The 1960’s

The 1960’s

A. Kennedy’s Domestic Policies

Plans: New Frontier

• Education• Medical Care for

the Elderly• Urban Renewal• Tax Cuts• End Racial

Discrimination

Failures• Most not passed

due to resistance in Congress

• After his death Johnson is able to pass many of JFK’s programs

Space Race• Americans were behind in the Space Race

• Kennedy promoted $24 billion project to land Americans on the moon

• 1969, Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon

• Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong

B. LBJ Takes Over

The Assassination of a President

• Nov 22, 1963

• Kennedy is shot and killed

• Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested

Warren Commission

• Commission led by Earl Warren that investigated JFK’s assassination

• Concluded that Oswald was a lone gunman

The New President• Pledged to

continue Kennedy’s policies

• Got Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill (Civil Rights Act of 1964) and tax cut bill passed

• One of the few Southern Democrats in favor of Civil Rights

C. The Election of 1964

Nominees• Barry Goldwater

(Rep)• Wanted to abolish

social welfare programs and use Nukes in Vietnam

• Lyndon Johnson (Dem)

• Promised a Great Society and would not cause Nuclear War

Campaign• Daisy Ad campaign highlights the

belief that electing Goldwater would mean nuclear war

• Goldwater not popular with moderate Republicans

The Results• Johnson wins by a landslide

D. The Great

Society

The War on Poverty• 40-50 million

Americans were considered poor

• Attributed to loss of unskilled jobs

• Office of Economic Opportunity (1964)– Job Training– Legal Services– Scholarships

Head Start (1965)• Pre-school

program• Help

disadvantaged children prepare for school

• Programs also passed to aid elementary and secondary schools

Medicare Act of 1965• Health insurance for the elderly• Medicade – health insurance for the

low income

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

• Provided low-income housing• $2.9 billion to urban renewal

Immigration Act of 1965

• Undid National Origins Act of 1924• 1st come, 1st served• Precedence given to:

– Family ties– Skills necessary for the U.S.– Political Refugees

• Did set limits– 120,000 from Western Hemisphere– 170,000 from Eastern Hemisphere

Impact of Immigration Act

• Opened the floodgates– Latin America (esp Mexico)– Asia (Southeast Asia)– Caribbean

• Sunbelt mostimpacted

• Increase in illegal immigrationbegan

Johnson’s Legacy

• Achievements compared to FDR’s New Deal

• Poverty reduced from 22% to 13%

• Great Society overshadowed and under-funded because of Vietnam War

E. Election of 1968

Problems with the 1968 Election

• LBJ decides not to run because of Vietnam

Assassination of MLK & Race Riots

• Killed April 4, 1968• Sparked race riots in major U.S. cities

• Bobby Kennedy (Dem) is assassinated after California primary (June 1968)

• Riot in Chicago at the Democratic Convention between police and anti-war activists

Nominees• Richard Nixon

(Rep)• Promised to restore

law and order

• Hubert Humphrey (Dem)

• Represented all of the problems of the country

• George Wallace (Am. Ind)

• Ran on a campaign of pro-segregation

Results• Nixon wins, but is a minority

president

F. American Culture 1960’s

Version

Impact of Baby Boomers

• ↑ affluent youth + ↑ jobs requiring post-high school skills = ↑ college students

• 1950 - 1 million college students

• 1968 – 7 million college students

• Exposure to ideas that challenged traditional views

New Left• Influenced by the Beats of the 1950’s• Liberal political movement of the 1960’s• Wanted a participatory democracy,

critiqued Am. values, and anti-conformity

• Opposed “The Establishment” • Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

epitomized this movement– Anti-war– Pro-Civil Rights– Free Speech

Counterculture

• Grew out of the New Left• Was a way of life rather than just a

political movement• Wanted a lifestyle of drug use, free

love, and a rejection of adult authority

• Hippies becames the most known counterculture movement

• Fought for racial equality, women's rights, sexual liberation, relaxation of prohibitions against recreational drugs, and an end to the Vietnam War

• Hippie culture was best embodied by the new genre of psychedelic rock music

• The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin.

G. Societal Changes of the 1960’s

Sexual Revolution

• Challenged traditional values of pre-marital sex as taboo

• Encouraged by mass marketing of birth control

• “Free Love” – separating sex from procreation

• Became part of the youth rebellion

Breakdown of the Family• By 1965, divorce rates were on the

rise• TV replaced parenting

Women’s Rights

• Eleanor Roosevelt began to highlight the inequalities women faced

• Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique (1963) explored how unfulfilling women found being housewives

• The middle class suburban dream had become a nightmare

• Began the Feminist Movement

“The suburban home is a comfortable concentration camp”

• National Organization of Women (NOW) founded in 1966

• Called for equal employment opportunities and equal pay

• Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) began in 1967 but ultimately failed