HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 17 Outline of Last Lecture I JFK and the New Frontier a The New Frontier b Civil Rights and the Kennedys II Flexible Response a Confronting the Soviets b Vietnam c Death in Dallas Outline of Current Lecture I Beyond the New Frontier a Shaping the Great Society b New Voice II Expanding the American Dream a The Women s Rights Movement b The Emergence of Chicano Power III Happenings of 1968 Current Lecture Great Promises Bitter Disappointments 1960 1975 Part 2 I Beyond the New Frontier a Shaping the Great Society According to some conservatives Johnson s programs were destroying the traditional American values of localism self help and individualism Johnson s Great Society offered a tempting political target to the Republicans and Barry Goldwater the Republican presidential nominee in 1964 o Beginning of the conservative movement in the Republican pary Having trounced Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign Johnson pushed forward legislation to enact his Great Society o The Great Society yielded over sixty programs most seeking to provide better economic and social opportunities by removing social and economic barriers thrown up by health education region and race Reflecting Johnson s own desires and responding to African American and liberal desires early in the new administration 1965 the president advanced the issue of civil rights o LBJ signed an executive order that required government contractors to ensure nondiscrimination in jobs 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 The president appointed the first African American cabinet member Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert Weaver the first African American woman federal justice Constance Baker Motley and the first black on the Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall Hoping to pull the federal government behind their efforts to expand black political and social rights civil rights leaders targeted Alabama and Mississippi o The result was the Freedom Summer of 1964 led by the SNCC s Bob Moses in which whites and blacks went to Mississippi to open Freedom Schools and to encourage African Americans to vote Freedom summer 3 Civil Rights workers went to Mississippi to teach black students to read and write to prepare them ready to vote The Mississippi and Civil Rights workers went missing due to the KKK LBJ was outraged and said that he wanted them found sent FBI to find them The FBI agents got fire bombed by the KKK so another army of FBI agents went to Mississippi The FBI tried to pin the clans against each other to find the people and they got fire bombed again Federal troops were then sent in In the end the FBI destroyed the Klan o The Freedom Schools taught basic literacy and black history and stressed black pride and achievements o Civil rights violence in Mississippi occurred almost daily from June through August of 1964 but the crusade registered nearly 60 000 new voters Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act had made discrimination illegal clearly it was still practiced throughout much of the South and civil rights leaders were just as clearly determined to eliminate it o As expected Sheriff Jim Clark confronted protesters and arrested nearly two thousand of them before King called for a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery to increase the pressure o Television coverage of the onslaught of local authorities stirred nationwide condemnation of Clark s tactics and support for King and the marchers Johnson also used the violence in Selma to pressure Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act which banned a variety of methods states used to deny blacks the right to vote including Mississippi s literacy test o 1968 Fair Housing Act no discrimination in buying selling renting houses or rooms and no discriminated mortgages At the top of Johnson s priorities were health and education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 1965 was the first general educational funding act by the federal government o Federal Student loans created Johnson s Medical Care Act 1965 established Medicare medical insurance for people 65 and over which helped the elderly cover their medical costs and Medicaid health insurance for the poor which provided funds to states to provide free health care for those on welfare Despite the flood of legislation by the end of 1965 many Great Society programs were underfunded and diminishing in popularity o An expanding war in Vietnam white backlash to urban riots and partisan politics were forcing reductions in the budget of the War on Poverty Vietnam derails the Great Society and its programs b New Voices The Watts Riot White back lash o What started as a simple arrest in Watts black suburb of Los Angeles soon mushroomed into a major riot as a crowd of onlookers gathered and scuffling began Molotov cocktails and fires began o When firemen and police arrived from LA to restore order and put out the flames they had to dodge black snipers bullets and Molotov cocktails o The Watts riot shattered the complacency of many northern whites who had supported civil rights in the South while ignoring the plight of the inner cities and it demonstrated a gap between the attitudes of northern blacks and many civil rights leaders More deadly urban riots followed and a new militant approach to racial and economic injustices erupted the Black Power movement o New voices called on blacks to seek power through solidarity independence and if necessary violence since blacks needed to use the same means as whites Stokely Carmichael I am not going to beg the white man for anything I deserve I m going to take it o Among those more receptive to the militant approach were the Black Muslims including Malcolm X who proclaimed the ideals of black nationalism and separation and rejected integration with white society They rejected Martin Luther King Jr for his nonviolence o As the 1968 presidential campaign began law and order replaced the Great Society as the main issue c The Challenge of Youth Nearly as alarming to many Americans were the changes taking place among the nation s youth o Although the majority of young adults maintained the typical quest for a traditional American life o Campus activists denounced course requirements and restrictions on dress suits and ties to jeans and t shirts behavior and living arrangements coed communal bathrooms o The counterculture had a lasting impact