The Stormy Sixties

The New Frontier to Great Society

John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1960-1963

1960 election: Kennedy (D) vs. Nixon (R)

Nixon: associated with Eisenhower and McCarthyism

Kennedy: appeals to youth and educated liberals

First televised Presidential Debates

Marks beginning of domination of television in American politics

Kennedy won but closest contest since 1884

Video: Inaugural speech: “Ask not..”A. JFK’s domestic program: the New

FrontierEconomic stimulus: increased military

spending and tax incentivesSocial programs: extended social security,

slum clearance, fair housing (ending racial discrimination), urban and housing renewal, emergency relief for farmers

Extension of fair labor standards (increase min wage from $1.10 to $1.25/hr)

JFK’s Domestic Program cont’dScholarships, student loans and education

assistanceWelfare and aid to dependent

children (ADC)Equal employment and civil

rights extensions in the workplace

Started the Peace Corps

JFK’s Domestic Program cont’dClean air act (after reports of pollution in

rivers, Silent Spring publication re DDT)Recommendations for paid maternity leave,

equal hiring practices for women

B. JFK and the Moon (the space race)• Mercury Project (1959-1963)

o US sends astronauts into space and brings them back

• Gemini Project (1965-1966)o Longer orbitso Spacewalks

• Apollo Mission (1963-1972)o Men land on the moono 12 Americans walk on the moon

C. JFK's Advisors• Surrounded himself with the "best and brightest“

• “Whiz” kids – academics, intellectuals and industry leaders

o Robert Kennedy: Attorney Generalo Robert McNamara: Secretary of Defenseo Dean Rusk: Secretary of Stateo McGeorge Bundy: National Security Advisor

D. JFK’s Assassination• JFK’s death traumatic• The nation in mourning

Video: JFK Assassination

• Identity of his successor (Johnson) also traumatic: tainted the legitimacy of the presidency

• Presidency under JFK: – power and prestige reached new heights

(“Camelot” Administration)– more than central operational mechanism of

nation– More than the chief emblem of nationalism

JFK assassination interpreted as a sign of something wrong in American society. Both a symptom and a result of some larger social crisis:

• National headlines New York Times Magazine: “What Sort of Nation are We?”

• The Washington Post:“…beset by division and the spectacle of hatred, and shaken by pervasive guilt.”

• Senator Fullbright:“our national life, both past and present, has been marked by a baleful and incongruous strand of intolerance and violence.”

E. Kennedy: the man and the politician

• JFK very popular with intellectuals, liberal elite, Catholics, blacks, upper-middle-class

• JFK exemplified the centrist ideal of the foreign policy Establishment: rational, restrained, stylish, yet fundamentally cautious, resolutely anti-Communist, but temperate in his use of power = the imperial President

II. Lyndon Baine Johnson 1963-1969

• JFK was everything that Johnson was not• Johnson:

Was not part of the New England establishment (A Southerner from Texas)Was not Catholic not sophisticatednot an intellectual not young

A. Johnson: the man

• Passionately ambitious to be remembered as a great President• Highly sensitive to what others thought of him• a man of contradictions: complex but able• Southerner but understood the black revolution• Southerner but also a Westerner (Texas)• Understood poverty because he had known it but also

belonged to a rural oligarchy• Proud, domineering, insecure, persuasive, egotistical, subtle,

coarse, sentimental, vindictive, intelligent (but not intellectual)

A. Johnson: the man cont’d

“The Johnson Treatment”

“a great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed in on you.”

• Vowed to do everything that Kennedy would have done for the remainder of his term

• LBJ’s domestic policy inspired by JFK’s New Frontier

B. Johnson: the politician

• Warren Commission under Johnson set up to investigate the assassination of JFK

• After assassination LBJ had to prove his legitimacy“Every President has to establish with the various

sectors of this country what I call ‘the right to govern.’…For me, that presented special problems…since I had come to the Presidency not through the collective will of the people but in the wake of tragedy. I had no mandate from the voters.”Source: Johnson’s memoirs

B. Johnson: the Politician cont’d

• War on poverty and civil rights bills stemmed from JFK’s legacy and the assassination itself:

“we have hate abroad in the world, hate internationally, hate domestically where a President is assassinated and then they take the law into their own hands and kill the assassin. That is not our system. We have to do something about that…the roots of hate are poverty and disease and illiteracy, and they are abroad in the land.”

B. Johnson: the politician cont’d

C. LBJ’s Great Society

The poverty cycle: 3 pronged attack:1. Stopping people becoming poor in the first place2. Rehabilitating those caught in the cycle3. Making life easier for those who could not be

helped by rehabilitation to help themselves out of poverty

War on Poverty:Michael Harrington, The Other America, 1962 despite economic growth, 40-50 million Americans poor

• “There are tens of millions of Americans who are beyond the welfare state.

• Taken as a whole there is a culture of poverty…bad health, poor housing, low levels of aspiration, and high levels of mental distress. Twenty percent of a nation, some 32,000,000.”

Michael Harrington, author of the Culture of Poverty 1962

Johnson’s Speech"This administration today here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join me in that effort.... "Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the State and local level. "For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House. "Very often, a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty but to cure it–and above all, to prevent it. "No single piece of legislation, however, is going to suffice."

• War on Poverty – $3 billion in spending to address poverty– Food Stamp Act 1964– Poverty in America decreased (especially among the

elderly)– Infant mortality decreased substantially

• Health Coverage– Federal aid to assist and subsidize medical care for

senior citizenso Medicare (entitlement for the elderly)o Medicaid (health insurance for the poor)

1963 poverty line = $3,000/yearPoverty rate fell from 22% in 1960 to 13% in 1969

Poverty amongst blacks fell by half

Poverty levels along racial lines

Source: United States Department of Commerce Census Bureau

• Involve the poor themselves in decisions about efforts to help them, through “community action”

• Economic Opportunity Act 1964 Eliminate poverty Expand educational opportunities Increase the safety net for the poor and

unemployed Tend to health and financial needs of

the elderly“Today, for the first time in all the history of the human

race, a great nation is able to make, and is willing to make, a commitment to eradicate poverty.”

• LBJ won a landslide victory in 1964o Had 2 to 1 majorities in both chambers of Congresso "Great Society Congress" passed legislation comparable to

that of FDR's New Deal

D. LBJ’s Re-election

• Build Great Society by...o Improving America's cities o Improving America's rural areas (Appalachia) o Improving America's education system

• Video: University of Michigan speech May 1964

1964 Elections Map Johnson vs. GoldwaterLBJ won 61% popular vote

91 % electoral votesouth moving away from Democratic Party

Great Society and Education• Major increase in funding to

education Student Aid Head Start

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965)

– $1 billion in aid for public schools to buy supplies

Great Society and Immigration

• Immigration reform – (repealed

Immigration Act of 1924)

– Allowing entry of many Asians and Hispanics into U.S.

LBJ and Civil Rights• 1964 Civil Rights Act

– Ended segregation in all public facilities– Ended unfair employment practices:

discrimination based on race, gender, age, etc…– Most comprehensive piece of civil rights

legislation• Appointed Thurgood Marshall to Supreme

Court (1st African American)

After Civil Rights Act passed, protestors turned their attention to voting rights (political rights)

LBJ and Civil Rights cont’d• 1965 Voting Rights Act (after re-election)

– Before its passage, 6 million blacks old enough to vote in 11 Southern states

• <27% Georgia; <19% Alabama; <6% Mississippi registered to vote

– Reinforced 15th amendment– Prohibited voting restrictions (standard in the South)

• Literacy tests/poll taxes• Any restrictions had to be pre-cleared by a federal judge

– Gave federal government significant oversight of elections and election policies in many southern states

Federal Jurisdiction Voting Rights Act 1965

LBJ’s Great Society• Video: The Great Society

Johnson considered • a Superhero by liberals• A borderline socialist by

conservative Republicans• An ultimate disappointment

by blacks for not going far enough

Liberal Criticism of LBJ’s Great Society

MLK’s oratory: “Beyond Vietnam: a time to break silence”

"It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."