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Past political experience:
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
1961-1963
Democrat
-Senator from Massachusetts
-Wealthy, political family
-1960 election V.P. Nixon vs. JFK, televised debates
-youngest president to date at 43
-White House referred to as Camelot
-Inaugural address “ask what you can do for your country”
DOMESTIC
-New Frontier
POLICIES/ISSUES -created the Youth Conservation Corp.
-believed deficit spending and lower taxes were needed to solve
economic recession
-Congress increased the minimum wage
-JFK wanted but Congress rejected medical care for the aged, to
rebuild dilapidated urban areas, and federal aid for education
-died before being able to push through his ideas for a national
assault on poverty, an investigation of racial injustice in the South,
a national civil rights bill, and a tax cut
-created the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress providing
FOREIGN
economic aid for developing nations
POLICIES/ISSUES -funding of the space race
-flexible response to the Cold War
-Bay of Pigs invasion (1961)
-Berlin Wall (1961)
-Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
-Limited Test Ban treaty (1963)
-Diem deposed from rule in Vietnam by the U.S. (1963)
ECONOMIC
-economy revitalized by increased spending on defense and the
TRENDS
space race
MAJOR
Baker v. Carr (1962) established the principle of “one man, one
SUPREME
vote” when drawing lines for Congressional districts
COURT CASES
-Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) required criminal courts to provide
free legal counsel to those who could not afford it
SOCIAL
-Introduced the Civil Rights Act but dies before passage
CHANGES
-Freedom Riders (1961); March on Washington (1963)
(INC. WOMEN &
-Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique published in 1963 challenged
AFRICANthe status quo for women
AMERICAN RIGHTS)
Assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald who was then shot
by Jack Ruby. The Warren Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, found
that Oswald had acted alone.