HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 16 Outline of Last Lecture I JFK s Young Years a Childhood b Young Adulthood II Getting into Politics III The Presidency a JFK s Image b Death IV Girlfriends of the President Outline of Current Lecture I II JFK and the New Frontier a The New Frontier b Civil Rights and the Kennedys Flexible Response a Confronting the Soviets b Vietnam c Death in Dallas Current Lecture Great Promises Bitter Disappointments 1960 1975 Part 1 I JFK and the New Frontier a The New Frontier At his inauguration John F Kennedy spoke in idealistic terms and avoided any mention of specific programs but promised to march against the common enemies of man tyranny poverty disease and war itself These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute o Doesn t mention domestics as much as foreign policy in inauguration speech o He asked all Americans to participate exhorting them to ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country Kennedy idealism o Despite his call for public involvement Kennedy believed that experts would solve most national problems with little need of public support Didn t think common man could understand the countries problems Kennedy s staff and cabinet were dubbed the best and the brightest o Recruiting from business and universities Kennedy appointed men and women who were called the best and the brightest they included Rhodes scholars and Harvard professors Viewed themselves as tough coming out of WWII era The best and the brightest really lead America into the Vietnam War o JFK and his staff wanted to be activists leading the nation along new paths of liberalism but Congress was likely to be an obstacle so Kennedy decided to focus on legislation within the vital center Robert McNamara Sec of Defense Dean Ross Sec of State b Civil Rights and the Kennedys Civil rights advocates were far from satisfied with Kennedy s actions in this area even though he did appoint several blacks to high office and district courts o Critics noted that several of JFK s judicial appointments went to recognized segregationists and he did not ban segregation in federal housing until 1962 Kennedy could only get the southern side if he put some of their own on the bench He was appeasing the segregationists Even as Kennedy assumed office a new wave of black activism was striking at segregation in the South in the form of sit ins and boycotts o The sit ins remained largely a student movement supported by the more established civil rights groups especially the Congress of Racial Equality CORE and King s Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC o The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC was formed in April 1961 to coordinate the dramatically increasing number of sit ins and boycotts o Sharing the headlines with those sitting in were the freedom riders who chose to force integration on southern bus lines and stations Sit ins African Americans would sit at lunch counters and refused to move The servers would call the police and take them to jail Freedom riders African Americans rode greyhound buses to go against segregation occurring on them John Seigenthaler rode with them and when they got off him and the riders got beaten with baseball bats Because of this the government decided that since the buses crossed state boundaries it was a matter for the federal government Therefore the buses had to be desegregated o As some predicted violence forced the federal government to respond and state and local protection was obtained for the riders through Alabama o Finally in September 1961 the Interstate Commerce Commission declared that it would uphold the Supreme Court s decision prohibiting segregation and as a result most state and local authorities grudgingly accepted desegregation In 1962 James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi with the protection of federal forces and became its first African American graduate o In 1963 the University of Alabama were forced to accept blacks but governor George C Wallace disagreed and literally blocked the entrance of blacks into the school with his own body Eventually he gets forced aside by federal troops and the first black students can attend Martin Luther King Jr and the SCLC focused their attention on overturning segregation in Birmingham Alabama o Letter from a Birmingham Jail called for immediate and continuous peaceful civil disobedience since freedom was never given voluntarily by the oppressor o Events in Birmingham helped Kennedy conclude that the time had come to fulfill his campaign promise to make civil rights a priority and he spoke to the nation in June 1963 about making civil rights an immediate moral issue Bull Conner put fire hoses and German Shepherds on black women and children which became aired on television around the world This becomes an international problem forcing Kennedy help civil rights o King s August 28 March on Washington exceeded all expectations in its attempt to pressure Congress to act on civil rights legislation and King enthralled his audience and the nation with his I Have a Dream speech o In the South however violence and bigotry continued II Flexible Response a Confronting the Soviets Flexible response included economic and military strategies o Eisenhower had policy of brinkmanship and terror which Kennedy saw as a choice between doing nothing and using nuclear weapons not flexible enough o Kennedy wants assassination teams CIA and others trained better as response Despite the Bay of Pigs disaster Kennedy vowed to continue the relentless struggle against Castro and Communism including the use of covert and special operations o Bay of Pigs 1961 Americans land navy on Bay of Pigs but Castro is tipped off and was there to retaliate with planes shooting down The exiles called for help but Kennedy said no This results in a surrender of the Americans and huge disaster Kennedy was honest in front of the press and took full responsibility his father s advice His polls went up because he was honest and took responsibility The building of the Berlin Wall Aug 1961 challenged Western ideals of freedom but not its presence in West Berlin o Kennedy uses this as a representation of the Communist s failure they had to build a wall to keep people from leaving Operation Mongoose planned to remove Castro with the CIA and the mob working together The Cuban Missile Crisis Oct