" raged in French Indochina ---Eisenhower continued Truman's policies (supporting the Nationalist Chinese and the French) ---(1954) The struggle between France and the VIET MINH was not going well for Paris ---Watching the French military worsen, Eisenhower announced the DOMINO THEORY, warning that if Indochina fell to communism, the loss "of Burma, of Thailand, of the Malaysian Peninsula, and Indonesia" would certainly follow, endangering Australia and New Zealand ---To many it meant that the US needed to take a more direct role in the conflict b) As Viet Minh forces launched murderous attacks on the beleaguered French fortifications at Dienbienphu, the French (and some members of the Eisenhower administration) wanted American intervention to save the garrison ---Eisenhower rejected the idea, saying that "no military victory" was "possible in that kind of theater" ---The surrender of Dienbienphu (1954) forced on the French to negotiate an end to their control over Indochina c) The GENEVA AGREEMENT created 3 new nations out of French Indochina: ---Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam ---Vietnam was "temporarily" partitioned along the 17th parallel, but within 2 years elections were to be held to unify the nation d) The 3 new nations were not to enter into military alliances or allow foreign bases on their territory ---American strategists called the settlement a "disaster" (half of Vietnam was lost to communism, and elections were likely to favor the Communists) ---Therefore the US refused to sign the agreement and Eisenhower immediately moved to support South Vietnam's new government and prime minister, NGO DINH DIEM ---With American blessings, Diem ignored the Geneva-mandated unification elections, quashed his political opposition, and in October 1955 staged a PLEBISCITE that created the REPUBLI OF VIETNAM and elected him president

56) Glasnost

a) When Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he launched his nation on a dramatic new course. His dual program of "perestroika" ("restructuring") and "glasnost" ("openness") introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. Within five years, Gorbachev's revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War (1945-91), the largely political and economic rivalry between the Soviets and the United States and their respective allies that emerged following World War II. Gorbachev's actions also inadvertently set the stage for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which dissolved into 15 individual republics. He resigned from office on December 25, 1991. b) When Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped onto the world stage in March 1985 as the new leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it was immediately clear that he was different from his predecessors. Gorbachev, then 54, was significantly younger than the aging party members who had led the Communist superpower in previous decades-the last two of whom had seen their rule cut short by health problems. Hailing from a younger generation gave Gorbachev a new outlook on the challenges that faced his country. ---Gorbachev realized that he had inherited significant problems. Even as the USSR vied with the United States for global political and military leadership, its economy was struggling, and its citizens were chafing under their relatively poor standard of living and lack of freedom. Those difficulties were also keenly felt in the Communist nations of Eastern Europe that were aligned with and controlled by the Soviets. ---Gorbachev took a new approach toward addressing these problems: He introduced a reform program that embodied two overarching concepts. Perestroika, his restructuring concept, started with an overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party. It also focused on economic issues, replacing the centralized government planning that had been a hallmark of the Soviet system with a greater reliance on market forces. The accompanying concept of glasnost sought to ease the strict social controls imposed by the government. Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and allowed citizens to express divergent views. By 1988, Gorbachev had expanded his reforms to include democratization, moving the USSR toward an elected form of government. c) Gorbachev's internal reforms were matched by new approaches to Soviet foreign policy. Determined to end his country's nuclear rivalry with the United States, he pursued negotiations with U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Although Reagan held strong anti-communist views and had intensified the Cold War by initiating a buildup of U.S. forces in the early 1980s, the two leaders managed to find common ground. ---Gorbachev and Reagan took part in five summits between 1985 and 1988. Their discussions resulted in the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which brought about a major reduction in both nations' weapons stockpiles. The productive dialogue was the result of fresh thinking on both sides, but progress on many points began with Gorbachev's willingness to abandon long-held Soviet positions. d) The Gorbachev initiative that had the most far-reaching effects was his decision to abandon Soviet control of the Communist nations of Eastern Europe. Since World War II, leaders of the USSR had viewed the maintenance of these states as essential to their nation's security, and they had crushed anti-Soviet uprisings in Warsaw Pact countries (a group of eight Communist nations in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Hungary) that sought greater independence. However, just a year after taking power, Gorbachev oversaw reforms that loosened the Soviet grip on these states. Then, in a landmark December 1988 speech at the United Nations, he declared that all nations should be free to choose their own course without outside interference. To the amazement of millions, he capped this speech by announcing that the USSR would significantly reduce the number of troops and tanks that were based in the Eastern Bloc countries. ---Gorbachev's move had unintended consequences. He had hoped that his reforms would revitalize and modernize the Soviet Union. Instead, they unleashed social forces that brought about the dissolution of the USSR (which had been in existence since 1922). In 1989, Communist regimes fell in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. By the end of that year, the Berlin Wall had been dismantled and discussions were under way that would result in the reunification of Germany in October 1990. ---Gorbachev did not watch passively as these events unfolded. To the contrary, he adopted more conservative policies in 1990-the same year he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite his willingness to try new approaches, Gorbachev remained committed to the principles of socialism and determined to maintain the Soviet republics as one nation. In the end, however, his efforts to rein in the reform spirit he had turned loose were ineffective. ---Angry hard-line Communists attempted to remove Gorbachev from power in August 1991 by staging a coup. The revolt failed due to the efforts of Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007), president of the Russian Republic, who emerged as the country's most powerful political figure. However, before the end of the year, Yeltsin and other reformers succeeded in completely undoing the old order. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 individual republics, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned from the presidency of a nation that no longer existed.

54) Strategic Defense Initiative

a) The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. With the tension of the Cold War looming overhead, the Strategic Defense Initiative was the United States' response to possible nuclear attacks from afar. Although the program seemed to have no negative consequences, there were concerns brought up about the program "contravening" the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks years before. For this reason, in conjunction with budgetary constraints, the Strategic Defense Initiative was ultimately set aside. ---The nickname "Star Wars" may have been attached to the program for some of its abstract and farfetched ideas, many of which included lasers. Furthermore, the previously released science fiction movie titled "Star Wars," caused the public to easily associate this program with new and creative technologies. "The weapons required included space- and ground-based nuclear X-ray lasers, subatomic particle beams, and computer-guided projectiles fired by electromagnetic rail guns—all under the central control of a supercomputer system." By using these systems, the United States planned to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles while they still flew high above the Earth, minimizing their effects. However, there was a large power requirement for these types of weapons — power requirements so vast that nuclear power was the method of choice. Thus, as the reality of creating numerous nuclear plants diminished, so did the ambitious designs. By the end of SDI, the primary focus of the weapons design group was focused on "land based kinetic energy weapons." These weapons were essentially guided missile projectiles. At the end of the Strategic Defense Initiative, thirty billion dollars had been invested in the program and no laser and mirror system was ever used, not on land, not in space. ---The Strategic Defense Initiative was eventually abandoned, and after a few years, it was nothing other than a short chapter in history books. With bold intentions, the Star Wars program was hopeful of a revolutionary defense system, a system which was said to be nearly impenetrable. Yet with political pressure, both domestic and international, combined with budgetary conflicts, the Strategic Defense Initiative was slated for failure from the start. Fear of Soviet retaliation due to violations in the ABM treaty from the first S.A.L.T. talks was a primary factor in these international pressures, but United States legislators and congressmen also argued that a creation of a large anti-ballistic missile system would raise tensions between the two nations and potentially spark a conflict. Because having a pre-emptive strike in a nuclear war would be advantageous, both nations were already on edge and so it was decided that any project which could jeopardize the balance would be discarded. The treaties set up by the S.A.L.T. talks remained in effect for nearly 30 years and it was not until 2001 when President George W. Bush cited Article 15 of the ABM treaty and pulled America out. By this point, the SDI was far behind and relations with Russia, no longer the Soviet Union, were vastly improved.

57) Globalization

a) Globalization refers to the technological, political, economic, financial, and cultural exchanges between peoples and nations that have made and continue to make the world a more interconnected and interdependent place. In the business world, this includes increased trade and investment flows, currency exchange, and the rise of multinational corporations. Communication and transportation technologies are capable of linking people who are physically distant from one another, thereby facilitating the exchange of culture, knowledge, and ideas. ---Although the concept and vocabulary of globalization is fairly recent, emerging most forcefully in the 1990s, the processes of globalization are as old as history itself. This is because humans have always engaged in cultural exchange, the dissemination of knowledge, and the trade of goods and services. However, important developments in the latter part of the twentieth century, particularly the 1990s, accelerated these processes. b) With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the world became more interconnected. This is because the communist bloc countries, which had previously been intentionally isolated from the capitalist West, began to integrate into the global market economy. Trade and investment increased, while barriers to migration and to cultural exchange were lowered. ---Technological advances, including mobile phones and especially the internet, have contributed to globalization by connecting people all over the globe. The World Wide Web links billions of people and devices, providing innumerable opportunities for the exchange of goods, services, cultural products, knowledge, and ideas. ---Free trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed in 1992, removed barriers to the free flow of people, goods, and services, thereby facilitating greater trade, investment, and migration across national borders. ---Though free trade and open markets have led to job losses in some sectors in certain countries, and have displaced workers in certain industries, they can also increase economic growth and prosperity. For instance, NAFTA has been criticized for moving almost three-quarters of a million manufacturing jobs out of the United States and into Mexico, but US trade with Mexico increased substantially as a direct result of the agreement. c) Although globalization has had many positive effects and has contributed to greater prosperity in many countries, it has a dark side as well. Global terrorist networks have used the conditions created by globalization to enhance their own influence and to promote a culture of intolerance and hate. For example, the al-Qaeda members who perpetrated the attack on September 11th used mobile phone technology and the internet to coordinate their plans. They were also easily able to move from one country to another because of lowered barriers to international travel and mobility. ---Moreover, the increasing interconnectedness of the world economy and international finance has heightened the risk of global economic catastrophe. This is because banking or financial failures in one country will lead to crises in other countries, and thus will become internationalized rather than remaining isolated. This was the case with the Great Recession of 2008-2009, during which the financial crisis in the US subprime mortgage market led to a global economic meltdown.

41) Nixon and China

a) In an amazing turn of events, President Richard Nixon takes a dramatic first step toward normalizing relations with the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks. Nixon's historic visit began the slow process of the re-establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China. ---Still mired in the unpopular and frustrating Vietnam War in 1971, Nixon surprised the American people by announcing a planned trip to the PRC in 1972. The United States had never stopped formally recognizing the PRC after Mao Zedong's successful communist revolution of 1949. In fact, the two nations had been bitter enemies. PRC and U.S. troops fought in Korea during the early-1950s, and Chinese aid and advisers supported North Vietnam in its war against the United States. b) Nixon seemed an unlikely candidate to thaw those chilly relations. During the 1940s and 1950s, he had been a vocal cold warrior and had condemned the Democratic administration of Harry S. Truman for "losing" China to the communists in 1949. The situation had changed dramatically since that time, though. In Vietnam, the Soviets, not the Chinese, had become the most significant supporters of the North Vietnamese regime. And the war in Vietnam was not going well. The American people were impatient for an end to the conflict, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the United States might not be able to save its ally, South Vietnam, from its communist aggressors. The American fear of a monolithic communist bloc had been modified, as a war of words—and occasional border conflicts—erupted between the Soviet Union and the PRC in the 1960s. Nixon, and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger saw a unique opportunity in these circumstances—diplomatic overtures to the PRC might make the Soviet Union more malleable to U.S. policy requests (such as pressuring the North Vietnamese to sign a peace treaty acceptable to the United States). In fact, Nixon was scheduled to travel to meet Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev shortly after completing his visit to China. ---Nixon's trip to China, therefore, was a move calculated to drive an even deeper wedge between the two most significant communist powers. The United States could use closer diplomatic relations with China as leverage in dealing with the Soviets, particularly on the issue of Vietnam. In addition, the United States might be able to make use of the Chinese as a counterweight to North Vietnam. Despite their claims of socialist solidarity, the PRC and North Vietnam were, at best, strongly suspicious allies. As historian Walter LaFeber said, "Instead of using Vietnam to contain China, Nixon concluded that he had better use China to contain Vietnam." For its part, the PRC was desirous of another ally in its increasingly tense relationship with the Soviet Union and certainly welcomed the possibility of increased U.S.-China trade.

33) Operation Rolling Thunder

a) Operation Rolling Thunder was the codename for an American bombing campaign during the Vietnam War. U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968. This massive bombardment was intended to put military pressure on North Vietnam's communist leaders and reduce their capacity to wage war against the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder marked the first sustained American assault on North Vietnamese territory and represented a major expansion of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. b) Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. provided military equipment and advisors to help the government of South Vietnam resist a communist takeover by North Vietnam and its South Vietnam-based allies, the Viet Cong guerrilla fighters. ---In 1962, the American military initiated limited air operations within South Vietnam, in an effort to offer air support to South Vietnamese army forces, destroy suspected Viet Cong bases and spray herbicides such as Agent Orange to eliminate jungle cover. ---President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded American air operations in August 1964, when he authorized retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam following a reported attack on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. ---Later that year, Johnson approved limited bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of pathways that connected North Vietnam and South Vietnam by way of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The president's goal was to disrupt the flow of manpower and supplies from North Vietnam to its Viet Cong allies. c) The Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign began on March 2, 1965, partly in response to a Viet Cong attack on a U.S. air base at Pleiku. The Johnson administration cited a number of reasons for shifting U.S. strategy to include systematic aerial assaults on North Vietnam. ---For example, administration officials believed that heavy and sustained bombing might encourage North Vietnamese leaders to accept the non-Communist government in South Vietnam. The administration also wanted to reduce North Vietnam's ability to produce and transport supplies to aid the Viet Cong insurgency. ---Finally, Johnson and his advisers hoped to boost morale in South Vietnam while destroying the Communists' will to fight. d) The Operation Rolling Thunder campaign gradually expanded in both range and intensity. At first, the airstrikes were restricted to the southern portion of North Vietnam; however, U.S. leaders eventually moved the target area steadily northward to increase the pressure on the Communist government. ---By mid-1966, American planes were attacking military and industrial targets throughout North Vietnam. The only areas considered off limits for the bombing raids were the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong and a 10-mile buffer zone along the border of China. ---Shortly after the operation began in 1965, Johnson committed the first U.S. ground troops to the Vietnam War. Although their initial mission was to defend air bases in South Vietnam that were being used in the bombing campaign, the troops' role soon expanded to include engaging the Viet Cong in active combat. ---As the North Vietnamese army became more heavily involved in the conflict, Johnson steadily increased the number of American forces in Vietnam.

53) US Economy During the Reagan years

a) Reaganomics (/reɪɡəˈnɒmɪks/; a portmanteau of [Ronald] Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey) refers to the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with supply-side economics, referred to as trickle-down economics or voodoo economics by political opponents, and free-market economics by political advocates. ---The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and tighten the money supply in order to reduce inflation. During Reagan's presidency, the national debt almost tripled and the U.S. went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor in under eight years. b) Prior to the Reagan administration, the United States economy experienced a decade of rising unemployment and inflation (known as stagflation). Political pressure favored stimulus resulting in an expansion of the money supply. President Richard Nixon's wage and price controls were phased out. The federal oil reserves were created to ease any future short term shocks. President Jimmy Carter had begun phasing out price controls on petroleum while he created the Department of Energy. Much of the credit for the resolution of the stagflation is given to two causes: a three-year contraction of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker, initiated in the last year of Carter's presidency, and long-term easing of supply and pricing in oil during the 1980s oil glut. ---In stating that his intention was to lower taxes, Reagan's approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors. Reagan enacted lower marginal tax rates as well as simplified income tax codes and continued deregulation. During Reagan's presidency, the annual deficits averaged 4.2% of GDP after inheriting an annual deficit of 2.7% of GDP in 1980 under president Carter. The real (inflation adjusted) rate of growth in federal spending fell from 4% under Jimmy Carter to 2.5% under Ronald Reagan. GDP per working-age adult, which had increased at only a 1.15% annual rate during the Carter administration, increased at a 1.8% rate during the Reagan administration. The increase in productivity growth was even higher: output per hour in the business sector, which had been roughly constant in the Carter years, increased at a 1.4% rate in the Reagan years. However, Federal net outlays as percent of Gross Domestic Product was higher under Ronald Reagan than under Jimmy Carter ---During the Nixon and Ford Administrations, before Reagan's election, a combined supply and demand side policy was considered unconventional by the moderate wing of the Republican Party. While running against Reagan for the Presidential nomination in 1980, George H. W. Bush had derided Reaganomics as "voodoo economics". Similarly, in 1976, Gerald Ford had severely criticized Reagan's proposal to turn back a large part of the Federal budget to the states.

23) Race Riots in the Mid-1960's

a) A race riot, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a riot caused by racial dissension or hatred. In 1968, the National Commission on Civil Disorder (known as the Kerner Commission) reported that the race riots that took place in the United States during the 1960s were the direct result of the serious grievances of a minority racial group. Those riots generally erupted when a minority person was killed or injured and other members of the group perceived it as unjust and prejudicial. During the 1960s, race riots broke out in many larger cities, where there was a large population and concentration of minorities. b) Harlem Riots, 1964 ---The riots began on July 16, 1964, when a police officer killed a young black boy in Harlem. The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) had already scheduled a peaceful march to take place two days later to protest police brutality. After the march, a group of more militant and aggressive demonstrators took their protest to the steps of the police precinct. A number of fights broke out between the police and protesters, and 16 black demonstrators were arrested. ---Word of the arrests quickly spread, along with reports that police was beating the suspects and that their cries and screaming could be heard outside the building. These rumors prompted a crowd to gather and by 10:30 p.m., a riot began, with protesters throwing Molotov cocktails, stones and bricks. Police came out in riot gear and fired warning shots into the air. ---The violence continued for four days and began to spread to other neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where shooting, looting and arson was widespread. White-owned stores and businesses were burnt down. CORE chairman James Farmer walked through the streets of Harlem begging the rioters to stop, but to no avail. The violence finally ended on July 23, but left one fatality, 144 injuries and 519 arrests in its wake. c) Watts Riot, 1965 ---On August 11, 1965, police used excessive force while arresting a black man in Watts, a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, for drunk driving. A small group of people gathered at the scene. Although the situation was tense, it was not violent. That changed when a police officer accused a woman of spitting at him and tried to arrest her. The crowd instantly erupted and began throwing bottles and rocks at passing cars and buses. Additional police were called in, and the violence and fighting intensified. ---After police left the scene, thinking that their presence exacerbated the issue, the rioters took to the streets with a vengeance and began overturning cars, and smashing windows of nearby stores and looting them. "Burn, baby, burn" was the cry of the rioters. The situation deteriorated and 75 stores in the neighborhood were burned during the first 2 days of the rioting. The undermanned police force was helpless to combat the rioters. ---Finally, the National Guard was called in and a curfew and martial law were imposed on Watts and on a surrounding area of 50 square miles. It took 13,000 Guardsmen to bring the rioting under control. When things quieted down, it was reported that there were 34 deaths, 1,000 injuries and damage to 600 buildings totaling $40 million. d) Newark Riots 1967 ---In Newark, on July 12, 1967, police beat a black cab driver while trying to arrest him. A group of protesters gathered at the precinct house and became unruly. When they were asked to leave, they refused to obey and the police began to use force to break up the crowd. A protest rally against police brutality was called for the next morning. Once again, the police used excessive force, and the city erupted into violence with looting, burning and shooting. The National Guard was called in to help restore order. In all, 23 people were killed and nearly $11 million of damage was caused. e) Detroit Riots 1967 ---In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, Detroit police raided an after-hours bar and arrested 80 patrons. A crowd gathered outside and rocks were thrown at police cars, breaking their windows. The rioting increased and began to spread, with rioters outnumbering police. The next morning, a state of emergency was declared and the National Guard was called in to help the police. Things did not improve until President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in federal troops to help stop the sniping, shooting, looting and burning.

59) Clinton's Economic Policy in the Mid-1990's

a) The economic policies of Bill Clinton, referred to by some as Clintonomics (a portmanteau of Clinton and economics), encapsulates the economic policies of United States President Bill Clinton that were implemented during his presidency, which lasted from January 1993-January 2001. ---President Clinton oversaw a very robust economy during his tenure. The U.S. had strong economic growth (around 4% annually) and record job creation (22.7 million). He raised taxes on higher income taxpayers early in his first term and cut defense spending, which contributed to a rise in revenue and decline in spending relative to the size of the economy. These factors helped bring the federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998-2001, the only surplus years after 1969. Debt held by the public, a primary measure of the national debt, fell relative to GDP throughout his two terms, from 47.8% in 1993 to 31.4% in 2001. ---Clinton signed NAFTA into law along with many other free trade agreements. He also enacted significant welfare reform. His deregulation of finance (both tacit and overt through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) has been criticized as a contributing factor to the Great Recession. b) Clinton's presidency included a great period of economic growth in America's history. Clintonomics encompassed both a set of economic policies as well as governmental philosophy. Clinton's economic (clintonomics) approach entailed modernization of the federal government, making it more enterprise-friendly while dispensing greater authority to state and local governments. The ultimate goal involved rendering the American government smaller, less wasteful, and more agile in light of a newly globalized era. ---Clinton assumed office following the end of a recession, and the economic practices he implemented are held up by his supporters as having fostered a recovery and surplus, though some of the president's critics remained more skeptical of the cause-effect outcome of his initiatives. The Clintonomics policy focus could be encapsulated by the following four points: ---Establish fiscal discipline and eliminate the budget deficit ---Maintain low interest rates and encourage private-sector investment ---Eliminate protectionist tariffs Invest in human capital through education and research ---Prior to the 1992 presidential campaign, America had undergone twelve years of conservative policies implemented by Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. Clinton ran on the economic platform of balancing the budget, lowering inflation, lowering unemployment, and continuing the traditionally conservative policies of free trade. ---David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, opined that: c) The Clinton years were unquestionably a time of progress, especially on the economy... Clinton's 1992 slogan, 'Putting people first,' and his stress on 'the economy, stupid,' pitched an optimistic if still gritty populism at a middle class that had suffered under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. .... By the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged.

31) Native American Activists in the 1960's

a) American Indian Movement, (AIM), militant American Indian civil rights organization, founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968 by Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, and George Mitchell. Later, Russell Means became a prominent spokesman for the group. Its original purpose was to help Indians in urban ghettos who had been displaced by government programs that had the effect of forcing them from the reservations. Its goals eventually encompassed the entire spectrum of Indian demands—economic independence, revitalization of traditional culture, protection of legal rights, and, most especially, autonomy over tribal areas and the restoration of lands that they believed had been illegally seized. b) AIM was involved in many highly publicized protests. It was one of the Indian groups involved in the occupation (1969-71) of Alcatraz Island, the march (1972) on Washington, D.C., to protest violation of treaties (in which AIM members occupied the office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs), and the takeover (1973) of a site at Wounded Knee to protest the government's Indian policy. In the mid-1970s AIM's efforts were centred on the prevention of resource exploitation of Indian lands by the federal government. With many of its leaders in prison, and torn by internal dissension, the national leadership disbanded in 1978, although local groups continued to function. From 1981 an AIM group occupied part of the Black Hills (South Dakota) to press its demands for return of the area to Indian jurisdiction.

12) Eisenhower and Civil Rights

a) As the civil rights movement continued, the White House responded with carefully selected platitudes ---when asked, Eisenhower gave elusive replies: "I plead for understanding, for really sympathetic consideration of a problem.... I am for moderation, but I am for progress; that is exactly what I am for in this thing." ---Personally, Eisenhower believed that government, especially the executive branch, had little role in integration ---Max Rabb, his adviser on minority affairs, thought the "Negroes were being to aggressive" ---On a political level, cabinet members and Eisenhower were disappointed in the low number of blacks who had voted Republican in 1952 and 1956 b) But not all within the administration were unsympathetic toward civil rights ---Attorney General HERBERT BROWNELL drafted the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction ---THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957 passed Congress after a year of political maneuvering, having gained the support of Democratic majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas ---a moderate law, it provided for the formation of a Commission on Civil Rights and opened the possibility of using federal lawsuits to ensure voter rights ---a second act passed Congress in 1960 that strengthened efforts to use the courts to gain voting rights, but like its predecessor, it was too weak to counter white opposition and violence in the South

10) White-Collar Workers

a) As the economy grew and changed, the kinds of work people did also drastically changed ---when the 1950's began, Blue-Collar workers made up the largest part of the workforce ---Blue-Collar Workers are people who work in factories or at skilled trades, such as plumbing or auto repair ---by the end of the 1950's, the workforce looked different b) For the first time in history, WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS OUTNUMBERED BLUE-COLLAR EMPLOYEES ---White-Collar Workers included professionals such as doctors and lawyers, engineers, salespeople, managers, and office staff ---most of them recieved a weekly or yearly salary rather than an hourly wage ---because White-Collar employees worked in offices, they could wear white shirts to work without fear of getting them dirty c) Both groups prospered during the 1950's ---as Blue-Collare Workers moved up into the middle class, they began to dress, act, and consume like their White-Collar neighbors, "LIKE SHIFT FROM GOODS TO SERVICES"

35) Democratic Convention in 1968

a) At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. Over the course of 24 hours, the predominant American line of thought on the Cold War with the Soviet Union was shattered. ---Since the end of World War II, the U.S. perspective on the Soviet Union and Soviet-style communism was marked by truculent disapproval. Intent on stopping the spread of communism, the United States developed a policy by which it would intervene in the affairs of countries it deemed susceptible to communist influence. In the early 1960s, this policy led to U.S. involvement in the controversial Vietnam War, during which the United States attempted to keep South Vietnam from falling under the control of communist North Vietnam, at a cost of more than 2 million Vietnamese and nearly 58,000 American lives. ---The "Cold War consensus," in U.S. government, however, fractured during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Democratic delegates from across the country were split on the question of Vietnam. A faction led by Eugene McCarthy, a committed anti-war candidate, began to challenge the long-held assumption that the United States should remain in the war. As the debate intensified, fights broke out on the convention floor, and delegates and reporters were beaten and knocked to the ground. Eventually, the delegates on the side of the status quo, championed by then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, won out, but the events of the convention had seriously weakened the party, which went on to lose the following election. b) Meanwhile, on the streets of Chicago, several thousand anti-war protesters gathered to show their support for McCarthy and the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley deployed 12,000 police officers and called in another 15,000 state and federal officers to contain the protesters. The situation then rapidly spiraled out of control, with the policemen severely beating and gassing the demonstrators, as well as newsmen and doctors who had come to help. ---The ensuing riot, known as the "Battle of Michigan Avenue," was caught on television, and sparked a large-scale change in American society. For the first time, many Americans came out in virulent opposition to the Vietnam War, which they had begun to feel was pointless and wrongheaded. No longer would people give the national government unrestrained power to pursue its Cold War policies at the expense of the safety of U.S. citizens.

49) Proposition 13

a) Background ---On June 6th, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California's voters passed Proposition 13, reducing property tax rates on homes, businesses and farms by about 57%. b) The Environment Prior to Proposition 13 ---Prior to Proposition 13, the property tax rate throughout California averaged a little less than 3% of market value. Additionally, there were no limits on increases for the tax rate or on individual ad valorem charges. ("Ad valorem" refers to taxes based on the assessed value of property. ) Some properties were reassessed 50% to 100% in just one year and their owners' property tax bills increased accordingly. c) Proposition 13 Tax Reform ---Under Proposition 13 tax reform, property tax value was rolled back and frozen at the 1976 assessed value level. Property tax increases on any given property were limited to no more than 2% per year as long as the property was not sold. Once sold, the property was reassessed at 1% of the sale price, and the 2% yearly cap became applicable to future years. This allowed property owners to finally be able to estimate the amount of future property taxes, and determine the maximum amount taxes could increase as long as he or she owned the property.

44) CREEP

a) CREEP was the unofficial abbreviation derisively applied to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, a fundraising organization within the administration of President Richard Nixon. Officially abbreviated CRP, the committee was first organized in late 1970 and opened its Washington, D.C. office in the spring of 1971. ---Besides its infamous role in the 1972 Watergate scandal, the CRP was found to have employed money laundering and illegal slush funds in its re-election activities on the behalf of President Nixon. b) During the investigation of the Watergate break-in, it was shown that the CRP had illegally used $500,000 in campaign funds to pay the legal expenses of the five Watergate burglars in return for their promise to protect President Nixon, initially by remaining silent, and by giving false testimony in court — committing perjury — after their eventual indictment. c) Some key members of CREEP (CRP) included: ---John N. Mitchell - Campaign Director ---Jeb Stuart Magruder - Deputy Campaign Manager ---Maurice Stans - Finance Chairman ---Kenneth H. Dahlberg - Midwest Finance Chairman ---Fred LaRue - Political Operative ---Donald Segretti - Political Operative ---James W. McCord - Security Coordinator ---E. Howard Hunt - Campaign Consultant ---G. Gordon Liddy - Campaign Member and Finance Counsel ---Along with the burglars themselves, CRP officials G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, John N. Mitchell, and other Nixon administration figures were imprisoned over the Watergate break-in and their efforts to cover it up. ---The CRP was also found to have had ties to the White House Plumbers. Organized on July 24, 1971, the Plumbers was a covert team officially called the White House Special Investigations Unit assigned to prevent leaks of information harmful to President Nixon, such as the Pentagon Papers to the press. d) Besides bringing shame on the office of President of the United States, the illegal acts of the CRP helped turn a burglary into a political scandal that would bring down an incumbent president and fuel a general mistrust of the federal government festering as part of protests against continued U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

15) Freedom Rider Movement

a) Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use "whites-only" restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers—as well as horrific violence from white protesters—along their routes, but also drew international attention to their cause. b) The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were modeled after the organization's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. During the 1947 action, African-American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia that found segregated bus seating was unconstitutional. c) The 1961 Freedom Rides sought to test a 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional as well. A big difference between the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and the 1961 Freedom Rides was the inclusion of women in the later initiative. d) In both actions, black riders traveled to the American South—where segregation continued to occur—and attempted to use whites-only restrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms. e) The original group of 13 Freedom Riders—seven African Americans and six whites—left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961. Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation's public schools was unconstitutional. f) The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. John Lewis, an African-American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow, and another African-American rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area. g) The rides continued over the next several months, and in the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.

20) Freedom Summer

a) Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Aimed at increasing black voter registration in Mississippi, the Freedom Summer workers included black Mississippians and more than 1,000 out-of-state, predominately white volunteers. The Ku Klux Klan, police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murder of at least three people b) Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South. c) The Mississippi project was run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an association of civil rights groups in which SNCC was the most active member. About a hundred white college students had helped COFO register voters in November 1963, and several hundred more students were invited in 1964 for Freedom Summer, a much-expanded voter registration project. d) On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred arrived. The next day, two of the white students, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both from New York, and a local African American, James Chaney, disappeared. ---Although their badly beaten bodies were not discovered for six weeks, certainty that they had been murdered swept the country and helped precipitate the passage of a long-pending civil rights bill in Congress. In Mississippi, the murders shook the project profoundly. ---Surrounded by threats and violence, the workers resented the lack of federal protection and the slowness of the investigation. Distrust grew between white and black workers; would the public outcry have been the same, some asked, if all three victims had been black? e) The Mississippi project did establish fifty Freedom Schools to carry on community organizing, but it managed to register only twelve hundred African Americans. Another blow came in August when, with the acquiescence of party liberals and civil rights leaders, the Democratic National Convention refused to seat a protest slate of delegates elected through COFO's Mississippi Freedom Democratic party. f) The events of Freedom Summer deepened the division between those in the civil rights movement who still believed in integration and nonviolence and others, especially young African Americans, who now doubted whether racial equality was achievable by peaceful means. g) The civil rights movement continued to be active, but after 1964, it began to lose the hopeful solidarity that had infused its earlier years.

28) Counterculture

a) In the decade after 1965, radicals responded to the alienating features of America's technocratic society by developing alternative cultures that emphasized authenticity, individualism, and community. The counterculture emerged from a handful of 1950s bohemian enclaves, most notably the Beat subcultures in the Bay Area and Greenwich Village. ---But new influences shaped an eclectic and decentralized counterculture after 1965, first in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, then in urban areas and college towns, and, by the 1970s, on communes and in myriad counter-institutions. The psychedelic drug cultures around Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey gave rise to a mystical bent in some branches of the counterculture and influenced counterculture style in countless ways: acid rock redefined popular music; tie dye, long hair, repurposed clothes, and hip argot established a new style; and sexual mores loosened. Yet the counterculture's reactionary elements were strong. In many counterculture communities, gender roles mirrored those of mainstream society, and aggressive male sexuality inhibited feminist spins on the sexual revolution. b) Entrepreneurs and corporate America refashioned the counterculture aesthetic into a marketable commodity, ignoring the counterculture's incisive critique of capitalism. Yet the counterculture became the basis of authentic "right livelihoods" for others. Meanwhile, the politics of the counterculture defy ready categorization. The popular imagination often conflates hippies with radical peace activists ---But New Leftists frequently excoriated the counterculture for rejecting political engagement in favor of hedonistic escapism or libertarian individualism. Both views miss the most important political aspects of the counterculture, which centered on the embodiment of a decentralized anarchist bent, expressed in the formation of counter-institutions like underground newspapers, urban and rural communes, head shops, and food co-ops c) As the counterculture faded after 1975, its legacies became apparent in the redefinition of the American family, the advent of the personal computer, an increasing ecological and culinary consciousness, and the marijuana legalization movement.

50) New Right

a) New Right, grassroots coalition of American conservatives that collectively led what scholars often refer to as the "conservative ascendancy" or "Republican ascendancy" of the late 20th century. Dubbed the New Right partly in contrast to the New Left counterculture of the 1960s, the New Right consisted of conservative activists who voiced opposition on a variety of issues, including abortion, homosexuality, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the Panama Canal Treaty, affirmative action, and most forms of taxation. ---The "newness" of the New Right refers both to the reinvigorated and redefined forms of conservative political activity and to the youthfulness and mobilization of a previously disorganized suburban middle class. The New Right grew rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks in part to organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom and College Republicans. These organizations shared demographic characteristics (white, middle-class, Protestant, suburban) and were frustrated with a perceived decline in morality during the 1960s and 1970s, including rampant drug use and more-open and public displays of sexuality as well as rising crime rates, race riots, civil rights unrest, and protest movements against the Vietnam War. Additionally, New Right conservatives often blamed the nation's ills on liberalism, which they saw as contributing to the mismanagement and corruption of the federal government. ---Though some debate as to the regional birthplace of the New Right still exists among scholars, the most popular view sees the Sun Belt—the area of land stretching from southern California across the Southwest, through Texas, and into Florida—as the geographic home of the New Right. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign is often viewed as a key event in the rise of the New Right, and Pres. Ronald Reagan is often seen as its iconic hero. Other key players in the rise of the New Right included anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly and Richard Viguerie, whose use of direct mail revolutionized political strategies for mobilizing grassroots support.

62) Homosexuality in the early 1990's

a) Nineteen ninety-eight was a watershed year in the battle for gay rights in America -- in a bad way. Bill Clinton had in 1997 nominated James C. Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. But his nomination as the first openly gay U.S. ambassador stalled the following summer. Hormel, born during the early 1930s, had been a dean at the University of Chicago Law School and also a leader in creating gay institutions in his home town of San Francisco. In 1991, he endowed the Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library, which would go on to bear his name when it opened. ---His nomination snagged on the Republican leadership in Congress, then busily seeking President Clinton's impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. An even bigger obstacle was their disgust over Hormel's homosexuality. ---Senator Jesse Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman well known for his public opposition to the "homosexual lifestyle" and the people he called, in Newsweek in 1994, "degenerates" and "weak, morally sick wretches," vowed to block the appointment. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi on June 15, 1998, added fuel to the fire, comparing being gay to a condition "just like alcohol...or sex addiction...or kleptomania'' -- a pathology in need of treatment. House Majority Leader Dick Armey chimed in to support Lott, affirming, "The Bible is very clear on this." Assistant Senate Majority Leader Don Nickles of Oklahoma told "Fox News Sunday " on June 21, 1998, that Hormel "has promoted a lifestyle and promoted it in a big way, in a way that is very offensive." Against that backdrop, the comments of Republican Chuck Hagel, U.S. senator from Nebraska, didn't stand out as idiosyncratic. Ambassadors "are representing our lifestyle, our values, our standards. And I think it is an inhibiting factor to be gay -- openly aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel -- to do an effective job," Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after meeting with Hormel, according to a July 3, 1998 Omaha-World Herald story. b) In September of that year, Salon revealed that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde -- who had helped rush the Defense of Marriage Act through in 1996 as part of the Gingrich Revolution with the justification that same-sex unions were "illegitimate" and "immoral" -- had broken up another man's marriage by having an affair with his wife. (Newt Gingrich, who worked to push DOMA through and impeach the adulterous president who'd signed it, was later revealed to have also been having affair at the time.) ---In October 1998, 21-year-old gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was beaten into a coma and tied to a fence outside Laramie, where he would not be discovered for 18 hours. The passing motorist who discovered him at first thought he was a scarecrow, Reuters reported at the time. Shepard, whose skull had been cracked, never regained consciousness and died several days later at the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, from his severe injuries.

45) American Hostages in Iran

a) On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter's decision to allow Iran's deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to the United States for cancer treatment. However, the hostage-taking was about more than the Shah's medical care: it was a dramatic way for the student revolutionaries to declare a break with Iran's past and an end to American interference in its affairs. ---It was also a way to raise the intra- and international profile of the revolution's leader, the anti-American cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The students set their hostages free on January 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after President Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address. Many historians believe that hostage crisis cost Jimmy Carter a second term as president. b) The Iran hostage crisis had its origins in a series of events that took place nearly a half-century before it began. The source of tension between Iran and the U.S. stemmed from an increasingly intense conflict over oil. British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of Iran's petroleum reserves almost since their discovery-a profitable arrangement that they had no desire to change. However, in 1951 Iran's newly elected prime minister, a European-educated nationalist named Muhammad Mossadegh, announced a plan to nationalize the country's oil industry. In response to these policies, the American C.I.A. and the British intelligence service devised a secret plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with a leader who would be more receptive to Western interests. c) Through this coup, code-named Operation TP-Ajax, Mossadegh was deposed and a new government was installed in August 1953. The new leader was a member of Iran's royal family named Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah's government was secular, anti-communist and pro-Western. In exchange for tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, he returned 80 percent of Iran's oil reserves to the Americans and the British. ---For the C.I.A. and oil interests, the 1953 coup was a success. In fact, it served as a model for other covert operations during the Cold War, such as the 1954 government takeover in Guatemala and the failed intervention in Cuba in 1961. However, many Iranians bitterly resented what they saw as American intervention in their affairs. The Shah turned out to be a brutal, arbitrary dictator whose secret police (known as the SAVAK) tortured and murdered thousands of people. Meanwhile, the Iranian government spent billions of dollars on American-made weapons while the Iranian economy suffered. d) By the 1970s, many Iranians were fed up with the Shah's government. In protest, they turned to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a radical cleric whose revolutionary Islamist movement seemed to promise a break from the past and a turn toward greater autonomy for the Iranian people. In July 1979, the revolutionaries forced the Shah to disband his government and flee to Egypt. The Ayatollah installed a militant Islamist government in its place. ---The United States, fearful of stirring up hostilities in the Middle East, did not come to the defense of its old ally. (For one thing, President Carter, aware of the Shah's terrible record in that department, was reluctant to defend him.) However, in October 1979 President Carter agreed to allow the exiled leader to enter the U.S. for treatment of an advanced malignant lymphoma. His decision was humanitarian, not political; nevertheless, as one American later noted, it was like throwing "a burning branch into a bucket of kerosene." Anti-American sentiment in Iran exploded. ---On November 4, just after the Shah arrived in New York, a group of pro-Ayatollah students smashed the gates and scaled the walls of the American embassy in Tehran. Once inside, they seized 66 hostages, mostly diplomats and embassy employees. After a short period of time, 13 of these hostages were released. (For the most part, these 13 were women, African-Americans and citizens of countries other than the U.S.-people who, Khomeini argued, were already subject to "the oppression of American society.") Some time later, a 14th hostage developed health problems and was likewise sent home. By midsummer 1980, 52 hostages remained in the embassy compound. ---Diplomatic maneuvers had no discernible effect on the Ayatollah's anti-American stance; neither did economic sanctions such as the seizure of Iranian assets in the United States. Meanwhile, while the hostages were never seriously injured, they were subjected to a rich variety of demeaning and terrifying treatment. They were blindfolded and paraded in front of TV cameras and jeering crowds. They were not allowed to speak or read, and they were rarely permitted to change clothes. Throughout the crisis there was a frightening uncertainty about their fate: The hostages never knew whether they were going to be tortured, murdered or set free. e) President Carter's efforts to bring an end to the hostage crisis soon became one of his foremost priorities. In April 1980, frustrated with the slow pace of diplomacy (and over the objections of several of his advisers), Carter decided to launch a risky military rescue mission known as Operation Eagle Claw. The operation was supposed to send an elite rescue team into the embassy compound. However, a severe desert sandstorm on the day of the mission caused several helicopters to malfunction, including one that veered into a large transport plane during takeoff. Eight American servicemen were killed in the accident, and Operation Eagle Claw was aborted. f) The constant media coverage of the hostage crisis in the U.S. served as a demoralizing backdrop for the 1980 presidential race. President Carter's inability to resolve the problem made him look like a weak and ineffectual leader. At the same time, his intense focus on bringing the hostages home kept him away from the campaign trail. ---The Republican candidate, former California governor Ronald Reagan, took advantage of Carter's difficulties. Rumors even circulated that Reagan's campaign staff negotiated with the Iranians to be sure that the hostages would not be released before the election, an event that would surely have given Carter a crucial boost. (Reagan himself always denied these allegations.) On Election Day, one year and two days after the hostage crisis began, Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide. ---On January 21, 1981, just a few hours after Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address, the remaining hostages were released. They had been in captivity for 444 days.

55) Reagan Administration and the Contras

a) On this day, President Ronald Reagan signs off on a top secret document, National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), which gives the Central Intelligence Agency the power to recruit and support a 500-man force of Nicaraguan rebels to conduct covert actions against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. A budget of $19 million was established for that purpose. NSDD-17 marked the beginning of official U.S. support for the so-called Contras in their struggle against the Sandinistas.The decision came several months after President Reagan directed the CIA to develop a plan to stop what his administration believed to be a serious flow of arms from Nicaragua to rebels in neighboring El Salvador. The administration also believed that the Sandinista regime was merely a cat's paw for the Soviet Union. CIA officials subsequently set about securing pledges from Honduras to provide training bases and Argentina to give training to about 1,000 rebels (these would be in addition to the 500-man force trained and supplied by the CIA). Beyond the original goal of halting the flow of arms from Nicaragua, the tasks of the rebels were expanded to include spy missions and even paramilitary actions inside Nicaragua. News of the directive leaked out to the press in March 1982, but Reagan administration officials quickly downplayed the significance of the action. They argued that the CIA plan was designed to support Nicaraguan "moderates" who opposed the Sandinista regime, not the disreputable former soldiers and allies of Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinista overthrew in 1979. Deputy Director of the CIA Admiral Bobby R. Inman argued that the $19 million allocation provided little buying power for arms and other materials, saying that "Nineteen million or $29 million isn't going to buy you much of any kind these days, and certainly not against that kind of military force."In the years to come, U.S. support of the Contras became a highly charged issue among the American public. Congressional and public criticisms of the program eventually drove the Reagan administration to subvert congressional bans on aid to the Contras. These actions resulted in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.

47) Roe vs Wade

a) Roe v. Wade was a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's legal right to an abortion. ---The Court ruled, in a 7-2 decision, that a woman's right to choose an abortion was protected by the privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The legal precedent for the decision was rooted in the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to privacy involving medical procedures. ---Despite opponents' characterization of the decision, it was not the first time that abortion became a legal procedure in the United States. In fact, for most of the country's first 100 years, abortion as we know it today was not only not a criminal offense, it was also not considered immoral. b) In the 1700s and early 1800s, the word "abortion" referred only to the termination of a pregnancy after "quickening," the time when the fetus first began to make noticeable movements. The induced ending of a pregnancy before this point did not even have a name-but not because it was uncommon. Women in the 1700s often took drugs to end their unwanted pregnancies. ---In 1827, though, Illinois passed a law that made the use of abortion drugs punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. Although other states followed the Illinois example, advertising for "Female Monthly Pills," as they were known, was still common through the middle of the 19th century. c) Abortion itself only became a serious criminal offense in the period between 1860 and 1880. And the criminalization of abortion did not result from moral outrage. The roots of the new law came from the newly established physicians' trade organization, the American Medical Association. Doctors decided that abortion practitioners were unwanted competition and went about eliminating that competition. ---The Catholic Church, which had long accepted terminating pregnancies before quickening, joined the doctors in condemning the practice. ---By the turn of the century, all states had laws against abortion, but for the most part they were rarely enforced and women with money had no problem terminating pregnancies if they wished. It wasn't until the late 1930s that abortion laws were enforced. Subsequent crackdowns led to a reform movement that succeeded in lifting abortion restrictions in California and New York even before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. d) The fight over whether to criminalize abortion has grown increasingly fierce in recent years, but opinion polls suggest that most Americans prefer that women be able to have abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, free of any government interference.

60) Abortion

a) Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7-2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman's constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ("...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"). ---The case began in 1970 when "Jane Roe"—a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey—instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas county, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe's assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time and attempted to balance a woman's right of privacy with a state's interest in regulating abortion. In his opinion, Blackmun noted that only a "compelling state interest" justifies regulations limiting "fundamental rights" such as privacy and that legislators must therefore draw statutes narrowly "to express only the legitimate state interests at stake." The court then attempted to balance the state's distinct compelling interests in the health of pregnant women and in the potential life of fetuses. It placed the point after which a state's compelling interest in the pregnant woman's health would allow it to regulate abortion "at approximately the end of the first trimester" of pregnancy. With regard to the fetus, the court located that point at "capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb," or viability. ---Repeated challenges since 1973 narrowed the scope of Roe v. Wade but did not overturn it. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court established that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional if they place an "undue burden" on a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus is viable. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003), which prohibited a rarely used abortion procedure known as intact dilation and evacuation. In Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the court invoked its decision in Casey to strike down two provisions of a Texas law that had required abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centres and abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. ---In 1998, having undergone two religious conversions, McCorvey publicly declared her opposition to abortion.

27) Students for a Democratic Society

a) SDS, founded in 1959, had its origins in the student branch of the League for Industrial Democracy, a social democratic educational organization. An organizational meeting was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1960, and Robert Alan Haber was elected president of SDS. Initially, SDS chapters throughout the nation were involved in the civil rights movement. Operating under the principles of the "Port Huron Statement," a manifesto written by Tom Hayden and Haber and issued in 1962, the organization grew slowly until the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam (1965). SDS organized a national march on Washington, D.C., in April 1965, and, from about that period, SDS grew increasingly militant, especially about issues relating to the war, such as the drafting of students. Tactics included the occupation of university and college administration buildings on campuses across the country. ---By 1969 the organization had split into several factions, the most notorious of which was Weatherman, or the Weather Underground, which employed terrorist tactics in its activities. Other factions turned their attention to the Third World or to the efforts of black revolutionaries. Increasing factionalism within the ranks of SDS and the winding down of the Vietnam War were but two of the reasons for the dissolution of SDS. By the mid-1970s the organization was defunct.

19) Civil Rights Act of 1964

a) The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. b) Following the Civil War, a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery, made the former slaves citizens and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race. c) Nonetheless, many states—particularly in the South—used poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures to keep their African-American citizens essentially disenfranchised. They also enforced strict segregation through "Jim Crow" laws and condoned violence from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. d) For decades after Reconstruction, the U.S. Congress did not pass a single civil rights act. Finally, in 1957, it established a civil rights section of the Justice Department, along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions. e) Three years later, Congress provided for court-appointed referees to help blacks register to vote. Both of these bills were strongly watered down to overcome southern resistance. f) When John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he initially delayed supporting new anti-discrimination measures. But with protests springing up throughout the South—including one in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses—Kennedy decided to act. ---In June 1963 he proposed by far the most comprehensive civil rights legislation to date, saying the United States "will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free." g) Kennedy was assassinated that November in Dallas, after which new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately took up the cause. h) "Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined," Johnson said in his first State of the Union address. During debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, southerners argued, among other things, that the bill unconstitutionally usurped individual liberties and states' rights. i) In a mischievous attempt to sabotage the bill, a Virginia segregationist introduced an amendment to ban employment discrimination against women. That one passed, whereas over 100 other hostile amendments were defeated. In the end, the House approved the bill with bipartisan support by a vote of 290-130. j) Having broken the filibuster, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the bill, and Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964. "It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come," Johnson, a Democrat, purportedly told an aide later that day in a prediction that would largely come true. k) Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, segregation on the grounds of race, religion or national origin was banned at all places of public accommodation, including courthouses, parks, restaurants, theaters, sports arenas and hotels. No longer could blacks and other minorities be denied service simply based on the color of their skin. ---The act also barred race, religious, national origin and gender discrimination by employers and labor unions, and created an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the power to file lawsuits on behalf of aggrieved workers. ---Additionally, the act forbade the use of federal funds for any discriminatory program, authorized the Office of Education (now the Department of Education) to assist with school desegregation, gave extra clout to the Commission on Civil Rights and prohibited the unequal application of voting requirements. ---was later expanded to bring disabled Americans, the elderly and women in collegiate athletics under its umbrella. l) It also paved the way for two major follow-up laws: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of property. Though the struggle against racism would continue, legal segregation had been brought to its knees in the United States.

32) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

a) The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" by the communist government of North Vietnam. It was passed on August 7, 1964, by the U.S. Congress after an alleged attack on two U.S. naval destroyers stationed off the coast of Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively launched America's full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War. b) By 1964, Vietnam was embroiled in a decades-long civil war, and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was the beginning of the United States' formal involvement in the Vietnam War, with the stated goal of stopping the spread of communism in the region. It passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives, and with only two opposing votes in the U.S. Senate. ---The resolution was prompted by two separate attacks on two U.S. Navy destroyers, U.S.S. Maddox and U.S.S. Turner Joy, which allegedly occurred on August 2 and August 4, 1964, respectively. ---The two destroyers were stationed in the Gulf Tonkin, a body of water now often referred to as the East Vietnam Sea, in waters that separate Vietnam from the Chinese island of Hainan. They were there as part of an effort to support South Vietnamese military raids on what was then the North Vietnamese coast. ---According to the U.S. Navy, both Maddox and Turner Joy reported being fired upon by North Vietnamese patrol boats, but later doubts surrounding the veracity of the second attack, on Turner Joy, emerged. ---Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution at the insistence of President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the understanding that the president would seek their approval before launching a full-scale war in Vietnam with U.S. military personnel. However, that ultimately proved not to be the case. c) In the early morning hours of August 2, 1964, the crew of Maddox received an intelligence report suggesting that three North Vietnamese patrol boats had been dispatched to attack it. ---The naval ship's captain, John J. Herrick, initially ordered Maddox to head out to sea, hoping to avoid confrontation. However, a few hours later, Herrick reversed his orders, and the destroyer returned to the Gulf. ---Within a few hours, three North Vietnamese patrol boats were fast approaching the destroyer, and Herrick ordered the ship's guns to be at the ready. He told his crew to be prepared fire if the patrol boats came within 10,000 yards of Maddox. He also called in air support from the U.S.S. Ticonderoga, which was stationed nearby. ---Maddox and the fighter jets were able to fend off the North Vietnamese attack, and the three boats retreated—one boat was destroyed and the other two were heavily damaged. d) The next day, in a demonstration of American resolve, President Johnson ordered Turner Joy to join Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 4, Maddox and Turner Joy both received intelligence suggesting that another North Vietnamese attack was imminent. ---With visibility poor and storms approaching, Captain Herrick ordered the destroyers to take evasive measures to avoid confrontation, by moving further out to sea. ---Just before 9 p.m. that night, Maddox reported spotting unidentified vessels in the area. Over the next three hours, Maddox and Turner Joy were engaged in high-speed maneuvers designed to evade attack, although it was unclear whether or not North Vietnamese ships were in fact in pursuit. ---Still, Maddox reported multiple torpedo attacks as well as automatic weapons fire. Both destroyers returned fire, launching multiple shells at the "enemy." ---However, Navy Commander James Stockdale, who had overseen the air defense of Maddox two days before and was flying recognizance over the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4th, cast doubt on whether there was indeed an attack that day, noting, "Our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets... There were no [North Vietnamese] boats there... There was nothing there but black water and American firepower." ---Captain Herrick, too, later questioned his crew's version of events, and attributed their actions on August 4th to "overeager sonar operators" and crew member error. e) However, Captain Herrick's initial reports to military and government officials in Washington, D.C., on August 4th and 5th indicated that the attack had occurred and U.S. intelligence sources in Southeast Asia reportedly confirmed this early account. ---With the time in the U.S. capital 12 hours ahead of that in Vietnam, President Johnson and his administration had been monitoring the events of August 4th since the early morning of August 5th. At 11:30 p.m. local time, President Johnson took to the airwaves to inform the American public of the attack and to announce his intention to retaliate. ---On August 7th, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which the president signed into law three days later, and plans to increase U.S. military involvement in Vietnam were begun in earnest. ---The results of those discussions became apparent a few months later. On February 13, 1965, the United States launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a large-scale bombing campaign of North Vietnamese targets that would last for more than two years. The president also authorized the deployment of ground combat troops to fight the Viet Cong in the Vietnamese countryside.

37) My Lai Massacre

a) The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S. Army officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage. The brutality of the My Lai killings and the official cover-up fueled anti-war sentiment and further divided the United States over the Vietnam War. b) The small village of My Lai is located in Quang Ngai province, which was believed to be a stronghold of the communist National Liberation Front (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC) during the Vietnam War. ---Quang Ngai province was therefore a frequent target of U.S. and South Vietnamese bombing attacks, and the entire region was heavily strafed with Agent Orange, the deadly herbicide. ---In March 1968, Charlie Company—part of the Americal Division's 11th Infantry Brigade—received word that VC guerrillas had taken control of the neighboring village of Son My. Charlie Company was sent to the area on March 16 for a search-and-destroy mission. ---At the time, morale among U.S. soldiers on the ground was dwindling, especially in the wake of the North Vietnamese-led Tet Offensive, which was launched in January 1968. Charlie Company had lost some 28 of its members to death or injuries, and was down to just over 100 men. c) Army commanders had advised the soldiers of Charlie Company that all who were found in the Son My area could be considered VC or active VC sympathizers, and ordered them to destroy the village. ---When they arrived shortly after dawn, the soldiers—led by Lieutenant William Calley—found no Viet Cong. Instead, they came across a quiet village of primarily women, children and older men preparing their breakfast rice. ---The villagers were rounded up into groups as the soldiers inspected their huts. Despite finding only a few weapons, Calley ordered his men to begin shooting the villagers. d) Some soldiers balked at Calley's command, but within seconds the massacre had begun, with Calley himself shooting many men, women and children. ---Mothers who were shielding their children were shot, and when their children tried to run away, they too were slaughtered. Huts were set on fire, and anyone inside who tried to escape was gunned down. ---"I saw them shoot an M79 (grenade launcher) into a group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else," Sgt. Michael Bernhardt, a soldier at the scene, later told a reporter. ---"We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village—old papa-sans [men], women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive," Bernhardt said. ---In addition to killing unarmed men, women and children, the soldiers slaughtered countless livestock, raped an unknown number of women, and burned the village to the ground. ---Calley was reported to have dragged dozens of people, including young children, into a ditch before executing them with a machine gun. Not a single shot was fired against the men of Charlie Company at My Lai. e) The My Lai massacre reportedly ended only after Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot on a reconnaissance mission, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks. ---"We kept flying back and forth ... and it didn't take very long until we started noticing the large number of bodies everywhere. Everywhere we'd look, we'd see bodies. These were infants, two-, three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever," Thompson stated at a My Lai conference at Tulane University in 1994. ---Thompson and his crew flew dozens of survivors to receive medical care. In 1998, Thompson and two other members of his crew received the Soldier's Medal, the U.S. Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. f) By the time the My Lai massacre ended, 504 people were dead. Among the victims were 182 women—17 of them pregnant—and 173 children, including 56 infants. ---Knowing news of the massacre would cause a scandal, officers higher up in command of Charlie Company and the 11th Brigade immediately made efforts to downplay the bloodshed. ---The coverup continued until Ron Ridenhour, a soldier in the 11th Brigade who had heard reports of the massacre but had not participated, began a campaign to bring the events to light. After writing letters to President Richard M. Nixon, the Pentagon, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff and several congressmen—with no response—Ridenhour finally gave an interview to the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in November 1969. ---Amid the international uproar that followed Ridenhour's revelations, the U.S. Army ordered a special investigation into the My Lai massacre and subsequent efforts to cover it up. The inquiry, headed by Lieutenant General William Peers, released its report in March 1970 and recommended that no fewer than 28 officers be charged for their involvement in covering up the massacre. ---The Army would later charge only 14 men, including Calley, Captain Ernest Medina and Colonel Oran Henderson, with crimes related to the events at My Lai. All were acquitted except for Calley, who was found guilty of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings, despite his contention that he was only following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina. ---In March 1971, Calley was given a life sentence for his role in directing the killings at My Lai. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, and his sentence was reduced upon appeal to 20 years and later to 10; he was paroled in 1974. ---Later investigations have revealed that the slaughter at My Lai was not an isolated incident. Other atrocities, such as a similar massacre of villagers at My Khe, are less well known. A notorious military operation called Speedy Express killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta, earning the commander of the operation, Major General Julian Ewell, the nickname "the Butcher of the Delta." g) By the early 1970s, the American war effort in Vietnam was winding down, as the Nixon administration continued its "Vietnamization" policy, including the withdrawal of troops and the transfer of control over ground operations to the South Vietnamese. ---Among the American troops still in Vietnam, morale was low, and anger and frustration were high. Drug use increased among soldiers, and an official report in 1971 estimated that one-third or more of U.S. troops were addicted. ---The revelations of the My Lai massacre caused morale to plummet even further, as GIs wondered what other atrocities their superiors were concealing. On the home front in the United States, the brutality of the My Lai massacre and the efforts made by higher-ranking officers to conceal it exacerbated anti-war sentiment and increased the bitterness regarding the continuing U.S. military presence in Vietnam.

42) Arab Oil Embargo

a) The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) implements what it calls "oil diplomacy" on this day in 1973: It prohibits any nation that had supported Israel in its "Yom Kippur War" with Egypt, Syria and Jordan from buying any of the oil it sells. The ensuing energy crisis marked the end of the era of cheap gasoline and caused the share value of the New York Stock Exchange to drop by $97 billion. This, in turn, ushered in one of the worst recessions the United States had ever seen. ---In the middle of 1973, even before the OPEC embargo, an American oil crisis was on the horizon: Domestic reserves were low (about 52 billion barrels, a 10-year supply); the United States was importing about 27 percent of the crude petroleum it needed every year; and gasoline prices were rising. The 1973 war with Israel made things even worse. OPEC announced that it would punish Israel's allies by implementing production cuts of 5 percent a month until that nation withdrew from the occupied territories and restored the rights of the Palestinians. It also declared that the true "enemies" of the Arab cause (in practice, this turned out to mean the United States and the Netherlands) would be subject to an indefinite "total embargo." Traditionally, per-barrel prices had been set by the oil companies themselves, but in December, OPEC announced that from then on, its members would set their own prices on the petroleum they exported. As a result, the price of a barrel of oil went up to $11.65, 130 percent higher than it had been in October and 387 percent higher than it had been the year before. ---Domestic oil prices increased too, but shortages persisted. People waited for hours in long lines at gas stations—at some New Jersey pumps, lines were four miles long!-and by the time the embargo ended in March 1974, the average retail price of gas had climbed to 84 cents per gallon from 38 cents per gallon. Sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars skyrocketed. At the same time, declining demand for the big, heavy gas-guzzlers that most American car companies were producing spelled disaster for the domestic auto industry.

25) Kerner Commission

a) The President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders—known as the Kerner Commission—releases its report, condemning racism as the primary cause of the recent surge of riots. Headed by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, the 11-member commission was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in July 1967 to uncover the causes of urban riots and recommend solutions. b) The report, which declared that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal," called for expanded aid to African American communities in order to prevent further racial violence and polarization. Unless drastic and costly remedies were undertaken at once, the report said, there would be a "continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values." c) The report identified more than 150 riots or major disorders between 1965 and 1968 (including the deadly Newark and Detroit riots) and blamed "white racism" for sparking the violence—not a conspiracy by African American political groups as some claimed. d) Statistics for 1967 alone included 83 people killed and 1,800 injured—the majority of them African Americans—and property valued at more than $100 million damaged or destroyed.

52) National Debt in 1987

a) The Savings and Loan Crisis was the most significant bank collapse since the Great Depression of 1929. By 1989, more than 1,000 of the nation's savings and loans had failed. Between 1986-1995, more than half of the nation's S&Ls had failed. ---The crisis cost $160 billion. Taxpayers paid $132 billion, and the S&L industry paid the rest. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation paid $20 billion to depositors of failed S&Ls before it went bankrupt. ---More than 500 S&Ls were insured by state-run funds. Their failures cost $185 million before they collapsed. ---The crisis ended what had once been a secure source of home mortgages. It also destroyed the idea of state-run bank insurance funds. b) The Senate Ethics Committee investigated five U.S. Senators for improper conduct. The "Keating Five" included John McCain, R-Ariz., Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., John Glenn, D-Ohio, Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. ---The Five were named after Charles Keating, head of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. He had given them $1.5 million total in campaign contributions. In return, they put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Banking Board to overlook suspicious activities at Lincoln. The FHLBB's mandate was to investigate possible fraud, money laundering, and risky loans. ---Empire Savings and Loan of Mesquite, Texas was involved in illegal land flips and other criminal activities. ---Empire's default cost taxpayers $300 million. Half of the failed S&Ls were from Texas. The crisis pushed the state into recession. When the banks' bad land investments were auctioned off, real estate prices collapsed. That increased office vacancies to 30 percent, while crude oil prices fell 50 percent. c) The situation worsened in the 1980s. Money market accounts became popular. They offered higher interest rates on savings without the insurance. When depositors switched, it depleted the banks' source of funds. S&L banks asked Congress to remove the low interest rate restrictions. The Carter Administration allowed S&Ls to raise interest rates on savings deposits. It also increased the insurance level from $40,000 to $100,000 per depositor. ---By 1982, S&Ls were losing $4 billion a year. It was a significant reversal the industry's profit of $781 million in 1980. ---In 1982, President Reagan signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act. It solidified the elimination of the interest rate cap. It also permitted the banks to have up to 40 percent of their assets in commercial loans and 30 percent in consumer loans.

38) US Senate and Cambodia

a) The Senate Armed Services Committee begins a probe into allegations that the U.S. Air Force made thousands of secret B-52 raids into Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 at a time when the United States recognized the neutrality of the Prince Norodom Sihanouk regime in Cambodia. The Pentagon acknowledged that President Richard Nixon and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird had authorized the raids against Cambodia, but Sihanouk denied the State Department claim that he had requested or authorized the bombing. Though it was established that the bombing records had been falsified, Laird and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor, denied any knowledge of the falsification. The Senate hearings eventually exposed the extent of the secrecy involved in the bombing campaign and seriously damaged the credibility of the Nixon administration.

64) Presidential Election in 2000

a) The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush (1989-1993), and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President. ---Bill Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266 (with one elector abstaining in the official tally). ---The election was noteworthy for a controversy over the awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state, and the unusual event of the winning candidate having received fewer popular votes than the runner-up. It was the closest election since 1876 and only the fourth election in which the electoral vote did not reflect the popular vote.

40) War Powers Act

a) The War Powers Act is a congressional resolution designed to limit the U.S. president's ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad. Among other restrictions, the law requires that presidents notify Congress after deploying the armed forces and limits how long units can remain engaged without congressional approval. Enacted in 1973 with the goal of avoiding another lengthy conflict such as the Vietnam War, its effectiveness has been repeatedly questioned throughout its history, and several presidents have been accused of failing to comply with its regulations. b) The War Powers Act—officially called the War Powers Resolution—was enacted in November 1973 over an executive veto by President Richard M. Nixon. ---The law's text frames it as a means of guaranteeing that "the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply" whenever the American armed forces are deployed overseas. To that end, it requires the President to consult with the legislature "in every possible instance" before committing troops to war. ---The resolution also sets down reporting requirements for the chief executive, including the responsibility to notify Congress within 48 hours whenever military forces are introduced "into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances." ---Additionally, the law stipulates that Presidents are required to end foreign military actions after 60 days unless Congress provides a declaration of war or an authorization for the operation to continue. c) In the U.S. Constitution, the power to make war is shared by the executive and legislative branches. As commander-in-chief of the military, the president is charged with directing the armed forces. Congress, meanwhile, is vested with the power "to declare war" and "raise and support armies." ---These provisions were traditionally interpreted to mean that Congress had to approve American involvement in overseas wars. By the 1970s, however, many lawmakers had grown wary of presidents deploying the armed forces abroad without first consulting Congress. ---President Harry S. Truman had committed U.S. troops to the Korean War as part of a United Nations "police action," and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon had overseen the long and controversial undeclared conflict during the Vietnam War. ---Legislative efforts to reign in presidential war powers coalesced during the Nixon administration. Disturbed by revelations about the Vietnam conflict—including news that Nixon had been conducting a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia—the House and Senate crafted the War Powers Act as a means of reasserting Congressional authority over foreign wars. d) President Nixon was an early critic of the War Powers Act, and he vetoed the law on the grounds that it was an "unconstitutional and dangerous" check on his duties as commander-in-chief of the military. ---In a message accompanying his veto, Nixon argued that the resolution "would attempt to take away, by a mere legislative act, authorities which the President has properly exercised under the Constitution for almost 200 years." ---Congress overrode Nixon's veto, but he wasn't the last chief executive to bristle at the restrictions of the War Powers Act. Since the 1970s, every sitting president has either sidestepped some of the law's provisions or labeled it unconstitutional. ---One of the first major challenges to the War Powers Act came in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan deployed military personnel to El Salvador without consulting or submitting a report to Congress. In 1999, President Bill Clinton continued a bombing campaign in Kosovo beyond the 60-day time limit cited in the law. ---A more recent War Powers Act dispute arose in 2011, when President Barack Obama initiated a military action in Libya without congressional authorization. ---Members of Congress have occasionally objected to the executive branch's disregard for the War Powers Act, but attempts to take the issue to court have been unsuccessful. In 2000, for example, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case on whether the law had been violated during military operations in Yugoslavia.

43) "Plumbers"

a) The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, was a covert White House Special Investigations Unit, established July 24, 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. Its members branched into illegal activities while working for the Committee to Re-elect the President, including the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal. ---The Plumbers came to include several Watergate figures. Hunt was recommended by Charles Colson, and Liddy was recommended by Egil Krogh. Liddy coined his own sensitivity indicator for the group in the form of "ODESSA". ---Some authors believe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer John Paisley was a member of the Plumbers. Paisley was assigned to the CIA's Office of Security, of which Nixon campaign security coordinator and Watergate burglar James McCord was once a member. On August 9, 1971, Young's memo indicates he met with Paisley and OS Director Howard Osborn, in which Paisley provided a list of objectives for the Special Investigations Unit. b) The Plumbers' first task was the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's Los Angeles psychiatrist, Lewis J. Fielding, in an effort to uncover evidence to discredit Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers. The operation was reportedly unsuccessful in finding Ellsberg's file and was so reported to the White House. However, Fielding himself stated the file was in his office; he found it on the floor on the morning after the burglary and quite clearly, someone had gone through it. In a September 1971 conversation, John Ehrlichman advised Nixon, "We had one little operation; it's been aborted out in Los Angeles which, I think, is better that you don't know about." Eventually, the case against Ellsberg was dismissed due to government misconduct. ---Aside from the Fielding burglary, there are few other activities the Plumbers were known to have been engaged in. Hunt reportedly looked into the Ted Kennedy-Chappaquiddick incident and Liddy reported purported Kennedy administration involvement in the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. ---After the California break-in, Liddy—who was general counsel, a member of the finance committee of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) and promoted from aide to Krogh and Young—worked with Campaign political-intelligence operations. Ehrlichman, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Special Investigations Unit, knew about Liddy's goal to perform an intelligence-gathering operation for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP). Liddy involved Hunt in the operations which would later include the Watergate burglary.

5) Economic Growth During the 1950s

a) The expanding economy was a result of BIG government, BIG business, CHEAP energy, and an EXPANDing population ---WWII and the Cold War had created military-industrial-governmental linkages that primed the economy through government spending, what some have labeled "military KEYNESIANISM" ---(1955) National security needs accounted for half of the US budget (equaling about 17% of the gross national product, or GNP) and exceeded the total net incomes of all American corporations b) The connection between government and business went beyond direct spending: ---millions of research and development dollars flowed into COLLEGES and INDUSTRIES ---The electronics industry drew 70% of its research money from the government, producing not only new scientific and military technology but marketable consumer goods from vinyl floors and Formica countertops to transistor radios and color televisions ---By 1960, the electronics industry was the 5th largest in the nation c) A revolving door seemed to connect government and business positions ---Few saw any real conflict of interest even when those from businesses to be regulated staffed regulatory agencies and cabinet positions and relaxed antitrust activity ---Secretary of Defense WILSON, the ex-president of General Motors, later voiced the common view ("What was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa.") ---It was an era of "new economics" where, according to the Advertising Council, "people's capitalism" was creating "the highest standard of living ever known by any people...at any time." d) Not all agreed that the connections between government and business were without risk ---In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the power of the "military-industrial complex" and its potential threat to the "democratic process" e) However, few Americans seemed worried when corporate profits DOUBLED between 1948 and 1958 and industrial wages steadily rose from $55 to $80 a week (nor was there much concern about corporations getting bigger) ---large corporations swallowed smaller companies and merged with one another to create CONGLOMERATES ---5% of American companies were producing 90% of corporate income and GNP had doubled since 1940 f) The new economy also promoted changes in the WORKFORCE ---Industrial jobs declined, even as salaries increased ---Some off the decline resulted from increased productivity caused by larger, more efficient plants that increasingly used machines and AUTOMATION ---Another side of the decline, however, was the growth of service and consumer-related jobs ---By the mid-1950s, more white-collar jobs existed than blue-collar ones, and union membership continued to decline from wartime highs ---Organized labor responded by merging the CIO and AFL in 1956, avoiding strikes, and focusing on better wages, cost-of-living raises, and pensions and health benefits g) Central to the new economy were the AUTOMOBILE and the industries and jobs that the car generated ---75% of all Americans had at least one car and were driving millions of miles, stopping at newly constructed motels, amusement parks, shopping malls, drive-in theaters, and fast-food restaurants ---The $32 billion allocated to build an interstate highway system was only a fraction of funds spent on road construction by all levels of government ---New and better highways led to more cars, and more cars needed still more roads, parking lots, and places to visit

36) Vietnamization

a) Vietnamization was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society. President Nixon believed his Vietnamization strategy, which involved building up South Vietnam's armed forces and withdrawing U.S. troops, would prepare the South Vietnamese to act in their own defense against a North Vietnamese takeover and allow the United States to leave Vietnam with its honor intact. But the Vietnamization process was deeply flawed from the beginning. b) When President Richard M. Nixon took office in January 1969, the U.S. had been sending combat troops to fight in Vietnam since 1965, and some 31,000 American lives had been lost. ---However, the full-scale U.S. military commitment seemingly had made little progress in defeating communist North Vietnam and its Viet Cong guerrilla allies. The enemy forces had absorbed tremendous punishment but remained determined to overthrow the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam and reunite the country under Communist rule. ---Facing intense pressure from a war-weary public and widespread Vietnam War protests, Nixon sought a way to disengage American combat forces without appearing to abandon South Vietnam to the communists. He rejected calls from the anti-war movement to order an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and publicly expressed a desire to achieve "peace with honor" in Vietnam. c) Toward this end, Nixon and his advisors—including Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird—developed a new strategy they called Vietnamization. The Vietnamization plan provided for a gradual, phased withdrawal of American combat forces, combined with an expanded effort to train and equip South Vietnam to take over military responsibility for its own defense. ---The president announced his Vietnamization strategy to the American people in a nationally televised speech on November 3, 1969. He emphasized how his approach contrasted with the "Americanization" of the war that had taken place under his predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson. ---"The defense of freedom is everybody's business, not just America's business. And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened," Nixon explained in his speech. "In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace." d) In addition to U.S. troop withdrawals and efforts to prepare and modernize the South Vietnamese army, Nixon's Vietnamization strategy also featured programs designed to strengthen the South Vietnamese government and expand its political base in rural areas. He offered U.S. assistance to help South Vietnamese officials organize local elections and implement social reforms and economic development initiatives. ---At the same time that the Vietnamization plan was put in place, however, the Nixon administration also escalated U.S. military activity in other parts of Southeast Asia. In April 1970, for example, the president secretly authorized bombing campaigns and a ground invasion of Cambodia, a neutral country. ---When his expansion of the war came to public attention, Nixon asserted that the incursion into Cambodia was necessary to keep pressure on the enemy until the Vietnamization strategy took root. The president's actions nonetheless came under harsh criticism and prompted massive anti-war demonstrations across America. ---Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam in several stages, from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972. However, during this same period, North Vietnamese leaders launched several offensives that tested the president's resolve and cast doubt on his Vietnamization strategy. ---The March 1972 Easter Offensive, for instance, highlighted the poor performance of the South Vietnamese army and its heavy reliance on U.S. air power to repel the Communist attack. e) In January 1973, the Nixon administration negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnamese leaders. Under the terms of the settlement, the U.S. agreed to withdraw its remaining troops within 60 days in exchange for an immediate cease-fire, the return of American prisoners of war, and North Vietnam's promise to recognize the legitimacy of South Vietnam's government and submit future disputes to an international commission. ---In his final report before leaving office that month, Laird declared the Vietnamization process completed: "As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese." ---However, later events proved that the Laird's confidence was completely unfounded, as South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces in 1975.

8) "Lonely Crowd" and "Catcher in the Rye"

a) Viewed as extreme were the BEATS, or "BEATNIKS", a group that rejected the morality and lifestyles of mainstream American culture ---ALLEN GINSBERG in his poem "HOWL" and JACK KEROUAC in his novel "ON THE ROAD" denounced American materialism and sexual repression, and glorified a freer, natural life ---a minority, especially among young college students, found the beatnik critique of "square America" meaningful, but most Americans easily rejected the Beats' message and lifestyles b) Americans could justify the suppression of beatniks and homosexuals because they appeared to mock traditional values of family and community ---other critics of American society, however, were more difficult to dismiss ---several respected writers and intellectuals claimed that the suburban and consumer culture was destructive (stifling diversity and individuality in favor of conformity) ---mass-produced homes, meals, toys, fashions, and the other trappings of suburban life, they said, created a gray sameness about Americans ---DAVID REISMAN argued in "The Lonely Crowd" that postwar Americans, unlike earlier generations, were "outer-directed" (less sure of their values and morals and overly concerned about fitting into a group) ---he suggested that peer pressure had replaced individual thinking c) urged readers to resist being packaged like cake mixes and to reassert their own identites d) HOLDEN CAUFIELD, hero of SALINGER'S "The Catcher in the Rye", unable to find his place in society, merely concluded that the major features of American life were all phony

26) Feminine Mystique

a) With her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan (1921-2006) broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. She also helped advance the women's rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She advocated for an increased role for women in the political process and is remembered as a pioneer of feminism and the women's rights movements. b) A bright student, Betty Friedan excelled at Smith College, graduating in 1942 with a bachelor's degree. Although she received a fellowship to study at the University of California, she chose instead to go to New York to work as a reporter. Friedan got married in 1947 and had three children. She returned to work after her first child was born, but lost her job when she was pregnant with her second, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Friedan then stayed home to care for her family. But she was restless as a homemaker and began to wonder if other women felt the same way. To answer this question, Friedan surveyed other graduates of Smith College. The results of this research formed the basis of The Feminine Mystique. The book became a sensation—creating a social revolution by dispelling the myth that all women wanted to be happy homemakers. Friedan encouraged women to seek new opportunities for themselves. c) As an icon in the women's rights movement, Betty Friedan did more than write about confining gender stereotypes—she became a force for change. She co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, serving as its first president. Friedan also fought for abortion rights by establishing the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America) in 1969. She wanted women to have a greater role in the political process. With such other leading feminists as Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, Friedan helped create the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971. d) In 1982, Betty Friedan published The Second Stage, which sought to help women wrestling with the demands of work and home. It seemed to be a more moderate feminist position than her earlier work. While in her seventies, Friedan explored the later stages of a woman's life in The Fountain of Age (1993). e) Betty Friedan died of heart failure on February 4, 2006, in Washington, D.C. She is remembered as one of the leading voices of the feminist and women's rights movement of the twentieth century. And the work that she started is still being carried today by the three organizations she helped establish.

11) Brown vs Board of Education

a) (1954) The Supreme Court considered the case of BROWN VS BOARD OF EDUCATION, Topeka, Kansas ---the Brown case had started four years earlier, when Oliver Brown sued to force the school district to allow his daughter to attend a nearby white school ---the Kansas courts had rejected his suit, pointing out that the availability of a school for African Americans fulfilled the Supreme Court's separate-but-equal ruling ---the NAACP appealed; in addressing the Supreme Court, NAACP lawyer THURGOOD MARSHALL argued that the concept of "separate but equal" was inherently self-contradictory ---he used statistics to show that black schools were unequal in financial resources and the quality and number of teachers ---he also used a psychological study indicating that black children educated in a segregated environment suffered from low self-esteem ---Marshall stressed that segregated educational facilities, even if physically similar, could never yield equal results b) In 1952 a divided Court was unable to make a decision, but two years later the Court heard the case again ---now sitting as cheief of justice was EARL WARREN, the Republican former governor of California who had been appointed to the Court by Eisenhower in 1953 ---to the dismay of many who had considered Warren a legal conservative, the chief justice and the Court rejected social and political consensus and unanimously stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" ---recognizing the degree of change the Brown decision wrought, in 1955, the Court addressed how to implement the ruling and gave primary responsibility to local school boards, ordering them to proceed with "all deliberate speed" ---the justices also instructed lower federal courts to monitor progress according to this vague guideline c) Reactions to the case were predictable; African Americans and liberals hailed he decision and hoped that segregated schools would soon be an institution of the past ---Southern whites vowed to resist integration by all possible means; Virginia passed a law closing any integrated school ---Southern congresional representatives issued the SOUTHERN MANIFESTO, in which they proudly pledged to oppose the Brown ruling ---Eisenhower, who believed the Court had erred, refused to support the decision publicly d) While both political parties carefully danced around school integration and other civil rights issues, the school district in Little Rock, Arkansas, moved forward with "all deliberate speed" ---Central High School was scheduled to integrate in 1957; Opposing integration were the parents of the school's students and Governor ORVAL FAUBUS, who ordered National Guard troops to surround the school and prevent desegregation ---when Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine integrating students, walked toward Central High, National Guardsmen blocked her path as a hostile mob roared, "Lynch her!" lynch her!" ---She retreated to her bus stop; Central High remained segregated e) For 3 weeks the black students were prevented from enrolling ---federal judge ordered integration of Central High School ---Faubus complied and withdrew the National Guard ---But segregationists remained determined to block integraion and when they discovered that the nine that slipped into the school unnoticed, they rushed the police lines and battered the school doors open ---Inside the school, Melba Patella Beals thought, "I'm going to die here, in school." ---the students were loaded into cars and warned to duck their heads ---School officials ordered the drivers to "start driving, do not stop....If you hit somebody, you keep rolling, 'cause if you stop, the kids are dead." f) Integration had lasted almost 3 hours and was followed by rioting throughout the city, forcing the mayor to ask for federal troops to restore order ---Faced with insurrection, Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and dispatched a thousand troops of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock ---the president emphasized that he had sent the federal troops not to integrate the schools but to uphold the law and to restore order ---the distinction was lost on most white southerners, who fumed as soldiers protected the nine black students for the rest of the school year ---even with the presence of the soldiers, threats against the nine students continued ---Beals remembered that "there was no word big enough to explain her fear," fear that any day she could be killed g) The following school year, the city closed its high schools rather than integrate them ---to prevent such actions, the Supreme Court ruled in COOPER V AARON that an African American's right to attend school couldnot "be nullified openly" or "be evasive schemes for segregation" ---Little Rock's high schools reopened, and integration slowly spread to the lower grades; BUT in Little Rock, as in other communities, many white families fled the integrated public schools and enrolled their children in private schools that were beyond the reach of the federal courts ---with no endorsement from the White House and entrenched southern opposition, "all deliberate speed" amounted to a snail's pace ---By 1965, less than 2% of all southern schools were integrated

61) Dayton Agreement

a) The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, Dayton Accords, Paris Protocol or Dayton-Paris Agreement, (Bosnian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum, Serbian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum, Croatian: Daytonski sporazum) is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, in November 1995, and formally signed in Paris, France, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the ​3 1⁄2-year-long Bosnian War, one of the Yugoslav Wars. b) Though basic elements of the Dayton Agreement were proposed in international talks as early as 1992,[2] these negotiations were initiated following the unsuccessful previous peace efforts and arrangements, the August 1995 Croatian military Operation Storm and its aftermath, the government military offensive against the Republika Srpska, conducted in parallel with NATO's Operation Deliberate Force. During September and October 1995, world powers (especially the United States and Russia), gathered in the Contact Group, applied intense pressure to the leaders of the three sides to attend the negotiations in Dayton, Ohio. ---The conference took place from 1-21 November 1995. The main participants from the region were the President of the Republic of Serbia Slobodan Milošević (representing the Bosnian Serb interests due to the absence of Karadžić), President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman, and President of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović with his Foreign Minister Muhamed Šaćirbeg. ---The peace conference was led by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and negotiator Richard Holbrooke with two Co-Chairmen in the form of EU Special Representative Carl Bildt and the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Igor Ivanov. A key participant in the US delegation was General Wesley Clark (later to become NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) in 1997). The head of the UK team was Pauline Neville-Jones, political director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The UK military representative was Col Arundell David Leakey (later to become Commander of EUFOR in 2005). Paul Williams, through the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) served as legal counsel to the Bosnian Government delegation during the negotiations. ---The secure site was chosen in order to remove all the parties from their comfort zone, without which they would have little incentive to negotiate; to reduce their ability to negotiate through the media; to securely house over 800 staff and attendants. Curbing the participants' ability to negotiate via the media was a particularly important consideration. Richard Holbrooke wanted to prevent posturing through early leaks to the press. ---After having been initialled in Dayton, Ohio, on 21 November 1995, the full and formal agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December 1995[3] and witnessed by French president Jacques Chirac, U.S. president Bill Clinton, UK prime minister John Major, German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

3) Revolution in Cuba

a) A rebellion led by FIDEL CASTRO toppled the Cuban government of FULGENCIO BATISTA, who had controlled the island since the 1940s ---The corrupt and dictatorial Batista had become an embarrassment to the US, and many Americans believed that Castro could be a pro-American reformist leader ---However, by 1959, with Castro's forces in control of the island, many in Washington were concerned about Castro's economic and social reforms, which endangered American investments and interests ---Washington's response was to apply economic and political pressure b) (1960) Castro reacted by signing an economic pact with the Soviet Union ---Eisenhower said Castro was a "madman...going wild and harming the whole American structure." c) Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to overthrow the Cuban leader ---However, actual implementation of the plot fell to Eisenhower's successor

46) American Businesses in the 1970's

a) During the 1970s, business conditions and the economy were the worst they had been in decades. International events, the most important being the oil crises of 1973-74 and 1979, rocked a decade earmarked by rampant wage and price inflation and slow business growth. The unprecedented combination of these negative economic factors led to a new term: "stagflation." It also humbled the large institutions in the United States—the government, big business, labor unions—by demonstrating their reduced ability to affect the economy. b) The increasing inflation during the 1970s was brought about in large part because of the government's funding of the Vietnam War and President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" social welfare programs. President Richard M. Nixon's initial unwillingness to curb the Johnson administration's government spending worsened the situation. As inflation rose, Nixon eventually responded with government-mandated wage-and-price controls, but they were only temporary measures. His presidential successors during that decade, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, fared no better in their efforts to keep prices down. c) Big businesses in America, particularly the automobile manufacturers, suffered terribly in such a poor economy. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were at the mercy of uncontrollable changes in the oil market and consumer preferences. As energy shortages arose in the decade, consumers demanded energy-efficient products, especially cars. Slow to see the need for such products, American carmakers lost ground to their European and Japanese competitors, who were able to satisfy consumer demand more quickly. In order to avoid bankruptcy in late 1979, Chrysler had to be propped up by government loan guarantees. During the decade, other American companies and even New York City also had to be helped by huge federal loans. d) In such a depressed economy, it was remarkable that women and minorities continued to make gains in workplace equality. Those gains did not occur because of a change in business attitude toward the workers' abilities, but because of legislation and judicial action. Lawmakers and the courts forced businesses to alter their hiring practices so that everyone could have an equal chance at a successful career. Although by the end of the decade more women were employed than ever before, they continued to earn less money than their male peers earned for the same work. Equality in the workplace was still decades away. e) Lost in the turmoil of the 1970s was the fact that the U.S. economy was going through a painful, yet necessary, transformation. Small companies forming at that time would, in the years to come, radically change the U.S. and world economy. Among these were Apple, Microsoft, and Nike. They set the stage for a new type of economy in the future, one that was less dependent on the large manufacturing companies that had dominated America for a large portion of the twentieth century. f) The 1970s Business and the Economy: Overview - Dictionary definition of The 1970s Business and the Economy: Overview | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary

17) Cuban Missile Crisis

a) During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. b) After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959, leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (1926-) aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets (and their respective allies) were engaged in the Cold War (1945-91), an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes. c) The two superpowers plunged into one of their biggest Cold War confrontations after the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation. d) President Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16, and he immediately called together a group of advisors and officials known as the executive committee, or ExCom. For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union. e) For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland-just 90 miles south of Florida. From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans. f) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gambled on sending the missiles to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation's nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island-the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961-and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S. aggression. g) Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed. h) In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the blockade and made it clear that the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas. i) A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the blockade. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the blockade would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade. j) Although the events at sea offered a positive sign that war could be averted, they did nothing to address the problem of the missiles already in Cuba. The tense standoff between the superpowers continued through the week, and on October 27, an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. (The 35-year-old pilot of the downed plane, Major Rudolf Anderson, is considered the sole U.S. combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.) "I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see," recalled U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009), as quoted by Martin Walker in "The Cold War." A similar sense of doom was felt by other key players on both sides. k) Despite the enormous tension, Soviet and American leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey. l) Officially, the Kennedy administration decided to accept the terms of the first message and ignore the second Khrushchev letter entirely. Privately, however, American officials also agreed to withdraw their nation's missiles from Turkey. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925-68) personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, and on October 28, the crisis drew to a close. m) Both the Americans and Soviets were sobered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, a direct "hot line" communication link was installed between Washington and Moscow to help defuse similar situations, and the superpowers signed two treaties related to nuclear weapons. The Cold War was far from over, though. In fact, another legacy of the crisis was that it convinced the Soviets to increase their investment in an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. from Soviet territory.

13) Nixon and Kennedy Debate

a) Facing NIXON stood JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, a youthful, energetic senator from Massachusetts ---a Harvard graduate, Kennedy came from a wealthy Catholic family ---some worried about his young age and lack of experience, others worried about his religion (no Catholic had ever been elected president) ---to offset these possible liabilities, Kennedy astutely added the politically savvy Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas to the ticket, called for a new generation of leadership, and suggested that those who were making religion an issue were bigots ---his slogan, the NEW FRONTIER, challenged the nation to improve the overall quality of life of all Americans and to stand fast against the Communist threat ---he offered action and empowerment to the government, people, and institutions b) Nixon, too, promised an energetic presidency, vowing to improve the quality of life and support civil rights ---he emphasized his executive experience and record of standing up to communism at home and abroad ---several political commentators called the candidates "two peas in a pod" and speculated that the election would probably hinge on appearances and party loyalty more than on issues c) A critical point of the campaign was the images projected by each candidate during the televised debates ---KENNEDY appeared FRESH and CONFIDENT and SPOKE DIRECTLY TO THE CAMERA ---NIXON appeared TIRED and HAGGARD and LOOKED AT KENNEDY RATHER THAN THE CAMERA ---the contrasts were critical; unable to see Nixon, the RADIO audience believed he won the debates, but to the 70 million TELEVISION viewers, the winner was the self-assured Kennedy ---the debates helped Kennedy, but victory depended on his holding the Democratic coalition together, maintaining southern Democratic support while wooing African American and liberal voters d) Every vote was critical, but when the ballots were counted, Kennedy had secured popular and electoral victories ---Congress remained in Democratic hands, although Republicans had gained 22 seats in the House of Representatives

39) Jackson and Kent State

a) Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Southeast Asia. In its immediate aftermath, a student-led strike forced the temporary closure of colleges and universities across the country. Some political observers believe the events of that day in northeast Ohio tilted public opinion against the war and may have contributed to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. ---General Canterbury ordered his men to lock and load their weapons, and to fire tear gas into the crowd. The Guardsmen then marched across the Commons, forcing protesters to move up a nearby hill called Blanket Hill, and then down the other side of the hill toward a football practice field. ---As the football field was enclosed with fencing, the Guardsmen were caught amongst the angry mob, and were the targets of shouting and thrown rocks yet again. ---The Guardsmen soon retreated back up Blanket Hill. When they reached the top of the hill, witnesses say 28 of them suddenly turned and fired their M-1 rifles, some into the air, some directly into the crowd of protesters. ---Over just a 13-second period, nearly 70 shots were fired in total. In all, four Kent State students—Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer—were killed, and nine others were injured. Schroeder was shot in the back, as were two of the injured, Robert Stamps and Dean Kahler. ---Following the shooting, the university was immediately ordered closed, and the campus remained shut down for some six weeks following the shootings. ---Numerous investigatory commissions and court trials followed, during which members of the Ohio National Guard testified that they felt the need to discharge their weapons because they feared for their lives. ---However, disagreements remain as to whether they were, in fact, under sufficient threat to use force. ---In a civil suit filed by the injured Kent State students and their families, a settlement was reached in 1979 in which the Ohio National Guard agreed to pay those injured in the events of May 4, 1970 a total of $675,000. b) A group of angry students. A burst of gunfire from authorities. Young lives cut short. ---It sounds a lot like the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, but it happened 10 days later at a predominantly black college in the South. ---Police fired for about 30 seconds on a group of students at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing two and wounding 12 others. ---The tragedy was the culmination of increasing friction among students, local youths and law enforcement. On the evening of May 14, African-American youths were reportedly pelting rocks at white motorists driving down the main road through campus — frequently the site of confrontations between white and black Jackson residents. ---Tensions rose higher when a rumor spread around campus that Charles Evers — a local politician, civil rights leader and the brother of slain activist Medgar Evers — and his wife had been killed, according to Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College. The situation escalated when a non-Jackson State student set a dump truck on fire. ---Police responded to the call. A group of students and non-students threw rocks and bricks at the officers. Police advanced to Alexander Hall, a large dorm for women. ---According to a 1970 report from the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. And an FBI investigation revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired into Alexander Hall. The shooters claimed that there was a sniper in the dorm, but investigators found "insufficient evidence" of that claim. ---The two young men who were gunned down in the melee were Phillip L. Gibbs, a junior at Jackson State and the father of an 18-month-old; and James Earl Green, a high school senior.

34) Tet Offensive

a) The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region. b) As the celebration of the lunar new year, Tet is the most important holiday on the Vietnamese calendar. In previous years, the holiday had been the occasion for an informal truce in the Vietnam War between South Vietnam and North Vietnam (and their communist allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong). ---In early 1968, however, the North Vietnamese military commander General Vo Nguyen Giap chose January 31 as the occasion for a coordinated offensive of surprise attacks aimed at breaking the stalemate in Vietnam. Giap believed that the attacks would cause Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces to collapse and foment discontent and rebellion among the South Vietnamese population. ---Furthermore, Giap believed the alliance between South Vietnam and the United States was unstable—he hoped the offensive would drive the final wedge between them and convince American leaders to give up their defense of South Vietnam. c) In preparation for the planned offensive, Giap and the troops of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a series of attacks in the fall of 1967 on isolated American garrisons in the highlands of central Vietnam and along the Laotian and Cambodian frontiers. ---On January 21, 1968, PAVN forces began a massive artillery bombardment of the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh, located on the principal road from northern South Vietnam into Laos. As President Lyndon B. Johnson and General William Westmoreland focused their attention on the defense of Khe Sanh, Giap's 70,000 poised to begin their true objective: the Tet Offensive. d) On the early morning of January 30, 1968, Viet Cong forces attacked 13 cities in central South Vietnam, just as many families began their observances of the lunar new year. ---Twenty-four hours later, PAVN and Viet Cong forces struck a number of other targets throughout South Vietnam, including cities, towns, government buildings and U.S. or ARVN military bases throughout South Vietnam, in a total of more than 120 attacks. ---In a particularly bold attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, a Viet Cong platoon got inside the complex's courtyard before U.S. forces destroyed it. The audacious attack on the U.S. Embassy, and its initial success, stunned American and international observers, who saw images of the carnage broadcast on television as it occurred. ---Though Giap had succeeded in achieving surprise, his forces were spread too thin in the ambitious offensive, and U.S. and ARVN forces managed to successfully counter most of the attacks and inflict heavy Viet Cong losses. e) Particularly intense fighting took place in the city of Hue, located on the Perfume River some 50 miles south of the border between North and South Vietnam. ---The Battle of Hue would rage for more than three weeks after PAVN and Viet Cong forces burst into the city on January 31, easily overwhelming the government forces there and taking control of the city's ancient citadel. ---Early in their occupation of Hue, Viet Cong soldiers conducted house-to-house searches, arresting civil servants, religious leaders, teachers and other civilians connected with American forces or with the South Vietnamese regime. They executed these so-called counter-revolutionaries and buried their bodies in mass graves. ---U.S. and ARVN forces discovered evidence of the massacre after they regained control of the city on February 26. In addition to more than 2,800 bodies, another 3,000 residents were missing, and the occupying forces had destroyed many of the grand city's temples, palaces and other monuments. ---The toughest fighting in Hue occurred at the ancient citadel, which the North Vietnamese struggled fiercely to hold against superior U.S. firepower. In scenes of carnage recorded on film by numerous television crews on the scene, nearly 150 U.S. Marines were killed in the Battle of Hue, along with some 400 South Vietnamese troops. ---On the North Vietnamese side, an estimated 5,000 soldiers were killed, most of them hit by American air and artillery strikes. f) Despite its heavy casualty toll, and its failure to inspire widespread rebellion among the South Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive proved to be a strategic success for the North Vietnamese. ---Before Tet, Westmoreland and other representatives of the Johnson administration had been claiming that the end of the war was in sight; now, it was clear that a long struggle still lay ahead. Westmoreland requested more than 200,000 new troops in order to mount an effective counteroffensive, an escalation that many Americans saw as an act of desperation. ---As anti-war sentiment mounted on the home front, some of Johnson's advisers that had supported past military buildup in Vietnam (including soon-to-be Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford) now argued for scaling back U.S. involvement. ---On March 31, a beleaguered President Johnson declared that he was limiting the bombing of North Vietnam to the area below the 20th parallel (thus sparing 90 percent of communist-held territory) and calling for negotiations to end the war. At the same time, he announced that he would not be running for re-election that November. ---Though peace talks would drag on for another five years—during which more American soldiers were killed than in the previous years of the conflict—Johnson's decision to halt escalation after the Tet Offensive marked a crucial turning point in American participation in the Vietnam War.

1) Soviet Satellites

a) In 1957, Eisenhower extended federal spending after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II into space ---Not only did one nation seem vulnerable to Soviet missiles, but it appeared that the American education system was NOT putting enough effort into teaching mathematics and science b) Eisenhower asked Congress to provide money for public education and to create a new agency to coordinate the country's space program c) The NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT OF 1958 provided funds for public education to improve the teaching of math, languages, and science and set aside $295 million in NATIONAL DEFENSE STUDENT LOANS for college students d) To improve the space program, Congress created the NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) ---it unveiled PROJECT MERCURY with the goal of sending astronauts into space

18) South Vietnamese Government

a) In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. This resolution became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon Administrations prosecution of the Vietnam War. b) After the end of the First Indochina War and the Viet Minh defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the countries meeting at the Geneva Conference divided Vietnam into northern and southern halves, ruled by separate regimes, and scheduled elections to reunite the country under a unified government. The communists seemed likely to win those elections, thanks mostly to their superior organization and greater appeal in the countryside. The United States, however, was dedicated to containing the spread of communist regimes and, invoking the charter of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (1954), supported the South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, when he refused to hold the elections. Diem held control of the South Vietnamese Government, but he could not halt the communist infiltration of the South. By 1959, the Viet Cong, South Vietnamese communist guerillas, and the Viet Minh, began a large scale insurgency in the South that marked the opening of the Second Indochina War. c) Ngo Dinh Diem failed to capture the loyalties of the people of South Vietnam the way that Ho Chi Minh had done among the population of North Vietnam. Despite U.S. support, Diem's rural policies and ambivalent attitude toward necessary changes like land reform only bolstered support for the Viet Cong in the southern countryside. By 1963, Diem's rule had so deteriorated that he was overthrown and assassinated by several of his generals with the tacit approval of the Kennedy Administration. Three weeks later, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was also assassinated, and the war continued under new leadership in both countries. Before his death, Kennedy had increased the U.S. advisory presence in South Vietnam in the hopes that a U.S.-supported program of "nation-building" would strengthen the new South Vietnamese government. However, South Vietnam continued to experience political instability and military losses to North Vietnam. d) By August, 1964, the Johnson Administration believed that escalation of the U.S. presence in Vietnam was the only solution. The post-Diem South proved no more stable than it had been before his ouster, and South Vietnamese troops were generally ineffective. In addition to supporting on-going South Vietnamese raids in the countryside and implementing a U.S. program of bombing the Lao border to disrupt supply lines, the U.S. military began backing South Vietnamese raids of the North Vietnamese coast. The U.S. Navy stationed two destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in the Gulf of Tonkin to bolster these actions. They reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on August 2, and a second attack on August 4. Doubts later emerged as to whether or not the attack against the Turner Joy had taken place. e) Immediately after reports of the second attack, Johnson asked the U.S. Congress for permission to defend U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. The Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. Congress supported the resolution with the assumption that the president would return and seek their support before engaging in additional escalations of the war. f) The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the subsequent Gulf of Tonkin resolution provided the justification for further U.S. escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Acting on the belief that Hanoi would eventually weaken when faced with stepped up bombing raids, Johnson and his advisers ordered the U.S. military to launch Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign against the North. Operation Rolling Thunder commenced on February 13, 1965 and continued through the spring of 1967. Johnson also authorized the first of many deployments of regular ground combat troops to Vietnam to fight the Viet Cong in the countryside.

2) Iran in the 1950's

a) Prime Minister MOHAMMAD MOSSADEGH had nationalized British-owned OIL PROPERTIES ans seemed likely to sell oil to the Soviets ---Eisenhower considered him to be "neurotic and periodically unstable" and gave the CIA the ok to overthrow him and replace him with a pro-Western government b) (1953) Mossadegh was forced from office and was replaced with SHAH MOHAMMAD REZA PAHLAVI, who awarded the US 40% of Iranian oil production

51) Reagan's Supply-Side Economics

a) Supply-side economics is better known to some as "Reaganomics," or the "trickle-down" policy espoused by 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He popularized the controversial idea that greater tax cuts for investors and entrepreneurs provide incentives to save and invest, and produce economic benefits that trickle down into the overall economy. In this article, we summarize the basic theory behind supply-side economics. ---Like most economic theories, supply-side economics tries to explain both macroeconomic phenomena and—based on these explanations—offer policy prescriptions for stable economic growth. In general, the supply-side theory has three pillars: tax policy, regulatory policy, and monetary policy. ---However, the single idea behind all three pillars is that production (i.e. the "supply" of goods and services) is most important in determining economic growth. The supply-side theory is typically held in stark contrast to Keynesian theory which, among other facets, includes the idea that demand can falter, so if lagging consumer demand drags the economy into recession, the government should intervene with fiscal and monetary stimuli. ---This is the single big distinction: a pure Keynesian believes that consumers and their demand for goods and services are key economic drivers, while a supply-sider believes that producers and their willingness to create goods and services set the pace of economic growth.

29) Mexican Americans During the 1960's

a) The Chicano Movement emerged during the civil rights era with three goals: restoration of land, rights for farm workers and education reforms. Prior to the 1960s, however, Latinos lacked influence in the national political arena. That changed when the Mexican American Political Association worked to elect John F. Kennedy president in 1960, establishing Latinos as a significant voting bloc. ---After Kennedy was sworn into office, he showed his gratitude toward the Latino community by not only appointing Hispanics to posts in his administration but also by considering the concerns of the Hispanic community. ---As a viable political entity, Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, began demanding that reforms be made in labor, education and other sectors to meet their needs b) When did the Hispanic community's quest for justice begin? ---Their activism actually predates the 1960s. In the 1940s and '50s, for example, Hispanics won two major legal victories. The first -- Mendez v. Westminster Supreme Court -- was a 1947 case that prohibited segregating Latino schoolchildren from white children. It proved to be an important predecessor to Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court determined that a "separate but equal" policy in schools violated the Constitution. ---In 1954, the same year Brown appeared before the Supreme Court, Hispanics achieved another legal feat in Hernandez v. Texas. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection to all racial groups, not just blacks and whites. ---In the 1960s and '70s, Hispanics not only pressed for equal rights, they began to question the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This 1848 agreement ended the Mexican-American War and resulted in America acquiring territory from Mexico that currently comprises the Southwestern U.S. During the civil rights era, Chicano radicals began to demand that the land is given to Mexican Americans, as they believed it constituted their ancestral homeland, also known as Aztlán. ---In 1966, Reies López Tijerina led a three-day march from Albuquerque, N.M., to the state capital of Santa Fe, where he gave the governor a petition calling for the investigation of Mexican land grants. He argued that the U.S.'s annexing of Mexican land in the 1800s was illegal. ---Activist Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, known for the poem "Yo Soy Joaquín," or "I Am Joaquín," also backed a separate Mexican American state. The epic poem about Chicano history and identity includes the following lines: "The Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken and is but another treacherous promise. / My land is lost and stolen. / My culture has been raped." c) Arguably the most well-known fight Mexican Americans waged during the 1960s was that to secure unionization for farm workers. To sway grape growers to recognize United Farm Workers -- the Delano, Calif., union launched by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta -- a national boycott of grapes began in 1965. Grape pickers went on strike, and Chavez went on a 25-day hunger strike in 1968. ---At the height of their fight, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy visited the farm workers to show his support. It took until 1970 for the farm workers to triumph. That year, grape growers signed agreements acknowledging UFW as a union. d) Students played a central role in the Chicano fight for justice. Notable student groups include the United Mexican American Students and the Mexican American Youth Association. Members of such groups staged walkouts from schools in Denver and Los Angeles in 1968 to protest Eurocentric curriculums, high dropout rates among Chicano students, a ban on speaking Spanish and related issues. ---By the next decade, both the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unlawful to keep students who couldn't speak English from getting an education. Later, Congress passed the Equal Opportunity Act of 1974, which resulted in the implementation of more bilingual education programs in public schools. e) Not only did Chicano activism in 1968 lead to educational reforms, it also saw the birth of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which formed with the goal of protecting the civil rights of Hispanics. ---It was the first organization dedicated to such a cause. f) Now the largest racial minority in the U.S., there's no denying the influence that Latinos have as a voting bloc. While Hispanics have more political power than they did during the 1960s, they also have new challenges. Immigration and education reforms are of key importance to the community. Due to the urgency of such issues, this generation of Chicanos will likely produce some notable activists of its own.

21) Voting Rights Act of 1965

a) The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. b) Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws. c) After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote. d) During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back. e) In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African-American citizens the vote. f) Blacks attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Blacks, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed. g) Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws," a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even blacks with college degrees were turned away from the polls. h) The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 333-85 on July 9. ---Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony. ---The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had not registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections. ---In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court. i) Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of blacks in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo. ---Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. j) Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens.

58) World Trade Organization

a) World Trade Organization (WTO), international organization established to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 in the expectation that it would soon be replaced by a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) to be called the International Trade Organization (ITO). Although the ITO never materialized, the GATT proved remarkably successful in liberalizing world trade over the next five decades. By the late 1980s there were calls for a stronger multilateral organization to monitor trade and resolve trade disputes. Following the completion of the Uruguay Round (1986-94) of multilateral trade negotiations, the WTO began operations on January 1, 1995. b) The ITO was initially envisaged, along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as one of the key pillars of post-World War II reconstruction and economic development. In Havana in 1948, the UN Conference on Trade and Employment concluded a draft charter for the ITO, known as the Havana Charter, which would have created extensive rules governing trade, investment, services, and business and employment practices. However, the United States failed to ratify the agreement. Meanwhile, an agreement to phase out the use of import quotas and to reduce tariffs on merchandise trade, negotiated by 23 countries in Geneva in 1947, came into force as the GATT on January 1, 1948. ---Although the GATT was expected to be provisional, it was the only major agreement governing international trade until the creation of the WTO. The GATT system evolved over 47 years to become a de facto global trade organization that eventually involved approximately 130 countries. Through various negotiating rounds, the GATT was extended or modified by numerous supplementary codes and arrangements, interpretations, waivers, reports by dispute-settlement panels, and decisions of its council. ---During negotiations ending in 1994, the original GATT and all changes to it introduced prior to the Uruguay Round were renamed GATT 1947. This set of agreements was distinguished from GATT 1994, which comprises the modifications and clarifications negotiated during the Uruguay Round (referred to as "Understandings") plus a dozen other multilateral agreements on merchandise trade. GATT 1994 became an integral part of the agreement that established the WTO. Other core components include the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which attempted to supervise and liberalize trade; the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which sought to improve protection of intellectual property across borders; the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes, which established rules for resolving conflicts between members; the Trade Policy Review Mechanism, which documented national trade policies and assessed their conformity with WTO rules; and four plurilateral agreements, signed by only a subset of the WTO membership, on civil aircraft, government procurement, dairy products, and bovine meat (though the latter two were terminated at the end of 1997 with the creation of related WTO committees). These agreements were signed in Marrakech, Morocco, in April 1994, and, following their ratification, the contracting parties to the GATT treaty became charter members of the WTO. By the 2010s the WTO had more than 160 members. c) The WTO has six key objectives: (1) to set and enforce rules for international trade, (2) to provide a forum for negotiating and monitoring further trade liberalization, (3) to resolve trade disputes, (4) to increase the transparency of decision-making processes, (5) to cooperate with other major international economic institutions involved in global economic management, and (6) to help developing countries benefit fully from the global trading system. Although shared by the GATT, in practice these goals have been pursued more comprehensively by the WTO. For example, whereas the GATT focused almost exclusively on goods—though much of agriculture and textiles were excluded—the WTO encompasses all goods, services, and intellectual property, as well as some investment policies. In addition, the permanent WTO Secretariat, which replaced the interim GATT Secretariat, has strengthened and formalized mechanisms for reviewing trade policies and settling disputes. Because many more products are covered under the WTO than under the GATT and because the number of member countries and the extent of their participation has grown steadily—the combined share of international trade of WTO members now exceeds 90 percent of the global total—open access to markets has increased substantially. ---The rules embodied in both the GATT and the WTO serve at least three purposes. First, they attempt to protect the interests of small and weak countries against discriminatory trade practices of large and powerful countries. The WTO's most-favoured-nation and national-treatment articles stipulate that each WTO member must grant equal market access to all other members and that both domestic and foreign suppliers must be treated equally. Second, the rules require members to limit trade only through tariffs and to provide market access not less favourable than that specified in their schedules (i.e., the commitments that they agreed to when they were granted WTO membership or subsequently). Third, the rules are designed to help governments resist lobbying efforts by domestic interest groups seeking special favours. Although some exceptions to the rules have been made, their presence and replication in the core WTO agreements were intended to ensure that the worst excesses would be avoided. By thus bringing greater certainty and predictability to international markets, it was thought, the WTO would enhance economic welfare and reduce political tensions. d) The GATT provided an avenue for resolving trade disputes, a role that was strengthened substantially under the WTO. Members are committed not to take unilateral action against other members. Instead, they are expected to seek recourse through the WTO's dispute-settlement system and to abide by its rules and findings. The procedures for dispute resolution under the GATT have been automated and greatly streamlined, and the timetable has been tightened. ---Dispute resolution begins with bilateral consultations through the mediation, or "good offices," of the director-general. If this fails, an independent panel is created to hear the dispute. The panel submits a private draft report to the parties for comment, after which it may revise the report before releasing it to the full WTO membership. Unlike the IMF and the World Bank, both of which use weighted voting, each WTO member has only one vote. As in the earlier GATT system, however, most decisions are made by consensus. Unless one or both of the parties files a notice of appeal or the WTO members reject the report, it is automatically adopted and legally binding after 60 days. The process is supposed to be completed within nine months, and, if an appeal is lodged, the WTO Appellate Body hears and rules on any claim of legal error within 60 days. Appellate rulings are automatically adopted unless a consensus exists among members against doing so.

14) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

a) a civil-rights group formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movement. The SNCC soon became one of the movement's more radical branches. In the wake of the Greensboro sit-in at a lunch counter closed to blacks, Ella Baker, then director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), helped set up the first meeting of what became the SNCC. She was concerned that SCLC, led by Martin Luther King Jr., was out of touch with younger blacks who wanted the movement to make faster progress. Baker encouraged those who formed SNCC to look beyond integration to broader social change and to view King's principle of nonviolence more as a political tactic than a way of life. b) The new group played a large part in the Freedom Rides aimed at desegregating buses and in the marches organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC. c) Under the leadership of James Forman, Bob Moses, and Marion Barry, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee also directed much of the black voter registration drives in the South. Three of its members died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. d) Events such as these heightened divisions between King and SNCC. The latter objected to compromises at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where the party refused to replace the all-white Mississippi delegation with the integrated Freedom Democrats. e) In 1966, Stokely Carmichael was elected head of SNCC and popularized the term "black power" to characterize the new tactics and goals—including black self-reliance and the use of violence as a legitimate means of self-defense. He also drew attention to the plight of blacks in the inner cities. f) Carmichael's successor, H. Rap Brown, went further, saying "Violence is as American as cherry pie." But the fires and disorders that followed in the summer of 1967 led to Brown's arrest for incitement to riot, and SNCC disbanded shortly thereafter as the civil rights movement itself splintered.

9) Rock and Roll

a) Like their mothers, children did not always match the image of the ideal family, and juvenile delinquency became a serious concern for parents and society ---Juvenile crime among gangs operating in cities was not new, but as the 1950s progressed, many in the middle-class suburbs were alarmed about the behavior of their own teens who seemed to flout traditional values and behavior b) At the center of the problem, many believed, was the public high school, where middle-class kids mixed with children of the "other America" ---the children of working-class whites, Latinos, and African Americans were attending high school in larger numbers and were thought to be a bad influence ---their clothing choices (t-shirts, jeans, leather jackets), their disrespect for authority, and their music conflicted with middle-class norms ---"improper" family environments where lax parenting and improper gender roles led to confused children and juvenile delinquents ---"the rebellious young characters come from suburban homes where gender roles are reversed, with dminating mothers and fathers who cook and assume many traditional housewifely duties c) The problem with kids also seemed connected to cars and "ROCK AND ROLL" ---the availability of the car allowed teens to escape adult controls and provided a "private lounge for drinking and...sex episodes." d) Rock and Roll, the term coined by popular disc jockey, ALAN FREED, was a new American music genre that broke barriers between "black music" and "white music" ---Critics argued that it undermined American morals and was a tool of communism ---A Catholic Young Center newspaper asked readers to "smash" rock and roll records because they promoted "a pagan concept of life" ---but it was a losing battle; By the mid-decade, African American artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Ray Charles were successfully "crossing over" and being heard on "white" radio stations, while white singers copied and modified R&B songs to produce COVER RECORDS e) Cover artists like Pat Boone sold millions of records that avoided suggestive lyrics and were heard on hundreds of radio stations that refused to play the original versions by black artists ---at the same time, some white singers, including the 1950's most dynamic star, ELVIS PRESLEY, we're making their own contributions ---Beginning with "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1956, Presley recorded 14 GOLD RECORDS within 2 years ---in concerts, he drove his audiences into frenzied with sexually suggestive movements that earned him the nickname "Elvis the Pelvis" ---less controversial, Dick Clark's "American Bandstand", a weekly television show featuring teens dancing to rock and roll, was by the end of the decade one of the nation's most watched and most accepted programs

16) Martin Luther King Jr.

a) Martin Luther King, Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986. b) Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher. c) A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law. d) King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. e) The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. f) On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King, Jr. as the protest's leader and official spokesman. g) By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance. h) Emboldened by the boycott's success, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest. i) In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders. j) Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America's most racially divided cities. k) Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics. l) Later that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices African Americans continued to face across the country. m) The March on Washington culminated in King's most famous address, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric. n) That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans. o) On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers' strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning.

30) Cesar Chavez

a) Mexican-American Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) was a prominent union leader and labor organizer. Hardened by his early experience as a migrant worker, Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. His union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in its first strike against grape growers in California, and the two organizations later merged to become the United Farm Workers. Stressing nonviolent methods, Chavez drew attention for his causes via boycotts, marches and hunger strikes. Despite conflicts with the Teamsters union and legal barriers, he was able to secure raises and improve conditions for farm workers in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida. ---Born in Yuma, Arizona, to immigrant parents, Chavez moved to California with his family in 1939. For the next ten years they moved up and down the state working in the fields. During this period Chavez encountered the conditions that he would dedicate his life to changing: wretched migrant camps, corrupt labor contractors, meager wages for backbreaking work, bitter racism. ---His introduction to labor organizing began in 1952 when he met Father Donald McDonnell, an activist Catholic priest, and Fred Ross, an organizer with the Community Service Organization, who recruited Chavez to join his group. Within a few years Chavez had become national director, but in 1962 resigned to devote his energies to organizing a union for farm workers. b) A major turning point came in September 1965 when the fledgling Farm Workers Association voted to join a strike that had been initiated by Filipino farm workers in Delano's grape fields. Within months Chavez and his union became nationally known. Chavez's drawing on the imagery of the civil rights movement, his insistence on nonviolence, his reliance on volunteers from urban universities and religious organizations, his alliance with organized labor, and his use of mass mobilizing techniques such as a famous march on Sacramento in 1966 brought the grape strike and consumer boycott into the national consciousness. The boycott in particular was responsible for pressuring the growers to recognize the United Farm Workers (ufw; renamed after the union joined the afl-cio). The first contracts were signed in 1966, but were followed by more years of strife. In 1968 Chavez went on a fast for twenty-five days to protest the increasing advocacy of violence within the union. Victory came finally on July 29, 1970, when twenty-six Delano growers formally signed contracts recognizing the ufw and bringing peace to the vineyards. ---That same year the Teamsters' union challenged the ufw in the Salinas valley by signing sweetheart contracts with the growers there. Thus began a bloody four-year struggle. Finally in 1973, the Teamsters signed a jurisdictional agreement that temporarily ended the strife. ---Believing that the only permanent solution to the problems of farm workers lay in legislation, Chavez supported the passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act (the first of its kind in the nation), which promised to end the cycle of misery and exploitation and ensure justice for the workers. These promises, however, proved to be short-lived as grower opposition and a series of hostile governors undercut the effectiveness of the law. c) After 1976 Chavez led the union through a major reorganization, intended to improve efficiency and outreach to the public. In 1984 in response to the grape industry's refusal to control the use of pesticides on its crops, Chavez inaugurated an international boycott of table grapes. ---For thirty years Chavez tenaciously devoted himself to the problems of some of the poorest workers in America. The movement he inspired succeeded in raising salaries and improving working conditions for farm workers in California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

22) Johnson's Bills in 1965

a) President Lyndon Johnson signed into law Medicare, which provides low-cost hospitalization and medical insurance for the nation's elderly. The legislation remains an important legacy of LBJ's "Great Society" society initiative. b) President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to blacks. c) drafted a new bill providing coverage of the aged, limited hospitalization and nursing home insurance benefits, and Social Security financing. Wilbur Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Legislation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (and later Secretary), pushed the Medicare bill. Cohen convinced Johnson to give the bill high priority, and Johnson declared its importance to his Great Society program. The bill was introduced as companion bills,[3] H.R. 1 and S. 1, given the numbers as the first bill introduced in each House of the new Congress

6) Television in the 1950s

a) Television helped define suburban life ---Televisions were not widely available until AFTER the war, and then they were very expensive ---BUT as prices fell, the number of homes with a television rocketed from 9% in 1950 to nearly 90% by the end of the decade b) Programming developed audience-oriented time slots with cartoons and westerns for children on weekend mornings and sports for dad on Saturday and Sunday afternoons ---the most watched time slot, however, was AFTER dinner and designed for family viewing ---By 1960 most people watched television five hours a day c) Among the most popular shows during the family time slot were situation comedies (or "sitcoms") like "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" ---they depicted "normal" middle-class families that were white wit hardworking fathers and attractive, stay-at-home mothers ---the children, usually numbering between two and four, did well in school, rarely worried about the future, and provided humorous dilemmas for Mom to untangle with common sense and sensitivity d) After the dislocations of the Depression and the war, stable households seemed to represent the strength and future of the country

48) Asians in 1985

a) A sustained wave of Asian immigration in the past decade fueled a 70 percent increase in the Asian population of the United States from 1980 to 1988, said a report made public today by the Census Bureau. ---The bureau reported that the Asian population grew nearly seven times as fast as the general population and three times as fast as the black population. Asian Americans numbered about 6.5 million on July 1, 1988, up from 3.8 million eight years earlier, the report said. ---The increase changed the political and social landscape of California, where more than one-third of those from Asia and the Pacific islands settled. The rise is largely due to the influx from the Philippines, China, South Korea and India, said officials of the bureau and of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. ---Asians and Pacific Islanders are in a heterogeneous category, the officials said. Many are native Americans who trace their descent to China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, the Philippines and Micronesia. Some trace their origins to the Indian subcontinent. b) The figures in the census report are extrapolated from data derived from the 1980 census, during which those who participated with the census-takers classified themselves a white, black, Asian or American Indian and, if necessary, Hispanic. ---These figures were then combined with the Federal Government's annual birth and death statistics and with immigration and emigration data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. ---Census demographers assigned racial categories to the immigrants of the 80's based on the way earlier immigrants from the same countries identified themselves in the census. For instance, if 95 percent of the Cambodians called themselves Asians, 95 percent of subsequent Cambodian immigrants would be considered Asian. Soviet immigrants, for the purpose of the report, were considered white. ---The Census Bureau, for the purposes of this study, considered all Soviet emigres white. Under Soviet emigration law, the only ethnic groups allowed to leave the country in the 1980's were Jews, Armenians and ethnic Germans, all of whom would have been considered white by the Census Bureau. ---Although some individuals will be included in a given category incorrectly, the overall estimates using this inference are statistically sound, experts said. At least 80 percent of the Asian immigrants of the past eight years were from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Micronesia and the subcontinent.

7) US Corporations in the 1950S

a) Another dimension of the economy and suburbia was CONSUMERISM ---Radio and television bombarded their audiences with imags of products Americans supposedly needed ---the average television watcher saw over five hours a week of TV with ads enticing viewers to buy goods that would improve their lives b) To sell their products, advertisers used images that resonated with the public, ones that conveyed youth, sophistication, and modernity, as well as the image of the ideal American family enjoying the fruits of a prosperous nation ---Automobile companies emphasized their "modern" styles, complete with rocket-like fins, and linked the car to the idealized family that saw the "USA in their Chevrolet" c) The public responded enthusiastically, trading in out-of-date, but still very operable, cars for the newest models ---Gone were the depression of and war mottos of "use it up" and "wear it out" d) Increasingly, to pay for cars, televisions, washing machines, toys, and "Mom's night out", Americans turned to credit, and a new form of credit was available - the all-purpose CREDIT CARD ---American Express and a host of plastic cards; Diner's club credit card made its debut in 1950 ---By 1958, credit purchases reached $44 billion, more than five times the amount bought on credit in 1946