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 New Left 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 Counterculture the 1930s and 1940s. a. The “hippie” symbolized the new d. At the University of California at counterculture, a youthful movement Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement 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.