1950s and ‘60s
We shall overcome!
-How did the challenges
of the fifties and sixties era change
America?
…..Civil Rights and towards a Great
Society?
Cold War at Home: Red Hunt
becomes a witch Hunt – fears of
communists at home
• 1938 – House established HUAC, Committee
on Un-American Activities to investigate
subversion.
• Alger Hiss, convicted of perjury in 1950
• Nixon, Roy Jenkins, Robert F. Kennedy and
Senator Joseph McCArthy
• 1951 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted
and electrocuted in 1953 for espionage– leaked
atomic doctrines to Moscow
• 1950 - McCarran Internal Security Act vetoed by
Truman but overriden by Congress
Vietnam
• Eisenhower (1954):
• Dien Bien Phu, (French defeat/surrender)
• Geneva Accords (17th parallel)
-US supports South Vietnam
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Kennedy: Military Advisers (early 1960s)
Johnson: Golf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964
Ho Chi Minh Trail / Viet Cong
Americanization, 1965 (American ground forces)
Tet offensive, 1968
1968 Nixon- “Peace with Honor”
My Lai massacre, 1968 (1970)
Vietnamisation, 1969
1970 – invasion of Cambodia
1973 – War Powers Resolution Act (Congress Limits Pres.)
1975 – Saigon Falls (Vietnam is reunified under communism)
The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1960
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Joseph McCarthy –bubble bursts
Early Civil Rights movement: Rosa Parks;
Desegregation of schools
Prosperity – a new consumer culture, centered
around television
• Broad public consensus as a reaction to
turbulent 30s & 40s; New Deal, Fair Deal +
anticommunism
• Cold War tensions: Sputnik, Berlin Crisis, U-2
incident & Castro’s Cuban revolution
• Nonintervention in Hungarian revolt
ASSESSING THE EISENHOWER
PRESIDENCY
•He wielded the veto 169 times, only twice
overrode
•Economic prosperity
•1959, Alaska and Hawaii become states
•Greatest failing: no real crusade on civil
rights (more on this in later slides)
•As a Republican, he supported the New Deal
+Fair Deal
•Restraint in the use of military power: failed
in goal of ending the arms race with the
Soviets
•He had ended the Korean War and avoided
others
1960 Election:
• Kennedy “New Frontier” vs Nixon
• First televised debate: Who won the debate?
• JFK – youngest man to
be president and the first
Roman Catholic
JFK as President: 1961-1963
• youngest man to be president and the first
Roman Catholic
New Frontier
Escalation of the Vietnam War after 1965
Affected resources available for domestic programs
Robert McNamara briefing on Vietnam
FOREIGN POLICY in the ‘60s
• “Flexible response vs. Dulles’/
Eisenhower‘s “massive retaliation”
– Peace Corps
– Special Forces
– Conventional Forces
• 1961, Berlin Wall
• Cuba: 1962 Bay of Pigs;
• missile crisis; 1963 “hot line” installed
• Defense Sect.McNamara:
• 1962,US aid increase to Vietnam
• 1964, Tonkin Gulf Resolution;
• 1965, Johnson bombs No. Vietnam
• 1968, Tet Offensive
• 1973, Nixon and N. Vietnam sign
cease fire agreement;
US troops leave S. Vietnam
TRAGEDY IN DALLAS:
JFK Assassinated
 22 November 1963: while visiting
Dallas, Kennedy was shot and
killed by Lee Harvey Oswald


Before being brought to trial,
Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby,
owner of a Dallas nightclub
Many people believed a conspiracy
was behind the Kennedy
assassination and a special
commission under Chief Justice
Earl Warren was established to
investigate

Concluded Oswald had acted alone
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
• Initiated and passed more social welfare
• Legislation more quickly, than any other
president.
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
Lyndon B. Johnson November 22, 1963 –1969
 Johnson sought election as president in his own
right in 1964

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Championship of civil rights garnered him almost
unanimous support of blacks
His tax policy attracted the well-to-do and business
interests
War on poverty held the allegiance of labor and other
traditionally Democratic groups
Down-home southern antecedents counterbalanced
his liberalism on race in the eyes of many white
Southerners
 Johnson declared war on poverty and set out to
create a Great Society


In 1960, between 20 and 25 percent of American
families—about 40 million people—lived below the
poverty line
Prosperity and advancing technology had changed
the definition of poverty; yet, as living standards rose
so did the educational requirements of many jobs
THE GREAT SOCIETY
 Medicare and Medicaid
 January 1965: Johnson proposed a compulsory hospital insurance system,
Medicare, for all persons over 65
 Part A: hospital insurance for retired (funded by increase in Social Security)
 Part B: a voluntary plan covering doctors’ bills (paid for in part by the
government)
 Also provided for grants to the states to help pay medical expenses of poor
people regardless of age—Medicaid
 In the end, it provided medical treatment for millions of people but gave
doctors, hospitals and drug companies the ability to raise fees without fear of
losing customers
 Economic Opportunity Act of 1964: created a mixture of programs that combined
the progressive concept of government with the conservative concept of
individual responsibility
 Job Corps
 which was supposed to provide vocational training to help people get
better jobs, was almost a complete failure
 Community action program to finance local antipoverty efforts
Education,
Inc, publishing as Longman
 System for training thePearson
unskilled
unemployed
and for lending money to small
© 2008
businesses in poor areas
Civil Rights: “We shall Overcome!”
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC)
– Non violence
– Integration
– Montgomery Bus boycott (1955)
– Marches (Selma, Birmingham, and on
Washington
Early Civil Rights Movement 1954-57
• Brown vs Board of Ed of Topeka
• SC Judge Earl Warren reversed the Plessy v Ferguson of
“separate but equal”
• = integration
• By 1956 only 700 of the South’s 10,000 school districts
desegregated
• Incidents of violence:
– Clinton, Tennessee: “Kill the niggers!”
-Nat’l Guard sent in but school blown up!
- Virginia governor: “Massive Resistance” by denying state
aid to integrated schools
- U of Alabama: expulsion of black female student after riots
- Little Rock, Arkansas 1957: Governor Orval Faubus sends in
National Guard troops to PREVENT integration!
Central High School, Little Rock
Arkansas integrated, 1957
Little Rock Arkansas
Eisenhower sends in 1000 paratroopers and took over
the National Guardsmen sent in by the Faubus to
enforce segregation. Troops remain for the rest of the
school year!
Desegregation
• Forced integration ended by Supreme
Court decision in 2007.
Rosa Parks, 1955
Seeds of the Civil Rights
Movement
“I just decided I was not going to be moved out of that seat.”
Rosa Parks’ bus, 1955
Freedom Riders Montgomery Alabama, 1961
SNCC
• Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee
– Sit-ins (“Greensboro Four”
 Civil Rights Act (1964)
- outlawed discrimination by employers against blacks and also against
women
 Broke down legal barriers to black voting in southern states
 Outlawed racial segregation of all sorts in places of public
accommodation
 Johnson made sure the act was enforced
– Freedom Riders
 Voting Rights Act of 1965:
 provided for federal intervention to protect black registration and voting
in six southern states and applied to state and local as well as federal
elections
Civil Rights Movement:
“Shoot Don’t Loot!”
• Black Power!
- “Nation of Islam” and Malcolm X
- Carmichael Stockley
- “Separation not Integration”
-Self-determination
Malcom X
MLK, Jr.
Born: January 15, 1929,
Atlanta, Georgia
Assassinated: April 4, 1968,
Memphis, Tennessee
Compare and contrast them!
Born: May 19, 1925,
Full name:
Malcolm Little
Assassinated:
February 21, 1965,
New York City
Thurgood Marshall
NAACP member
First African American SC Judge 1967-1991
CIVIL RIGHTS 1960s
• 1966 0n – Black movement more militant
• 1960, SNCC – Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Comm.- college students
• 1963, Malcolm X broke with Nation of Islam; assassinate
in 1965
• Black Panther Party – Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale,
Huey Newton – black power, Angela Davis
• 1960s, Freedom Riders; 1962, James Meredith at U.
Mississippi; 1963, March on Washington, King’s “I have
a Dream” speech; 1964-Civil Rights Act – created
EEOC;1965 – Voting Rights Act
• 1965, race riots in U.S. cities – Watts, Detroit and
Newark: “Burn baby burn”
Civil Rights Movement
• Other long term effects of Brown v. Board
of Ed:
– Bussing
– Affirmative Action
• Example to other groups fighting for their
rights:
-Women
-Minorities
-Environmentalists
.....NEXT 1970s and ’80s
Election of 1968