The Turbulent 1960s Flashcards
Formed in April 1960 by Ella Baker in Raleigh, North Carolina
Early example of student group dedicated to replacing the culture of segregation
“We can’t count on the adults, very few…are not afraid of the tremendous pressure they will face. This leaves the young people to be the organizers, the agents of social and political change.”
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and asked to be served
After five months, Woolworth’s agreed to serve black customers
Sparked other protests
Greensboro Sit-in
Launched the Freedom Rides – integrated groups traveling by bus to the Deep South
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Integrated groups who traveled by bus into the Deep South
Assaulted by violent mobs
Ultimately protected by federal marshals and the Interstate Commerce Commission, which ordered buses desegregated
Freedom Rides
Admitted to the University of Mississippi
Mop rampaged in Oxford where the University of Mississippi is located, to protest
James Meredith
Composed by Martin Luther King
Listed litany of abuses faced by black southerners
Helped revive the flagging effort to acheive equlity in Birmingham, Alabama
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Police chief who decided to assault children who were protesting with nightsticks, fire hoses, attack dogs
Decision led to a wave of revulsion across America
Eugene “Bull” Connor
Field secretary of the NAACP who was assassinated in June 1963
Medgar Evers
250,000 blacks and whites on August 28, 1963
Organized by A. Philip Randolph
Called for congress to act on civil rights and minimum wage
Ended with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech
March on Washington
Speech that ended the March on Washington
“I Have a Dream Speech”
Martin Luther King
Kennedy’s foriegn policy agenda aimed at countering the spread of communism
New Frontier
Program established by Kennedy to send Americans abroad to aid developing countries
Worked as educators, health workers, technicians
By 1966, 15,000 were serving as volunteers
Peace Corps
Kennedy committment in response to the Soviet’s launching of the first man in space in April 1961
Accomplished in 1969
Man to the Moon
Kennedy foreign policy toward Latin America
Aimed to promote political and material freedom
Military regimes and local elites controlled the aid the policy failed
Alliance for Progress
Invasion of Cuba authorized by Kennedy
Intent was to oust Castro, who was nationalizing United States interests and aligning with the Soviets
The invasion was a failure with 100 killed and 1,100 captured
Bay of Pigs
Castro ousted dictator Batista in 1959
Nationalized American interests and aligned with the Soviets
Cuban Revolution
Concrete structure built in August 1961 by the Soviets and East Germans in order to prevent emigrants from fleeing East Germany
Berlin Wall
Began with the discovery by American spy planes of the Soviet arms in Cuba
Kennedy imposed a blockade and demanded removal
Khrushchev agreed to withdraw and kennedy agreed to not invade as well as secretly removed American arms in Turkey
Cuban Missile Crisis
Likely committed by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963
Led to Lyndon Johnson becoming the president
Kennedy Assassination
Prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions, privately owned public accomodations
Banned discrimination on account of sex
Johnson supported despite risk of political harm
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Coalition of civil rights groups including SNCC, CORE and NAACP launched voter registration drives
Hundreds of white Nothern college students traveled to Mississippi to take part
Violence against the students included firebombs, beatings
Freedom Summer
Local deputy sherrif responsible for actions against…
…Michael Schwerner
…Andrew Goodman
…James Chaney
Highlighted the federal governments inability to protect rights
Murder of Freedom Summer Activists
Campaign to take seats from Mississippi’s all-white official party
Rejected a proposed compromise from Hubert Humphrey to seat two blacks
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
MFDP rallied behind Johnson’s campaign
Barry Goldwater critisized the New Deal welfare state, calling for substitution of private charity for public welfare
Johnson won 61% of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes
Goldwater won 38% of the popular vote and 52 electoral votes
Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress
Election of 1964
Repealed a 1963 law banning racial discrimination in real estate
Protected the “freedom” of property owners
California Proposition 14
Conservative student group
Developed the Sharon Statement advocating…
…free market
…limited government
…opposition to communism
Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)
Position developed by a group of 90 members of YAF including…
…free markets underpin “personal freedom”
…government must be strictly limited
…“international communism” must be destroyed
Sharon Statement
Goldwater’s success in five states in the Deep South in the Election of 1964
Nixon later emphasized law and order and traditional values
Beginnings of “Southern Strategy”
Starting point for march organized by Martin Luther King to secure voting rights for blacks
Marchers confronted by state police on a bridge – police used cattle prods, whips, tear gas
Television broadcast the violence
Selma, Alabama
on the way to Montgomery
Allowed federal officials the right to register voters
Enabled black southerners to final regain suffrage
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Outlawed the poll tax
Twenty-fourth Amendment
Reformed immigration law by abanding the national-origins quota system
Established new, racially neutral criteria for immigration
Established limit of 120,000 immigrants from Western Hemisphere and 170,000 from the rest of the world
Created category of “illegal aliens”
Hart-Celler Act of 1965
Johnson’s aggressive program to attack the major social problems
Included Medicaid, Medicare,
creation of the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts
Great Society
Federal program to provide health services to the poor
Medicaid
Federal program to provide a form of health insurance for retired and disabled
Medicare
Term for Johnson’s focus in the Great Society to eliminate poverty
War on Poverty
Book revealing that 40-50 million American lived in poverty
Technological improvements had eliminated unskilled jobs and locked some Americans into poverty
The Other America
by Michael Harrington
Office of Economic Opportunity program to provide funidng for early childhood education
Intended to prepare children of poor parents for kindergarten
Head Start
“the man who is hungry, who cannot find work or educate his children, who is bowed by want, that man is not fully free.”
Lyndon Johnson
at the Democratic National Convention
Uprisings in 1965 involving 50,000 persons who attacked police and firemen and looted white businesses
Ultimately required 15,000 national guardsmen to return order
35 people died, 900 injured, $30m in property was lost
Watts Riots
Released in 1968 and blamed violence and rioting on “segregation and poverty”
Emphasized white institutions created American ghettos
Did not offer clear proposals for change
Kerner Report
King backed effort in 1966 to…
…end discrimination by employers and unions
…provide equal access to mortgages
…construct low-income housing
Failed due to opposition by Richard Daley
Chicago Freedom Movement
Emerged as a leader of the second phase of civil rights
Preached message of white evil and black self-discipline
Dropped his slave surname of Little
Became a critic of integration and nonviolence
Malcolm X
Members are called Black Muslims
Founded by Elija Muhammad
Preached Islamic principles plus black pride
Nation of Islam
Term used first by Stokely Carmichael in 1966
Rallying cry for bitterness over federal government failure
“Black Power”
Founded in Oakland, California in 1966
Advocated armed self-defense in response to police brutality
Demanded the release of black prisoners
Promoted militant black power and ran social programs
Founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton
Black Panther Party
Group that rejected earlier intellectual and political categories including the Soviet Union as a model
Spoke of loneliness, isolation, alienation, powerlessness
Galvanized by 7m students attending college in 1968
New Left
Book that provided the angry voice of the black revolution
The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
Book criticizing urban renewal and the removal of poor from cities
Argued that density and diversitymade cities alive
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacob
Formed in 1962 and part of the “New Left” movement
Offshoot of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy
Wrote the Port Huron Statement calling for a greater role for university students
Students for Democratic Society (SDS)
Manifesto of the SDS
Called for greater role for university students
Rejected the traditional role of the university and current American foreign policy goals
Critisized a range of institutions including political parties, corporations, unions, the military-industrial complex
Port Huron Statement
“We seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life”
SDS in Port Huron Statement
Thousands of Berkeley students became involved in protests which evolved into a critque of the entire structure of the university
Free Speech Movement
Prohibited political groups
Prompted students to create the Free Speech Movement
University of California Berkeley
“I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.
Lyndon Johnson
Authorized Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repeal” the Vietnamese
Passed without any discussion of American goals or strategy
Prompted by a North Vietnamese patrol boat attack on an American vessel that actually never happened
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Success with 22,000 troops gave Johnson more confidence to pursue a greater investment in troops in Vietnam
Domincan Republic
U.S. troops exceeded 500,000
North Vietnamese mistreated American prisoners of war
U.S. dropped more bombs than all of World War II
Chemicals used to destroy forests
“Search and destroy” missions did not distinguish between combatants and civilians
Vietnam War in 1968
Term used to describe the New Left’s expanded definition of freedom including the rejection of…
…belief in authority
…rejection of elders
Included a massive redefinition of freedom with the rallying cry of “liberation”
Counterculture
Urged the crowd in San Francisco to:
“Turn on, tune in, drop out”
Timothy Leary
Festival attended by 400,000 people
Celebrated music and harmony
Included acts by Pete Townshend and others
Woodstock
Restarted the feminist movement
Wrote The Feminine Mystique
First president of the National Organization for Women
Betty Friedan
Book that painted a devestating picture of talented women trapped by marriage and motherhood
Written by Betty Friedman
Became the bible of the feminist movement
The Feminine Mystique
Barred sex discrimination among holders of the same job
Equal Pay Act of 1963
Group that publicized inequalities for women in the workplace and worked to create opportunities
Demanded equal opportunity in jobs, education, politics
Later turned to social issues and efforts to pass the ERA
First president was Betty Friedman
National Organization for Women
Name for women in the women’s liberation movement who pressed for change and established “consciousness-raising” groups
“Bra Burners”
Collection of essays published in 1970 pointing out violence against women, inequalities in the law
Sisterhood is Powerful
Gay rights organization founded in 1951 by Harry Hay
Purpose was to persuade the public that sexual preferences should not be persecuited
Mattachine Society
Leader of the first gay rights group, the Mattachine Society
Harry Hay
Police raid at this gay club in Greenwich Village led to five days of riots
Stonewall Bar
Son of migrant workers who led nonviolent protests including a national boycott of California grapes
Drew national attention to low wages and bad working conditions
Pressured the growers to agree to contracts with the United Farm Workers
Cesar Chavez
Negotiated with growers to secure better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers
United Farm Workers
Protests in 1968 demanding greater tribal self-government and restoration of economic resources guaranteed in treaties
Indians brought land claims, demanded monetary settlements
American Indian Movement
Launched by the American Indian Movement
Red Power Movement
Book warming of the dangers of DDT
Chemical companies launched a campaign to discredit
Written by Rachel Carson and helped spark the birth of the modern environmental movement
Silent Spring
Trio of bills supporting environmentalism put in place by a bipartisan Congress
Clean Air Act
Clean Water Act
Endangered Species Act
Led the consumer movement
Wrote Unsafe at Any Speed which exposed auto manufacturers practices
Highlighted the risk of the Chevrolet Corvair rolling over
Ralph Nadar
Book by Ralph Nadar highlighting the dangers of the Chevrolet Corsair and the auto manufacturers in general
Unsafe at Any Speed
June 17, 1957
Surpreme Court reigned in anticommunist crusade, overturning HUAC related convictions
“Red Monday”
Court decision to strike down southern laws that sought to destroy civil rights organizations by having them make their membership lists public
NAACP v. Alabama
Court overturned libel judgment by Alabama jury against the New York Times, which had carried an advertisement critical of local officials
Court also declared the Sedition Act of 1789 unconstitutional
Created modern constitutional law of freedom of the press
New York Times v. Sullivan
Court found laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional
Judge had given them the option to leave Virginia
Loving v. Virginia
Court forbade discrimination in the rental or sale of housing
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.
Court established that an individual in police custody must be informed of rights including…
…right to remain silent
…right to confer with a lawyer before answering questions
…statements could be used in court of law
Miranda v. Arizona
Court ruled that districts electing members of state legislatures must be equal
“One-man, one-vote” overturned apportionment systems
Baker v. Carr
Court overturned state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives based on constitutionally protected “zone of privacy” within marriage
“The right to be let alone is the beginning of all freedom” Justice William O. Douglas
Griswold v. Connecticut
Court ruled woman’s right to privacy underlay the legalization of abortion
Created a constitutional right to terminate a pregnacy
Roe v. Wade
Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops launched uprisings in January 1968 which surprised American military leaders
United States drove back but the intensity of the fighting shattered the public’s confidence in the Vietnam War and in Johnson’s leadership
Tet Offensive
April 4, 1968
Civil rights leader killed by white assassin
King Assassination
Congress passed to prohibit discrimination in the sale and rental of homes
Open Housing Act
10,000s came to Chicago to protest
Chicago police assaulted the marchers and eight political radicals were charged
Delegates nominated Hubert Humprhrey for president
Democratic National Convention
Name for group that was charged and tried for disrupting the Democratic National Convention
Their conviction was overturned
Chicago Seven
Nixon campaigned as the champian of this group who were ordinary Americans who believed change had gone too far
“Silent Majority”
Nixon won 43.2% of the popular vote and 301 electoral votes
Humphrey won 42.6% of the popular vote and 191 electoral votes
Wallace won 12.9% of the popular vote and 46 electoral votes
Election of 1968
