American Studies
Dr. Weiselberg
Unit Outline, 1960s
Unit Theme: A Nation Torn by Civil Rights and Vietnam
Essential Questions:
1. To what extent did domestic and international events of the 1960s divide American society?
2. How successful was the United States in achieving its foreign policy goals in the 1960s?
3. How did the Civil Rights movement, civil rights legislation and federal court decisions
contribute to the realization of long held civil rights goals?
4. How do the 1960s compare with other periods of reform in US history such as the
Progressive Era and the New Deal?
5. How did the JFK admin embody a new spirit of optimism amongst Americans in the 1960s?
JFK’s New Frontier
John F. Kennedy
1960 Presidential Debate; Kennedy and Nixon
Robert Kennedy, Attorney General
Space Program
Peace Corps
“Ask not what your country can do for you…”
Nov. 22, 1963 assassination
Zapruder video
Warren Commission
Lee Harvey Oswald
Oliver Stone’s JFK
LBJ’s Great Society
Lyndon Baines Johnson
VISTA program
War on Poverty
Office of Economic Opportunity, Project Head Start, Upward Bound, Job Corps
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 1965
Amendments to Social Security Act of 1935: Medicare, Medicaid
Dept of Housing and Urban Development
Impact of Vietnam War on LBJ’s Great Society
Civil Rights Movement
1950s: Desegregation of armed forces, Jackie Robinson, Brown v. Board of Ed, Little
Rock Nine, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks
Greensboro Sit-In, 1960
Freedom Rides, 1961
James Meredith, 1962
University of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama, 1963; JFK’s speech and the March on Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Letter from a Birmingham jail,” 1963
“I have a dream” speech, 1963
Selma (Alabama) March, 1965
Assassinations of MLK and RFK, 1968
New directions
Malcolm X
Race Riots of 1964 and 1965
Civil Rights Legislation
Kerner Commission
Civil Rights Act of 1964
24th Amendment, 1964
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. US (1964)
Women’s Rights
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Gloria Steinem
National Organization for Women, 1966
Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964
Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Opportunity Act, 1972
Title IX (of the Educational Amendments Act), 1972
Roe v. Wade, 1973
Latinos
Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers, 1962
Native Americans
Occupation of Alcatraz, 1969
Occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973
Leonard Peltier
Rights of the Accused
Mapp v. Ohio, 1961
Baker v. Carr, 1962
Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963
Miranda v. Arizona, 1966
Counterculture
Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, NY, 1969
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison
“hippies”
Foreign Policy
Cuban Missile Crisis
Fulgencio Batista
Fidel Castro
Nikita Kruschev
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 196i1
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Vietnam Conflict
See separate outline