CHAPTER 28

Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and Conservative Rebirth 1961–1972 .

CHAPTER OUTLINE 1. The 1964 Election a. Lyndon Johnson was the opposite of The following annotated chapter outline will help Kennedy. A seasoned Texas politician you review the major topics covered in this chapter. and longtime Senate leader, he had I. Liberalism at High Tide risen to wealth and political eminence A. John F. Kennedy’s Promise without too many scruples. But he 1. President Kennedy called upon the never forgot his modest, hill-country American people to serve and improve origins or lost his sympathy for the their country. His youthful enthusiasm downtrodden. inspired a younger generation and laid the b. Johnson lacked the Kennedy style, but groundwork for an era of liberal reform. he capitalized on Kennedy’s 2. Kennedy was not able to fulfill his assassination, applying his astonishing promise or his legislative suggestions such energy and negotiating skills to bring as health insurance for the aged, a new to fruition several of Kennedy’s stalled antipoverty program, or a civil rights bill programs and many more of his own, because of opposition in the Senate. in the ambitious Great Society. 3. On November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, c. On assuming the presidency, Johnson President Kennedy was assassinated by promptly and successfully pushed for Lee Harvey Oswald; Lyndon Johnson was civil rights legislation as a memorial to sworn in as president. his slain predecessor (see Chapter 27). 4. Kennedy’s youthful image, the trauma of His motives were complex. As a his assassination, and the sense that southerner who had previously Americans had been robbed of a opposed civil rights for African promising leader contributed to a powerful Americans, Johnson wished to prove mystique that continues today. that he was more than a regional B. Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society

CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

figure—he would be the president of a. By the end of 1965, the Johnson all the people. administration had compiled the most d. Johnson’s ambitious goal was to “end impressive legislative record of liberal poverty in our time.” reforms since the New Deal. e. The Office of Economic Opportunity, b. The results of the War on Poverty were established by the Economic that the poor were better off in an Opportunity Act of 1964, created absolute sense, but they remained far programs such as Head Start, the Job behind the middle class in a relative Corps, Upward Bound, Volunteers in sense. The proportion of Americans Service to America (VISTA), and the living below the poverty line dropped Community Action Program. from 20 percent to 13 percent between f. During the 1964 presidential election 1963 and 1968. campaign, Johnson promised to c. Millions of African Americans moved continue the War on Poverty and into the middle class. hoped for a mandate by the people. d. Although the Great Society benefitted g. His opponent, archconservative Barry many Americans, it did not solve basic Goldwater of Arizona, ran on an problems, such as entrenched poverty, anticommunist, antigovernment racial segregation in cities, and skewed platform. distribution of wealth. h. Johnson won by a landslide, and a C. Rebirth of the Women’s Movement Democratic congressional majority 1. Labor Feminists allowed him to push the Great Society a. Feminist concerns were kept alive in ahead. Goldwater’s candidacy, the 1950s and 1960s by working however, marked the beginning of a women, who campaigned for such grassroots conservative revolt. things as maternity leave and equal pay 2. Great Society Initiatives for equal work. a. The Elementary and Secondary b. Labor feminists, who belonged to Education Act of 1965 authorized $1 unions, won passage of the Equal Pay billion in federal funds to benefit Act in 1963, establishing the principle impoverished children; the Higher of equal pay for equal work. Education Act provided the first c. Although more women than ever were federal scholarships for college working outside the home, the labor students. Congress also established market undervalued their contributions Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. and families still expected them to do b. The Great Society also addressed the their traditional domestic labor. environment; Johnson pressed for 2. Betty Friedan and the National expansion of the national parks system, Organization for Women improvement of the nation’s air and a. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine water, and increased land-use planning. Mystique suggested that women, who c. Liberal Democrats brought about felt stifled by domestic routines, significant changes in immigration needed education and work outside the policy with the passage of the home. Immigration Act of 1965, which b. Publication of Friedan’s book abandoned the quota system of the coincided with developing changes, 1920s. such as women having fewer children 3. Assessing the Great Society owing to the birth control pill and more CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

women divorcing and gaining higher c. Operation Rolling Thunder, a education levels. protracted bombing campaign that by c. Women also had legal tools to fight 1968 had dropped a million tons of sex discrimination owing to the Civil bombs on North Vietnam, failed to Rights Act of 1964. break the North Vietnamese’s will to d. Friedan and many labor feminists fight; the flow of their troops and founded the National Organization for supplies continued to the south Women (NOW) in 1966. Modeled on unabated as the communists rebuilt the NAACP, NOW was intended to be roads and bridges, moved munitions a civil rights organization for women. underground, and built networks of e. Ironically, the calls by white middle- tunnels and shelters. class women for reform helped to d. Hoping to win a war of attrition, the further fracture the fragile New Deal Johnson administration assumed that coalition. American superiority in personnel and II. The Vietnam War Begins weaponry would ultimately triumph. A. Escalation Under Johnson B. Public Opinion and the War 1. Gulf of Tonkin 1. Although the American people initially a. When Johnson became president, he approved escalation in Vietnam, by the continued and accelerated U.S. late 1960s, public opinion began to turn involvement in Vietnam based on the against the war in Vietnam; television had policy of containing communism. much to do with these attitudes as b. Johnson in the summer of 1964 heard Vietnam was the first televised war. reports that North Vietnamese torpedo 2. Despite glowing statements made on boats had fired on American destroyers television, by 1967, many administration in international waters. officials privately reached a more c. On August 7, 1964, Congress pessimistic conclusion regarding the war. authorized the Gulf of Tonkin 3. Reporters accused the administration of Resolution, which allowed Johnson to suffering from a “credibility gap;” “take all necessary measures to repel televised hearings in 1966 by the Senate any armed attack against the forces of Foreign Relations Committee raised the United States and to prevent further further questions about U.S. policy. aggression.” 4. Economic developments put Johnson and d. Johnson, however, did not reveal plans his advisors even more on the defensive; to the American people, fearing that it the costs of the war became evident as the would mean the end of the Great growing federal deficit nudged the Society. inflation rate upward, beginning the 2. The New American Presence inflationary spiral that plagued the U.S. a. The Johnson administration moved economy throughout the 1970s. toward the Americanization of the war 5. After the escalation in the spring of 1965, in 1965 with deployment of American various antiwar coalitions organized ground troops and intensive bombing several mass demonstrations in against North Vietnam. Washington; participants shared a b. The deployment of ground troops, common skepticism about the means and eventually numbering 536,000 in 1968, aims of U.S. policy and argued that the was intended to stabilize South war was antithetical to American ideals. Vietnam. C. Rise of the Student Movement CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

1. The 2. Young Americans for Freedom a. Youth were among the key protestors a. Conservative students were also of the era. protesting on college campuses. b. In their manifesto, the Port Huron b. Inspired by the group Young Statement, the Students for a Americans for Freedom (YAF), these Democratic Society (SDS) expressed students defended free enterprise and their disillusionment with the supported the war in Vietnam but consumer culture and the gulf between feared that the government had taken the prosperous and the poor and on oppressive powers. rejected Cold War ideology and c. YAF’s founding principles, outlined in foreign policy. “The Sharon Statement” in 1960, c. The founders of SDS referred to inspired young conservatives who themselves as the New Left to would support the Reagan distinguish themselves from the Old administration in the 1980s. Left of communists and socialists of 3. The the 1930s and 1940s. a. The “” symbolized the new d. At the University of California at counterculture, a youthful movement Berkeley, the that glorified liberation from traditional organized a sit-in in response to social strictures. administrators’ attempts to ban b. Popular music by Pete Seger, Joan political activity on campus. Baez, and Bob Dylan expressed e. Many protests centered on the draft, political idealism, protest, and loss of especially after the Selective Service patience with the war and was an System abolished automatic student important part of the counterculture. deferments in January 1966; in public c. Beatlemania helped to deepen the demonstrations of civil disobedience, generational divide and paved the way opponents of the war burned their draft for the more rebellious, angrier music cards, closed down induction centers, of other British groups, notably the and broke into Selective Service Rolling Stones. offices and destroyed records. d. Drugs and sex intertwined with music f. The Johnson administration had to face as a crucial element of the youth the reality of large-scale opposition to culture that was celebrated at rock the war. The 1967 Mobilization to End concerts attended by hundreds of the War brought 100,000 protestors thousands of people. into the streets of San Francisco and e. In 1967, at the “world’s first Human over 250,000 in New York. Be-In” at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, urged gatherers to “turn on, tune in, and drop out;” 1967 was also the “,” in which city neighborhoods swelled with young dropouts, drifters, and teenage runaways dubbed “flower children.” f. Many young people stayed out of the counterculture and the antiwar movement, yet media coverage made it seem that all of America’s youth were CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

rejecting political, social, and cultural B. The Antiwar Movement and the 1968 norms. Election III. Days of Rage, 1968–1972 1. Democratic Convention A. War Abroad, Tragedy at Home a. The events of 1968 had radicalized the 1. The Tet Offensive antiwar activists. a. The Johnson administration’s hopes for b. At the 1968 Democratic National Vietnam evaporated when the Convention, the political divisions Vietcong unleashed a massive assault, generated by the war consumed the known as the Tet offensive, on major party; outside the convention urban areas in South Vietnam. “Yippies” demonstrated, diverting b. Although in military terms a failure, attention from the more serious and the attack made a mockery of official numerous activists who came to pronouncements that the United States as delegates or volunteers. was winning the war and swung public c. The Democratic mayor of Chicago, opinion more strongly against the Richard J. Daley, called out the police conflict. to break up the demonstrations. In c. Antiwar Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s what was later described as a “police strong showing in the presidential riot,” patrolmen attacked protestors at primaries reflected profound public the convention with mace, tear gas, and dissatisfaction with the course of the clubs as TV viewers watched, which war and propelled Senator Robert F. only cemented a popular impression of Kennedy into the race on an antiwar the Democrats as the party of disorder. platform. d. Democrats dispiritedly nominated d. On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned Hubert H. Humphrey and approved a the nation by announcing that he would platform that endorsed continued not seek reelection. fighting in Vietnam while diplomatic 2. Political Assassinations means to an end were explored. a. 1968 also witnessed the assassination 2. Richard Nixon of Martin Luther King and its ensuing a. Richard Nixon, after losing the riots. presidential campaign in 1960 and the b. Robert Kennedy’s plea to follow California gubernatorial race in 1962, King’s nonviolent example in tapped the increasingly conservative Indianapolis kept the city from mood of the electorate in an amazing erupting in a riot. political comeback, winning the 1968 c. On June 5, Americans experienced Republican presidential nomination. another tragedy that shattered the b. Nixon courted the “silent majority” of dreams of those hoping for social law-abiding Americans, including change through political action. working-class voters who had Kennedy, as he was celebrating his traditionally supported the Democratic victory in the California primary, was Party, but had become disillusioned. shot dead by a young Palestinian, 3. George Wallace Sirhan Sirhan. a. George Wallace, a third-party d. The Democratic Party never fully candidate, skillfully combined attacks recovered from Johnson’s withdrawal on liberal intellectuals and government and Robert Kennedy’s assassination. elites with denunciations of school segregation and forced busing. CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

b. Wallace hoped that by carrying the protesting at the Miss America pageant in South, he could deny a major candidate 1968. an electoral victory and force the 3. A national Women’s Strike for Equality in election in the House of August 1970 brought hundreds of Representatives. thousands of women into the streets c. Although this strategy failed, his demanding women’s equality with men. campaign issues—liberal elitism, 4. The terms sexism and male chauvinism welfare policies, and law and order— became new words in American culture. became hallmarks for the next 5. “Sisterhood” often did not include women generation of conservatives. of color because they were more focused 4. Nixon’s Strategy on the shared struggle of the civil rights a. Nixon offered a subtler version of movement. Wallace’s populism, adopting what his 6. Women’s liberationists insisted that advisers called the “southern strategy” women take control of their bodies, of courting disaffected southern white campaigned for reproductive rights, and voters tired of the civil rights agenda of railed against a culture that blamed the Democratic Party. women in cases of sexual assault and b. By promising to strictly adhere to law ignored sexual harassment at work. and order, he also appealed to millions 7. Women’s political mobilization resulted of suburban voters. in significant legislative and c. Nixon received 43.4 percent of the vote administrative gains, such as Title IX of to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent, defeating the 1972 Educational Amendments Act, him by only 500,000 votes out of the which prohibited colleges and universities 73 million that were cast. The New that received federal funds from Deal coalition of the past thirty years discriminating on the basis of sex. was now broken for the Democratic 8. Founded by congresswomen Shirley Party. Chisholm and Bella Abzug in 1971, the C. The Nationalist Turn National Women’s Political Caucus 1. Vietnam and the increasingly radical promoted the election of women to public youth rebellion intersected with the turn office. toward nationalism by young African 9. In 1972, Congress authorized child-care American and Chicano activists. deductions for working parents; in 1974, 2. Mexican Americans including Cesar the Equal Credit Opportunity Act Chavez marched in Los Angeles in 1970 improved women’s access to credit. against the war. 10. The antiwar movement and evolving 3. The and the National rights liberalism of the sixties further Black Antiwar Antidraft League spoke out splintered the Democratic Party. against the war as well. Muhammad Ali, E. Stonewall and Gay Liberation the most famous boxer in the world, 1. The vast majority of gay men and refused to be inducted in the army. lesbians remained “in the closet.” D. Women’s Liberation Homosexuality was illegal in the vast 1. The late 1960s spawned a new brand of majority of states—sodomy statutes feminism: women’s liberation. outlawed same-sex relations, and 2. Women’s liberation was loosely police used other morals laws to harass structured. The movement went public by and arrest gay men and lesbians. CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

2. In the late 1960s, inspired by Black c. Far from abating, however, the antiwar Power and the women’s movement, movement intensified. In November gay activists increasingly demanded 1969, half a million demonstrators unconditional recognition of their staged a huge protest in Washington. rights and encouraged people to “Come d. On April 30, 1970, as part of a secret Out!” bombing campaign against Vietminh 3. The new gay liberation found multiple (Vietnamese liberation army) supply expressions in major cities across the lines operating in neutral Cambodia, country, but a defining event occurred American troops destroyed enemy in New York’s Greenwich Village bases there. When news of the invasion when a local gay bar called the of Cambodia came out, American Stonewall Inn was raided by police in campuses exploded in outrage. the summer of 1969. Its patrons, e. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State including gay men, lesbians, University in Ohio, panicky National transvestites, and transsexuals, rioted Guardsmen fired into an antiwar rally, for two days. killing four students and wounding 4. The gay liberation movement grew eleven. At Jackson State College in quickly after Stonewall. Local gay and Mississippi, Guardsmen stormed a lesbian organizations proliferated, and dormitory, killing two black students. activists began pushing for 2. My Lai Massacre nondiscrimination ordinances and a. Journalist Seymour Hersh revealed one consensual sex laws at the state level. of the worst atrocities of the war in Life 5. By 1975, the National Gay Task Force magazine in 1969. U.S. Army troops and several other national had killed hundreds of villagers in My organizations lobbied Congress, served Lai. as media watchdogs, and advanced b. Although high-ranking officers had suits in the courts. participated, only one soldier, Second IV. Richard Nixon and the Politics of the Silent Lieutenant William Calley was Majority convicted of the war crime. A. Nixon in Vietnam c. A group called Vietnam Veterans 1. Vietnamization and Cambodia Against the War, believing that Calley a. When it came to Vietnam, Nixon had been turned into a scapegoat, picked up where Johnson had left off. publicized other atrocities committed Abandoning Vietnam, Nixon insisted, by U.S. troops. Their antiwar protest would damage America’s “credibility” reflected the deep personal torment that and make the country seem “a pitiful, Vietnam had caused many soldiers. helpless giant.” Nixon wanted peace, 3. Détente but only “peace with honor.” a. Nixon’s policy of détente was to seek b. To neutralize criticism at home, Nixon peaceful coexistence with the Soviet began delegating the ground fighting to Union and Communist China and to the South Vietnamese. Under this new link these overtures of friendship with policy of Vietnamization, American a plan to end the Vietnam War, a war troop levels dropped from 543,000 in fought ostensibly to halt the spread of 1968 to 334,000 in 1971 to barely communism. 24,000 by early 1973. b. He traveled to Moscow to sign the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty CHAPTER 28 • UNCIVIL WARS: LIBERAL CRISIS AND CONSERVATIVE REBIRTH

(SALT) between the United States and guns—contributed to a drastic rise in the Soviet Union. crime, fueling conservatives’ call for c. Nixon traveled to China in 1972, the law and order. first sitting U.S. president to do so, in a 2. Busing symbolic visit that set the stage for the a. Because southern states had lagged in establishment of formal diplomatic their intent to desegregate schools, relations. federal courts by 1968 ordered an end 4. Exit America to segregation. a. To strengthen his negotiating position b. Using the strategy of busing students to at the Paris peace talks with North or from heavily segregated schools Vietnam, Nixon stepped up military proved effective; by the mid-1970s, action with a series of B-52 bombings; 86 percent of southern black children the Paris Peace Accords were signed attended school with whites. on January 27, 1973. c. In northern states, busing was less b. Congress gradually cut back aid to successful because the separation of South Vietnam. In March 1975, North suburbia from the inner city had Vietnamese forces launched a final entrenched racial segregation of offensive, and on April 30, Vietnam schools. was reunited. d. As the 1972 presidential election c. America’s military involvement had neared, Nixon took advantage of the barely altered the geopolitical reality in discontent over law and order issues southeastern Asia. and busing. d. More than 58,000 Americans died and C. The 1972 Election over 300,000 were wounded during a 1. The disarray within the Democratic Party war that cost over $150 billion and over Vietnam and civil rights gave decreased Americans’ confidence in Nixon’s campaign a decisive edge. their government system. 2. Nixon’s advantages against his weak B. The Silent Majority Speaks Out opponent, Senator George McGovern, and 1. Law and Order and the Supreme Court a short-term upturn in the economy a. Under the leadership of Chief Justice favored the Republicans. Earl Warren, the U.S. Supreme Court 3. Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” of issued some of the most far-reaching non-protesters and easily won reelection liberal jurisprudence in U.S. history. with 61 percent of the popular vote, b. Right-wing activists accused the carrying every state except Massachusetts Warren Court of legislating from the and the District of Columbia, although bench when it ruled that the accused Democrats maintained control of both had the right to counsel and that houses of Congress. arrestees had to be informed by police 4. The election, nevertheless, marked a pivotal of their right to remain silent. moment in the nation’s shift to the right. c. The Court’s decisions in regard to pornography and religious rituals in school convinced conservative and religious Americans that the Court had become immoral. d. A myriad of social factors—drugs, income inequality, and proliferation of