2020

AP US History | Unit 8

SOCIAL CHANGE

Source: Packed adapted from Georgia Virtual ‐ Shared Content

SOCIAL CHANGE ‐ INTRODUCTION

Introduction: Remember during Radical Reconstruction when African Americans were allowed to vote and have greater opportunities in society? You also may remember that those rights were taken away after Reconstruction and a system of racial segregation emerged. During the mid‐20th Century, new leaders emerged to lead a movement that pushed for equal rights in society. In the 1950s and 60s, African Americans successfully challenged segregation, won voting rights, and made other gains. Civil rights legislation was a part of a much larger drive of equality for a variety of groups. American involvement in Vietnam grew over time until half a million U.S. troops were involved in a ground war to prevent the spread of communism. As the war dragged on, many Americans became involved in a movement to end American involvement in the conflict. Richard Nixon began withdrawing troops and pursued a policy of attempting to relax Cold War tensions known as detente. Later, his involvement in the Watergate scandal led to his resignation. The 1970s featured many challenges on the economic front with unemployment, inflation, and gas prices rising rapidly.

Essential Questions:  How did the Civil Rights Movement achieve major goals in restoring and expanding equality and access for many Americans?  Why did Vietnam become such a controversial war that had a large impact both in foreign policy and domestic affairs?  What were some of the major events and challenges of the 1970s?

Module Minute: During the 1950s and 60s people rose up against institutionalized discrimination. The entrenched system of Jim Crow was shook from its foundations as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others led the African American community in non‐violent civil disobedience. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in all places open to the public and the Voting Rights Act one year later opened up political power to previously disenfranchised voters. Other causes were advanced in addition to equal rights for African Americans including: women's rights, Hispanic rights, and environmentalism. The Vietnam War raged and ended up being a divisive issue. In the 1970s Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate Scandal and large numbers of Americans became distrustful of the government. The economy also faced struggles in the decade as well.

What to Expect:  Key Concepts Assignment Check Quiz  Virtual Visit: National Civil Rights Museum  Document Analysis Assignment Check Quiz: The Tumultuous 60s  Discussion: The Vietnam War  Essay: The 1970s  Test: MC and Short Answer

Don't forget to read the chapter(s) on the Social Change period in your textbook!

Reading assignments from the following textbook have been included: America’s History for the AP Course (9th Ed.), by James A. Henretta, Rebecca Edwards, Eric Hinderaker, and Robert O. Self.

In addition, the following exam preparation book is recommended for all learners: AMSCO Advanced Placement United States History, by John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach, 2020 Edition.

Assignment: Read pages 744‐747 and page 810 in your textbook.

Describe what you will learn in this unit after you read the pages above and review the key terms in the pages that follow.

Key Terms: Review key terms. Return to review the key terms as you encounter them in the rest of the module.

Warren Court ‐‐‐ activist court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. It’s rulings often overruled state laws in favor of individual rights and desegregation. Miranda v. Arizona ‐‐‐ controversial decision of the Warren Court that stated police must inform people of their rights prior to arrest. Jackie Robinson ‐‐‐ became the first African American to play for a major league baseball team when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Harry Truman ‐‐‐ the U.S. President who issued an executive order in 1948 to desegregate the federal government, including the armed forces. Brown v. Board of Education ‐‐‐ landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that forbade segregation in public schools, struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine of the Plessy v. Ferguson case (1896). Martin Luther King, Jr. ‐‐‐ was the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement, a Baptist minister who advocated a strategy of non‐‐‐violent civil disobedience. TV News Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement ‐‐‐ Americans saw much of the violence directed toward civil rights protesters on the nightly news and this helped turn sympathies toward ending racial segregation. Letter from a Birmingham Jail ‐‐‐ written by MLK to address the fears of some white religious that he was moving too fast on desegregation. I Have a Dream ‐‐‐ is MLK’s most famous speech, delivered to a quarter million people in Washington D.C. in support of the Civil Rights Bill. Civil Rights Act of 1964 ‐‐‐ prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and gender for any place or organization open to the public. Voting Rights Act of 1965 ‐‐‐ outlawed literacy tests and removed barriers from keeping African Americans from registering and voting. Vietnam War ‐‐‐ was a war between the communist north and pro‐‐‐West south. The U.S. was directly involved with combat troops in the late 1960s and early 1970s; after the U.S. troops were withdrawn communist North Vietnam took over South Vietnam. Tet Offensive ‐‐‐ this 1968 surprise offensive was named after the Vietnamese New Year. The U.S. and South Vietnamese militarily won, but it was a psychological and political defeat for the U.S. as much of the American public began to turn against the Vietnam War. Anti‐Vietnam War Movement ‐‐‐ gained strength in the late 1960s as the Vietnam War became more unpopular, centered on college campuses and opposed to the draft (selective service). Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. ‐‐‐ in 1968 MLK was shot and killed in Memphis, TN. Race riots erupted in many U.S. citizens as the civil rights movement had lost its greatest voice for non‐‐‐violence. Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy ‐‐‐ shot and killed in 1968 while running for the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform of reform and opposition to the Vietnam War. 1968 Democratic National Convention ‐‐‐ held in Chicago, it is remembered for the violent street clashes that occurred between police and anti‐‐‐war protesters. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) ‐‐‐ founded by MLK and others to carry out non‐‐‐violent acts of civil disobedience. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ‐‐‐ founded as student wing of the SCLC and spearheaded the sit‐‐‐in movement at lunch counters, later became a more militant and violent organization. Sit‐Ins ‐‐‐ a tactic employed by civil rights protesters, especially at lunch counters, where they would enter a business and sit there until they were served or forcefully removed. Freedom Rides ‐‐‐ civil rights advocates would ride interstate buses in defiance of segregation laws affecting buses and stations. Women’s Movement ‐‐‐ women began pushing for a larger role in society in politics, working outside the home, social equality, and reproductive issues. National Organization of Women (NOW) ‐‐‐ a group that led much of the women’s liberation movement and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment. Sexual Revolution ‐‐‐ a dramatic shift in attitudes toward sexual morals that began in the 1960s. Traditional attitudes were challenged by a greater acceptance in society for divorce, pre‐‐‐marital sex, cohabitation, abortion, and homosexuality. United Farm Workers’ Movement ‐‐‐ organization founded by Cesar Chavez that wanted higher wages and better benefits for agricultural workers, especially migrant workers. Cesar Chavez ‐‐‐ led the United Farm Workers and a nationwide boycott of California grapes that were picked with non‐‐‐union labor. Environmental Movement ‐‐‐ is a movement that began in the 1960s that promoted conservation and preservation of the earth and its natural resources. Silent Spring ‐‐‐ book published in 1962 that brought forward dangers from pesticides; helped lead to passage of the Water Quality Act of 1965. Rachel Carson ‐‐‐ the author of Silent Spring which jump‐‐‐started the modern environmental movement. Earth Day ‐‐‐ began in 1970 as a way to heighten awareness of environmental issues; still observed by thousands of schools each year. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ‐‐‐ created by President Nixon in 1970 to set limits on pollution, conduct environmental research, and assist state and local governments in cleaning up polluted sites. Conservative Movement ‐‐‐ a reaction to the more liberal movements and the changes that they were causing in society. Conservatives were alarmed at the challenges to traditional values, the expansion of government, and saw many of the anti‐‐‐war protesters as unpatriotic Barry Goldwater ‐‐‐ Republican Senator from Arizona who lost the 1964 Presidential to Johnson in a landslide, but is credited with launching the modern conservative movement. Roe v. Wade ‐‐‐ 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion based on a right to privacy. Regents of University of California v. Bakke ‐‐‐ 1978 Supreme Court Case on affirmative action that ruled that race can be considered in college admissions, but not racial quotas. Richard Nixon ‐‐‐ elected to the Presidency in 1968, his presidency featured significant changes and ended in major scandals. Détente ‐‐‐ a French term for “relaxed”. Beginning with Richard Nixon and continuing throughout the 1970s, the U.S. soughta less confrontational approach toward communism and the Cold War in general. Nixon’s Visit to China ‐‐‐ in 1972 Nixon visited China to seek scientific, cultural, and trade agreements; this resulted in closer relations with China and leverage in the rivalry with the Soviet Union. Watergate Scandal ‐‐‐ centered on the Nixon’s administrations attempt to cover up a burglary of the Democratic headquarters. It led to the resignation of Nixon and a greater feeling of distrust by the public towards government and lawyers. Gerald Ford ‐‐‐ took office when Nixon resigned, he pardoned Nixon and struggled to deal with the economic recession. OPEC ‐‐‐ the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. This organization is made up nations who controlled much of the world’s oil supply, many of them, in the Middle East. They seek to influence the price of oil (and thus ensure large profits) by setting limits for oil production. Oil Crisis ‐‐‐ the energy crisis of the 1970s saw Middle Eastern nations cutting off and restricting the flow of oil to the United States. This caused a large spike in the previously affordable price of energy and long lines for gasoline.

Reading assignments from the following textbook have been included: America’s History for the AP Course (9th Ed.), by James A. Henretta, Rebecca Edwards, Eric Hinderaker, and Robert O. Self.

In addition, the following exam preparation book is recommended for all learners: AMSCO Advanced Placement United States History, by John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach, 2020 Edition.

Reading Assignment for this Module

Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 1‐1 – pages 1‐5 Lesson 1‐2 – pages 5‐8 Lesson 1‐3 – pages 9‐12 Lesson 1‐4 – pages 13‐16 Lesson 1‐5 – pages 17‐20 Lesson 2 – pages 21‐24 Lesson 3 – pages 25‐27 Reading Document Boundless: The Vietnam War (embedded in this document) Lesson 4 – pages 1‐13

Textbook: Read from your textbook, taking notes. Lesson 1‐1 – pages 812‐842 Lesson 1‐2 – pages 846‐861 Lesson 1‐3 – pages 862‐876 Lesson 1‐4 – pages 878‐892 Lesson 1‐5 – pages 893‐906

AMSCO prep book: Read from your exam preparation book, taking notes. Lesson 2 – pages 556, 587‐599 Lesson 3 – pages 600‐610 Lesson 4 – pages 611‐624 Lesson 5 – pages 625‐647 Module Wrap‐up – pages 648‐652

Lesson 1‐1: Individual Rights and Racial Integration

This key concepts lesson is very important as it covers the main areas of the Advanced Placement frameworks.

Answer the key questions that follow as you read. The answers are found in the text and Readings Document that follows.

Answer these questions on your own paper or word processing document as you complete all the lessons in this module.

1. Was the Warren Court generally in favor or against government power (especially state government laws) in cases that involved equality or individual rights?

2. Which President ordered the desegregation of the military in 1948?

3. Who promoted non‐violet civil disobedience and was the most well‐known civil rights leader?

4. What outlawed literacy tests in 1965?

5. Why did Rosa Parks say that she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955?

6. What organization was Malcolm X a vocal leader in, but was later assassinated after he broke with the organization?

7. Sit‐ins and freedom rides were tactics of what civil rights organization?

8. The U.S. containment policy manifested itself in the United States being involved in what Southeastern Asian nation in the 1960s and early 1970s?

9. List and briefly describe some of the key events of 1968.

10. What were some of the goals of the NOW and the women’s movement?

11. Cesar Chavez led a nationwide boycott of what crop?

12. What political figure was nominated by the Republicans in 1964, showing the growing power of the conservative movement?

13. The Roe v. Wade decision was based on an expansion of what rights (relates to the 4th amendment) to include abortion?

14. President Nixon made a high profile visit to what country in 1972? What was détente?

15. Which of the major professional sports was the first to integrate? Who was the first African American to play in this league?

16. What were some of the measures of the Kennedy Administration relating to Civil Rights?

17. What were some of the major aspects of the Sexual Revolution?

18. Briefly describe the Counterculture Movement of the 1960s and early 70s.

19. What were some of the major economic challenges of the 1970s?

20. How did Gerald Ford become president even though he was never elected to the office of President or Vice President? What controversial action did he take soon after taking office?

Individual Rights During most of the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Court, as it was known, became famous for issuing landmark decisions (that often overruled state law), such as declaring that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that the Constitution includes the right to privacy, that the right of free speech protects students who wear armbands as an antiwar protest on school grounds, and that all states must obey all decisions of the Supreme Court. The Warren Court also issued ruling that forced states to elect state legislatures based on population and banned school‐led prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

In 1963, the Warren Court issued another of its landmark decisions, Miranda v. Arizona: Police must inform suspects of their constitutional rights at the time of arrest. The case involved a man named Ernesto Miranda, who was convicted and imprisoned after signing a confession although, at the time of his arrest, the police questioned him without telling him he had the right to speak with an attorney and the right to stay silent. The Miranda decision strengthened Americans' individual rights.

Racial Integration African Americans fought bravely in World War II and also worked in war industries in the United States during the war. After the war, they once again faced the racial discrimination that had been traditional before the war, but many people took bold actions to end discrimination and promote integration. Review the following details of six major events in the recent history of the civil rights movement.

Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 1‐1 – pages 1‐5

Readings From an open (non-copyright) online text on the Boundless Website https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/

Module 11: Social Change

Civil Rights under the Truman Administration

OVERVIEW During his administration, Truman made several important contributions to the Civil Rights Movment. First, he created the President's Committee on Civil Rights by Executive Order 9808 on December 5, 1946. The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen and protect them. After the committee submitted a report of its findings to President Truman, it disbanded in December 1947.

COMMITTEE GOALS The committee's terms of reference were to examine the condition of civil rights in the United States, to produce a written report of their findings, and to submit recommendations on improving civil rights in the United States. In October 1947, To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights was produced. The 178-page report proposed improving existing civil rights laws. More specifically, it aimed to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission, a Joint Congressional Committee on Civil Rights, and a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, to develop federal protection from lynching, to create a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), to abolish poll taxes, among other measures.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS On July 26, 1948, President Truman advanced the recommendations of the report by signing executive orders 9980 and 9981. Executive Order 9980 ordered the desegregation of the federal work force with Executive Order 9981, the desegregation of the armed services. He also sent a special message to Congress on February 2, 1948 to implement the recommendations of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights.

In February 1948, the president submitted a civil rights agenda to Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices. This provoked a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the run up to the national nominating convention. Southern Democrats would run their own “Dixiecrat” candidate, Strom Thurmond, in protest. Truman refused to compromise, saying: "My forebears were Confederates ... but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten." In retirement however, Truman was less progressive on the issue. He described the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches as silly, stating that the marches would not "accomplish a darned thing."

Finally, he issued an Executive Order in 1951 to establish the Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC). This committee ensured that defense contractors to the armed forces could not discriminate against a person because of their race.

IMPACT ON CIVIL RIGHTS Truman's efforts, including the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, were important for the burgeoning issue of racism in post-war America. Protection from lynching and desegregation in the work force was a triumph of conscience for Truman, as he recalled in his farewell address:

“There has been a tremendous awakening of the American conscience on the great issues of civil rights--equal economic opportunities, equal rights of citizenship, and equal educational opportunities for all our people, whatever their race or religion or status of birth.”

These "small actions" culminated into the signing of the two executive orders mentioned above by Truman in 1948, an election year. In light of the growing possibility of war, addressing the state of black morale the armed forces was particularly important. The far-reaching effects that the committee had hoped for had little impact on the civil rights of Black Americans in the late 1940s. However, these steps, along with the integration of major league baseball with the first black player in Jackie Robinson (which took place without government action), the groundwork was laid for greater change in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

The African-American civil rights movement (1955-1968) refers to the social movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This mobility witnessed the emergence of the Black Power movement (roughly from 1966 to 1975) which enlarged the aims of the civil rights movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency.

The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama as well as a wide range of other nonviolent activities.

Across the country young people were inspired to action, and African Americans re- entered politics in the South. Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the civil rights movement were: • The passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; • The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which restored and protected voting rights; • The Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, which dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; • The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that rejected separate white and colored school systems and, by implication, overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African-Americans adopted a combined strategy of direct action with nonviolent resistance known as civil disobedience, giving rise to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968.

The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation in the court system that typified the civil rights movement in the first half of the twentieth century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action"— primarily boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, marches, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, and civil disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968.

Montgomery and Protests

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal episode in the U.S. civil rights movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks Twelve years before her history-making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driver James F. Blake, who ordered her to board at the back door and then drove off without her. Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor. The protest that arose around the Taylor case was the first instance of a nationwide civil rights protest, and it laid the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott.

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the frontmost row for black people on the bus. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Found guilty on December 5, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed.

E.D. Nixon Between Parks' arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work schedule, he arranged that no election of a leader for the proposed boycott would take place until his return. When he returned he caucused with Ralph Abernathy and Rev. E.N. French to name the association to lead the boycott (they selected the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to the city, and select King (Nixon's choice) to lead the boycott.

Boycott On the night of Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows:

"Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped... We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday."

On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves, driving people to various destinations. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.

King and 155 other protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus under a 1921 ordinance. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest.

Victory Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956 the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling, leading to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, after 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott resounded far beyond the desegregation of public buses; it stimulated the national civil rights movement and launched King into the national spotlight as a leader.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his practice of nonviolent civil disobedience in his efforts to advance civil rights. King has become a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King found himself called to civil rights activism early on in his life. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in 1957, helped found and served as the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his exalted "I Have a Dream" speech, and established himself as one of the greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In the following years leading up to his death, he

Lesson 1‐2: Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement TV newscasts also changed the shape of American culture. Americans who might never have attended a civil rights demonstration saw and heard them on their TVs in the 1960s. In 1963, TV reporters showed helmeted police officers from Birmingham, Alabama, spraying African American children who had been walking in a protest march with high‐pressure fire hoses, setting police dogs to attack them, and then clubbing them. TV news coverage of the civil rights movement helped many Americans turn their sympathies toward ending racial segregation and persuaded Kennedy that new laws were the only way to end the racial violence and give African Americans the civil rights they were demanding.

Two civil rights groups prominent in the struggle for African American rights in the Sixties were The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Review the following breakdown to see how SCLC and SNCC started as similar organizations but grew to differ over time, especially in SNCC's changing composition.

SCLC SNCC Founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Founded by African American college students with $800 received Founding other ministers and Civil Rights leaders from the SCLC To carry on nonviolent crusades against the Goal To speed up changes mandated by Brown v. Board of Education evils of second‐class citizenship Marches, protests, and demonstrations Sit‐ins at segregated lunch counters all across the South; Original throughout the South, using churches as registering African Americans to vote, in hope they could Tactics bases influence Congress to pass voting rights act Registering African Americans to vote, in Freedom Rides on interstate buses to determine if southern states Later Tactics hope they could influence Congress to pass would enforce laws against segregation in public transportation voting rights act Original Average African American adults; white African American and white college students; included whites at Membership adults first, but later it became all‐African American organization Later Same as original membership African Americans only; no whites Membership Original Nonviolence Nonviolence Philosophy Later Militancy and violence; " Black Power " and African‐American Same as original philosophy Philosophy pride

Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 1‐2 – pages 5‐8

On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves, driving people to various destinations. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.

King and 155 other protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus under a 1921 ordinance. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest.

Victory Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956 the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling, leading to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, after 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott resounded far beyond the desegregation of public buses; it stimulated the national civil rights movement and launched King into the national spotlight as a leader.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his practice of nonviolent civil disobedience in his efforts to advance civil rights. King has become a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King found himself called to civil rights activism early on in his life. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in 1957, helped found and served as the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his exalted "I Have a Dream" speech, and established himself as one of the greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In the following years leading up to his death, he expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War—alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam". King also planned a national occupation of Washington, D.C., called "the Poor People's Campaign."

Ideas, Influences, and Political Stances Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College, Thurman mentored the young King and his friends. Thurman's missionary work led him abroad, where he met and conferred with Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1959, King, inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, visited Gandhi's birthplace in India. This trip affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and reinforcing his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings, counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence. Rustin went on to serve as King's main adviser and mentor throughout King's early activism, and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand that King distance himself from Rustin.

Activism In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the pursuit of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death. Additionally, King organized and led marches in support of blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In April 1963, the SCLC initiated a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest out of 29. From his cell, he composed the now-famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which responded to calls for King to discontinue his nonviolent protests and instead rely on the court system to bring about social change.

King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations that were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. Originally, the march was conceived as a very public opportunity to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern United States and present organizers' concerns and grievances directly to the seat of power in the nation's capital. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history. King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.

Assassination and Legacy On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of the black sanitary public works employees, which had been on strike for 17 days in an effort to attain higher wages and ensure fairer treatment. While standing on the second floor balcony of a motel, King was shot by escaped convict James Earl Ray. One hour later, King was pronounced dead at St Joseph’s hospital.

King's legacy continues to be that of a human rights icon. His name is often invoked when people debate his likely position on various modern political issues. On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In 2011, the Martin Luther King National Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

Sit-ins and Freedom Rides

Sit-Ins During the sit-in movement of the 1960s, students and other civil rights activists would "sit-in" at whites-only locations. In the first sit-ins, students would sit at white-only lunch counters, and refuse to leave until they had been served. The sit in movement used the strategy of nonviolence . As students across the south began these sit-ins, local authority figures sometimes used brute force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities.

Freedom Rides Freedom Rides were journeys by civil rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, (1960) that ended segregation for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. During Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains, which proved to be a dangerous mission.

Mob Violence in Anniston and Birmingham As these first freedom riders entered Alabama, they encountered extreme resistance. The Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor and Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter), organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters.

Impact of the Freedom Rides In September 1961, the ICC issued the necessary orders, and the new policies went into effect on November 1, 1961, six years after the ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; racially segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and the lunch counters began serving all customers, regardless of race.

Federal Intervention

John F. Kennedy and Civil Rights The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of the 1960s for the JFK administration. John F. Kennedy verbally supported racial integration and civil rights. In a 1961 speech, Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment: “ We will not stand by or be aloof—we will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 [Supreme Court school desegregation] decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is now the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law."

Robert Kennedy and Civil Rights It has become commonplace to assert the phrase "The Kennedy Administration" or even "President Kennedy" when discussing the legislative and executive support of the civil rights movement. However, between 1960 and 1963, many of the initiatives that occurred during President Kennedy's tenure were a result of the passion and determination of an emboldened Robert Kennedy, who through his rapid education in the realities of Southern racism, underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as Attorney General. Asked in May 1962, "What do you see as the big problem ahead for you, is it Crime or Internal Security?" Robert Kennedy replied, "Civil Rights." The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters at hand to such an extent that it was at the Attorney General's insistence that he made his famous address to the nation.

Robert Kennedy played a large role in the Freedom Riders protests. After the Anniston bus bombings, Kennedy acted to protect the Riders in continuing their journey. Kennedy sent John Seigenthaler, his administrative assistant, to Alabama to secure the riders' safety there. He also forced the Greyhound bus company to provide the Freedom Riders with a bus driver to ensure they could continue their journey.

While Kennedy offered protection to the Freedom Riders, he also attempted to convince them to end the Rides. Kennedy's attempts to end the Freedom Rides early were in many ways tied to an upcoming summit with Khrushchev and De Gaulle, as he believed the continued international publicity of race riots would tarnish the president heading into international negotiations. This reluctance to protect and Lesson 1‐3: Vietnam War and Anti‐War Movement

Vietnam War The Vietnam War was a struggle for control of Vietnam. While the conflict originally began during the French colonial rule in the region, the United States became involved in the 1950s by providing economic and limited military aid. Then, in the early 1960s, U.S. involvement began to increase; it lasted until the early 1970s. The democratic government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States, battled communist North Vietnam and a military organization called the Viet Cong. U.S. policymakers believed that if Vietnam came to be ruled by a communist government, communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and perhaps beyond. In 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army started the eight‐month‐long Tet Offensive. It was the Viet Cong's largest and most damaging campaign of the entire war.

Ultimately, the Tet Offensive failed to achieve its goal of driving the Americans out of Vietnam but it did lead many people in the United States to question how and why Johnson had told them America was winning the war. This led some Americans who had been quiet up until then to raise their voices in protest against the war. Many college campuses were home to groups formed to protest American involvement in Vietnam. The goals of these groups differed, but most favored ending the draft and removing all American troops from Vietnam.

Anti‐Vietnam War Movement Americans against the war in Vietnam became more vocal in their opposition. Many antiwar groups started on college campuses to urge the government to end selective service (the draft) and to bring home all American troops from Vietnam. They used many of the same tactics as groups fighting for civil rights, including sit‐ins, marches, and demonstrations. Later, some protesters became more radical, burning their draft cards, going to prison rather than going to Vietnam, and even fleeing to Canada.

1968 The year 1968 was one of social and political turmoil in the United States. Review this list of key events that shocked America and made 1968 a defining moment of the modern era:

Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 1‐3 – pages 9‐12

advance the Freedom Rides alienated many of the Civil Rights leaders at the time who perceived him as intolerant and narrow minded.

Despite this, Robert Kennedy intervened on behalf of the civil rights activists on numerous occasions. Robert Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice, and collaborated with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to create the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped bring an end to Jim Crow laws.

Federal Intervention in the Integration of Universities In September 1962, a student named James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but was prevented from entering. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, who said, "[N0] school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor."

Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by sending 400 federal marshals, hoping that legal means, along with the escort of U.S. Marshals, would be enough to force the governor to allow Meredith admission. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and then firing on the U.S. Marshals guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Two people, including a French journalist, were killed; 28 marshals suffered gunshot wounds; and 160 others were injured. Thus, after the situation on campus turned violent, President John F. Kennedy sent 3,000 troops to quell the riot. The University of Mississippi riots of 1962 left two dead and dozens injured, but James Meredith did finally enroll in his first class. On November 20, 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, prohibiting racial discrimination in federally supported housing or "related facilities."

Similarly, on June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending. President John F. Kennedy sent a force to make Governor Wallace step aside. That evening, Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation—to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights. His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Throughout this time, both Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy remained adamant concerning the rights of black students to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system.

JFK's Interventions in the Birmingham Campaigns, 1963-1964 In 1963, activists made plans to desegregate downtown Birmingham merchants. The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit- ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an injunction barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for mass arrests of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.

Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to directly and more forcefully intervene in negotiations between the white business community and the activists. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders.

Black Power Movement

OVERVIEW Black Power is a term used to refer to various associated ideologies associated with African Americans in the United States, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values. "Black Power" expresses a range of political goals, from defense against racial oppression to the establishment of social institutions and a self-sufficient economy. Black power stood in contrast to King and the mainstream leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, which emphasized integration. Groups such as the Nation of Islam (of which Malcolm X was initially a member of, but later left) and the Black Panthers were two of the more radical non- integrationist groups.

BACKGROUND Stokely Carmichael, who became the leader of SNCC in 1966, was one of the earliest and most articulate spokespersons for what became known as the "Black Power" movement. In 1966, Carmichael began urging African American communities to confront the Ku Klux Klan armed and ready for battle. He felt it was the only way to ever rid the communities of the terror caused by the Klan.

This move towards Black Power and self-defense as a means of obtaining African- American civil rights marked a change from previous nonviolent actions. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like black nationalism to him. SNCC activists, in the meantime, began embracing the "right to self-defense" in response to attacks from white authorities, and booed King for continuing to advocate non-violence.

When King was murdered in 1968, Stokely Carmichael stated that whites murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting, and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground. Racial riots broke out in the black community in cities from Boston to San Francisco following King's death. As a result, the white population fled from many areas in these cities and city crews were often hesitant to enter affected areas, leaving Blacks in a dilapidated and nearly irreparable city.

The Black Power movement was given a stage on live, international television on October 1968. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympics, donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony. Smith and Carlos were immediately ejected from the games by the United States Olympic Committee. The International Olympic Committee would later issue a permanent lifetime ban for the two.

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY Black Power was made most public by the Black Panther Party, which was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966. This group followed the ideology of Malcolm X, a former member of the Nation of Islam, using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping inequality. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The group's "provocative rhetoric, militant posture, and cultural and political flourishes permanently altered the contours of American Identity.”

The organization's official newspaper, The Black Panther, was first circulated in 1967. Also that year, the Black Panther Party marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento in protest of a selective ban on weapons. By 1968, the party had expanded into many cities throughout the United States. Peak membership was near 10,000 by 1969, and their newspaper had a circulation of 250,000.

Gaining national prominence, the Black Panther Party became an icon of the counterculture of the 1960s. They instituted a variety of community social programs designed to alleviate poverty, improve health among inner city black communities, and soften the Party's public image. The Black Panther Party's most widely known programs were its armed citizens' patrols to evaluate behavior of police officers and its Free Breakfast for Children program. However, the group's political goals were often overshadowed by their confrontational, militant, and violent tactics against police.

IMPACT OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY Due to the negative and militant reputation of groups like that of the Black Panther Party, many people felt that this movement of "insurrection" would soon serve to cause discord and disharmony through the entire U.S. Though Black Power at the most basic level refers to a political movement, the psychological and cultural messages of the Black Power movement, though less tangible, have had perhaps a longer lasting impact on American society. The movement uplifted the black community as a whole by cultivating feelings of racial solidarity, often in opposition to the world of white Americans; a world that had oppressed Blacks for generations. Through the movement, Blacks came to understand themselves and their culture by exploring and debating the question “who are we?”, in order to establish a unified and viable identity . The respect and attention accorded to African Americans’ history and culture in both formal and informal settings today is largely a product of the movement for Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s.

Additional Movements

The 1960s was a decade of rapid social change and upheaval. In addition to the struggle for equality for African-Americans many other groups also pushed for change. The Feminist Movement, Latino/Hispanic Rights, and Environmental Movement are discussed in the information in the course content. Other key movements of this time period included the assertion of rights and identity in the American Indian community and a sexual revolution relating to changing attitudes and behaviors.

The Sexual Revolution

The 1960s in the US are often perceived as a period of profound societal change, in which many young, educated, and politically minded individuals sought to influence the status quo. The quest for autonomy during this time was also characterized by changes towards sexual attitudes, generally referred to under the blanket metaphor of "sexual revolution." Like much of the radicalism of the 1960s, the sexual revolution was often seen to have been centered around the university campus, amongst students.

Changes in Social Norms The modern consensus is that the sexual revolution in 1960s America was typified by a dramatic shift in traditional values related to sex, and sexuality. Sex became more socially acceptable outside the strict boundaries of heterosexual marriage. For example, studies have shown that, between 1965 and 1975, the number of women who experienced sexual intercourse before marriage showed a marked increase. The increased availability of birth control (and the quasi-legalization of abortion in some places) helped reduce the chance that premarital sex would result in unwanted children. By the mid-1970s, the majority of newly married American couples had experienced sex before marriage.

Free Love Similarly, during this time, a culture of "free love" emerged. Beginning in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, this culture of "free love" was propagated by thousands of "hippies," who preached the power of love and the beauty of sex. By the 1970s, it was acceptable for colleges to allow co-educational housing where male and female students mingled freely. Hippies embraced the old slogan of free love from the radical social reformers of other eras.

Birth Control and Population Control Advocacy Lesson 1‐4: Social Movements

Women's Movement The National Organization of Women was founded in 1966 to promote equal rights and opportunities for America's women. NOW had its origins in the civil rights and anti‐war movements of the early 1960s. In both of these, women felt sidelined by the men who led organizations like SNCC and anti‐Vietnam War groups. NOW's goals included equality in employment, political and social equality, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

United Farm Workers' Movement Latinos also protested to gain civil rights in the 1960s. Their leader was Cesar Chavez, an American of Mexican descent who grew up picking crops in California with his family. As founder of the United Farm Workers movement, Chavez believed in nonviolent methods to achieve his goals. In 1965, he started a nationwide boycott of California grapes, forcing grape growers to negotiate a contract with the United Farm Workers in 1970. This contract gave farm workers higher wages and other benefits for which they had been protesting through the Sixties.

Environmental Movement Protecting the environment became important to many Americans. Silent Spring, a 1962 book about pesticides by Rachel Carson, exposed dangers to the environment. This book led to the Water Quality Act of 1965. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, when almost every community across America and over 10,000 schools and 2,000 colleges organized events to raise awareness of environmental issues; Earth Day is still celebrated each year. Also in 1970, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set limits on pollution, conduct environmental research, and assist state and local governments clean up polluted sites.

Conservative Movement In 1964, the Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater for president, which was a sign of the rising power of America's conservative movement. Goldwater believed the federal government should not try to fix social and economic problems such as poverty, discrimination, or lack of opportunity. His conservative proposals included selling the Tennessee Valley Authority, making Social Security voluntary, and getting more involved in Vietnam. Goldwater lost the election to President Johnson, who said more American involvement in Vietnam would not solve the problems there. Despite his loss, Goldwater's nomination began to shift the ideology of the Republican Party to a more conservative position which would be more successful in future elections. The conservative movement continued with the 1968 candidacy and election of Republican Richard M. Nixon. He wanted to replace President Johnson's Great Society programs with what Nixon called the New Federalism. This conservative initiative would take away some federal government powers, such as social welfare, and give them to state and local governments.

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After World War II, the birth control movement had accomplished the goal of making birth control legal, and advocacy for reproductive rights transitioned into a new era that focused on abortion, public funding, and insurance coverage. “The Pill” was one of the cornerstones of the sexual revolution.

Birth control advocacy took on a global aspect as organizations around the world began to collaborate. In 1946, the International Planned Parenthood Federation was founded, which soon became the world's largest non-governmental, international family-planning organization. Fear of global overpopulation became a major issue in the 1960s, generating concerns about pollution, food shortages, and quality of life, leading to well-funded birth control campaigns around the world.

Birth control and the Pill were also part of US government’s policies against poverty. In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson instituted his social reform policy, The Great Society, which aimed to eliminate poverty and racial injustice. Thus, as a form of population control, the Pill was endorsed and distributed by doctors.

The Sexual Revolution and “The Pill” In the early 1950s, philanthropist Katharine McCormick provided funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1960 . "The Pill," as it came to be known, was extraordinarily popular, and despite worries over possible side effects, by 1962, an estimated 1,187,000 women were using it.

This new contraceptive technology was a key player in forming women's modern economic role, in that it prolonged the age at which women first married. This allowed women to invest in education and become more career-oriented. Soon after the Pill was legalized, there was a sharp increase in college attendance and graduation rates for women. From an economic point of view, the Pill reduced the cost of staying in school. The ability to control fertility without sacrificing sexual relationships allowed women to make long-term educational and career plans.

Women's rights movements also heralded the Pill as a method of granting women sexual liberation, and saw the popularity of the drug as just one signifier of the increasing desire for equality (sexual or otherwise) amongst American women. The Pill and the sexual revolution was therefore an important part of the drive for sexual equality in the 1960s.

Opposition to the Pill The Pill became an extremely controversial subject as Americans struggled with their thoughts on sexual morality, controlling population growth, and women's control of their reproductive rights. Even by 1965, birth control was illegal in some US states, including Connecticut and New York.

Because the Pill was so effective, and soon so widespread, it heightened the debate about the moral and health consequences of premarital sex and promiscuity. Never before had sexual activity been so divorced from reproduction. For a couple using the Pill, intercourse became purely an expression of love, or a means of physical pleasure, or both—but it was no longer a means of reproduction. While this was true of previous contraceptives, their relatively high failure rates and their less widespread use failed to emphasize this distinction as clearly as did the Pill. The spread of oral contraceptive use thus led many religious figures and institutions to debate the proper role of sexuality and its relationship to procreation. The Roman Catholic Church in particular reiterated the established Catholic teaching that artificial contraception distorts the nature and purpose of sex.

The Pill and the sexual freedom it provided to women are frequently blamed for what many believe are regressions in quality of life. Since the sexual revolution, out- of-wedlock births, sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, and the divorce rate have all risen considerably.

Homosexuality and the Beginning of the Gay Rights Movement Even in a time of unprecedented societal change and burgeoning liberal views and policies, homosexuality was still widely publicly reviled, and more often than not was seen as a malaise or mental illness, instead of a legitimate sexual orientation. Indeed, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the overriding opinion of the medical establishment was that homosexuality was a developmental maladjustment.

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn, and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, and again several nights later. The Stonewall riots are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities.

Since then, they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world.

By the summer of 1970, groups in at least eight American cities were sufficiently organized to schedule simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots for the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York and thousands more at parades in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. On June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities. Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.

Native American Rights

The movement for Native American centered around the tension between rights granted via tribal sovereignty and rights that individual Indians retain as U.S. citizens. Many of the demands of the movement related to the U.S. government’s obligation to honor its treaties with the sovereign Native American nations.

Native American Civil Rights After years of unequal schooling, for reasons from racist schools to insufficiently funded schools, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) was formed in 1969 to fight for equal education for American Indians. American Indian Activists strove for media protection and to own their own media. Until 1935, American Indian people could be fined and sent to prison for practicing their traditional religious beliefs. In more recent times, there has been controversy around the use of American Indian symbols such as for school or team mascots. Concerns are that the use of the symbols distort American Indian history and culture and often stereotype in offensive ways, such as when “savages” is used. One of the primary advocacy organizations for Native American Rights, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was also formed during the 1960s.

Alcatraz Occupation: Catalyst for the Formation of AIM The group Indians of All Tribes (IAT) occupied Alcatraz for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government. According to the IAT, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the U.S. and the Sioux should have returned all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land to the Native people from whom it was acquired. Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, a number of activists felt the island qualified for reclamation. In 1970, the Occupation of Alcatraz was noted as “the symbol of a newly awakened desire among Indians for unity and authority in a white world.”

American Indian Movement (AIM) The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by urban Native Americans. The AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty. The organization was formed to address various issues concerning the Native American urban community in Minneapolis, including poverty, housing, treaty issues, and police harassment. From its beginnings in Minnesota, AIM soon attracted members from across the United States. At a time when peaceful sit-ins were a common protest tactic, the American Indian Movement (AIM) takeovers in their early days were noticeably violent. Some appeared to be spontaneous outcomes of protest gatherings, but others included armed seizure of public facilities.

Gaining Native American Civil Rights On March 6, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11399, establishing the National Council on Indian Opportunity (NCIO). With the passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) in 1968, also called the Indian Bill of Rights, Native Americans were guaranteed many civil rights. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act put an end to individual states claims on whether or not Indians were allowed to vote through a federal law. Before the Voting Rights Act, many states had found ways to prevent Native Americans from voting, such as residency or literacy requirements.

The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture

A counterculture developed in the United States in late 1960s. This movement lasted from approximately 1964 to 1972, and it coincided with America's involvement in Vietnam. A counterculture is the rejection of conventional social norms – in this case the norms of the 1950s. The counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, specifically racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War.

As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam, race relations, sexual mores, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream. White, middle class youth, who made up the bulk of the counterculture, had sufficient leisure time to turn their attention to social issues, thanks to widespread economic prosperity.

Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture, most of whose members were white, middle-class young Americans. Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States. The counterculture reached its peak in the 1967 "Summer of Love," when thousands of young people flocked to the Haight- Ashbury district of San Francisco. The counterculture lifestyle integrated many of the ideals and indulgences of the time: peace, love, harmony, music, and mysticism. Meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs were embraced as routes to expanding one's consciousness.

Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop-art, and new explorations in spirituality. Musicians who exemplified this era include The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Pink Floyd.

New forms of musical presentation also played a key role in spreading the counterculture, mainly large outdoor rock festivals. The climactic live statement of this occurred from August 15–18, 1969, with the Woodstock Music Festival held in Lesson 1‐5: Supreme Court Decisions

Supreme Court Decisions The Supreme Court ruled on many cases that would change the perception of civil liberties and civil rights in America. Two controversial cases with the greatest impact were Roe v. Wade and Regents of University of California v. Bakke (also known as the Bakke decision).

President Nixon and President Ford Administrations Richard Nixon's presidency was one of great successes and criminal scandals. Nixon's visit to China in 1972 was one of the successes. He visited to seek scientific, cultural, and trade agreements and to take advantage of a 10‐year standoff between China and the Soviet Union. Nixon hoped to win the Chinese to his side in case he had future negotiations with the Soviets. Later, Nixon was part of the Watergate scandal, which centered on his administration's attempt to cover up a burglary of the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington, D.C. The crime was committed by Nixon's reelection campaign team, who sought political information. Nixon won reelection in 1972, but his efforts to cover up the crime soon unraveled and, facing impeachment, he resigned in 1974. The scandal left Americans dismayed by Nixon's actions and cynical about politics in general. It also led to changes in campaign financing and to laws requiring high‐level government officials to disclose their finances. Because Nixon and many of the people involved in Watergate were lawyers, the reputation of the legal profession suffered too. Nixon was succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford, whose two‐year presidency was damaged by his connection to Nixon. It was damaged again when he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed. One bright spot is that the Vietnam War ended during the Ford administration by following a path established by Nixon, but Ford's domestic policies failed to stop growing inflation and unemployment, and America experienced its worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

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Bethel, New York. During this festival, 32 of rock and psychedelic rock's most popular acts performing live outdoors over the course of a weekend to an audience of half a million people.

Countercultural sentiments were expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period, such as "do your own thing," "turn on, tune in, drop out," "whatever turns you on," "eight miles high," "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll," and "light my fire." Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology, the term "Age of Aquarius," and knowing people's signs.

The counterculture movement divided the country. To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, world peace, and the pursuit of happiness. To others, the counterculture movement reflected a self- indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on America's traditional moral order.

In an effort to quash the movement, authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media. In the end, the counterculture collapsed on its own around 1973.

Two main reasons are cited for the collapse. First, the most popular of the movement's political goals—civil rights, civil liberties, gender equality, environmentalism, and the end of the Vietnam War—were accomplished (to at least a significant degree), and its most popular social attributes, particularly a "live and let live" mentality in personal lifestyles (the "sexual revolution")—were co-opted by mainstream society. Second, a decline of idealism and hedonism occured as many notable counterculture figures died and the rest settled into mainstream society and started their own families.

The "magic economy" of the 1960s gave way to the stagflation of the 1970s, the latter costing many middle-class Americans the luxury of being able to live outside conventional social institutions. The counterculture, however, continues to influence social movements, art, music, and society in general, and the post-1973 mainstream society has been in many ways a hybrid of the 1960s establishment and counterculture—seen as the best (or the worst) of both worlds.

The Nixon Administration

OVERVIEW Richard Milhous Nixon was elected president in the election of 1968, narrowly beating the incumbent Vice President, Hubert Humphrey. Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” of Americans who sought more stability and law and order in the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Nixon became the second Republican President elected since 1932. Nixon was inaugurated on January 20, 1969, sworn in by his former political rival, Chief Justice Earl Warren. In his inaugural address, which received almost uniformly positive reviews, Nixon remarked that "the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker"—a phrase that would later be placed on his gravestone. He pledged an end to partisan acrimony and new era of unity:

“In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

In 1972, Nixon was reelected, defeating Democratic senator George McGovern in a landslide. Emphasizing a stable good economy and his successes in foreign affairs, Nixon won 60.7% of the popular vote, only slightly lower than Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. However, Nixon resigned in 1974, before the end of his term, amidst the Watergate scandal. Nixon was implicated in the burglary of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17. The scandal eventually led to Nixon's resignation on August 9. Nixon was the only president in American history to resign.

NIXON'S FOREIGN POLICY Nixon achieved some successes in the realm of foreign policy. Assisted by his Henry Kissinger (initially Nixon's National Security Advisor and later Nixon's Secretary of State), Nixon initiated diplomatic relations with China, and made a well-received and productive visit to China in February 1972. The visit ushered in a new era of Sino-American relations. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to pressure for détente with the United States.

Nixon had pledged to end America's military involvement in Vietnam, which had been greatly escalated by President Johnson. Nixon's strategy included a secret bombing campaign of North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia, coupled with "Vietnamization" of the war, replacing American troops with Vietnamese troops. Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1975, allowing for the withdrawal of remaining American troops. North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam in 1975. The Nixon administration also improved diplomatic relations with the USSR. In successful summits, Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence." The USSR and USA agreed to arms reduction treaties and USSR limited its support of North Vietnam.

NIXON'S DOMESTIC POLICY In domestic policy, Nixon advocated a "New Federalism", which would devolve power to state and local elected officials, though Congress was hostile to these ideas and enacted few of them. During this era, Nixon contended with budget deficits and high inflation. Nixon made controlling inflation a priority, experimenting with price controls with mixed success. Nixon also sparred with democratic senators over national health insurance. On civil rights, Nixon worked to find a politically popular solution to the school integration issue, though he could not avert widespread anti- bussing riots around the country. Nixon also implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the nation's first affirmative action legislation in 1970.

The Economy Under Nixon

Nixon was far more interested in foreign affairs than domestic policies, but believed that voters tended to focus on their own financial conditions. At the time Nixon took office in 1969, inflation was at 4.7 percent—its highest rate since the Korean War. The Great Society had been enacted under Johnson, and its expensive policies were, together with the costs of the Vietnam War, causing large budget deficits. Unemployment was low, but interest rates were at their highest in a century. Nixon thus perceived a threat to his reelection chances in the state of the economy.

The primary goal of Nixon's economic policy was the reduction of inflation rates. The most obvious means of reducing inflation was the cessation of the Vietnam war. This policy could not be implemented overnight, however. The U.S. economy continued to struggle throughout 1970, contributing to a lackluster Republican performance in the midterm congressional elections. Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress throughout Nixon's presidency. According to political economist Nigel Bowles in his 2011 study of Nixon's economic policies, the new president did little to alter Johnson's policies through the first year of his presidency.

Nixon's broader philosophy on domestic policy was informed by the ideas of "New Federalism." New Federalism proposes the decentralization of political power, transferring certain powers from the United States federal government back to the states. The primary objective of New Federalism, as opposed to the eighteenth- century political philosophy of Federalism, is the restoration to the states some of the autonomy and power which they lost to the federal government during the New Deal, including the power to administer social programs. Pursuing New Federalist policies, Nixon's budget included grants to the states and the sharing of federal revenue with states. These proposals were mostly rejected by congress. However, Nixon gained popularity by advocating these policies.

In 1970, Congress had granted the President the power to impose wage cuts and price freezes. The Democratic majorities, knowing Nixon had opposed such controls through his career, did not expect Nixon to actually use this authority. With inflation unresolved by August 1971, and an election year looming, Nixon convened a summit of his economic advisers at Camp David. He subsequently announced temporary wage and price controls. He also suspended the gold standard, allowing the dollar to float against other currencies and ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. These policies precipitated the Nixon Shock and essentially ended the Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, in place since the end of World War II. Nixon's policies dampened inflation through 1972, although their aftereffects contributed to inflation during his second term and into the Ford administration. The policies were more successful, however, as political maneuvers. Nigel Bowles points out that, "by identifying himself with [an anti-inflation] policy, Nixon made it difficult for Democratic opponents ... to criticize him. His opponents could offer no alternative policy that was...believable since the [policy] they favored was the one...the president had appropriated for himself."

After the 1972 elections, which Nixon won handily, inflation began to rise again. Nixon thus re-imposed price controls in June 1973. The price controls became unpopular with the public and businesspeople. Many saw the price board bureaucracy, associated with Republican policy, as more dangerous than powerful labor unions, which were associated with the Democratic party. The price controls produced food shortages, as meat disappeared from grocery stores and farmers drowned chickens rather than sell them at a loss. Despite the failure to control inflation, controls were slowly ended, and on April 30, 1974, their statutory authorization lapsed.

The Energy Crisis

Embargo Instated In October 1973, the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC, plus Egypt and Syria), proclaimed an oil embargo "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur War; it lasted until March 1974. OAPEC declared it would limit or stop oil shipments to the United States and other countries if they supported Israel in the conflict. With the US actions seen as initiating the oil embargo, the long-term possibility of embargo-related high oil prices, disrupted supply, and recession created a strong rift within NATO; both European countries and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from the US Middle East policy. Arab oil producers had also linked the end of the embargo with successful US efforts to create peace in the Middle East, which complicated the situation. To address these developments, the Nixon Administration began parallel negotiations with both Arab oil producers to end the embargo, and with Egypt, Syria, and Israel to arrange an Israeli pull back from the Sinai and the Golan Heights after the fighting stopped. By January 18, 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai. The promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was sufficient to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. By May, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

Independently, the OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil to stabilize their real incomes by raising world oil Additional Resources for Lesson 1

Digital History – The 1960s http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=17&smtID=2

Shmoop – The 1960s https://www.shmoop.com/study‐guides/history/1960s

MLK Video http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/mlkDreams.html

Eyes on the Prize (Civil Rights) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eyesontheprize/

1960s Culture and Society Chart http://cms.gavirtualschool.org/Shared/SocialStudies/APUSHistory/11_SocialChange/chart1960sSociety_Culture.pdf

Shmoop – Jim Crow https://www.shmoop.com/study‐guides/history/jim‐crow

Shmoop – Civil Rights‐Desegregation https://www.shmoop.com/study‐guides/history/civil‐rights‐desegregation

Shmoop – Civil Rights‐Black Power https://www.shmoop.com/study‐guides/history/civil‐rights‐black‐power

Digital History – 1970‐2000 (through Détente) http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=19&smtid=2

Lesson 2: Virtual Visit ‐ National Civil Rights Museum

As we have learned, the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and achieved many successes during the 1950s and 1960s. The movement for equality and full participation of African Americans in society was led by a variety of leaders and took place in numerous locations. American society was changing rapidly as Jim Crow laws were removed from the books. The National Civil Rights Museum is located in Memphis, Tennessee. It is housed in the Lorraine Motel where in 1968 the most prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and its most effective champion of non‐violence, Martin Luther King was gunned down. The assassination of King shook the nation, but his dream lives on. The location of the National Civil Rights Museum was chosen to not only remember what happened at the Lorraine Motel, but to help tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement and educate future generations of the struggle against discrimination.

Assignment: Virtual Visit ‐ National Civil Rights Museum

Visit this historical site "National Civil Rights Museum" by using the pages that follow. Write a reflection on your virtual visit. Your reflection should be at least one page. In your reflection here are some questions that you will want to consider (feel free to include other aspects of what you learned as well): 1. What is significant about this site in American History? What happened there? 2. What type of things would you see at this location? 3. How would you judge the quality of the website information? Does it give you a good "feel" for the location? If the information was lacking in some areas, how could it be improved? 4. Is this a place that you would like to physically visit one day? Why or why not?

Civil Rights Museum

April 4, 1968, was a dark day for Tennessee. On that evening Martin Luther King Jr., the best‐known Civil Rights leader of all‐time, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. It was, in many ways, the culmination of a movement that, during the 1950s and 1960s, turned the United States from a completely segregated society into a mostly integrated one. Life in Tennessee is nothing like it was before the Civil Rights Movement.

The site of King's murder

After King's murder, the Lorraine Motel declined because many people no longer wanted to stay there. Eventually the motel was closed, and for several years it looked as if it would be torn down. But in the early 1980s activists in Memphis began promoting the idea of converting the building into a civil rights museum. In 1991 the National Civil Rights Museum opened to the public; today it is one of the most fascinating places to visit in the state.

People congregate at the Lorraine Motel after King's murder. PHOTO: Bill Preston, The Tennessean

Before you visit the National Civil Rights Museum, we suggest you learn a few things about the Civil Rights Movement. There are hundreds of books on the subject, and the Tennessee History for Kids textbooklet Raise the children the best you can ‐‐ click here to see how you can get one ‐‐ tells you a lot about the Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee. Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you read about this period in American history:  How was society different in the 1950s than it is today?  When did the struggle for civil rights between people of different races begin?  What types of tactics did civil rights workers use? King giving his "I have a dream" speech in Washington D.C. PHOTO: Library of Congress

It is very important, for instance, to understand that the Civil Rights Movement didn't just happen; it was carefully planned after years of training and years of planning (and some of that training and planning occurred in Tennessee). It is also extremely important to understand that King's base philosophy was that of non‐violent protest and resistance, and that the American Civil Rights Movement was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, who led India's nationalist movement against Great Britain. Because of this, there is a display that pays tribute to Gandhi at the National Civil Rights Museum.

The Gandhi exhibit

The museum starts sooner than you might expect. It points out, rightfully so, that African‐Americans struggle for equal treatment started long before the 1960s. Among the people you will see at the museum's many displays are Dred Scott, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Ida Wells, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois.

The focus of the museum eventually shifts to the 1960s; the formation of non‐violent organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and more extreme organizations such as the Black Panthers; key events such as the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; the sit‐in movements; and marches such as the one from Selma to Montgomery.

The 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man is considered to be the spark that ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement. The National Civil Rights Museum contains a Montgomery bus from that era identical to the one on which this occurred. On that bus, which visitors are free to walk on, you will find a statue of Rosa Parks.

The Rosa Parks exhibit

Here you see one of the better museum displays ‐‐ the one that depicts the sit‐in movement. Sit‐ins occurred at many places across the South, and succeeded in integrating restaurants in many cities (including Nashville). The figures you see here were, in fact, created based on photographs that were taken during Nashville's sit‐ins. The film that is continuously shown features interviews with Nashville leaders and with some of the participants in the sit‐ins there.

Exhibit of a sit‐in

The museum explains that Martin Luther King was in Memphis in 1968 because of a strike by garbage workers. In this centerpiece display you see the three images of the city that dominated the media at that time: garbage, protestors, and National Guardsmen.

The garbage worker strike exhibit

By this time you have worked your way to the actual room in which Dr. Martin Luther King slept (which is behind glass and therefore does not photograph well). If you are like us, by the time you get to this part of the museum, you've forgotten that all this time you've been walking around in a converted motel. The Lorraine Motel, where King was staying, was at that time one of the nicer motels in a predominantly black section of Memphis. King had stayed at the Lorraine many times before, and the museum has two rooms on display: one in which he normally stayed, and the other, in which he actually did on the night of April 3.

The Lorraine Hotel

The museum then shifts across the street; you go through a tunnel and up an elevator to the former boarding house from where James Earl Ray was later convicted of shooting King. Here you will find a plethora of material on the actual assassination; including much of the evidence that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation used to convict Ray for the crime. There are people who believe that Ray had accomplices, but that none of those accomplices were ever accused or tried for their roles. If you would like to know more about this theory, visit the museum and decide for yourself.

The bathroom from which Ray allegedly shot King

Septima Clark and Rosa Parks at the Highlander Folk School PHOTO: Highlander Research and Education Center Please be aware that the National Civil Right Museum is a private organization and that there is a fee for admission.

Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 2 – pages 21‐24

prices. This action followed several years of steep income declines after the recent failure of negotiations with the major Western oil companies earlier in the month.

Effects The effects of the embargo were immediate. OPEC forced the oil companies to increase payments drastically. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974 to nearly US$12 per barrel (75 US$/m3).

This increase in the price of oil had a dramatic effect on oil-exporting nations, since the countries of the Middle East that had long been dominated by the industrial powers were seen to have acquired control of a vital commodity. The traditional flow of capital reversed as the oil-exporting nations accumulated vast wealth. Some of the income was dispensed in the form of aid to other underdeveloped nations whose economies had been caught between higher prices of oil and lower prices for their own export commodities and raw materials amid shrinking Western demand for their goods. Much was absorbed in massive arms purchases that exacerbated political tensions, particularly in the Middle East.

The Arab embargo had a negative impact on the U.S economy, causing immediate demands to address the threats to U.S energy security. On an international level, the price increases of petroleum disrupted market systems in changing competitive positions. At the macro level, economic problems consisted of both inflationary and deflationary impacts of domestic economies. The Arab embargo left many U.S companies searching for new ways to develop expensive oil, even in the elements of rugged terrain such as in hostile arctic environments. The problem that many of these companies faced was that finding oil and developing new oil fields usually required a time lag of 5 to 10 years between the planning process and significant oil production.

OPEC-member states in the developing world withheld the prospect of nationalization of the companies' holdings in their countries. Most notably, the Saudis acquired operating control of Aramco, fully nationalizing it in 1980 under the leadership of Ahmed Zaki Yamani. As other OPEC nations followed suit, the cartel's income soared. Saudi Arabia, awash with profits, undertook a series of ambitious five-year development plans, of which the most ambitious, begun in 1980, called for the expenditure of $250 billion. Other cartel members also undertook major economic development programs.

Meanwhile, the shock produced chaos in the West. In the United States, the retail price of a gallon of gasoline (petrol) rose from a national average of 38.5 cents in May 1973 to 55.1 cents in June 1974. State governments requested citizens not put up Christmas lights, with Oregon banning Christmas as well as commercial lighting altogether. Politicians called for a national gas rationing program. Nixon requested gasoline stations to voluntarily not sell gasoline on Saturday nights or Sundays; 90% of owners complied, which resulted in lines on weekdays.

A few months later, the crisis eased. The embargo was lifted in March 1974 after negotiations at the Washington Oil Summit, but the effects of the energy crisis lingered on throughout the 1970s. The price of energy continued increasing in the following year, amid the weakening competitive position of the dollar in world markets.

The Watergate Scandal

OVERVIEW The Watergate scandal encompasses a series of clandestine, and often illegal, activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included "dirty tricks" such as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close aides also ordered harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the FBI, CIA, and the IRS.

Despite attempts at secrecy, the activities were exposed after five men were caught breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972. The Washington Post picked up on the story and, with tips from an FBI informant, gradually exposed the link between the burglery and the Nixon administration. Nixon downplayed the scandal as mere politics, calling news articles biased and misleading.

As a series of revelations made it clear that Nixon aides had committed crimes in attempts to sabotage the Democrats and others, senior aides such as White House Counsel John Dean and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman faced prosecution.

FACTS ABOUT THE CASE In January 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to the Committee for the Re- Election of the President (CRP), presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. Liddy was put in charge of the operation. He was assisted by former CIA Agent E. Howard Hunt and CRP Security Coordinator James McCord. John Mitchell resigned as Attorney General to become chairman of CRP.

After two attempts to break into the Watergate Complex failed, on May 17, Liddy's team placed wiretaps on the telephones of DNC Chairman Lawrence O'Brien and Executive Director of Democratic States' Chairman R. Spencer Oliver, Jr. When Magruder and Mitchell read transcripts from the wiretaps, they deemed the information inadequate and ordered another break-in.

WATERGATE ARRESTS Shortly after 1 am on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latch on several doors in the complex (allowing the doors to close but remain unlocked). He removed the tape, and thought nothing of it. He returned an hour later, and having discovered that someone had re-taped the locks, Wills called the police.

Five men were discovered and arrested inside the DNC's office. The five men were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, who were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them, as well as Hunt and Liddy, for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The five burglars who broke into the office were tried by Judge John Sirica and convicted on January 30, 1973.

BREAKING OF THE WATERGATE STORY Hearing of the incident at the Watergate complex, the Washington Post started publishing a series of articles probing the link between the burglary and the Nixon administration. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward relied on an informant, famously known as "Deep Throat" (later revealed to be deputy director of the FBI, William Mark Felt), to link the burglars to the Nixon administration. Still, at this point, only about half of Americans had even heard of the robbery.

On September 29, 1972 it was revealed that John Mitchell, while serving as Attorney General, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance intelligence-gathering against the Democrats. On October 10, the FBI reported the Watergate break-in was only part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee. Despite these revelations, Nixon's campaign was never seriously jeopardized, and on November 7, the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American political history.

The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media coverage — in particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post, TIME, and The New York Times. The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House.

NIXON'S RESIGNATION In July 1973, White House aide Alexander Butterfield testified that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded his conversations and phone calls in the Oval Office. Though Nixon lost much popular support, even from his own party, he rejected accusations of wrongdoing and vowed to stay in office. In light of his loss of political support and the near certainty of impeachment and removal from office, Nixon resigned the office of the presidency on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. Nixon is the only President in American history to ever resign the office.

The Ford Administration

Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the thirty-eighth President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and prior to this the fortieth Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. As president, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over arguably the weakest economy since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. One of his more controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Ford's incumbency, foreign policy was characterized, in procedural terms, by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the president. In 1976, Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Amnesty and Pardons When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency, making him the only person to assume the presidency without having been previously voted into either the presidential or vice presidential office. On September 8, 1974, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, which gave Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while president. When he announced the Nixon pardon, Ford also introduced a conditional amnesty program– Presidential Proclamation 4313–for Vietnam War draft dodgers who had fled to countries, such as Canada. This proved to be controversial, as it provided a means for those who were against the Vietnam War to erase any remaining criminal charges and for those who were given punitive discharges to have them converted to clemency discharges.

Domestic Policy The economy was a great concern during the Ford administration. One of the first acts the new president took to deal with the economy was to create the Economic Policy Board by Executive Order on September 30, 1974. In response to rising inflation, Ford went before the American public in October 1974 and asked them to "Whip Inflation Now.” As part of this program, he urged people to wear "WIN" buttons.”

The federal budget ran a deficit every year Ford was President. Despite his reservations about how the program ultimately would be funded in an era of tight public budgeting, Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which established special education throughout the United States. Ford Lesson 3: The Tumultuous 60s

The 1960s were a time of large‐scale change in the United States. Much of this change was controversial in that it reversed practices that had been common for many years. Change came not only through legislation, but through the judicial branch as well. The Supreme Court presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren took on several controversial cases and issued rulings. Areas these cases dealt with included the role of religion as it relates to government, segregation, birth control, and the rights of the accused. Conservatives protested that this amounted to "legislating from the bench" and infringing on states' rights. Liberals cheered these moves as creating a more equitable society and protecting individual rights.

The event that divided the American public in the 1960s perhaps more than any other is arguably the Vietnam War. Initially a large majority of Americans supported U.S. involvement in the war as a way to prevent the spread of communism. However, as the war dragged on and casualties mounted many Americans began to oppose American involvement in Vietnam. President Johnson supported a large role for American troops, while others including Martin Luther King came out against a war that they viewed as unjust.

Examine the 5 documents and answer the questions that follow.

Additional Resources for Lesson 3

Digital History http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/references/landmark.cfm

DocumentAnalysis

The 1960s were a time of large-scale change in the United States. Much of this change was controversial in that it reversed practices that had been common for many years. Change came not only through legislation, but through the judicial branch as well. The Supreme Court presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren took on several controversial cases and issued rulings. Areas these cases dealt with included the role of religion as it relates to government, segregation, birth control, and the rights of the accused. Conservatives protested that this amounted to “legislating from the bench” and infringing on states’ rights. Liberals cheered these moves as creating a more equitable society and protecting individual rights.

The event that divided the American public in the 1960s perhaps more than any other is arguably the Vietnam War. Initially a large majority of Americans supported U.S. involvement in the war as a way to prevent the spread of communism. However, as the war dragged on and casualties mounted many Americans began to oppose American involvement in Vietnam. President Johnson supported a large role for American troops, while others including Martin Luther King came out against a war that they viewed as unjust.

Examine these 5 documents and answer the questions that follow.

Document 1: Supreme Court decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962) that removed school lead (even if voluntary) prayer from public schools; the prayer that the case centered on is given as well as an excerpt from Justice Hugo Black’s opinion in the ruling

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.

The petitioners contend among other things that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents' prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental oficials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose oficial prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government. Document 2: from Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) decision opinion written by Justice Douglas which struck down a state law prohibiting contraceptives for married couples

Although the Constitution does not speak in so many words of the right of privacy in marriage, I cannot believe that it offers these fundamental rights no protection. The fact that no particular provision of the Constitution explicitly forbids the State from disrupting the traditional relation of the family - a relation as old and as fundamental as our entire civilization -surely does not show that the Government was meant to have the power to do so. Rather, as the Ninth Amendment expressly recognizes, there are fundamental personal rights such as this one, which are protected from abridgment by the Government though not speciically mentioned in the Constitution.

Document 3: from the Miranda v. Arizona (1966) decision stating that police must inform suspects of their rights; Chief Justice Earl Warren

The constitutional issue we decide in each of these cases is the admissibility of statements obtained from a defendant questioned while in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any signiicant way. In each, the defendant was questioned by police oficers, detectives, or a prosecuting attorney in a room in which he was cut off from the outside world. In none of these cases was the defendant given a full and effective warning of his rights at the outset of the interrogation process. In all the cases, the questioning elicited oral admissions, and in three of them, signed statements as well which were admitted at their trials. They all thus share salient features - incommunicado interrogation of individuals in a police- dominated atmosphere, resulting in self-incriminating statements without full warnings of constitutional rights.

Document 4: President Johnson defends American Involvement in Vietnam, 1965

Why are we in South Vietnam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam....We have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence. And I intend to keep our promise....

We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well-being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the conidence of all these people in the value of American commitment, the value of America's word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war.

We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would being an end to conlict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisied. Document 5: from Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” Speech; April 4, 1967

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

Questions:

1. On what grounds did Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority of the court, say that school (government sponsored) prayer was unconstitutional?

2. On what grounds did the Supreme Court throw out Connecticut’s law against contraception in marriage? How does this decision bring forward an argument over Constitutional interpretation that dates from the earliest years of our Republic?

3. What does the Miranda ruling require law enforcement to do in regards to a suspect prior to arrest and subsequent interrogation? Why would some Americans disagree with this decision?

4. What arguments does President Johnson use in defending American involvement in Vietnam?

5. How does Martin Luther King frame his position of opposing the Vietnam War? In his opinion, who has the greatest responsibility for ending the War?

Answer the questions on your own paper or word processing document. After you have answered the questions you will use your answers to complete the assignment check quiz. Chief Justice Earl Warren

Standoff between Vietnam War protesters and Military Police. Reading Document Boundless: Module 11: Social Change (embedded in this document) Lesson 3 – pages 25‐27 expressed "strong support for full educational opportunities for our handicapped children," according to the official White House press release for the bill signing.

Foreign Policy Ford continued the détente policy with both the Soviet Union and China, easing the tensions of the Cold War. Still in place from the Nixon Administration was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). The thawing relationship brought about by Nixon's visit to China was reinforced by Ford's December 1975 visit to the communist country. In 1975, the Administration entered into the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union, creating the framework of the Helsinki Watch, an independent non-governmental organization created to monitor compliance that later evolved into Human Rights Watch.

In the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, two ongoing international disputes developed into crises. The Cyprus dispute turned into a crisis with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, causing extreme strain within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. In the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, although the initial cease fire had been implemented to end active conflict in the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger's continuing shuttle diplomacy was showing little progress. On March 24, Ford received congressional leaders of both parties and informed them of the reassessment of the administration policies in the Middle East. "Reassessment," in practical terms, meant to cancel or suspend further aid to Israel. For six months between March and September 1975, the United States refused to conclude any new arms agreements with Israel.

One of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the continued Vietnam War. American offensive operations against North Vietnam had ended with the Paris Peace Accords, signed on January 27, 1973. The accords declared a cease-fire across both North and South Vietnam and required the release of American prisoners of war. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a 60-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The Election of 1976

The contest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1976 was between two serious candidates: Gerald Ford, the leader of the GOP's moderate wing and the incumbent President, from Michigan, and Ronald Reagan, the leader of the GOP's conservative wing and the former two-term governor of California. The presidential primary campaign between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even. By the start of the Republican Convention in August 1976, the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Ford defeated Reagan by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, and chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate in place of incumbent Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. The 1976 Republican Convention was the last political convention to open with the presidential nomination still being undecided until the actual balloting at the convention.

One of the advantages Ford held over Carter, as the general election campaign began, was that, as President, he was privileged to preside over events dealing with the United States Bicentennial. This position often resulted in favorable publicity for Ford. The Washington, D.C. fireworks display on the Fourth of July was presided over by the President and televised nationally. On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. These events were part of Ford's "Rose Garden" strategy to win the election. Instead of appearing as a typical politician, Ford presented himself as a "tested leader" who was busily fulfilling the role of national leader and Chief Executive. Not until October did Ford leave the White House to actively campaign across the nation.

Jimmy Carter ran as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington political scandals, which many voters found attractive in the wake of the Watergate scandal, leading to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford, although personally unconnected with Watergate, was seen by many as too close to the discredited Nixon administration, especially after Ford granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he might have committed during his term of office. Ford's pardon of Nixon caused his popularity, as measured by public-opinion polls, to plummet. Ford's refusal to publicly explain his reasons for pardoning Nixon, although he would do so in his memoirs several years later, also hurt his image. His son, Jack Ford, gave an interview in 1976 in which he stated that his father felt that he "(doesn't) have to prove anything" regarding the pardon of Nixon, and thus did not feel compelled to talk about it.

After the Democratic National Convention, Carter held a huge 33-point lead over Ford in the polls. However, as the campaign continued, the race greatly tightened. During the campaign Playboy magazine published a controversial interview with Carter; in the interview, Carter admitted to having "lusted in my heart" for women other than his wife, which cut into his support among women and evangelical Christians. Also, on September 23, Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960. Polls taken after the debate showed that most viewers felt that Ford was the winner. Carter was also hurt by Ford's charges that he lacked the necessary experience to be an effective national leader, and that Carter was vague on many issues. Carter pledged to end desegregation busing.

Results The states that ultimately secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin (1.68% margin) and Ohio (.27% margin). Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. The 27 states Ford won were and remain the most states ever carried by a losing candidate.

Carter was the first Democrat since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to carry the states of the Deep South, and the first since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to carry an unquestionable majority of southern states. Carter performed very strongly in his home state of Georgia, carrying 66.7% of the vote and every county in the state. His 50.1% of the vote was the only time since 1964 that a Democrat managed to obtain a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election, until Barack Obama won about 53% of the vote 32 years later. Carter is one of five Democrats to gain a majority of the popular vote since the American Civil War, with the others being Samuel Tilden, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama.

Had Ford won the election, the provisions of the 22nd amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, because he had served more than two years of Nixon's remaining term.

Lesson 4: Discussion ‐ Vietnam War

The United States became involved in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism as part of Cold War containment policy. We assisted the French in their efforts to defeat an insurgency lead by Ho Chi Minh. After the French were defeated, we supported the pro‐Western government of South Vietnam in their efforts to resist the communist North.

At first our assistance to South Vietnam was in the form of advisors and financial and military aid. However, by the end of 1964 American forces were involved in direct ground combat. Gradually, the U.S. took on the major portion of the fighting with massive bombing campaigns and over a half a million troops stationed in South Vietnam by 1968.

As the war dragged on and American casualties began to mount, the anti‐war movement gained steam. Originally centered among college students opposed to the draft, other Americans began pressuring the government to withdraw American troops as the 1960s closed. The divide over the war was intense. Opponents saw Vietnam as an unnecessary and unjust war. Supporters viewed it as a key aspect of containment and often viewed anti‐war protesters as unpatriotic.

When President Nixon took office, he began a gradual withdrawal of American troops. By the end of 1973 all American combat troops had been removed from Vietnam. Without U.S. support the government of South Vietnam fell rather quickly and communist rule was established in the Spring of 1975. The United States "lost" the Vietnam War not by being defeated on the battlefield, but in that the American public tired of the war and we eventually withdrew.

Read the Boundless reading.

So here is the question that you will consider.

Prepare to participate in a discussion about this topic. Discussions are a great way to have interaction with your classmates as well as to understand how you are grasping the content. We do have some rules for discussion:  Everyone must make at least two contributions.  The first entry answering the questions posed must be at least a paragraph of 4‐5 sentences of quality information that fully answers the question or questions posed.  You do not have to agree with the opinions of others but you must respect their right to an opinion.  You need to make at least one response. This should be at least a sentence or two. Consider a possible counterpoint to your entry and prepare a response.  Everyone should feel comfortable expressing themselves in class discussions.  If you feel someone is lacking understanding of a concept, help them understand by explaining.  Do NOT belittle what they have said. Remember, we are not face‐to‐face so it is easy to misinterpret what someone is saying.

Additional Resources for Lesson 4

Digital History – Vietnam War http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=18&smtid=2

Shmoop – Vietnam War https://www.shmoop.com/study‐guides/history/vietnam‐war

Digital History – Chart of American Troop Levels in Vietnam http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=11&psid=3844

Reading Document Boundless: The Vietnam War (embedded in this document) Lesson 4 – pages 1‐13

Boundless Reading

The Vietnam War

Indochina: The Background to War

The First Indochina War began in French Indochina on December 19, 1946 and lasted until August 1, 1954. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia. Following the reoccupation of Indochina by the French following the end of World War II, the Việt Minh launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.

After the war, the Geneva Conference (1954) made a provisional division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the Việt Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Hồ Chí Minh, and the south becoming the State of Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại, in order to prevent Hồ Chí Minh from gaining control of the entire country. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Diệm's refusal to enter into negotiations with North Vietnam about holding nationwide elections in 1956, as had been stipulated by the Geneva Conference, would eventually lead to war breaking out again in South Vietnam in 1959—the Second Indochina War.

The Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, recognized the 17th parallel as a "provisional military demarcation line" temporarily dividing the country into two zones, Communist North Vietnam and pro-Western South Vietnam. The Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a national government for a united Vietnam. However, the United States and the State of Vietnam refused to sign the document. From his home in France, Emperor Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Ðình Diệm as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. In 1955, with American support, Diệm used a referendum to remove the former Emperor and declare himself the president of the Republic of Vietnam. When the elections were cancelled, the Việt Minh cadres who stayed behind in South Vietnam were activated and started to fight the government. North Vietnam also invaded and occupied portions of Laos to assist in supplying the guerilla fighting National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. The war gradually escalated into the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the Vietnam War in the West and the American War in Vietnam.

At the beginning of the war, the U.S. was neutral in the conflict because of opposition to imperialism, because the Việt Minh had recently been their allies, and because most of its attention was focused on Europe where Winston Churchill argued an Iron Curtain had fallen. Then the U.S. government gradually began supporting the French in their war effort, primarily through Mutual Defense Assistance Act, as a means of stabilizing the French Fourth Republic in which the French Communist Party was a significant political force. A dramatic shift occurred in American policy after the victory of Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China in the Chinese Civil War. By 1949, the United States became concerned about the spread of communism in Asia and began to strongly support the French as the two countries were bound by the Cold War Mutual Defense Program. After the Moch-Marshall meeting of September 23, 1950 in Washington, the United States started to support the French Union effort politically, logistically, and financially.

In May 1950, after the capture of Hainan Island by Chinese Communist forces, U.S. President Harry S. Truman began covertly authorizing direct financial assistance to the French. It wasn't until June 27 of that same year, after the outbreak of the Korean War, that Truman announced publicly that the U.S. was doing so. Washington feared that if Ho were to win the war, with his ties to the Soviet Union, he would establish a puppet state with Moscow with the Soviets ultimately controlling Vietnamese affairs. The prospect of a communist dominated Southeast Asia was enough to spur the U.S. to support France, so that the spread of Soviet- allied communism could be contained.

A Growing War in Vietnam

The Vietnam War (1957–1975) was conducted in South Vietnam and the bordering areas of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. American advisors came in the late 1950s to help the RVN (Republic of Vietnam) combat Communist insurgents known as "Viet Cong." The U.S. framed the war as part of its policy of containment of Communism in south Asia, but American forces were frustrated by an inability to engage the enemy in decisive battles, corruption and incompetence in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and protests at home.

Growing Involvement, Containment During the Kennedy administration, involvement in Vietnam deepened through the US supplying military advisors and overthrowing South Vietnamese leader, Diem. The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy of containment practiced by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, Kennedy faced three events that made it appear as if the US was bending to communism: first, the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion; second, the construction of the Berlin Wall; third, communist political movement in Laos, called Pathet Lao, received Soviet support in 1961. Ultimately, Kennedy proposed a plan for a neutral Laos that the Soviet Union endorsed. After this agreement, Kennedy believed that another failure to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies.

In March 1961, when Kennedy voiced a change in policy from supporting a "free" Laos to a "neutral" Laos, he implied Vietnam, not Laos, would be deemed America's tripwire for communist spread in Southeast Asia. Kennedy was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. In May 1961, Kennedy dispatched Lyndon Johnson to meet with South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assured Diem that the US would provide more aid that could be used to mold a fighting force that could resist the communists. Kennedy announced a change of policy from support to partnership with Diem in order to defeat communism in South Vietnam.

Troops Under Kennedy In May 1961, Kennedy sent 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers. By the end of 1961, the American advisers in Vietnam numbered 3,205. In February, 1962, Kennedy created The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), and in August, 1962, Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, which provides "…military assistance to countries...on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack." When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, the number of US military advisors in South Vietnam had reached 16,700.

Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that South Vietnamese leader Diem and his forces must ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences." The quality of the South Vietnamese military (ARVN), however, remained poor. Bad leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in weakening the ARVN.

Diem's Assassination After Diem's assassination, South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed as a puppet of the Americans. The Viet Cong and communist insurgencies in South Vietnam took advantage of this instability, and increased their strength. By this point, U.S military advisers were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. General Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory against the insurgents by Christmas 1963. The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that "the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort."

Kennedy's Assassination At the time of Kennedy's death, no firm policy decision had been made regarding Vietnam. U.S. involvement in the region escalated until Lyndon Johnson deployed regular U.S. military forces for fighting the Vietnam War. After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson passed a memorandum on that reversed Kennedy's decision to withdraw 1,000 troops, and reaffirmed the policy of assistance to the South Vietnamese. Major American military involvement began in 1964 when Congress provided President Lyndon B. Johnson with blanket approval for presidential use of force in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Johnson’s Commitment to Vietnam

When Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the U.S. Presidency, after the death of John F. Kennedy, he did not consider the turbulent situation in South Vietnam a priority. Progressive social reforms of the "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" were of greater concern to Johnson. He did believe, however, in the Domino Theory: If one country came under Communist rule, neighboring countries would soon follow. Soon after taking office, Johnson issued National Security Action Memorandum No. 273, establishing his administration's commitment to containing North Vietnam's aggression through military means—thus reversing Kennedy's policy to withdraw U.S. military presence from Vietnam. In effect, Johnson escalated the war, following the controversial Gulf of Tonkin incident.

As the time Johnson took office in 1963, there were 16,000 American military advisors in South Vietnam, in the midst of the deteriorating political and military situation that existed in the region, particularly in the Mekong Delta. The South Vietnamese war effort was hindered by widespread corruption in the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam (in power since 1955). The South Vietnamese Army, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), proved ineffective against the Viet Cong. In 1961, the newly elected Kennedy Administration promised more aid to the war effort (money, weapons, supplies, etc.), but these were of little effect. Doubt arose among Washington D.D. policy- makers that Diem was capable of defeating the opposing Chinese Communist regime; some feared Diem might negotiate with Ho Chi Minh. Discussions about South Vietnamese regime change began in Washington, and were concluded on November 2, 1963, when the CIA aided a group of ARVN officers in the overthrew of Diem. To help contain the post-coup chaos, Kennedy increased the number of US advisors in South Vietnam to 16,000.

The South Vietnamese government was run by a twelve member military revolutionary council, headed by General Duong Van Minh—whom journalist Stanley Karnow later recalled as "a model of lethargy." There was chronic instability in the ARVN, as several coups—not all successful—occurred within a short period of time. Johnson was assuming the presidency at a tenuous time of military setbacks and political instability in South Vietnam.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident proved an escalating factor of the war, and justification of continued American presence in Vietnam. During this incident, the destroyer USS Maddox engaged 3 North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats in a sea battle resulting in several North Vietnamese casualties. In response Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam. While the Johnson administration claimed Vietnamese boats had fired first, subsequent investigations suggest that the battle was initiated by the Maddox. Some historians believe that that Johnson knowingly used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gain the support of the American people to enter into the Vietnam War.

On 2 August 1964, the USS Maddox, conducting an intelligence mission along the coast of North Vietnam, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats; the boats had been stalking the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, in the same area, the Maddox along with the USS Turner Joy each reported they had been attacked by North Vietnamese ships. The second attack prompted retaliatory air strikes, leading Congress to approve Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President broad powers to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war, and thus without seeking congressional approval. Although at the time Congress denied that the Resolution was a full-scale declaration of war, the Tonkin Resolution allowed the President full discretion to commit military forces. Thus, Johnson had initiated America's direct involvement in the ground war in Vietnam.

By the end of 1964, there were approximately 23,000 military personnel in South Vietnam. U.S. casualties for 1964 totaled 1,278. By 1968, over 550,000 American soldiers were inside Vietnam; in 1967 and 1968 soldiers were being killed at the rate of over 1,000 per month. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong's ranks grew from approximately 5,000 in 1959 to 100,000 in 1964.

“Americanizing” The Vietnam War

Under President Johnson, the number of American troops in Vietnam rose from 16,000 in 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969. The U.S. also financed and supplied the forces of all the American allies in the Vietnam War including Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Phillipines, and the Republic of Korea (second only to the Americans in troop strength). The period after 1964 is thus referred to as the Americanization of the war, with the United States taking on the primary responsibilities of fighting the North Vietnamese.

President Johnson had already appointed General William C. Westmoreland to succeed General Harkins as Commander of MACV in June 1964. Westmoreland expanded American troop strength in South Vietnam. On February 14, 1965, the National Leadership Committee installed Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky as prime minister. In 1966, the junta selected General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to run for president with Ky on the ballot as the vice-presidential candidate in the 1967 election. Thieu and Ky were elected and remained in office for the duration of the war. In the presidential election of 1971, Thieu ran for the presidency unopposed. With the installation of the Thieu and Ky government (the Second Republic), the U.S. had a pliable, stable, and semi-legitimate government in Saigon with which to establish a relationship.

Rolling Thunder In February 1965, a U.S. air base at Pleiku in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam was attacked twice by the NLF, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen U.S. personnel. These guerrilla attacks prompted the administration to order retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to a sustained strategic bombing campaign targeted against the North by aircraft of the U.S. Air Force and Navy that was inaugurated on March 2, 1965. Its original purpose was to bolster the morale in South Vietnam and to serve as a signaling device to Hanoi. U.S. airpower would act as a method of "strategic persuasion," deterring the North Vietnamese politically by the fear of continued or increased bombardment. Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity, with aircraft striking only carefully selected targets. When that did not work, its goals were altered to target the nation's industrial base, transportation network, and its (continually increasing) air defenses. After more than a million sorties were flown and three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder ended on November 11, 1968. In fact, during Vietnam more bombs were dropped on this relatively small area than on the Axis during World War II.

Increase of Troops On November 27, 1965, the Pentagon declared that if major operations were to successfully neutralize North Vietnamese and NLF forces, U.S. troop levels in South Vietnam would need to increase from 120,000 to 400,000. In a series of meetings between Westmoreland and the President in February 1966, Westmoreland argued that U.S. presence had prevented the immediate defeat of the South Vietnamese government but more troops would be required to conduct systematic offensive operations.

The American generals decisions in this period would influence American strategy and tactics for the duration of the war. Classical military logic demanded that the U.S. attack the locus of PAVN/NLF in the North. If that country could not be invaded, then the enemy's logistical system in Laos and Cambodia should be cut by ground forces, isolating the southern battlefield. However, US military actions were limited by political considerations underscored by the recent memory of communist reactions during the Korean War.

President Johnson authorized an increase in troop strength to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase in troops enabled MACV to carry out numerous operations that grew in size and complexity during the next two years. For U.S. troops participating in these operations (Operation Masher/White Wing, Operation Attleboro, Operation Cedar Falls, Operation Junction City and dozens of others) the war boiled down to hard marching through some of the most difficult (and unfamiliar) terrain on the planet and weather conditions that were alternately hot and dry or cold and wet. The Americans learned that PAVN (which was basically a light infantry force) was not a rag-tag band of guerrillas, but was instead a highly disciplined, proficient, and well motivated force. Previously communist forces had utilized hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, and the NLF who conducted effective tactics of sniping, booby traps, mines, and terror against the Americans. Guerrilla warfare tactics made it difficult for the U.S. military to distinguish friend from foe. Desertion rates increased, and morale plummeted. It was the PAVN/NLF that actually controlled the pace of the war, fighting only when their commanders believed that they had the upper hand and then disappearing when the Americans and/or ARVN brought their superiority in numbers and firepower to bear. North Vietnam, utilizing the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails, matched the U.S. at every point of the escalation, funneling manpower and supplies to the southern battlefields.

The Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive was a military campaign launched by the People's Army of Vietnam on January 30, 1968. It was a surprise attack, coming after the Tet holidays, during which time a cease-fire had been customary. The offensive was a well- coordinated assault on positions around the country, with more than 80,000 communist troops striking more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital of Saigon. The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side of the war up to that point.

As a result of continued heavy fighting, 1968 became the deadliest year of the war for the US forces with 16,592 soldiers killed. During one week, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) posted very high U.S. casualty figures with 543 killed and 2,547 wounded. On 23 February, the U.S. Selective Service System announced a new draft call for 48,000 men, the second highest of the war. On 28 February, Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense who had overseen the escalation of the war, but who had eventually turned against it, stepped down from office.

The Tet Offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War. Despite the fact that Tet was a military victory for the U.S. and South Vietnam in that all of the cities taken by the communists were recaptured (most rather quickly), it was a psychological and political defeat. Americans began to doubt that the war could be won quickly, if at all.

The Widening War at Home

The Vietnam War met with rising opposition among Americans during the second half of the 60's. A series of left-wing organizations, largely formed by students, staged increasingly vocal protests and demonstrations. At the same time, mainstream public opinion turned increasingly against the war in the late 60's.

SDS Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States, one of the iconic groups of America's "New Left." The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969. SDS's core principles included participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, and shoestring budgets. The organization greatly influenced generations of American student activist groups. One radical wing of SDS broke off and formed the Weather Underground, which was classified as a terrorist group by the FBI.

Escalation of the War In February 1965, United States President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam with a sustained bombing campaign and the introduction of ground troops. Campus chapters of SDS all over the country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war, and SDS's national office organized a march in Washington on April 17. The media began to cover SDS and the New Left. The first teach-in against the war was held at the University of Michigan. Soon, hundreds more, all over the country, were held. The demonstration in Washington, D.C., attracted about 25,000 anti-war protesters and SDS became the leading student group against the war on most U.S. campuses. On November 27, 1965, there was a major anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., at which Carl Ogelsby, the new SDS president, made a very successful speech implying that the United States government was imperialist in nature. The speech received a standing ovation and substantial press coverage. It greatly increased SDS's national prominence. The large and active chapter of SDS at the University of Texas in Austin published an underground newspaper called The Rag. At this time, there was also conflict within the movement over the exclusion of communists. SDS's parent organization, the Leauge for Industrial Democracy, was angered by SDS's refusal to exclude communists and communist front groups from their ranks.

Escalation of Protests During the winter and spring of 1967, protests on many campuses were increasingly militant. SDS members and self-styled radicals were even elected to student government at a few schools. Demonstrations against Dow Chemical Company and other campus recruiters were widespread and the issue of the draft grew more contentious. The FBI (mainly through its secret program COINTELPRO) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in SDS's chapters.

That fall saw further escalation of the anti-war actions of the New Left. The school year started with a large demonstration against Dow recruiters at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on October 17. Peaceful at first, the demonstration turned to a sit-in that was violently dispersed by the Madison police and riot squad, resulting in many injuries and arrests. A mass rally and student strike closed the university for several days. A coordinated series of demonstrations against the draft led by members of the Resistance, the War Resisters League, and SDS further galvanized anti-war sentiment. After the conventional civil rights tactic of peacefully picketing failed, Oakland, California's "Stop the Draft" week ended in a number of hit-and-run skirmishes with the police. On October 21, 100,000 people marched on the Pentagon. Hundreds were arrested and injured. Night-time raids on draft offices spread.

A Shift in Public Opinion Vietnam divided the American public perhaps more than any conflict in American History, and in many ways this divide even impacts our nation today. Initially, most of the protests were centered among college students and many Americans viewed them as unpatriotic. But over time public opinion shifted. Americans were increasingly skeptical about the way it was being handled and many opposed the war itself. Opinion polls showed a steady decline in support for the war after 1965. After the Tet Offensive of 1968 a majority of Americans opposed the War in Vietnam.

Nixon and the Withdrawal of American Forces

Richard Nixon campaigned for the 1968 presidential election behind the promise that he would end the war in Vietnam and bring "peace with honor." At the time Nixon took office in 1969, roughly 300 American soldiers were dying each week in Vietnam. The war was broadly unpopular in the United States, with violent protests occurring frequently. The Johnson administration had reached an agreement with the North Vietnamese to suspend bombing in exchange for negotiations without preconditions, but this agreement never fully took effect. Thus, Nixon sought to implement a policy that would ensure the safety of American forces from North Vietnamese attacks as they withdraw from and evacuated South Vietnam. However, no policy ever came to fruition, thus forcing the continuation of the American war commitment for another five years. The goal of the American military was to buy time so it could gradually build up the strength of the South Vietnamese armed forces by re-equipping them with modern weapons. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called Nixon Doctrine.

Amid protests at home demanding an immediate pullout, President Nixon implemented a strategy of replacing American troops with Vietnamese troops, known as Vietnamization. The goal of American military operations during this era was to buy time, gradually building up the strength of the South Vietnamese armed forces, and re-equipping it with modern weapons, so that it could defend South Vietnam on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called Nixon Doctrine.

Adjusting to Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, General Creighton W. Abrams, commander of the American military forces in Vietnam, advocated for smaller-scale operations against the logistics of the PAVN/NLF (People's Army of Vietnam/National Liberation Front), more openness with the media, and more meaningful cooperation with the South Vietnamese forces.

Vietnamization of the war, however, created a dilemma for U.S. forces: the strategy required that the U.S. troops fight long enough for the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) to improve enough to hold its own against Communist forces. Morale in the U.S. ranks rapidly declined during 1969-1972, as evidenced by declining discipline, worsening drug use among soldiers, and increased fraggings of U.S. officers by disgruntled troops. To help buy time, Nixon ordered the bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia in 1970. Nixon announced the ground invasion of Cambodia to the American public on April 30, 1970, sparking renewed protests.

In 1971, the policy of Vietnamization was put to the test with Operation Lam Son 719. The U.S. authorized the ARVN to carry out an offensive operation aimed at cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southeastern Laos. Besides attacking the PAVN logistical system (which would buy time for the U.S. withdrawal) the incursion would display the ability (or inability) of the ARVN to fight the PAVN. Backed by U.S. air and artillery support (American troops were forbidden to enter Laos), the ARVN moved across the border along Route 9. At first, the incursion went well, but after two months of savage fighting, the ARVN retreated back across the border, closely pursued by the North Vietnamese. One half of the invasion force was killed or captured during the operation, and Vietnamization was seen as a failure.

Vietnamization received another severe test in the spring of 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive conventional offensive across the Demilitarized Zone. Beginning on March 30,the Easter Offensive (known as the Nguyễn Huệ Offensive to the North Vietnamese) quickly overran the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. Early in April, PAVN opened two additional operations. The first, a three-division thrust supported by tanks and heavy artillery, advanced out of Cambodia on April 5. The second new offensive, launched from the tri-border region into the Central Highlands, seized a complex of ARVN outposts near Dak To and then advanced toward Kon Tum, threatening to split South Vietnam in two.

The U.S. countered with a buildup of American airpower to support ARVN defensive operations and to conduct Operation Linebacker, the first offensive bombing of North Vietnam since Rolling Thunder had been terminated in 1968. The PAVN attacks against Huế, An Lộc, and Kon Tum were contained and the ARVN launched a counteroffensive in May to retake the lost Northern provinces. On September 10, the South Vietnamese flag once again flew over the ruins of the Citadel of Quảng Trị City, but the ARVN offensive ran out of steam, conceding the rest of the occupied territory to the North Vietnamese. South Vietnam had countered the heaviest attack since Tet, but it was very evident that the ARVN was totally dependent on U.S. airpower for its survival.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal of American troops, who numbered less than 100,000 at the beginning of the year, continued as scheduled. By June only six infantry battalions remained. On August 12, the last American ground combat division left the country. However, the U.S. continued to operate the base At Long Binh. Combat patrols continued there until November 11 when the U.S. handed over the base to the South Vietnamese. After this, only 24,000 American troops remained in Vietnam and President Nixon announced that they would stay there until all U.S. POW's were freed.

The Peace Accords and the Legacy of Defeat

The Paris Peace Accords The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 intended to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. They ended direct U.S. military involvement and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. The governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries, signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973. The agreement was not ratified by the U.S. Senate.

The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968 after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to carry out the agreement.

The Resumption of Hostilities In March 1973, Nixon implied that the United States would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public and congressional reactions to Nixon's trial balloon were unfavorable, and in April, Nixon appointed Graham Martin as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Martin was less experienced and less highly regarded than previous U.S. ambassadors, and his appointment was an early signal that Washington had given up on Vietnam. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam. On 4 June 1973, the U.S. Senate passed the Case- Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention.

The Vietcong resumed offensive operations when dry season began, and by January 1974 it had recaptured the territory it lost during the previous dry season. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thiệu announced on January 4 that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There had been over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period.

The Defeat of South Vietnam By the end of April, the ARVN (the South Vietnamese army) had collapsed on all fronts except in the Mekong Delta. Thousand of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On April 27, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon. The city was defended by about 30,000 ARVN troops. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the VPA shelled the airport and forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians found that they had no way out.

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing key buildings and installations. A tank crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace, and at 11:30 am local time the NLF flag was raised above it. President Duong Van Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered. His surrender marked the end of 116 years of Vietnamese involvement in conflict either alongside or against various countries, primarily China, France, Japan and United States.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that failure in bombing Vietnam was imminent. Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion." Doubts also surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing.

The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours... But even at these odds you will lose and I will win."

The Results of U.S. Involvement Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973.

By war's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft dodgers. The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion.

Lesson 5: Long Answer Essay ‐ The 1970s

For all of its social turmoil, the decade of the 1960s was a time of great economic expansion and economic prosperity for most Americans. Some have referred to the economy of the 1960s as "The magic economy" with its rapid growth. But after two decades of overall economic prosperity, the economy struggled for most of the 1970s. Economic growth, stagnated. Interest rates, energy prices, and inflation all rose rapidly, seriously hampering Americans' purchasing power.

Additionally, many Americans lost trust in their government. One of the main criticisms of the Vietnam War is that the government was not open with the public and presented an overly optimistic view that the war could be won quickly. Of course that did not happen and American forces ended up leaving Vietnam and the communists were able to win the War after this withdrawal. Americans were left questioning if the United States was declining militarily.

Finally, the effects of the Watergate Scandal contributed to a decline in trust in political leaders and a rising cynicism. President Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he had been involved in a large‐scale cover‐up stemming from a botched burglary and attempt to spy on the Democratic National Convention. There were positives in the decade as the U.S. celebrated its Bicentennial Celebration in 1976, but the decade featured many challenges.

Assignment: Long Answer Essay, The 1970s

For this assignment you will write an essay about the 1970s. You do not need to complete the outline, but you may use it in your planning. However, you only need to turn in the actual essay. Remember to write your essay in the standard format for an AP Long Essay. Here is the question:

Additional Resource: https://www.thoughtco.com/1970s‐timeline‐1779954

Long Essay Question (LEQ) Outline

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Which of the categories does this question fall into? Underline the Category Below.

Continuity and Change Over Time Comparison Causation

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Module Wrap‐up

Assignment Checklist: In this module you were responsible for completing the following assignments.  Key Concepts questions  Virtual Visit: National Civil Rights Museum  Document Analysis Assignment: The Tumultuous 60s  Discussion: The Vietnam War  Essay: The 1970s

Review: In studying for the test, especially the multiple choice, a few strategies should be employed. Look over the information in this module. Especially go back and review the questions that you answered in Lesson 1 Key Concepts that related to the information and readings found there. In addition, many of the test questions relate to items described in the key terms.

For the short answer portion of the test, be familiar with the main topics, including the two listed below. 1. The various movements for rights in this era 2. American involvement in Vietnam

Additional Resources: http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/ https://www.khanacademy.org/ https://www.history.com/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/crash‐course‐us‐history/ http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/