-
Period: to
The Vietnam War
By 1968 Lindon B. Jonhson had poured half a million + troops into Southeast Asia, and the annual bill for the war was $30 billion +. Still, the end was nowhere in sight. -
Period: to
Conservatives in the South
Barry Goldwater owed his nomination (1964) to a bourgeoning conservative movement that was gathering strength in the mushrooming middle-class suburbs of the Sunbelt. Led intellectually by vibrant writers like William F. Buckley and his staff at National Review magazine, conservative activists in the early 1960s formed groups like Young Americans for Freedom and volunteered enthusiastically for the Draft Goldwater movement. -
The Other America (1962):book
The initial political impetus for the antipoverty campaign had come from journalist Michael Harrington’s surprise bestseller The Other America (1962), -
Lyndon Baines Johnson Goes from VP to P
Johnson retained most of the bright Kennedy team. The new president managed a dignified and efficient transition in the winter of 1963, pledging continuity with his slain predecessor’s policies. From the populist Austin, Texas, Franklin D. Roosevelt was his political “Daddy,” Johnson claimed, and he had supported New Deal measures down the line. But when LBJ lost a Senate race in 1941, he learned the sobering lesson that He trimmed his sails to the right. -
Period: to
The Great Society
LbJ’s term for his domestic policy agenda. Billed a psuccessor to the New Deal, the Great Society aimed to extend the postwar prosperity to all people in American society by promoting civil rights and fighting poverty. Great Society programs included the War on Poverty, which expanded the Social Security system by creating Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care for the aged and the poor. LBJ also signed laws protecting consumers and empowering community organizations to combat poverty. -
Period: to
The Great Society Specific
The War on Poverty, Congress x2 the appropriation of the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion and $1 billion to redevelop Appalachia. Two new cabinet offices: the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, designed to lift the level of American cultural life. Big Four programs: aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Federal law that banned racial discrimination in public facilities and strengthened the federal government's power to fight segregation in schools. Title VII of the act prohibited employers from discriminating based on race in their hiring practices, and empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to regulate fair employment. (EEOC, a body Kennedy had created in 1961) -
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Resolution that Lindon B. Johnson used to gain presidential office again in 1964, by declaring that he wanted no wider war then implying that Goldwater his opponent did. -
The Twenty-fourth Amendment,
Abolished the poll tax in federal elections. -
Freedom Summer
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by a coalition of civil rights groups. The campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the North, and was marred by the abduction and murder of three such workers at the hands of white racists. -
Mississippi Freedom Democratic party
Political party organized by civil rights activists to challenge Mississippi's delegation to the Democratic National Convention, who opposed the civil rights planks in the party's platform. Mississippi, where almost no black citizens could vote, the MFDP demanded to be seated at the convention but were denied by party bosses. The effort was both a setback to civil rights activism in the South and a motivation to continue to struggle for black voting rights. -
Period: to
Black Panther Party
Organization of armed black militants formed in Oakland, California, in 1966 to protect black rights. The Panthers represented a growing dissatisfaction with the nonviolent wing of the civil rights movement and signaled a new direction to that movement after the legislative victories of 1964 and 1965. -
1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. Selma, Alabama March
Early in 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr., resumed the voter-registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, where blacks made up 50 percent of the population but only 1 percent of the voters. State troopers with tear gas and whips assaulted King’s demonstrators as they marched peacefully to the state capital at Montgomery. A Boston Unitarian minister was killed, and a few days later a white Detroit woman was shotgunned to death by Klansmen on the highway near Selma. -
Medicare & Medicade
Medicare and Medicaid created “entitlements.” That is, they conferred rights on certain categories of Americans in perpetuity, without the need for repeated congressional approval. These programs were part of a spreading “rights revolution” that materially improved the lives of millions of Americans—but also eventually helped to undermine the federal government’s financial health. -
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
It abolished the “national-origins” quota system (since 1921). The act also doubled (to 290,000) the number of immigrants allowed to enter annually, it set limits on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. It provided for the admission of close relatives of U.S. citizens, outside numerical limits. More than 100,000 persons per year used “family unification” provisions. The source of immigration shifted from Europe to Latin America and Asia, changing the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S.. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Legislation pushed through Congress by President Johnson that prohibited ballot-denying tactics, such as literacy tests and intimidation. The Voting Rights Act was a successor to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and sought to make racial disenfranchisement explicitly illegal. Exactly 100 years after the conclusion to the Civil War. -
Malcolm X Assassinated
(1925-1965) Black militant, radical minister, and spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964. Having eschewed his family name "Little," Malcolm preached a doctrine of no compromise with white society. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), began to preach the doctrine of Black Power,
Doctrine of militancy and separatism that rose in prominence after 1965. Black Power activists rejected Martin Luther King's pacifism and desire for integration. Rather, they promoted pride in African heritage and an often militant position in defense of their rights. -
Period: to
Affirmative action
Program d to reqdress racial and gender imbalances in jobs & education. The term grew from an executive order issued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 mandating that projects paid for with federal funds take concerted action against discrimination based on race in their hiring practices. In the late 1960s, President Nixon's Philadelphia Plan changed the meaning of affirmative action to require attention to certain groups, rather than protect individuals against discrimination. -
France Withdrew from NATO 1966
-
Period: to
Opposition in Congress to the Vietnam
Opposition in Congress to the Vietnam involvement centered in the influential Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, headed by Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas. He staged a series of widely viewed televised hearings in 1966 and 1967, during which prominent personages aired their views, largely antiwar. Gradually the public came to feel that they had been deceived about the causes and “winnability” of the war, and a credibility gap.” New flocks of antiwar “doves” were hatching daily. -
The Six Days War
Military conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. The war ended with an Israeli victory and territorial expansion into the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. The 1967 war was a humiliation for several Arab states, and the territorial disputes it created formed the basis for continued conflict in the region. Leading to an intractable standoff between the Israelis and Palestinians. -
Johnson Starts to Spy on America
In 1967 President Johnson ordered the CIA, in clear violation of its charter as a foreign intelligence agency, to spy on domestic antiwar activists. He also encouraged the FBI to turn its counterintelligence program, code-named “Cointelpro,” against the peace movement. “Cointelpro” subverted leading “doves” with false accusations that they were communist sympathizers. -
Martin Luther King Jr. was Assintated
-
Tet Offensive
Communist offensive launched in late January 1968, during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Viet Cong suddenly and simultaneously mounted savage attacks on twenty-seven key South Vietnamese cities. Although eventually beaten off with heavy losses, they demonstrated anew that victory could not be gained by Johnson’s strategy of continual escalation. The Tet offensive ended in a military defeat but a political victory for the Viet Cong. American public opinion demanded a speedy end to the war. -
Resten pushed major tax reform trough congress
-
Period: to
Effect of Prez R and GWB’s económica administrations
WWII 1st major ^ national debt. Policies of Reagan & George H.W. Bush 1981–1993 expanded debt ($4 tril.) 1990s, 14% of federal revenues went to interest payments on debt. Budget surpluses from booming econ of the 2nd Clinton admin 1997–2001 thought to of pay debt off. But George W. Bush tax cuts & ^ military spending sent the debt soaring after 2001. Those tax cuts + revenue losses & stimulus expenditures by the “Great Recession” (2008) ^ the debt to peacetime levels, approaching 100 % of GDP. -
Period: to
Iran-Contra affair / US Spports Iran, Iraq, & contra in Nicaragua
1985 US diplomats secretly sold arms to Iran ->for war with Iraq->the Iranians helped release at least 1 US hostage of terrorists-> $ Iran paid for the US weapons was given to the contras in Nicaragua -> US violated a congressional ban of military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. US sold weapons to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for use against Iran. News broke in November 1986 -> Prez R claimed innocent & ignorant. (Watergate era, public wanted to know “what the president knew and when he knew it.” -
Reagan pushed major tax reform through congress