Domestic Events Kennedy and Johnson
- Kennedy
- 1960 Election
- Impact of Television
- Eisenhower’s “Failures”?
- New Frontier
- Education, urban renewal, medical care for the elderly, creation of Department of Urban Affairs, Civil Rights
- All blocked by Republicans and Southern Democrats
- Successes
- minimum wage increase to $1.25
- Housing Act
- Moon landing
- Economy continues to grow during the 1960’s
- Civil Rights=
- Freedom Riders sponsored by CORE
- RFK pushes for integration, uses Justice Department as AG
- JFK encourages SNCC and the Voter Education Program
- James Meredith integrates Ole Miss
- JFK uses National Guard
- Proposes Civil Rights Bill
- held up in Congress
- March on Washington
- JFK vs. Alabama Governor George Wallace
- Birmingham
- MLK,jrs march in spring 1963 met with violence
- JFK says Civil Rights is a “moral issue”
- Church Bombing kills 4 girls at Sunday school
- Desegregation of the University of Alabama
- JFK takes control of the state National Guard to enforce integration
- Assassination
- Lee Harvey Oswald
- Warren Commission
- LBJ
- 1964 Civil Rights Act
- Bans discrimination in all private facilities
- Creates EEOC
- 1964 Freedom Summer
- Violence
- 3 activists killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi
- 24th Amendment
- Eliminated poll taxes
- Voting Rights
- March on Selma
- Voting Rights Act= outlaws literacy tests
- 1964 Election
- Republicans nominate Barry Goldwater
- Goldwater wants to greatly reduce taxes, Social Security, & the TVA
- Opposed the Great Society
- Johnson campaign ads portray Goldwater as a threat to safety
- Gulf of Tonkin
- Goldwater had supported Civil Rights legislation but now turns against further legislation. States rights stance wins him votes in the south but costs him votes everywhere else
- Great Society
- War on Poverty
- Michael Harrington’s The Other America exposed that 20% of Americans live in poverty
- Medicare/Medicaid, Head start, HUD, Affirmative Action, Education Funding for poor areas
- Immigration Act 1965
- end to quota system, now on skills and political asylum
- increase in immigration especially Latin America and Asia
- Race Riots=70% AA live in ghettos
- Watts
- Newark, Chicago, Detroit
- Kerner Commission
- Black Power Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Elijah Muhhamad and Malcolm X
- “by any means necessary” counter to non-violent SCLC tactics
- Stokley Carmichael changes positions
- Black Panther Movement in Oakland
- copycat groups make it more militant
- MLK, Jr assassinated
- April 4, 1968 in Tennessee
- Thurgood Marshall, Robert Weaver
- Vietnam’s Impact on LBJ domestic agenda
- Social movements
- UFW/Cesar Chavez
- Chicano movement
- AIM
- Alcatraz occupied
- SDS
- The weathermen
- Counterculture
- Free Speech Movement born at UC Berkely
- Women’s Liberation
- Betty Friedan= The Feminine Mystique
- NOW
- ERA fails
- middle-class women
- The Manhattan Society
- 1968 Election
- RFK assassination
- Democratic convention explodes in riots
- Wallace’s 3rd party
- LBJ doesn’t run
- RFK assassinated
- Nixon wins