Chapter 29
Shaken to The Roots
1965–1980
“They asked if I’d fight for my country.
I answered the FBI yeah,
I will point a gun for my country,
But I won’t guarantee you which way.”
Woody Guthrie
Source: Pete Seeger -- an original verse, sung to Acres of Clams
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue,
and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the
facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to
carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that
sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on
a battlefield." George Orwell [1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose."]
"I don¹t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go
communist.” Henry Kissinger [about Chile’s election of Salvadore
Allende]
Concepts
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NIMBYs
William Julius Wilson
1978 Bakke
California’s Proposition 13 in 1978
Roe v. Wade in 1973
Anastasio Somoza, Sandinistas
1980 Olympic Games boycott / Afghanistan
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi [Shah]
Marielitos
October surprise? 1980
Noam Chomsky
Kern Council for Civic Unity, BC’s Duane Belcher Ad-Hoc BCSD
HEW Hearing, 1974 – Bakersfield City School District
Minority Coalition, 1970s Kern County
CSNY – Chicago and Ohio [songs]
Angela Davis, George Jackson [“Soledad Brother”]
Bibliography
• William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race:
Blacks and Changing American Institutions [1980]
• Gary Sick, October Surprise [1991]
• Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President [1995]
• Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the
Middle Class [1989]
Key Questions [Not on Exam 4]
• How did the national consensus of the 1950s and early1960s
unravel?
• What challenges did American cities face in the late 1960s and
1970s?
• Why did America’s view of the war in Vietnam change in 1968?
• What was the legacy of Richard Nixon’s presidency?
• How was Jimmy Carter’s idealism a frustration to his
success as president?
Chronology
1973
1974
1975
Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion / national gov't [Sp. Ct.]
forces all states to allow abortions
Arab embargo sparks oil crisis in the US
Construction of Alaska oil pipeline begins
Richard Nixon resigns presidency; Gerald Ford
President Ford pardons Nixon and introduces anti-inflation
program
Community Development Act funds programs for
urban improvement
Coalition of Labor Union Women formed
Unemployment rate reaches nearly 9 percent
South Vietnamese government falls Anti-busing protests
break out in Boston
New York City government declares itself bankrupt
1976
1977
1978
Percentage of African Americans attending college peaks at 9.3
percent and begins a decline
Hyde Amendment restricts use of Medicare funds for abortions
Tom Wolfe declares "the Me Decade"
Jimmy Carter is elected president
President Carter announces human rights as major tenet in
foreign policy
Stagflation-- unemployment and inflation
Depart. of Energy is established
Bakke v. University of California new limits on affirmative action
Senator Edward Kennedy calls attention to "a permanent
underclass"
Panama Canal Treaties arrange for turning the canal over to
Panama by 2000
Camp David meeting terms for Middle East Peace
California passes Proposition 13, cutting property taxes and
government social programs
Inflation reaches 10 percent
1979
1980
Three Mile Island nuclear accident threatens a meltdown
Moral Majority is formed
SALT II treaty is signed in Vienna but later stalls in the Senate
Nicaragua Revolution [Sandinistas] overthrows Anastasio
Somoza
Iranian fundamentalists seize the U.S. embassy in Tehran and
hold hostages 444 days
Soviets invade Afghanistan
Equal Rights Amendment, three states short of ratification, gets
a three-year extension but eventually dies anyway
United States boycotts Olympic Games in Moscow due to
Afghanistan
Kent State
The shootings at Kent State University in May 1970 reflected the deep
divisions in American society created by the Vietnam War, including those
between antiwar college students and young people serving in the armed
forces. © John Paul Filo/Hutton/Archive
Antiwar Protests
Antiwar protests were simultaneously symbolic and disruptive. Some
activists dumped jars of animal blood over draft-board records. Others tried
to block munitions trains. In October 1967, a hundred thousand people
marched on the Pentagon and surrounded it with the light of burning draft
cards. Some in front stuck flowers in the rifle barrels of the soldiers ringing
the building; others kicked and spat. The troops and police cleared the
grounds with tear gas and clubs. Corbis–Bettman
Peace sign
A hippie gestures the peace sign
while standing in a meadow.
Getty Images, Inc.–Taxi
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan
At the Newport (Rhode Island)
Jazz Festival in 1963, Joan Baez
and Bob Dylan performed as
folksingers who worked in the
tradition of protest songs. Two
years later in Newport, Dylan
shocked the popular music world
by replacing his acoustic
instrument with an amplified
guitar and backup and jumpstarting a fruitful blending of folk,
country, and rock music into
radical new sounds. AP/Wide
World Photos
Black Panther Party
Some members of the Black Panther party raised funds to pay for the legal
fees of those arrested and charged with various offenses, such as Bobby
Seale and Ericka Huggins. The Panthers advocated a radical economic,
social, and educational agenda that made the group the target of a
determined campaign of suppression by the police and the FBI. Magnum
Photos Inc.
MLK
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Corbis/Bettmann
Nixon and Elvis
This is the single most requested item in the National Archives which contain, among
other national treasures, originals of the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. President Nixon and Elvis Presley met at the
singer’s request. He had volunteered to work in the administration’s anti-drug
crusade. The president, looking for a way to reach out to young people, readily
agreed. He appointed Presley a “deputy” in the anti-drug war. Presley was, at the
time, addicted to a variety of uppers, downers, and other medications. [Photograph is
in the public domain and available at the National Archives]
Kim Phuc, napalm victim, Viet Nam
This Pulitzer Prize-winning
photograph of 9-year-old Kim
Phuc , center, running after an
aerial napalm attack on her
village in 1972 was taken by
Associated Press photographer
Nick Ut (Cong Ut). Kim suffered
burns over 65% of her body. She
survived and is now a peace
activist. AP/Wide World Photos
Civilian Causalities in Vietnam
A South Vietnamese farmer grieves over the bodies of his wife and son
lying in a mud paddy after stepping on a land mine in the Tay Ninh Province.
Nixon's Cabinet
President Richard Nixon confers
with Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, John Ehrlichman, and
Harry Haldeman in the Oval
Office.
Securing Deo Mang Pass
U.S. Army troops from the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne
Division move away from a landing zone along a dirt road while securing
Deo Mang Pass in 1965.
The Inauguration of Richard Nixon
Richard and Pat Nixon stand before a crowd during the presidential
inauguration ceremonies on January 20, 1969.
Vietnam
An American soldier struggles
through the thick jungle of the
central highlands of Vietnam
during a search-and-destroy
mission.
Arthur Ashe
While African American athletes
in boxing, football, baseball, and
basketball were common in the
early 1970s, Arthur Ashe was
one of the few African American
tennis stars and a frequent
champion.
Environmental worries, 1973
Sign on bridge near PPG plant near Ponce, Puerto Rico, protests air
pollution.
President Nixon meets with China's Communist Party Leader, Mao
Tse-Tung in 1971
President Richard Nixon visited The People's Republic of China in 1971,
forever ending the ''sterile pretense that Communist China did not exist.''
Rand, West Virginia, 1973
President Johnson's ''War on Poverty'' could not bring hope to all
Americans. In Rand, W.Va., most of the inhabitants were still living in abject
poverty in the 1970s.
Voter registration drive, Chicago, 1973
African-Americans register to vote, while attending Black Expo, 1973.
Chicago's annual exhibit of African-American talent, education, products
and other aspects of black consciousness aimed to make blacks aware of
both their heritage and capabilities.
Map 29-1 The War in Vietnam
The United States attacked North
Vietnam with air strikes but
confined large-scale ground
operations to South Vietnam and
Cambodia. In South Vietnam,
U.S. forces faced both North
Vietnamese army units and Viet
Cong rebels, all of whom
received supplies by way of the
so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail,
named for the leader of North
Vietnam. The coordinated attacks
on cities and towns throughout
South Vietnam during the Tet
Offensive in 1968 surprised the
United States.
The End of Consensus
• Deeper into Vietnam
– Search and Destroy
• Voices of Dissent
– Noam Chomsky
– Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden
– Selective Service System
• New Left and Community Activism
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Students for a Democratic Society [SDS]
Port Huron Statement, Tom Hayden
Free Speech Movement [FSM], Mario Savio
Model Cities Program
Kern Council for Civic Unity, BC’s Duane
Belcher, HEW Hearing, 1974 – Bakersfield City
School District
– Minority Coalition, 1970s Kern County
• The Feminist Critique
• Youth Culture and Counterculture
– Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley
• Rock lyrics
• Sounds of Change
– Bob Dylan, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Joan
Baez, Pete Seeger, Doors
– Jimi Hendrix, Beach Boys [1963 EB @ BC]
– Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young – Chicago, Ohio
• Communes and Cults
– Jim Jones in Guayana
Cities Under Stress
• Diagnosing an Urban Crisis
• Racial Rioting
• Minority Separatism
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Black Power
Nation of Islam, Malcolm X
Black Panthers, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale
George Jackson, Angela Davis
American Indian Movement [AIM], Dennis Banks,
Russell Means
• Suburban Independence: The Outer City
– Baker v. Carr, 1962
– Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education, 1971
The Year of the Gun
• The Tet Offensive, January 1968
• LBJ’s Exit
• Red Spring
– 1968
• Violence and Politics
– Martin Luther King Jr. killed April 4, 1968
– Robert F. Kennedy, June 1968 in LA
– Yippies
• Chicago Democratic National Convention,
1968
Nixon and Watergate
• Getting Out of Vietnam, 1969-1973
– Nixon Doctrine
– Herb Klein, San Diego Union, Press Secretary
• Nixon and the Wider World
– SALT – Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
– Détente
– Negative Income Tax
• Courting Middle America
– New Federalism
• Oil, OPEC, and Stagflation
– Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies
[OPEC]
• Americans as Environmentalists
– Environmental Protection Agency [EPA]
– Superfund
• From Dirty Tricks to Watergate
– Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg
– Dick Tut in Orange County, “The people have
spoken, the b…….s”
• American Views: Grassroots Community
Action
• The Ford Footnote
– Helsinki Accords
Jimmy Carter: Idealism &
Frustration in the White House
• Carter, Energy and the Economy
• Closed Factories and Failing Farms
• Building a Cooperative World
– Camp David Agreement, 1978 Begin and
Sadat
• New Crises Abroad
Chronology