The USA in the 1960s part 1 PDF

Preview

Summary

Cours de civilisation américaine L3 - premier semestre, politique intérieure et extérieure des USA...

Description

A5ACVA The United States From the 1930s

Lecture 4

The USA in the 1960s, Part 1 Note: Traditionally, the 1960s cover a period starting in 1961 with the election of John F. Kennedy (JFK) as president of the United States, and ending in the middle of the 1970s, with the end of the Vietnam War. When writing about the 1960s today, historians now refer to what they call “the long sixties” to stress that many of the characteristics of that period need to be inscribed in earlier decades while others continued to define American traits well after 1975. There were many different social movements in the 1960s and, even though they were varied in terms of aims and tactics, they are sometimes referred to as “the Movement” to indicate how widespread the spirit of protest was at that time. Part One / Kennedy’s Presidency (January 1961- November 1963) --John F. Kennedy (JFK), a 42-year-old Democrat, was the first Catholic president in the White House. His age and charisma are often associated with change, reform, and modernity but in many ways he was a “man of the center” who believed in American exceptionalism, in the fight against communism, and in the “liberal consensus”. --The “liberal consensus” implies faith in capitalism and in redistribution of wealth through growth. It also means a belief in the power of government-led reform to find solutions to problems in the nation. --JFK was more interested in foreign policy than in domestic issues even though circumstances forced him to initiate reforms at home. For example under the pressure of black protest he promised a new civil rights law, to little avail, something which led to the August 28, 1963 March on Washington by black organizations (King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech there). He also issued Executive Order 11063 against discrimination in federally funded housing in November 1962 and equal pay for women with the Equal Pay Act in June 1963 (these two measures were never really implemented). Part Two/ The Civil Rights Movement 1/ Black Organizing: a Long Tradition -1960s African Americans had long been fighting for their rights through various organizations created in the early to mid-20th century (The NAACP - 1909; the National Urban League - 1910; CORE – 1942; National Council of Negro Women – 1935; King’s SCLC - 1957) and in unions (e.g. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – 1925). They had also regularly organized boycotts against stores that refused to serve black customers. --After the war, African Americans fought first against segregation in the former slave states of the South, which led to the 1954 Brown case against segregation at school, in spite of intense white resistance by Southern Whites, as in 1957 in Little Rock Arkansas when state troops were federalized by President Eisenhower to enable black students to integrate a white high school. 2/ Nonviolent Protest --In the next few years, African Americans organized to obtain equal rights: boycotts (the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955), sit-ins, marches, all based on nonviolence and the desire for blacks to be integrated into the nation as full citizens. Black protest in the South met with incredible violence on the part of Whites (e.g. the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama), including police forces.

--Black students had their own mixed-race organizations (SNCC, 1960) and organized sit-ins (the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-in at a lunch counter in 1960), freedom rides (organized with CORE in 1961: traveling on interstate buses to demand their desegregation), and the Freedom summer in 1964 (to help Blacks register to vote in the South). --At the same time in the North, activist like Malcolm X rejected nonviolence as ineffective, decried integrationist stands, and praised black separatism. --Black activism, shown on the media everywhere, pushed the Johnson government to pass the Civil rights Act in 1964 (meant to put an end to discrimination in hiring and education on the basis of race, national origin, sex, and religion). III Protest Intensifies in the Early 1960s: Students and Women 1/ The Student Movement --The number of university students rose very much due to the baby boom. Among them many were politically minded early on: they were the children of parents who had been active in the Old Left (Socialists, Communists – before these parties were virtually eradicated, starting in the 1930s), had been part of the civil rights movement, and had criticized the limits imposed onto them by their school administration (concerning dress codes, curricula, freedom of speech, the military-industrial complex). --Students founded their own organizations and created what is known as the New Left --SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the main student organization was created in 1960 and wrote its manifesto in Port Huron, Michigan in 1962. In it, they stressed civil rights and individual liberties and they advocated participatory democracy. 2/ Johnson’s Great Society --Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) had been JFK’s vice-president and replaced him as president when JFK was assassinated in November 1963. He then ran for his own mandate and was elected in 1964. --During his campaign, on May 22, he gave his “Great Society” speech during which he delineated his program: abundance for all, the end of poverty and discrimination, a focus on goals rather than goods, among other things. He followed suit by enacting many reforms through, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, The Social Security Act of 1965 (with Medicare in 1965 and Medicaid in 1966), among many other aspects dealing with cities, education, pollution, and so forth. 3/ Women, Students and the Great Society --Women also started to organize. They decried persisting inequalities in access to higher education, employment, and equal pay. They also criticized the restrictive gender norms on sexuality, marriage, and motherhood imposed onto women, as shown by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963). Friedan and others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. It demanded integration of women in the society on an equal footing with men. --Students also started the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 (led by Mario Savio)....