The Confident Years

1
The Confident Years

• 1953-1964

2
Cold War Continues

• Ike and Dulles
• Brinkmanship
• Instant massive retaliation
• Liberation
• Dulless talk not put into action
• Soviet rejection of Arms limitations
• Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center

3
John F. Kennedy and the Cold War

• Baby Boom
• Radical Egalitarianism
• Challenge hierarchy and authority
• Seen in media
• Political line set by on-air personalities rather
  than publishers
• Cut America loose from traditional moorings
• Seen clearly in media handling of 1960 election

4
1960 Election

• By historical standards Nixon should have been a
  media hero
• Pull yourself up by boot straps
• Youth (only four years older than Kennedy)
• Very experienced
• Media denigration
• Media sustained myth of JFK

5
Kennedy Mystique

• Media protected JFK
• Suppressed health problems
• Covered up JFKs writings
• Exploitation of women
• Ran on supposed Missile Gap uncommented by
  press

6
TV and 1964 Election

• Nixon was tired, unmade up, knee trouble
• Kennedy campaign exploited Nixons weakness
• Requested two candidates stand
• Demanded temperature kept high
• Close ups of Nixons sweaty brow and 5 oclock
  shadow

7
Kennedy wins by small margin

• 34,226,731 (49.9) to 34,108,157 (49.7)
• Evidence of voter fraud in Texas and Illinois
• Nixon asked Harold Tribune to discontinue series
  giving evidence to fraud

8
Kennedy Presidency

• Dominated by competition with USSR
• Kennedy staunchly anti-communist
• Inaugural address
• Hour of maximum danger for freedom
• pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
  hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to
  ensure the survival and the success of libery

9
Rhetoric to Reality

• Increased defense budget
• Increased nuclear stockpile
• Strengthened conventional weapons
• Created special forces the Green Berets
• Peace Corp
• Increased space exploration budget

10
Kennedys Presidency

• Bay of Pigs
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Getting into Vietnam

11
Bay of Pigs

• Jan 1959 Fidel Castro overthrows Batista
  government
• Soviet Armed and Trained
• Soviet style dictatorship
• 1000s flee
• Plan to arm 12,000 Cuban refugees known as the
  Cuban Liberation Corp to land at Bay of Pigs to
  incite popular uprising

12
Bay of Pigs Fiasco

• Disaster from start to finish
• Castro read about planned invasion in newspapers
• Castro met the invasion killed 114, imprisoned
  1,100
• Kennedy abandoned Cubans all later died in
  prison or executed.

13
Cuban Missile Crisis

• 1962 Evidence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba
• Krushchev lied about missiles
• 42 medium range missiles 24 long range
• 24,000 soviet troops
• Oct 1962 missiles were operational
• Blockade of Cuba deadline to remove missiles by
  Oct 24

14

• Military at Defcon- 2
• More than a 1000 aircraft placed for immediate
  take off with multi-megaton bombs
• Krushchev/ Kennedy Agreement
• All Free men, wherever they may live, are
  citizens of Berlin, and therefore as a free man,
  I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner

15
Historical Analysis

• Kennedy privately agreed to Soviet demands for US
  missile removal from Turkey and Italy
• 42,000 Soviet troops remained in Cuba
• Kennedy agreed to leave Cuba alone
• Kennedy could have demanded restoration of status
  quo ante

16
The Vietnam Domino

• French Colonization
• French attempt to reassert sovereignty after WWII
• Battle of Dien Bien Phu
• Geneva Peace Accords divides Vietnam

17
Kennedy and Vietnam

• Increases American forces to 16000
• Diem assassinated

18
Civil RIghts
19
Brown v. Board of Education

• Thurgood Marshall argued for the NAACP
• Unanimously overturns Plessy v. Ferguson
• Supreme Court orders district judges to monitor
  compliance
• Border and northern states complied southern
  states did no

20
Blow to Jim Crow

• Dec. 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her
  seat in the colored section
• Martin Luther King organizes boycott of busses
• Nov. 1956 Supreme Court upholds ruling that
  outlaws segregation

21
South Forced to Desegregate

• Sept 1957 Arkansas Democrat Governor mobilized
  National Guard to block entrance to school
• Angry mobs harassed black students
• Eisenhower federalized national guard and
  dispatched regular troop
• Outside south, 90 of whites approved

22
Struggle for Black Equality

• 1957 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Civil disobedience inspired by Ghandi
• The Sit-in
• Freedom Ride
• Desegregation campaigns in Burmingham
• March on Washington (1963)

23
Civil Rights Act (1964)

• Banned racial discrimination and segregation in
  public space
• Outlawed bias in federal funded programs
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• Pushed through congress by Republican Everett
  Dirksen (il)