Difference between revisions of "American History Lecture Twelve"

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Beginning in 1950, Joseph McCarthy became the most visible public figure to stand up to Communist infiltration of the United States government.  He is now considered an American hero by many, though liberals still seek to tarnish his name. He claimed that large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers were engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States inside the federal government.  Ultimately, his detractors, including the Communist Party, were able to organize an effective effort to have him censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's attempts to expose Communists, was soon applied to similar dogmatic pursuits.  
 
Beginning in 1950, Joseph McCarthy became the most visible public figure to stand up to Communist infiltration of the United States government.  He is now considered an American hero by many, though liberals still seek to tarnish his name. He claimed that large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers were engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States inside the federal government.  Ultimately, his detractors, including the Communist Party, were able to organize an effective effort to have him censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's attempts to expose Communists, was soon applied to similar dogmatic pursuits.  
  
Edward R. Murrow "famous newsman in 1950s who criticized ""McCarthyism"" (overzealous claims of guilt by association w/Commun.)"
+
Edward R. Murrow, a famous liberal newsman in 1950s, criticized "McCarthyism" (overzealous claims of guilt by association with Communism.)
  
 
Law enforcement agents informed President Franklin Roosevelt of the truth about Alger Hiss, but he reacted by swearing at Whittaker Chambers, and refused to do anything about Hiss.
 
Law enforcement agents informed President Franklin Roosevelt of the truth about Alger Hiss, but he reacted by swearing at Whittaker Chambers, and refused to do anything about Hiss.

Revision as of 14:07, November 24, 2008

Lecture - Questions - Student Answers

This lecture will cover....

Review

Let's start by reviewing some key points from the Cold War.

The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 required every Communist organization to register with the Attorney General. Members of these organizations were not allowed to work in any national defense related job.

Beginning in 1950, Joseph McCarthy became the most visible public figure to stand up to Communist infiltration of the United States government. He is now considered an American hero by many, though liberals still seek to tarnish his name. He claimed that large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers were engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States inside the federal government. Ultimately, his detractors, including the Communist Party, were able to organize an effective effort to have him censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's attempts to expose Communists, was soon applied to similar dogmatic pursuits.

Edward R. Murrow, a famous liberal newsman in 1950s, criticized "McCarthyism" (overzealous claims of guilt by association with Communism.)

Law enforcement agents informed President Franklin Roosevelt of the truth about Alger Hiss, but he reacted by swearing at Whittaker Chambers, and refused to do anything about Hiss.

Hiss remained in powerful government positions until a series of internal memos generated by J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI finally forced Hiss out. But the public never learned about this until Congressman Richard Nixon (like Chambers, a Quaker) held public hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1948, after the Republicans had gained control of Congress in the 1946 elections. At first Hiss made the public laugh at Nixon’s committee, but when Chambers produced microfilm stored in a pumpkin on his Maryland farm to prove Hiss’s involvement the last laugh belonged to Nixon. He rode his anti-communism success to become Vice President under Eisenhower and eventually President in 1968. Hiss went to jail for perjury. Democrats never forgave Nixon’s combative tactics and eventually they caught Nixon doing something illegal, whereupon the Watergate scandal forced him to become the only president ever to resign (in 1973). The anti-communist reaction movement was also important in shaping Ronald Reagan's career, and he became president in 1980.

Several in our class have described communism as being good in theory, but bad in practice. But consider that communism requires coercion and force to enforce its requirement of equal wealth regardless of talents and efforts. That is anti-Christian in several important ways, starting with free will and ending with the unimportance of wealth to God. Also, communism inevitably requires suppressing religion, churches, private schools and homeschooling in order to ensure conformity of beliefs.

Post World War II

The return of all the soldiers from war was a time of great joy for the nation. Families were reunited. Soldiers quickly married and began to have families.

Cars were plentiful and there were good interstate roads. In 1940, the first multi-laned superhighway had been built in Pennsylvania, known as the "Pennsylvania Turnpike." The federal government helped pay for these roads and they still work well to this day.


Full Employment Act 1946: watered-down version of fed. govt. backing full employment

Marshall Plan "1947: financial assistance to European economies struggling from WWII, Communists reject it"

Jackie Robinson "1947: broke ""color barrier"" by becoming first black baseball player in Major Leagues, for Brooklyn Dodgers" Organization of American States 1947: Latin American organization incl. US to handle issues


After World War II ended in 1945, the nation was anxious to get back to normal. But President Truman kept government controls on wages and prices in effect even after the war ended. This infuriated voters, who wanted to return to normal life as quickly as possible. In the fall elections of 1946, voters dealt President Truman a huge loss and returned the Republicans to control of Congress for the first time since before the Great Depression. This new Republican-controlled Congress began, as all new Congresses do, in 1947.

80th Congress

The most productive and influential session of Congress in American history was probably the 80th Congress, despite claims by Truman and the media to the contrary. (Note that a "session" of Congress is the two-year period between is elections; each session is numbered starting with the first Congress in 1789. The 80th Congress convened 79 times 2 (160) years after the First Congress in 1789, which is 1789 plus 158, which equals 1947.)

The Republicans then moved quickly to pass important legislation. They passed (and the states ratified) the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in order to limit future presidents to two full terms in office, so that no one could ever again repeat what President Franklin Roosevelt did in dishonoring President Washington's precedent of no more than two terms. President Roosevelt died in office only a few months after inauguration, as his illness was concealed from the American people and they were deprived an opportunity to vote in an informed manner for the person who would really become president.

The 22nd Amendment also has an effect of reducing the power of the president while he is in office. It requires by law that he leave by a time definite, in contrast with congressmen and justices who have no set limit. That shifts power from the presidency to the other branches of government. By limiting the duration in power of any particular president, the 22nd Amendment limits the extent of his power to control and influence others.

The Republicans also passed, over President Truman’s veto, the Taft-Hartley Act to limit the power of unions. This was one of the most important pieces of legislation in the entire century of the 1900s, and by far the most significant labor legislation in our history. By 1947 unions had risen to the zenith of their power, having membership of nearly 10.5 million nationwide.

The Taft-Hartley Act did the following:

  • established the right of employees NOT to join unions in states that also supported this right
  • a union could represent all employees only if state law permitted it and a majority of workers voted for it
  • unions must give 60 days notice before striking
  • the federal government could prohibit a strike for 80 days if it endangered national health or safety
  • a later amendment in 1959 prohibited “secondary boycotts,” which were devastating “sympathy strikes” against additional companies to increase pressure on target company

For the purposes of American history, simply remember that the Taft-Hartley Act finally ended the unions' enormous power. And not a moment too soon, because crippling strikes hurt the country's economy in 1946 after the end of World War II. Ever since passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, Democrats have tried to repeal it, without success.


others achievements: tax cuts, balanced budget, joint income tax return............ps

CORE 1942:Congress of Racial Equality joined in struggle of African Americans banding together against segregation Truman – steel mill case Harry S Truman "Dem. Pres. 1945-52, pushed civil rights, protected South Korea, fired Gen. MacArthur, seized steel mills" Servicemen's Readjustment Act "1944: ""GI Bill"" pays for soldiers' higher education" Bretton Woods/World Bank July 1944: 44 nations set up International Monetary Fund


In the first election after World War II in 1946, while Truman was president, Republicans won back control of Congress. Truman had been slow in repealing the wage and price controls in place during WW II, and Republicans benefited politically from his mistake. The Republicans then passed an amendment to the Constitution limiting future presidents to two terms in office, so that no future presidents could break Washington’s precedent of serving only two terms. FDR served nearly four terms, and Republicans made sure that would not happen again.

In 1947, Truman announced what became known as Truman Doctrine to counter the communist threat: “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” Assistance shall be “primarily through economic and financial aid.” Also in 1947, a theory of “containment” to keep communism from spreading beyond Russia became popular. But communism continued to spread. China became communist in 1949.

In the late 1950s, communism spread to a country less than 100 miles from the United States: Cuba. Cuba was the country at the center of the Spanish-American war under President McKinley. We hold a military base there to this day (Guantanamo Bay). But in 1959, Fidel Castro led a communist revolution on the island and subsequently killed his opponents. He has ruled the country as a brutal dictator ever since, imprisoning or killing those who disagree with him.

In the 1950s and especially just prior to the revolution, many Cubans fled to the United States to escape Castro. Ever since many have also fled Cuba by boat, risking their lives in the ocean between Cuba and Florida. These emigrants from Cuba are some of the most fervent opponents of communism because they see how communism destroyed their own country. Many of them long to return to Cuba to restore freedom to their nation.

President Eisenhower developed a secret or “covert” plan to free Cuba from its communist dictatorship. When Kennedy became president after the 1960 election, he continued the plan. It consisted of having about a thousand “Cuban exiles” who had been forced to leave Cuba form an army to invade and overthrow Castro. But President Kennedy backed away from the plan at the last minute, and apparently someone in the United States government leaked the planned invasion to Castro. He waited with a much bigger force and captured or killed the Cuban exiles when they invaded at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961. President Kennedy was thereby humiliated in front of the world.

President Kennedy was himself assassinated two years later in 1963 by a communist sympathizer, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had once tried to become a citizen of the Soviet Union and who was in favor of Castro. An official commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren later concluded that Oswald acted alone, but unanswered questions remain concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. An independent poll conducted in 2003 (by ABC) showed that 68% of Americans believed that the government covered up the real truth about this assassination and that Oswald did not act alone.


We begin by reviewing the homework returned today (week 9). In the first question, there was an error in the book. In World War I, Italy was initially on the side of Germany, but later joined the war on the side of the Allies (England, France, Russia and United States). Please review the model answers for this and all the questions.

What is uniquely American? Jazz. Baseball. Fast food. Nuclear weapons. Country and Western music. Motion pictures. Basketball and football. Two that the class missed identifying: (1) the Mormon religion and (2) national parks. They are also uniquely American. And how about this one: a constitutional form of government?

Why study history? To avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Also, history is fun. History can give us vision about what we should be doing. It is useful and enriches our experiences. Learning history provides insight into the future. Studying history is one of the best hobbies that one can develop. Much of the Bible is history, and many study it constantly. History can also be inspirational, providing motivation for us to do more after learning how others sacrificed so much to accomplish things.


What is the most important event in America in the current decade 2000-2010? The terrorist attack of 9/11? President Bush’s elections? Change at the Supreme Court? Or this class? Do not think that history is something that involves only other people. You shape history too.

Consider the history of the United States to be like a child who grows into an adult. At what age would you expect a baseball player to hit his first home run? At what age would you expect a country to be old enough to have a prolonged Civil War? At what age would you expect a country to be able to lead the world? Put things in perspective and realize that we had to be 180 years old before we could write a Constitution, and over 300 years old before we could become the most powerful nation in the world. But once our country grew old enough, our enemies began to grow from within (e.g., infiltration by anarchists, communists and, more recently, terrorists).

Be able to identify overall trends in our history. One trend is ever-increasing federal power. Another trend is inflation. A third trend is increased democracy. A fourth trend is increasing power in the world. A fifth trend is the Supreme Court pushing us away from our religious roots. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools. Many consider this to be one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions ever.

Also understand history as a struggle between two sides. It is like two wrestlers combating each other on a mat. The wrestlers rotate on the map as each one tries to gain an advantage on the other. Same for the two political parties: they rotate their regional support over the years. At the time of the Civil War, the Republican Party dominated in the North and the Democratic Party dominated in the South. Now it is the opposite.

We have seen several important figures who were Quakers: William Penn, Susan Anthony (who favored women’s right to vote), Whittaker Chambers and Richard Nixon. What was the Quaker religion really about? It was Protestant against Protestantism. Every Quaker is his own pastor; every Quaker is his own church using the Bible and his “inner light.” This led to a fierce independence in the character of Quakers, including a pacifism (opposition to war) by the Quakers in the eastern United States.

What “drives” or “leads” or “causes” history? Do politicians lead or follow? Do writers of books lead or follow? What’s the real cause of history?

Many would say “culture” is what drives history. In other words, what is considered “cool” to people. What is considered to be fun, enjoyable, fashionable, acceptable, etc. The movies we watch, the books we read, the activities we pursue, the styles, the festivals, the communication, etc.

In the 1950s, it was “cool” to conform. Everybody wanted to be like everyone else. Everybody dressed the same. Everybody had the same style haircut. Every man wanted to get a job with General Motors or IBM, where the workers wore a white shirt every single day to work.

You got ahead in life in the 1950s by doing what you were told. By not making waves. Tired of war, people wanted to make some money, have a happy family life, and then retire. People look back on the 1950s with much nostalgia, as though it were a better time. Television shows like “Leave it to Beaver” depict the culture. The most popular television show in the late 1970s was “Happy Days,” which was about growing up in the 1950s. An adult named Ron Howard played the happy-go-lucky teenager “Ritchie Cunningham.”

On July 13, 1950, Time magazine put a man named William Levitt on its cover. Using rapid construction techniques that he mastered as a Seabee in the Pacific, Levitt built an entire town of thousands of identical houses on Long Island, called “Levittown”. It was immediately a huge success. A post war housing crunch and the low prices of the Levittown homes led many young couples to move there. They liked living in houses just like the houses around them. They could work in jobs in New York City or on Long Island. Life seemed pretty good.

This was the “baby boom” (1946 to 1964). Having put off marriage and children due to the Great Depression and World War Two, young men and women married, settled down, and began families. The number of baseball Little Leagues nationwide increased from 776 in 1950 to 5,700 by 1960. It was a time of great prosperity. People obtained jobs and earned money. The country grew stronger.

But criticism of the culture in the 1950s emerged. One evening in 1955 in a book shop in San Francisco, a man named Allen Ginsberg stood up to read a long poem called the “Howl”. It was an attack on the conformity, materialism and hypocrisy of the 1950s. This was the beginning of the “Beat Generation,” captured best in Jack Kerouac’s book “On the Road.” The Beat Generation advocated freedom, drugs, and being different. The name comes from “beat-up” lives of its leaders.

By the 1960s the Beat Generation had blossomed into the hippie counterculture. Grow your hair long, violate laws, disobey your parents, take drugs, go to rock concerts, have sex, and do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it. Every form of authority was rejected by hippies. Many of the leaders died of drug overdoses. Others ended up in jail, or caught sexual diseases. They had slogans like “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and sold books with titles like “Steal this Book.” Rock music started to advocate drug use. Movies changed for the worse. While the 1950s culture was about conforming, the 1960s culture was about rebelling.

The hippies had help from our political leaders. In 1962, the Supreme Court prohibited prayer in public schools, in a case called Engel v. Vitale. Our grandparents who went to public school before then in New Jersey used to say the Lord’s Prayer. The Supreme Court excluded God from our public schools and they have declined ever since.

The United States also had to confront Communism abroad. In 1960, The CIA hatched a plan for an invasion of Cuba that they thought would ignite a spontaneous rebellion against Fidel Castro. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower recognized the flaws of the plan and refused to approve it. However, Democrat President John F. Kennedy gave the CIA the green light, and the result was the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs.

A year later, the U.S. discovered that the USSR had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from the US mainland. President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, and for several days, the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear war. Finally, the USSR withdrew their missiles from Cuba.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and President Lyndon B. Johnson (“LBJ”) was sworn into office in November 1963. He was a tough Texan used to giving orders. He increased greatly our involvement in the Vietnam War, but would not let the military generals direct the war in a manner to win it. Instead, President Johnson would issue the orders for bombings and military maneuvers from the White House. Unfortunately, he didn’t know much about war, particularly guerrilla warfare.

Vietnam is a huge country: 81 million people, more than North and South Korea combined. Vietnam is also a jungle. The Communists had planted land mines everywhere. A substantial percentage of our casualties in the Vietnam War were from stepping on land mines.

We entered the war on the side of South Vietnam against the North Vietnamese, who were backed by China and the Soviet Union. We won every battle we fought. But in the jungle warfare, we were not any closer to winning after years of struggle.

Our leaders mishandled everything about the war. We would win a battle and then our leaders would call for a “cease-fire” to discuss settlement. But the Communists had no intention of settling, and they would just use the cease-fires to obtain replacement of all their ammunition and supplies from China and the Soviet Union.

The war became hugely unpopular, and people from all walks of life began protesting against in the United States. They caused disruption at colleges. The protests became bigger and bigger. Democratic President LBJ was in the White House, but he just kept fighting the war. He became obsessed with bombing North Vietnam, but wouldn’t let our generals win the war completely. Instead, LBJ insisted on ordering some bombing raids here and there without doing what was necessary to win the war. Later politicians swore that we should never repeat the mistake of Vietnam, which means we should never enter a war unless we are committed to doing what is necessary to win it. Later Presidents also avoided LBJ’s mistake of dictating detailed military strategy from the White House.

The hippies protested the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The tough Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, used police to arrest and beat up the protesters. The media turned this into a major embarrassment for the Democratic Party. By then LBJ had failed so badly with the war that he had to withdraw from the presidential race. By then the leading Democratic candidate (Robert F. Kennedy) had been assassinated by someone disgruntled over the Middle East. Ultimately Richard Nixon won the presidential race when a third party candidate (George Wallace) siphoned votes away from the Democratic nominee (Hubert Humphrey).

The Reverend Martin Luther King, who was a minister advocating greater rights for African Americans, was assassinated in 1968. Our society seemed to be falling apart. In 1969, news reports from Vietnam shocked the nation with a story about how American soldiers had murdered villagers in the “My Lai massacre.” The story was that our soldiers would unsuccessfully look for North Vietnamese, known as “Viet Cong,” but in their frustration in finding the real enemy would allegedly kill innocent people instead.

At Kent State University in 1970, peaceful protesters were shot at by National Guardsmen and several were killed. The United States began looking for ways to get out of the war. When we finally pulled out completely in 1973, South Vietnamese clung to the wheels of the last airplanes, begging to leave with us. North Vietnam eventually conquered South Vietnam after we left (Saigon fell to the communists in 1975), and created the new communist country of Vietnam that exists to this day.


The hippie culture had its effect in legalizing abortion. Previously, the leaders of the women’s rights movement had opposed abortion. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were opposed to abortion. Democratic President Jimmy Carter was (and is) against it, but did nothing about it as president. Alice Paul, a famous advocate of women’s rights in the 1920s, called abortion “the ultimate exploitation of women.”

But the culture of “me first” and “do whatever you want” led to laws legalizing abortion in New York, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska. The big change came in the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade (1973), where the Justices said that the U.S. Constitution provides for a right to abortion. Our Constitution does not support abortion, and even our textbook mistakenly says the right was based on the 4th Amendment. That is wrong. The Supreme Court said abortion is in the “penumbra” (shadowy area) of the Bill of Rights. First the Supreme Court had turned its back on God in the school prayer decision of Engel v. Vitale in 1962, and then it turned its back on the image of God by legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

By the middle of 1973, 30 states had ratified the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment.” This proposed amendment provided that:

Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The House of Representatives had passed this Amendment by a 354-24 margin. The Senate had passed it by a margin of 84-8. Both political parties favored it; all presidents until Ronald Reagan supported it; and the media strongly backed it. Its ratification by 3/4ths of the states (38 states), as required to amend the Constitution, seemed inevitable.

But a handful of conservative women met in a hotel near Chicago O’Hare airport on July 7, 1972, to discuss ways to stop the amendment. One woman proposed naming the movement, “Stop Taking our Privileges” or simply “STOP ERA.” The name stuck.

First they slowed the momentum of the passage of the amendment by state legislatures. After 30 states passed it in 1972 and 1973, only 3 passed ERA in 1974. Just one passed it in 1975, none in 1976, and only one in 1977. That brought the total to 35, just three shy of the 38 needed for ratification. Meanwhile, the states of Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Dakota were persuaded they had made a mistake, and they passed laws nullifying or rescinding their acts.

Deceptively attractive in its “equality” language, ERA was defeated by considering how it could legalize same-sex marriage and abortion, and even require equal use of women in military combat. Additional arguments against ERA included its transfer of power to the court system to interpret its meaning, and its transfer of power from states to Congress to enforce it.

The defeat of ERA helped elect a conservative president, Ronald Reagan, who had opposed it. Meanwhile, the hippie movement had already begun to decline in the 1970s, and by the time Ronald Reagan took the White House in 1981, it was no longer cool to be a hippie.

Key terms to cover in this lecture

Korean War "1950-53: Chinese intervention forced us to settle; 54,000 Americans died"

General Douglas MacArthur "led a front against Japan in WWII; oversaw Japan afterwards, led Korean War, fired by Truman"

McCarran-Walter Immigration "1952: passed over Truman's veto, affirms nat'l-origins quota system of 1924 and limits total annual immig "

  & Nationality Act	  to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920

Dwight D. Eisenhower "1952-60: Repub. Pres. kept New Deal, backed civil rights, warned against growth of ""military-industrial complex"" "

Earl Warren "1953: activist Chief Justice, appointed by Eisenhower based on deal due to Warren's support as Governor of Calif."

SEATO "1954: Southeast Asia Treaty Organiz., designed to stop advance of communism in Southeast Asia (e.g., Vietnam)"

Brown v. Board of Education "1954: ended segregation in schools, overturned Plessy v. Ferguson"

AFL-CIO "1955: massive merger of labor organizations, important in Dem. Party today"

Montgomery Bus Boycott "1955-56: Wouldn't let Rosa Parks have seat, massive bus boycott for over a year until Sup. Ct. ended segregation"

Beat culture 1950s: growing culture of young people in rebellion against the conformity of the Eisenhower era

Eisenhower Doctrine 1957: U.S. would use armed force to oppose Communist aggression in Middle East

Domino Theory "one country falls to Communism, then like dominos its neighbors will fall"

MAD 1950s-90s: Cold War theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (by nuclear war) to deter aggression by Soviets or US

NASA 1958: government-run space program with goal of landing a man on the moon

Landum-Griffin Act 1959: requires democracy in electing union officials; prohibits secondary boycotts; restricts picketing

Fidel Castro "1959: Communist revolutionary who took control of Cuba, Khrushchev threatened to drop atom bomb if we intervened"

U-2 spy planes that secretly flew over USSR; crash in 1960 hurt rapprochement (reconciliation) between US & USSR

Sputnik "USSR space program that was ahead of ours, caused concern. First launch in 1957."

John F. Kennedy "1961-63: Dem. Pres. cut taxes, mishandled Bay of Pigs; handled Cuban Missile Crisis; assassin. in Dallas"

OPEC "1960: Arabs monopolized oil with their Org. of Petrol. Export. Countries and then caused shortage, hurting economy"

Sit-ins 1960: organized protests of refusal by restaurants in South to serve African Americans; began in North Carolina

Alliance for Progress 1961: foreign aid by Kennedy to help solve problems of Latin America

Bay of Pigs "1961: failed attempt by Cuban refugees, with US backing, to topple Castro"

Berlin Wall 1961: East Germans sealed off their section of Berlin from Western section to stop people from fleeing

Peace Corps "1961: program to help poor nations by sending volunteers to teach farming, build schools"

Freedom Rides "May 1961: mixed races rode to end transp. segregation, from D.C. to LA, hit trouble in Alabama"

Project Apollo 1961-72: Kennedy's program to land a man on the Moon before the Russians.

Vietnam 1964-75: Americans lose 58k in fighting Communists. eventually Americans give up and leave

Engel v. Vitale 1962: Sup. Ct. prohibits official prayer in school

Baker v. Carr "1962: requires ""one man, one vote"" -- districts must have equal populations?"

The Other America "1962: Michael Harrington book exposes poverty: 1 out of 4 were poor, espec. Appalachia, South, & city ghettoes"

The Feminine Mystique 1963: feminist Betty Friedan's book that argued that popular magazines brainwashed women into domesticity

National Organiz. for Women "1966: Friedan founded it, known as ""NOW"", copying civil rights groups, but NOW demanded abortion rights, ERA"

Students for a Democratic Soc'y "1962: Port Huron, Mich mtg, students criticize society inherited: ""looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit"

James Meredith/Univ. of Mississ. "1962: first African American to attend the Univ. of Mississ., after riots and based on a Sup.Ct. order"

Cuban Missle Crisis "1962: planes detect missile launchers in Cuba, JFK blockades, USSR backs down"

Gideon v. Wainwright 1963: state must provide attorney to those charged with felony

"Martin Luther King, Jr." "advocated nonviolent resistance by African Americans, ""I Have a Dream"", killed 1968"

South. Christian Leadersh. Conf. "1957: Rev. Martin Luther King founded this group, leads Civil Rights Movement"

Student Nonviolent Coord. Com. "1960: estab. to organize sit-ins; scornful of integration and interracial cooperation; wanted ""black power"" in 1966"

Black Panthers "1966-early 70s: militant black group seeking civil rights, collected weapons to resist police"

March on Washington "1963: 250,000 march on Washington for Civil Rights"

Office of Economic Opportunity 1964: President Johnson ran program giving $1 billion for poverty relief

Civil Rights Act of 1964 "banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or gender in employment facilities"

Escobedo v. Illinois "1964: Sup. Ct. holds that, if requested, a lawyer must be present during police interrogation"

Free Speech Movement 1964: college students protest a number of injustices; began at U of CA @ Berkeley

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution "1964: Beginning of Vietnam just prior to 1964 elections, based on Truman Doctrine"

Lyndon Johnson "1963-68: Dem. Pres., enacted ""Great Society,"" wanted to end poverty using welfare, obsessed with Vietnam War"

Voting Rights Act "1965: guaranteed all the right to vote in federal elections, esp. for Southern blacks"

"""Great Society""" "1964: Johnson's new welfare programs: Medicare, Medicaid, Job Corps, arts schools"

Medicare and Medicaid 1965: government health insurance for everyone over 65 (Medicare): insurance for the poor (Medicaid)

Elem. & Sec. Ed. & High Ed. Acts "1965: federal funding for school districts, also Head Start for poor preschoolers"

Dept of Housing & Urban Dev't 1965: Created to develop and execute policy on housing and cities

Miranda v. Arizona "1966: estab. right of defendants to remain silent, have atty., hear rights"

Thurgood Marshall 1967: first African American Justice on the Supreme Court; had successfully argued for desegregation in Brown v. Bd.

Tet Offensive 1968-69: North Vietnamese raid 39 of 44 provincial capitals

Paris peace talks 1972-73: talks to end Vietnam War

Robert F. Kennedy (bro. of JFK) ran Dept. of Justice under JFK; destined to become Pres. in 1968 but assassinated by immigrant from Jordan

Democratic National Conv. "1968: protest riots in Chicago that were suppressed by Mayor Daley, publicity hurt Dems"

Chicago Seven hippies tried and convicted for disrupting Dem. 1968 conven. (overturned on appeal)

EPA 1970: Environmental Protection Agency estab. to conserve natural resources and reduce pollution

Roe v. Wade "1973: invented new constitutional ""right"" to abortion, over the objection of two Justices"

Richard Nixon "1968: Repub. Pres., former anti-Communist Congressman and VP, wins after 3rd party candidate siphons off votes"

Apollo 11 1969: lands on Moon to fulfill President Kennedy's promise War Powers Act "1973: Post-Vietnam, Congress says Pres. must get its approval w/in 60 days"

New York Times v. U.S. "1971: denies Pres. power to stop publication of Pentagon Papers (a secret, embarrassing study of US in Vietnam)"

Furman v. Georgia "1972: invalidates death penalties, requires high standards and guidelines before imposing the death penalty"

Henry Kissinger "1969-77: powerful Sec'y of State under Nixon and Ford, dictated US foreign policy as Nixon and Ford deferred to him"

"""Vietnamization""" 1969: Nixon gave planes to South Vietnam so that it could defend itself; strategy was unsuccessful

Strategic Arms Limit. Trty (SALT) 1972: key arms-reduction agreement with USSR; accepts Mutual Assured Destruction; ratified by Senate

Comm. to Reelect the Pres. "1972: Pres. Nixon's reelection committee in 1972 that broke the law, caused Watergate; named ""CREEP"" by critics"

Watergate 1972-74: Burglary that led to cover-up that led to Nixon resigning

Spiro Agnew "1973: Nixon's VP, forced out based on corruption charges arising from when he was governor of Maryland"

Saturday Night Massacre 1973: Nixon wants special prosecutor Cox fired; 2 resign rather than fire Cox; Robert Bork eventually fires Cox

Nixon resigns "1973: Ct ordered his tapes released, and impeachment was likely, so Nixon resigned first"

Gerald Ford "1973-76: Repub., only unelected President; pardoned Nixon, signed Helsinki Accords to promote rights worldwide"

Jimmy Carter "1976-1980: Dem. Pres., honest antidote to Nixon scandal, boycotted Olympics, decried nat'l ""malaise"", high inflation"

Panama Canal treaties "1977: Carter agrees to give back Panama Canal to Panama after 1999, Senate approves"

Camp David Accords "1978: Carter gets Egypt and Israel to agree to peace, still in effect"

Three Mile Island "1979: Nuclear power plant's meltdown near Harrisburg, boosted anti-nuclear movement"

SALT-II "1972-79: Carter's treaty with USSR to reduce arms, never ratified by Senate"

Iran hostage crisis 1979-81: Iranian fundamentalists captured US embassy since Carter helped Shah; hostages released for Reagan

Equal Rights Amendment "1972-82: STOP ERA movement, led by Phyllis Schlafly, defeated it; issue helped defeat Carter in reelection"

Ronald Reagan "1980-1988: Repub. Pres.: less govt. regulation, more morality, tough with Communists; ""tear down this wall"" (Berlin)"