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Decade of Change: the
1960s
Chapter 18
Section 1
Famous Quote
 “Ask
not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for
your country.”
 Do you know who said that?
 The
1960s were years if great change
and turmoil.
 In some respects, the changes were
positive.
 U.S. society became more democratic
in the 1960s, as minorities, the
handicapped, and women made
significant progress towards equality.
 Also, the Supreme Court made
decisions that expanded the
protections of the Bill of Rights.

Astonishing gains in science and
technology enabled the United States
to land a man on the moon in 1969.
In other respects, the 1960s was a tragic
decade.
 Assassinations took the lives of a president
(John Kennedy), a presidential candidate
(Robert Kennedy), and three African American
leaders (Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., and Malcolm X.
 Racial tensions caused riots to erupt in almost
every major U.S. city.
 Drug use among American youths increased.
 Large numbers of college students took part in
massive demonstrations protesting the war in
Vietnam.

The Kennedy Years
 Elected
in 1960 at the age of 43, he
was the youngest candidate to win
the presidency and the first president
born in the 20th century.
 He won the election over Nixon for
the presidency.
 Kennedy was also the first Roman
Catholic to be elected president.
Domestic Policy
 The
New Frontier was the name given
to President Kennedy’s domestic
program.
 It included federal aid to education, an
increase in Social Security benefits,
promotion of the civil rights of African
Americans, relief for Appalachia, and
health insurance for senior citizens.
New Frontier Programs Passed
 An
increase in the minimum wage to
$1.25 an hour.
 Federal funds for urban renewal (the
rebuilding of rundown city
neighborhoods)
 Federal loans to aid the impoverished
families in the Appalachian Mountains
and other “distressed areas.”
New Frontier Programs Rejected
 Federal
grants to the states for school
construction and teachers’ salaries.
 Medicare, or public health insurance, for
elderly Americans through the Social
Security system.
 A new civil rights law to enable the
federal government to take bolder action
in cases of racial discrimination and
segregation.
Civil Rights Actions





President Kennedy was a Democrat with
liberal views on racial issues.
As such, he gave encouragement to African
Americans’ struggle to end segregation.
He desegregated the interstate bus system.
James Meredith becomes became the first
African American to enroll at the University
of Mississippi.
President Kennedy ordered 400 federal
Marshals to the University to protect
Meredith.
Public Career of Dr. Martin
Luther King
 One
result of the bus boycott in
Montgomery was the rise a
supremely gifted leader and
speaker, Martin Luther King, Jr.
 He believed in nonviolent public
demonstrations.
 This approach was known as civil
disobedience.
Birmingham Protest
Protestors led by Martin Luther King Jr.,
went to Birmingham Alabama to
participate in a peaceful march through
the center of the city to protest the Jim
Crow Laws.
 The Birmingham police attacked the
marchers with dogs, powerful jets of
water from fire hoses, and electric cattle
prods.
 Television cameras brought the
confrontation to a national audience.


Among the
marchers
arrested and
jailed in
Birmingham
was their
leader, Martin
Luther King
Jr.
Assassination of Medgar Evers
 Medgar
Evers was known for his
contribution to the civil rights
movement in Mississippi.
 At a young age, he became leader of
the NAACP, organizing economic
boycotts, marches, and picket lines.
 Racial tensions in the 1960s led to
his assassination in 1963 by a white
supremacist Byron De La Beckwith.
March on Washington
 It
was to
alert
Congress
and the
American
people to
the need
for stronger
civil rights
laws.
Cuba: Bay of Pigs Invasion
The U.S. policy of containment was
threatened when Fidel Castro, a
Communist, seized power in Cuba only 90
miles from Florida.
 An invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro
Cubans was planned under Eisenhower
and carried out under Kennedy.
 The invasion failed, and tensions between
the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet
Union increased.

Berlin Wall
 A crisis
was created when the Soviets
and East Germans erected a concrete
barrier known as the Berlin Wall
across the city of Berlin to separate
the East and West German sectors.
 The Soviets hoped to isolate the city
and pressure the U.S. and its allies
into leaving.
 Instead,
Kennedy went to
Berlin and promised to defend
the city, no matter what the
consequences were.
 Kennedy’s speech, in which he
claimed “I am a Berliner,”
became a rallying cry for the
free world.
Cuban Missile Crisis
 Another
confrontation between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union occurred
when U.S. intelligence discovered
the existence of Soviet missilelaunching sites in Cuba.
 The U.S. Navy blockaded Cuba and
stood ready to use force to stop
more Soviet warships carrying
missiles from arriving in Cuba.
 The
world held its breath as the
two superpowers teetered on the
brink of war.
 Conflict was avoided when Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev
withdrew the missiles, and
Kennedy promised that the U.S.
would never attempt to invade
Cuba again.
Indochina-Vietnam and Laos


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In Laos, Communists and neutralists attempted
to overthrow the pro-Western government.
A truce was arranged and war avoided when all
sides agreed to share power in a coalition
government.
In Vietnam, a civil war broke out in the nonCommunist South.
Eisenhower sent U.S. military advisors to
South Vietnam to help prevent a Communist
victory.
Kennedy continued and expanded this policy.
 The
French encountered great
resistance from the Vietnamese
guerillas.
 After losing a major battle at
Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the
French decided to withdraw
from Indochina.
Latin America and the Alliance
for Progress


1)
2)
Kennedy wanted a plan of economic aid
that would do for Latin America what the
Marshall Plan had done for Europe.
He hoped an ambitious program of aid
would
Promote economic growth in a region
whose people suffered from poverty.
Contain the threat of communism
spreading from Cuba to other Latin
American countries.

Kennedy called his aid program for Latin
America the Alliance for Progress.
Launching the Race to the Moon
President Kennedy announced in 1961
that he intended the United States to be
the first nation to land a human being on
the moon.
 The goal was in fact achieved before the
1960s ended.
 John Glenn spent five hours in space
orbiting the earth and Neil Armstrong on
the spacecraft Apollo 11 in July 1969 set
foot on the moon.

Movement for Rights of Disabled
Citizens
Kennedy was a champion for the
disabled.
 He helped create the Special Olympics.
 And many court cases from 1960 to
present brought more attention and
rights towards disabled people.
 Veterans of Vietnam who were missing
limbs and used a wheel chair protested
so that buildings would be
handicapped accessible.

Deinstitutionalization
The mentally ill were often locked away for
years in state mental hospitals and received
little treatment.
 Many mentally ill people were released
because people felt they were being held
against their will.
 Many of the released mentally ill people
became homeless.
 They lacked the skills to find jobs and is the
reason why we have a homeless problem in
our country today.

Kennedy Assassination
 In
late November 1963, President
Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline
Kennedy, traveled to Dallas, Texas,
for a political event.
 While riding in an open car through
Dallas, the president was killed
instantly by bullets fired from a
high rise building.
Conspiracy?
 The
police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald
for the crime.
 But another assassin killed Oswald
before his case could come to trial.
 Thus, there is still a mystery
surrounding the death of President
Kennedy.
 Why did it happen?
 Did Oswald act alone, or were there
others involved in the crime?