Nation of Nations 3/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, and Stoff
	Online Learning Center

THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE

n some ways the political and social upheavals of the 1960s stand in sharp contrast to the calmer mood of the 1950s. In fact the ground work for many of the era's reformist causes had been laid earlier. Much of the Kennedy-Johnson legislative agenda extended programs launched under the New Deal discussed in Chapter 26. The important initiatives taken by African-Americans during the 1940s and 1950s prepared the way for the major push of the 1960s. And as Chapter 29 emphasized, a whole series of demographic shifts -- the maturing of the baby boomers, the shift of population to the West Coast, the migration of African-Americans from South to North and West, and the increase in the middle class -- all contributed to the ferment of the 1960s.

OVERVIEW

In the last two chapters you have seen the groundwork laid for the momentous achievements of the civil rights movement. But great movements have smaller, often painfully human dimensions, as the introduction to this chapter shows. Six-year-old Ruby displayed one kind of courage; an Atlanta school teacher showed quite another. Both made essential contributions to a dream too long deferred.

A Liberal Agenda for Reform

The roots of social upheaval in the 1960s lay beneath the calm surface of the 1950s. John F. Kennedy opened the new era with his call to "get the nation moving again." As a Catholic and playboy son of the wealthy Joseph Kennedy, Jack Kennedy seemed an unlikely presidential candidate. Yet he showed superb organizational skills, laid to rest the religious issue, and bested Richard Nixon in televised debates. For all that, Kennedy won the election by an unprecedentedly narrow margin.

As president, Kennedy was not instinctively a liberal. Still, he brought to the White House a crew of pragmatic liberals convinced they could reach "New Frontiers." That meant practical reforms at home and a more dynamic policy to contain Communism abroad. Kennedy shared with his advisers the belief that they could use power when and where it was needed to get optimal results.

New Frontiers

The new administration turned its attention abroad to the instabilities of the third world, hoping to counter them with programs like the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, and "special forces" military advisers. Almost immediately the aborted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs raised doubts about Kennedy's judgment. So, too, did his confrontation with Khrushchev in Vienna and the Soviet decision to build a wall in Berlin. Kennedy countered by stepping up aid to South Vietnam. And when intelligence sources discovered in October 1962 that the Soviets had placed offensive missiles in Cuba, the President faced the worst crisis of the nuclear age. Using restraint, he rejected air strikes in favor of a blockade. Privately he offered Soviet Premier Khrushchev a face-saving way out of the crisis. The next year Kennedy negotiated a nuclear test ban treaty, which eased slightly the heated-up cold war.

At home Kennedy and his advisors hoped to work with corporate leaders and passed modest legislation to increase economic growth without inflation. Even as they succeeded, they could not overcome the mistrust of the business community. And when Kennedy found his liberal reform package stymied by congressional conservatives, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren took the lead with critical decisions on civil liberties, voting, and civil rights.

The Civil Rights Crusade

Civil rights proved to be the crucial test of liberalism. Kennedy only reluctantly took up the cause which threatened to split the Democratic Party. Leadership came instead from black political and religious organizations such as the Congress on Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Council. Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and other forms of nonviolent protest became the weapons to fight segregation. The sometimes brutal reactions of southern police and white supremacists shocked national television audiences and especially Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. On several occasions the younger Kennedy ordered federal marshals to protect civil rights groups. The President introduced a major civil rights bill and on August 28, 1963, over 200,000 people gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King speak of his dreams for integration.

Kennedy committed himself to a civil rights bill, but was assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner, honored Kennedy's commitment by passing a broad Civil Rights Act in 1964 and a Voting Rights Act in 1965. But even those advances could not quiet the increasingly militant and radical demands of black nationalist groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers. In the North, civil rights leaders discovered de facto barriers to integration far more difficult to remove than the "Jim Crow" laws in the South. Beginning in the summer of 1964, a series of race riots tore through the nation's cities.

Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

As President, Lyndon Johnson was determined to leave an enduring mark on the nation, much in the spirit of his hero, Franklin Roosevelt. Not only did he commit himself to civil rights, but to liberal tax cuts, aid to education, health benefits for the elderly and poor, job training, housing, urban renewal, the environment, and more. He called his program "The Great Society" and with it surpassed Roosevelt's legislative achievements. In beating conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, Johnson also bested Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1936.

Johnson's vision proved heady indeed. In whirlwind fashion, he passed laws affecting almost every area of life from health to education to jobs to immigration to auto safety to equal rights to the environment. Many of the initiatives had a higher price tag than he or his supporters imagined. Inefficiency, corruption, soaring costs, and political infighting dogged many Great Society programs. But more than flawed legislation or political corruption, the Vietnam War shattered Johnson's hopes to create his Great Society.

The Counterculture

Among young Americans, there were many who had given up on the traditional methods of politics and society. One politically left group centered around Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). These young radicals distinguished their brand of politics from the Marxists of the 1930s by describing themselves as the New Left. A battle over free speech at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1964 brought their movement wide national exposure.

Other young people rejected politics altogether and sought non-materialistic lifestyles, experimenting with sex, drugs, and music in search of altered consciousness. In their outrageous clothes and personal style they flouted convention. Much of the style of the "counterculture" came from West Coast hippies and rock musicians. Drugs played a central role in defining hippie styles. So, too, did the folk music of Bob Dylan and rock music revitalized by the Beatles and other English groups. West Coast acid rock groups like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane adapted rock to the drug culture. By the late 1960s, the hope of building a better world, whether through a Great Society or through radical politics and cultural revolution, began to collapse. The era's soaring dreams were brought to earth under the weight of an invasive commercialism, the lack of coherence within the movements, growing violence, and, above all, the impact of the war in Vietnam.

Copyright ©1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
McGraw-Hill Higher Education is one of the many fine businesses of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
For further information about this site contact mhhe_webmaster@mcgraw-hill.com.