New Frontier

1
New Frontier Great Society

• Not all legislation on domestic issues during the
  1960s concerned civil rights. Kennedy's programs,
  known as the New Frontier, and Johnson's, known
  as the Great Society, continued and expanded upon
  traditions begun during Franklin Roosevelt's New
  Deal of the 1930s.

2
Kennedy

• Following the successful launch of a Soviet
  cosmonaut in 1961, the first man in space,
  President Kennedy committed the nation to a space
  program with the goal of landing a person on the
  moon by the end of the 1960s.
• In July 1969, six years after Kennedy's death,
  that goal was met when astronaut Neil Armstrong
  stepped onto the moon's surface.
• The effort had cost some 25.4 billion.

3
Kennedy

• The Peace Corps program sent thousands of
  American volunteers to developing nations where
  they trained local people in technical,
  educational, and health programs.
• The Peace Corps program was intended to offset
  the growth of communism in such nations.
• The program is still in existence.
• . . . My fellow citizens of the world ask not
  what America will do for you, but what together
  we can do for the freedom of man. . . .-John F.
  Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

4
Johnson

• The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)
  program was meant as a domestic Peace Corps,
  aiding poor citizens in rural and impoverished
  areas.

5
Johnson

• The Office of Economic Opportunity set up in
  1964, was a directing agency in President
  Johnson's War on Poverty.
• Its branches included Project Head Start (to
  provide education for preschoolers from
  low-income families), Project Upward Bound (to
  assist high-school students from low-income
  families to attend college), and the Job Corps
  (to provide vocational training for high school
  dropouts)

6
Johnson

• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed
  in 1965 was a measure that provided more than 1
  billion in federal aid to education, with the
  greatest share going to school districts with
  large numbers of students from low-income
  families.
• Sections of the bill required that schools
  accepting the money be integrated.

7
Johnson

• Medicare Amendments to the Social Security Act
  provided health insurance and some types of
  health care to those over the age of 65.
• A Medicaid program provided states with funds to
  help the needy who were not covered by Medicare.

8
Johnson

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development
  was a cabinet post that was meant to oversee
  federal efforts to improve housing and aid
  economic development of cities.
• Its first head, Robert C. Weaver, was the first
  African American to hold a cabinet post.

9
Foreign Policy in the 1960s

• United States foreign policy under Kennedy and
  Johnson continued Truman's cold war policy of
  containment of communism.
• As you remember, the United States has been
  deeply involved in the affairs of Latin America
  since early in its history. Latin American
  nations often resented such intervention, and
  United States policies have left a legacy of
  anger and hostility.

10
Kennedy and Latin America

• Kennedy hoped to improve relations with Latin
  America and stop the spread of communism there
  through the Alliance for Progress, which pledged
  20 billion to help economic development in the
  region.
• However, funds often went to aid repressive
  governments simply because they were
  anticommunist.

11
Kennedy and Latin America

• After President Kennedy took office, he approved
  a CIA plan to overthrow Fidel Castro, the
  communist leader of Cuba.
• The plan called for Cuban exiles supplied with
  U.S. arms, material, and trainingto invade Cuba
  and set off a popular uprising against Castro.

12
Kennedy and Latin America

• The invasion took place on April 17, 1961, at a
  location called the Bay of Pigs, about 90 miles
  from Havana.
• No uprising followed, and Castro's troops quickly
  crushed the invading forces, to the embarrassment
  of Kennedy and the United States government.

13
Kennedy and Latin America

• Fearing another U.S. invasion attempt, Castro
  agreed to a Soviet plan to base nuclear missiles
  aimed at the United States in Cuba. Kennedy
  learned of the plan while the bases were under
  construction.
• On October 22, 1962, he announced a naval
  blockade of Cuba and demanded that the Soviets
  withdraw the missiles. The Cuban missile crisis
  brought the United States and the Soviet Union to
  the brink of war, but the Soviets backed down and
  withdrew their missiles.

14
Kennedy and Latin America

• Fearing another U.S. invasion attempt, Castro
  agreed to a Soviet plan to base nuclear missiles
  aimed at the United States in Cuba. Kennedy
  learned of the plan while the bases were under
  construction.
• On October 22, 1962, he announced a naval
  blockade of Cuba and demanded that the Soviets
  withdraw the missiles. The Cuban missile crisis
  brought the United States and the Soviet Union to
  the brink of war, but the Soviets backed down and
  withdrew their missiles.

15
Kennedy and Latin America

• Kennedy had clearly demonstrated that the United
  States would not tolerate a Soviet presence in
  the Western Hemisphere just 90 mile, from its
  shores.
• By doing so, Kennedy also helped the nation
  recover some of the prestige it had lost in the
  failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

16
Kennedy and Latin America

• In 1963, the United States, Soviet Union, and
  Great Britain signed a nuclear test ban treaty in
  which they agreed not to test nuclear weapons in
  the air, in outer space, or under the sea.
• Underground testing was permitted.

17
Kennedy and Berlin

• Since World War II, the division of Germany into
  a Communist East Germany and a democratic West
  Germany had added to cold war tensions.
• President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita
  Khrushchev met in Austria in June 1961 to discuss
  relations between the United States and the
  Soviet Union.

18
Kennedy and Berlin

• Khrushchev thought that the Bay of Pigs disaster
  revealed American weakness, and he tried to
  threaten Kennedy into removing NATO troops from
  Europe. Instead, Kennedy increased U.S. military
  and financial commitment to West Germany.

19
Kennedy and Berlin

• Response to the American moves came in August
  1961, when the East German government built a
  wall between East and West Berlin.
• The Berlin Wall was meant to stop the flood of
  East Germans escaping to freedom in the West and
  quickly became a symbol of tyranny.

20
Kennedy and Berlin

• In June 1963, Kennedy visited West Berlin,
  renewing the American commitment to defend that
  city and Western Europe.
• In a famous speech, he said that he and all
  people who wanted freedom were citizens of Berlin.

21
Kennedy and Berlin

• The Berlin Wall stood as a strong cold war symbol
  until 1989.
• In that year, political change sweeping through
  Eastern Europe led East Germany to tear down the
  wall.
• By October 1990, the rapid political changes in
  the region had led to the reunification of the
  two Germanys as a single nation for the first
  time since the end of World War II.

22
Kennedys Death

• Kennedy's energetic voice for world democracy and
  his multilingual wife, Jacqueline, helped to make
  friends for the United States in many areas of
  the world.
• His tragic and unexpected assassination in
  November 1963 caused an outpouring of grief from
  around the world as dozens of foreign heads of
  state came hurriedly to Washington, D.C., for
  Kennedy's funeral.

23
Vietnam War

• Fear of communist expansion led the United States
  to become deeply involved in Southeast Asia.

24
Kennedy and Vietnam

• President Kennedy shared Eisenhower's belief in
  the domino theory.
• He, therefore, continued to support the Diem
  regime.
• By 1963, the number of United States "advisers"
  in South Vietnam totaled about 17,000.
• That year, 489 Americans died in the fighting in
  Vietnam.

25
Involvement

• American advisers urged Diem to adopt reforms to
  broaden his support.
• Diem, however, brutally suppressed all opponents
  and ruled as a dictator.
• On November 2, 1963, the South Vietnamese
  military overthrew Diem, with the knowledge and
  approval of the United States.

26
Involvement

• Around the same time, the White House announced
  that it intended to withdraw all United States
  military personnel from Vietnam by 1965.
• Kennedy was unable to keep this promise, because
  he was assassinated in 1963.

27
Johnson and Escalation

• Under the constitution, only Congress can declare
  war.
• However, in 1964, three PresidentsEisenhower,
  Kennedy, and Johnsonhad sent United States aid
  and troops into Vietnam.
• Each did so by acting as the
• commander in chief of the nation's military
  forces.

28
Tonkin Gulf

• On August 4, 1964, President Johnson escalated
  the war dramatically .
• He announced on television that American
  destroyers had been the victim of an unprovoked
  attack by North Vietnamese gun boats. (It later
  appeared that the ships might have been
  protecting South Vietnamese boats headed into
  North Vietnamese waters.)

29
Tonkin Gulf

• The next day, Johnson asked Congress for the
  authority to order air strikes, against North
  Vietnam.
• With only two dissenting votes, Congress passed
  the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
• The resolution empowered "the President, as
  commander in chief, to take all necessary
  measures to repel any armed attack against the
  forces of the United States and to prevent
  further aggression.

30
Tonkin Gulf

• Johnson used the resolution to justify expansion
  of the war.
• By April 1965, U.S. planes regularly bombed North
  Vietnam.

31
War

• At first, United States military leaders expected
  that the nation's superior technology would
  guarantee victory.
• However, they soon found themselves bogged down
  in a guerrilla war fought in the jungles of
  Southeast Asia.
• The enemy did not wear uniforms, and no clear
  battlefront emerged.

32
War

• Thousands of Vietnamese casualties occurred each
  month as the United States dropped more bombs on
  Vietnam, an area about twice the size of New York
  State, than it had used on Nazi Germany during
  the heaviest months of fighting during World War
  II.
• Laos shares a long border with North Vietnam.
• During the Vietnam War, the dense jungle terrain
  made it difficult for U.S. and South Vietnamese
  forces to cut off the supply lines that ran
  between Laos and North Vietnam.

33
Reasons for War

• The massive commitment in Vietnam raised
  questions in the minds of many Americans about
  why the United States got involved in Vietnam and
  why it stayed there.
• The administration argued that the United States
  was involved in Vietnam to prevent the fall of
  Vietnam to communism, to stop the rise of
  aggressor governments, and to protect the
  nation's position as a superpower and defender of
  democracy.

34
Reasons for War

• However, as the war dragged on, many Americans
  began to question these motives.

35
Resistance to War

• By late 1965, an antiwar movement had begun to
  take shape in the United States.
• In Congress, there were differences of opinion
  concerning the war. Some stood solidly behind the
  President and argued in favor of victory at any
  cost. These members were known as hawks.
• Those who favored immediate withdrawal and an end
  to the war were known as doves.

36
Student Protests

• College campuses became centers of political
  protest against the war.
• Students organized a new form of protest called
  teach-ins, or meetings in which speakers, usually
  promoting unconditional American withdrawal from
  Vietnam, held study sessions and rallies.

37
Student Protests

• The strongest antiwar group in the 1960s was
  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), founded
  in 1960. SDS was antiestablishment, or against
  big business and government. It led
  demonstrations, sit-ins, draft-card burnings, and
  protests against universities with
  "pro-establishment" regulations.
• By 1969, the organization had collapsed into a
  number of splinter groups. However, SDS's legacy
  of protest against authority remained a strong
  force into the 1970s.

38
Protest Marches

• People of all ages joined in protest marches
  against the war. The first huge march took place
  in Washington, D.C., in 1965.
• In 1967, some 300,000 Americans marched in New
  York City. That same year, another 50,000 tried
  to shut down the Pentagon.

39
Draft Resisters

• By 1968, about 10,000 draft resisters, people
  unwilling to serve in the military after being
  drafted, had fled the country for Canada.
• The nation's youth became increasingly divided as
  some chose to fight for the United States in
  Vietnam, while others sought deferments to go to
  college.

40
Draft Resisters

• A large number of minorities, who could not
  afford the cost of college, responded to the
  draft and went to Vietnam.
• The attitude of American youth became
  increasingly hostile toward the Johnson
  administration and all war-related issues.

41
1960s

• Some political analysts who studied the events of
  1968 believed the nation had survived one of the
  biggest tests to its political institutions since
  the Civil War.
• The 1960s had been shaped by two movements the
  civil rights movement and the antiwar movement.
  The political turmoil of the decade helped
  produce great social upheaval, especially among
  the nation's youth.

42
1960s

• Some young people became disillusioned with
  traditional American values. For the first time
  in United States history, thousands of Americans
  flaunted the use of illegal drugs, often
  popularized in rock music.
• Many young Americans referred to themselves as
  hippies or flower children. They claimed to be
  searching for a freer, simpler way of life.

43
1960s

• Communal living attracted thousands of youths who
  adopted lifestyles foreign to older Americans.
  Some spoke of a generation gap between youth and
  people over 30.
• The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War
  also divided Americans. The assassinations of
  Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
  heightened emotions.