This section outlines the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, including their foreign and domestic policies.
Coming into the first televised Presidential debate, John F. Kennedy had spent time relaxing in Florida while Richard Nixon maintained a hectic campaign schedule. As a result, Kennedy appeared tan and relaxed during the debate while Nixon seemed a bit worn down. Radio listeners proclaimed Nixon the better debater, while those who watched on television made Kennedy their choice.
Like King Arthur and Guinevere, a dynamic young leader and his beautiful bride led the nation. The White House was their home, America their kingdom. They were John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy.
President Kennedy faced a confident Soviet Union and a sleeping giant in the People's Republic of China. Fears of communist expansion plagued American foreign policy in places as distant as Vietnam and as close as Cuba. Like his predecessors, Kennedy made containment his chief foreign policy goal.
On November 22, 1963, a wave of shock and grief swept the United States. While visiting Dallas, President Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet. Millions of Americans had indelible images burned into their memories. The bloodstained dress of Jacqueline Kennedy, a mournful Vice-President Johnson swearing the Presidential oath of office, and dozens and dozens of unanswered questions.
Lyndon Baines Johnson moved quickly to establish himself in the office of the Presidency. Despite his conservative voting record in the Senate, Johnson soon reacquainted himself with his liberal roots. LBJ sponsored the largest reform agenda since Roosevelt's New Deal.
Details events of 1968, including the presidential election and the Assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Unlike his predecessor, Richard Nixon longed to be known for his expertise in foreign policy. Although occupied with the Vietnam War, Nixon also initiated several new trends in American diplomatic relations. Nixon contended that the communist world consisted of two rival powers the Soviet Union and China. Given the long history of animosity between those two nations, Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger, decided to exploit that rivalry to win advantages for the United States. That policy became known as triangular diplomacy.
In the 1960s, the first baby boomers entered college. These students were the largest class of young Americans ever to enter the halls of ivy. Unlike the "Silent Generation" of 1950s youth, the baby boomers were vocal about reforming democracy in the United States and the American presence abroad.
Not every woman wanted to wear pearls and bring her husband his pipe and slippers when he came home from work. Some women wanted careers of their own, and began to fight for this in the 1960s.
This section discusses birth control and the enhanced sexual freedoms that came with it in the 1960s.
The fight over the Equal Rights Amendment did not pit women against men it pitted two ideologies against eachother.
No topic related to the feminist movement has aroused such passion and controversy as much as the right to an abortion. In the 1960s, there was no federal law regulating abortions, and many states had banned the practice entirely, except when the life of the mother was endangered.
A century of full-fledged industrialism in America had taken its toll on the environment. Concerned citizens began to appeal in earnest to protect more of the nation's wilderness areas. Emissions into the atmosphere were creating smoggy haze rings above many metropolitan centers. Trash was piling up. Many Americans felt free to deposit waste from their increasingly disposable society along the sides of the roads. In the climate of social activism, the 1960s also became a decade of earth action.
The 1960s broadened the traditional definition of civil rights, as the politics of identity exploded in the United States. As African Americans and women demanded much needed reforms, other groups who felt on the margins of American society organized as well. The climate was conducive to change, and many felt the need to seize the moment. Latino Americans, Native Americans, and gay Americans demanded fair treatment and inclusion under the banner of civil rights.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) became the leaders of the antiwar movement in America. Drawing support from the civil rights movement, SDS chapters organized local demonstrations on college campuses and marches to the steps of the Capitol Building. They worked in inner cities to provide free lunches and participated in voter drives to turn out the African American electorate in the Deep South. In addition to these causes, the movement was concerned with student rights. Many universities required a dress code, curfews, and restrictions on free speech. As SDS advocated a freer society, they pointed their arguments to their deans as well as their political representatives.
Never more than a minority movement, the so-called "hippie" lifestyle became synonymous with American youth of the 1960s. Displaying frank new attitudes about drugs and sex, communal lifestyles, and innovations in food, fashion, and music, the counterculture youth of America broke profoundly with almost all values their parents held dear.
Something was terribly wrong in America in the 1970s. The United States was supposed to be a superpower, yet American forces proved powerless to stop a tiny guerrilla force in Vietnam. Support for Israel in the Middle East led to a rash of terrorism against American citizens traveling abroad, as well a punitive oil embargo that stifled the economy and forced American motorists to wait hours for their next tank of gasoline.
During his years in office, Nixon had brought a controversial end to the Vietnam War, opened communication with Red China, watched NASA put astronauts on the moon, and presided over a healing period in American history in the early 1970s. Despite these many accomplishments, Watergate's shadow occludes Nixon's legacy.
Nothing fuels a strong case of malaise like a sputtering economy. The United States had grown accustomed to steady economic growth since the end of World War II. Recessions were short and were followed by robust economic growth. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans faced an economy that could result in a lower standard of living for their children.