Lesson 20: The 1960s: Years of Idealism and Change

Objectives: Determine factors leading to the Cuban Revolution and Missile Crisis Learn about the Civil Rights Movement and Legislation Understand President John F. Kennedy's policies and events surrounding his assassination Recognize how Lyndon Johnson picked up where Kennedy left off Extend learning about counterculture Learn about the women's movement

The Sixties During the 1950's, times were good for most Americans. President Eisenhower had kept his promise to end the war in Korea and America was finally at peace. The 1960 election pitted the vice president of the United States, Richard Nixon, against a young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy tried to balance his liberal label and lack of experience by choosing Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas as his running mate. Since Eisenhower had been such a popular president, most people expected Vice President Nixon to win. The combination of intellect, charisma, and good looks of the junior senator from Massachusetts made the race much closer than people expected. The 1960 campaign featured the first televised debate between candidates. Many historians feel it was this debate that turned the election in Kennedy’s favor: while Kennedy appeared calm and in control throughout the debate, Nixon seemed nervous and unsure of himself. In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President. President John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy was the first president to be born in the twentieth century. Kennedy won the election of 1960 over Vice President Richard Nixon by only a very small margin. His good looks, charm, and zest for life appealed to many people, particularly young Americans. He attracted much support with his appeal to get the country moving. When Kennedy took office, unemployment was high, economic growth was sluggish, and minorities were discriminated against. The young president took steps to correct these problems, as well as to counteract the fast-developing threat of Communism in Cuba and Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, Kennedy did not live to see the outcome of most of what he initiated. Tragically, he was assassinated before he was able to carry out his ideas for a better America.

Cuban Missile Crisis At the beginning of 1959, Fidel Castro's revolution overthrew the corrupt Cuban president Fulgencio Batista. Despite problems with Batista, the United States never endorsed Castro’s coup because it feared that his socialist leanings were linked to Communism. Fidel Castro's system of government was based on the Soviet model of communism - a system of government in which the state, run by a single authoritarian party, plans and controls the economy, owns all means of production, and distributes goods to the population. When Cuba seemed to be moving towards a communistic from of government, tensions rose between Cuba and the U.S. In early 1961, the United States broke diplomatic relations and trade with Cuba, forcing the small island to turn to other markets. This move drove Cuba further towards Communism, as the Soviet Union willingly provided assistance, offering protection and trade in exchange for an opportunity to establish a foothold in America’s “backyard," for Cuba is only 90 miles off the southern coast of Florida. Fearing Communism and a Soviet presence so close to its borders, the U.S. government supported several secret plans to oust Castro. With President Kennedy’s approval, on April 19, 1961, about 1500 Cuban refugees, trained and armed by the U.S., landed at the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) to launch an attack against the government of Cuba. After being discovered by the Cuban Army, 90 were killed and the rest were taken prisoner. This failure became a public embarrassment to the Kennedy administration, which had denied that it was giving support to plans to overthrow the Cuban government. Tensions mounted over the next year as U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered the construction of a Soviet military base on the island. Castro, fearful of another U.S. invasion, had invited the Soviets to establish a military presence on Cuban soil. In October 1962, photographs were taken of ballistic missiles. Outraged, Kennedy demanded the immediate removal of the missiles and set up a naval blockade of the small country. The blockade intercepted and inspected all ships to ensure no other missiles arrived. From October 18th through the 29th, America was involved in what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the threat of a nuclear war hanging over the world, President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met to try to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels. In the end, the Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles and allow the U.S. to inspect the site in return for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba, the lifting of the naval blockade, and the removal of missiles from Turkey. Although the promised inspection never took place because Cuba was angry at what it saw as the Soviet submission, aerial photography showed that the bases were being dismantled.

Kennedy's Policies and Johnson's Efforts Kennedy's presidency and life had a great impact on the second half of our twentieth century. At 43, Kennedy was one of the youngest presidents ever to serve and the first Roman Catholic president. He proposed sweeping changes to the country through his vision of a “New Frontier” based on the idea that every single person could make a difference. Kennedy believed that focuses on volunteerism, freedom, equality, and technological achievement were very important. As part of the New Frontier, Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy poured money into the U.S. space agency, NASA, to reach this goal before the Soviet Union. The United States and the U.S.S.R. were in the "Space Race" to be the first nation to put a man into orbit. The Soviets' Sputnik program launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, in 1957, and the first living creature, a dog named Laika, was launched a few months later. These successes led to American fears of Soviet technological superiority, prompting greater U.S. investment in space and science. In May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to make a rocket flight and one year later, John Glenn orbited the earth. On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin fulfilled John F. Kennedy’s hopes for the space program when they landed on and explored the moon’s surface. It was on this mission that Armstrong spoke the often-quoted: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He even hit a golf ball into space when he and Aldrin spent over twenty-one hours on the moon. On November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy was assassinated. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for shooting the president, but Oswald was killed before he could be brought to trial when he himself was shot while in custody in the Dallas jail. Among the officials, reporters and other bystanders in the jail at that moment was Jack Ruby, a local bar owner and suggested gangster. As Oswald was moved through the jail, Ruby pulled out a gun and shot the accused assassin. The facts of Oswald's motivation or involvement with other groups who might have wanted the president killed remain unclear as are the facts about Ruby's motivation. Conspiracy theories abound about whether or not Oswald acted alone or was really the killer, but several investigations have concluded that he was. Jack Ruby professed that he shot Oswald out of a love for the president and concern for the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. He was sentenced for Oswald's murder and died in a Dallas jail cell in January 1967 without ever offering another explanation for his action. Kennedy was succeeded by his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who, with his Texas drawl and earthy ways, offered quite a contrast to his polished predecessor. Johnson, long experienced in government service, was better prepared for the presidency than any other president in the twentieth century. He was a masterful politician in the Senate and attempted to use the same methods that had served him there so well. Taking up the reins of government after Kennedy's untimely death, Johnson proved very skilled at enlisting the support of Congress in passing numerous important pieces of legislation. President Johnson attempted to carry out the goals of Kennedy's "New Frontier" and tried to establish his own domestic program, which he called the "Great Society." Johnson called for massive government efforts to fight poverty, sickness, and inequality. His initiatives included training for disadvantaged youths, health care for low income families and senior citizens through Medicaid and Medicare, and the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Throughout his presidency, Johnson continued to pursue Kennedy’s goal of equality, pushing significant civil rights legislation, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, through Congress. Johnson also appointed the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, formerly chief counsel of the NAACP. For a short time, Johnson had great success in promoting legislation designed to remedy the nation's ills, such as the war on poverty and in the field of civil rights. But his great domestic program was hindered by the United States' increasing involvement in the war in Vietnam. The bitter war in Southeast Asia overshadowed all other foreign and domestic problems after the U.S. became involved on a large scale in 1966. President Johnson's political career was ruined by the war because he was criticized for continuing the war by one side, and for not winning it by the other. The war created such bitterness that Mr. Johnson was vilified and ridiculed as no other president since Herbert Hoover. On top of these political problems, the enormous cost of the war and of Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives caused inflation and damaged the government's fiscal health. Law and order, Vietnam, and racial strife were the three main issues in the extremely close election of 1968. Dissatisfaction over Vietnam caused the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, a lot of trouble with his campaign. Richard Nixon was able to defeat him and became president in 1968. Ending the war in Vietnam occupied much of Nixon's time during his first term in office, but inflation and the beginnings of the energy crisis were also significant problems. A major highlight of the period was the landing of American astronauts on the moon in 1969.

Civil Rights Actions Civil rights are the non-political rights of a citizen, especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. President Kennedy believed in these rights and in equality for all. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act which promised equal wages without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. Also in 1963, President Kennedy proposed the Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, or national origin. That legislation protects the rights of blacks, women, and other minority groups. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 under Lyndon Johnson. A main focus of the Kennedy administration was the desegregation of America. During the late fifties and early sixties, African Americans radically increased their demands for equal rights in all areas of American society. This has become known as the Civil Rights Movement. Though Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, Kansas) had declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” to be a violation of the Constitution in 1954, America was still a largely segregated nation. Segregation is the separation or isolation of groups by class, race, or ethnic group. Led by African-American leaders such as Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., black citizens rose up against segregation. These activists and many other protesters believed that African Americans should have the same rights as whites in America. Jim Crow laws, still in place in most states, mandated that blacks had to ride in the back of buses or separate cars in trains, eat in designated areas of restaurants, and attend separate and inferior schools. The Civil Rights Movement sought to change that. While these ideas spread rapidly among the African-American population, changes did not come quickly or easily. When black students tried to enter the University of Alabama, the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, personally blocked the entrance to the school. President Kennedy was forced to send out the National Guard to gain the students’ admittance. The most famous of the Civil Rights Movement leaders was the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a founder and the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group which was instrumental in the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King, who organized bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama in the mid 1950s in support of Rosa Parks, believed in non-violent protest and he convinced millions of people, of all races, to join the cause for equal rights for all people. In August 1963, King organized the March on Washington. During this march he delivered the famous “I have a Dream" speech, in which he spoke of a day when his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This address helped catapult the civil rights movement into the forefront of America’s consciousness. As a result of his work, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In 1964, the ratification of the 24th Amendment finally outlawed the use of poll taxes to prevent voting. In 1965, the SCLC launched a voter registration drive that sparked a nationwide effort to register black voters. Until this time, many blacks who were legally eligible to vote had not registered to do so because of the intimidation they faced. On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. Despite calls for non-violence by the country’s leaders in the aftermath of this tragedy, riots broke out in cities across the country. Many of America’s inner cities experienced a week of looting, burning, and rioting. Ray was convicted of the killing in 1969 and died in prison in 1998. On the power of the messages of such leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, another leader of the SCLC; and Dorothy Height, an early activist for the rights of black women, the Civil Rights Movement is closely identified with African Americans. However, they were not the only minority group to demand equality during the ‘60s. Migrant workers - workers who moved with the season to harvest different crops - also began to make demands for civil rights. Cesar Chavez, a member of the migrant community since childhood, became a leader for the labor movement among migrant workers. Chavez was the original founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and fought to gain better wages, hours, and working conditions for migrants, who were often immigrants. Chavez realized that migrant workers were frequently marginalized in society and had difficulties participating in communities as a result of their low income, frequent moves, and language barrier. His actions and organization helped migrant workers to become more publicly visible and gained them many rights. The Native American civil rights movement began to pick up steam in the 1950s, too. A medicine man and prophet named Wallace Mad Bear Anderson was an activist for Native American rights who led Iroquois protests against state income taxes in 1957. In 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis to gain more rights for Native Americans. Leonard Peltier was one of the more controversial leaders of AIM. In 1977, Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents and is currently serving two life sentences although there are numerous individuals and groups who question his guilt in the incident. Another AIM leader, Vernon Belcourt, who has fought for indigenous rights worldwide, was arrested in 1997 for burning the Cleveland Indians' mascot in effigy. He was trying to make a political statement about the use of Native Americans as mascots by sports teams. AIM's most dramatic action was its takeover of Alcatraz prison in November 1969. The protesters occupied the prison until June 1971, for a total of 18 months, contributing to the rise of modern Native American activism. The protest brought Indian rights issues to the attention of the government and the American people and changed the views of Native people about themselves, their culture, and their right to self-determination.

Women's Liberation Movement Women were an active social group in the 1960s and early 1970s, although they had been campaigning for equal rights dating back to the founding of the nation. Abigail Adams is known to have admonished her husband John - who would become the second president of the United States - to be certain that "in the new code of laws, remember the ladies and do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the husbands." Unfortunately, Mrs. Adams's plea remained a relatively quiet dissent among women until the mid-nineteenth century when Elizabeth Stanton Cady and Lucretia Mott called for the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. The two women were active in the abolitionist movement and were as passionate about undoing what they saw as injustices toward women as they were about eliminating the injustices of slavery. An important first step, the Declaration of Sentiments and numerous other resolutions presented at the convention met with enthusiastic support from the 300 women and men participants. However, even noted speaker Frederick Douglass had difficulty in convincing those gathered to also pass a proposal for women's suffrage. The right to vote, he argued, was the right by which all others could be secured. Outside the convention hall, the battle was even harder. At the end of the Civil War, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed to provide equal rights to former slaves. Despite all efforts to have women included under the new laws, the amendments precluded women when, for the first time, the Constitution specifically stated these rights pertained to "males." Lobbying, petitions, and protests followed over the next half century, but it was not until 1919 that legislation granting women the right vote was sent to the states for ratification. Finally,, in August 1920, Tennessee, the last state needed for approval gave the nod and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution became law, proclaiming "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." The first big wave of activism that began in the late 1910s and led to the 19th Amendment gave impetus to the fight by women for further legislation that would protect their rights. The Equal Rights Amendment, for example, was originally proposed in 1923, but was not passed in Congress until 1972. More than forty years later, the amendment still has not been ratified by the required 38 states—it is shy of the mark with 35 states. Extensions for ratification and reintroductions of the amendment in each Congressional session keep the possibility alive that the amendment will become law. In the late 1960s, as in earlier movements, those who advocated for women’s rights were also concerned with reproductive rights, which deal with a woman’s ability to make decisions about when and how many children to have. In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive. In 1965, the Supreme Court overturned Connecticut's law prohibiting the prescription to or use of contraceptives by married couples in Griswold v. Connecticut. While access to birth control was becoming more widespread, due in part to the activism of the 1910s and 1920s, abortion was illegal in the United States at that time. “Pro-choice” advocates argued that every woman should have the right to decide whether to end a pregnancy and make choices about her own body. “Pro-life” proponents argued that “life” begins at conception and should be protected by the state, even before birth. In 1973, the issue made its way to the Supreme Court. In Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled that a woman's decision to have an abortion fell under the right to privacy derived from the 5th Amendment and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court said that, during the first trimester, access to abortion should be unlimited, but that states can pass laws restricting second and third trimester abortion. The ruling did not end the controversy. Pro-life advocates, religious groups, and political conservatives denounced the decision, and today, abortion remains a topic of heated debate today. Emblematic of the small steps toward equality for women was the 1973 prohibition by the Supreme Court against sex-segregated "Help Wanted" ads, which had, until then, been divided into sections for jobs for women and jobs for men. The quest for equality for all citizens in housing, jobs, education, and every other facet of American life continues.