Chapter 29: Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the Ordeal of...

Chapter 29: Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the Ordeal of

Liberalism

OBJECTIVES

o We will study the Civil Rights Movements focus on voting rights.

o We will studying the growing militancy of the Civil Rights Movement.

o We will examine Kennedy’s flexible response doctrine for the Cold War.

o We will study the early involvement in the United States during Vietnam.

Pro_15:1 A soft answer turneth

away wrath: but grievous words

stir up anger.

The Battle for Voting Rights:

o Having won a significant victory in one

area, the civil rights movement shifted

its focus to another; voting rights.

o During the Summer of 1964, thousands

of Civil Rights workers, black and white,

northern and southern spread out

through the South, but primarily in

Mississippi, to work on behalf of black

voter registration and participation.


o The campaign was known as freedom summer and it produced a violent response from Southern whites.

o Three of the first freedom workers to arrive in the South-two white, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and one African American, James Chaney were brutally murdered by Ku Klux Klan members with the support of local police in Neshoba, County Mississippi.


o In March 1965, King helped organize major demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, to press the demand for the right for blacks to register to vote.

o Selma sheriff Jim Clark led local police in brutal attack on the demonstrators which similar to Birmingham, received graphic television coverage and horrified many viewers across the nation.


o Two northern whites participating in

the Selma march were murdered in

the course of the effort there.

o One, a minister beaten to death in the

streets of the town; the other a Detroit

housewife, shot as she drove along a

highway at night with a black

passenger in her car.


o The national outrage that followed the events in Alabama helped push Lyndon Johnson to purpose to win passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, better known as the Voting Rights Act,

o Which provided federal protection to blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote.


o But important as such gains were,

they failed to satisfy the rapidly rising

expectations of African Americans as

the focus on the movement began to

move from political to economic

issues.

The Changing Movement:

o As more African Americans were moving to the cities, poor urban communities in which the black population was concentrated in, were getting significantly worse.

o Well over half of all American nonwhites lived in poverty at the beginning of the 1960s; black unemployment was twice that of Whites.

The Changing Movement: o By the mid-1960s, the issue of race was

moving out of the South and into the rest of the nation.

o The battle against school desegregation had moved beyond the initial assault on de jure segregation (segregation by law).

o To an attack on de facto segregation (segregation in practice, as through residential patterns), thus carrying the fight into northern cities.

The Changing Movement: o Many African American leaders and

their white supporters, were demanding, similarly that the battle against job discrimination move to a new level.

o Employers not only should abandon negative measures to deny jobs to blacks;

o They also should adopt positive measures to recruit minorities, thus compensate for past injuries.

The Changing Movement:

o Lyndon Johnson gave his tentative

support to this concept called

“Affirmative Action,” that became

federal policy for the next decade.

Urban Violence:

o Martin Luther King sought to bring

national attention to the plight of

housing and employment

discrimination in northern industrial

cities in Chicago.

o But King failed to capture the

national consciousness, and white

residents were vicious and

sometimes violent in their opposition.

Urban Violence:

o The first large race riot since the

end of World War II occurred

following summer in 1965 in the

Watts section of Los Angeles.

o At a routine traffic arrest, a white

police officer struck a protesting

black bystander with his club.

o The incident triggered a storm of

anger and a week of violence.

Urban Violence:

o White motorists were attacked,

buildings burned, stores looted and

police were shot at.

o Thirty-four people died and the

National Guard had to step in to

restore order.

o Of the dead, 28 were black.

Urban Violence:

o The violence spread to other

cities such as Chicago and

Cleveland.

o In the summer of 1967, there

were eight major outbreaks

including the largest of them all

a racial clash in Detroit in which

forty-three people died.

Urban Violence: o Televised reports of the violence

alarmed millions of Americans and created both a new sense of urgency and growing sense of doubt among many of those whites who had embraced the cause of racial justice only a few years before.

o A special federal commission concluded massive spending to eliminate the abysmal conditions of ghettos was advisable.

Urban Violence: o Disillusioned with the ideal of peaceful

change in cooperation with Whites an increasing number of African Americans were turning to a new approach to the racial issue: the philosophy of black power.

o Black power could mean many different things.

o But in all its forms, it suggested a move away from interracial cooperation and toward increased awareness of racial distinctiveness.

Urban Violence:

o It was part of a long nationalist

tradition among African Americans

instilling African American pride and

the rejection of cultural practices

borrowed from white society.

o It also brought a schism in the Civil

Rights Movement.

Urban Violence: :

o As the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality who were once moderate became more militant and radical.

o They broke away from more integrationist minded organizations such as the SCLC and NAACP to call for radical and often violent action against racism and of white society.

Urban Violence:

o Particularly alarming was the Black Panther Party founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California who promised to defend black rights even if that required violence.

o Black Panthers were organized in semi-military lines wore weapons proudly and openly and caused fear in White America.

Urban Violence: o But the most eloquent spokesman of

Black Power was Malcolm X.

o A former drug addict and pimp who spent time in prison reformed his life and joined the Black Muslim sect called the Nation of Islam.

o The Nation of Islam taught African Americans to take responsibility for their own lives to live by strict codes of behavior and to reject any dependence on whites.

o "About this time, my mother began to be visited by some Seventh Day Adventists

who had moved into a house not too far down the road from us. They would talk

to her for hours at a time, and leave booklets and leaflets and magazines for her

to read. She read them, and Wilfred, who had started back to school after we had

begun to get the relief food supplies, also read a lot. His head was forever in

some book.

o "Before long, my mother spent much time with the Adventists. It's my belief that

what mostly influenced her was that they had even more diet restrictions than

she always had taught and practiced with us. Like us, they were against eating

rabbit and pork; they followed the Mosaic dietary laws. They ate nothing of the

flesh without a split hoof, or that didn't chew a cud. We began to go with my

mother to the Adventist meetings that were held further out in the country. For us

children, I know that the major attraction was the good food they served. But we

listened, too. There were a handful of Negroes, from small towns in the area, but I

would say that it was ninety-nine percent white people. The Adventists felt that we

were living at the end of time, that the world soon was coming to an end. But they

were the friendliest white people I had ever seen….” Autobiography of Malcolm X,

page 16-17.

Urban Violence:

o Malcolm was a powerful speaker who

was blunt in his assessment in race

relations.

o He insisted that black people had the

right to defend themselves, violently

if necessary, from those who

assaulted them.

Urban Violence:

o Malcolm was assassinated in 1965

after he broke away from the Nation of

Islam to become a mainstream Muslim.

o But he is revered in the African

American community at the level of

Martin Luther King today.

FLEXIBLE RESPOSNE AND THE COLD WAR:

o Diversifying Foreign Policy:

o The Kennedy administration entered

office convinced that the United

States need to be able to counter

communist aggression in more

flexible ways than the atomic-

weapons oriented defense strategy of

the Eisenhower years.

Diversifying Foreign Policy:

o Kennedy was unsatisfied with the nation’s ability to meet communist threats in the emerging areas of the Third World, the areas in which, Kennedy believed, the real struggle against communism would be waged in the future.

o He gave support in the expansion of Special Forces such as the Green Berets, troops trained to fight guerrilla conflicts and other limited wars.


o Kennedy also favored expanding American influence through peaceful means.

o To repair the badly deteriorating relationship with Latin America, he proposed an “Alliance for Progress” a series of projects for peaceful development and stabilization of the actions of that region.

o JFK also inaugurated the Agency for International Development (AID) to cooperate with foreign aid.


o Kennedy established what became

one of his most popular innovations:

o The Peace Corps which sent young

American volunteers abroad to work

in development areas.


o Among the first foreign policy ventures of the Kennedy administration was a disastrous assault on the Castro’s government in Cuba.

o The Eisenhower administration had begun the project; and by the time Kennedy took office, the CIA had been working for months to train a small army of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Central America.


o The mission was a failure when

Kennedy decided not to give

American military air support to

2,000 armed exiles who landed at

the Bay of Pigs, in Cuba.

o Kennedy was fearful of U.S.

involvement in the invasion.

o Cuban forces routed the exiles.

Confrontations with the Soviet Union:

o Kennedy traveled to Vienna in June

1961 for his first meeting with

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

o Their frosty exchange of views did

little to reduce tensions between

the two nations nor did

Khrushchev's veiled threat of war if

the U.S. continued to support a

noncommunist West Berlin in the

heart of East Germany.


o Khrushchev was unhappy of the mass exodus of East Germans to the West through the easily traversed border in the center of Berlin.

o But found a solution when he ordered the East Germans to construct a wall between East and West Berlin preventing any further exodus and those who attempting to escape were shot by guards.


o The rising tensions reached its

apex in the most dangerous and

dramatic crisis of the Cold War.

o On October 14, aerial

reconnaissance photos produced

clear evidence that the Soviets

were constructing sites for

offensive nuclear weapons in

Cuba.


o The Americans saw this an act

of aggression and on October

22, JFK ordered a naval and air

blockade around Cuba a

“quarantine” against all

offensive weapons.


o Preparations were under way for an American air attack on the missile sites.

o When late in the evening of October 26, Kennedy received a message from Khrushchev implying that the Soviets would remove the missile bases in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Cuba.

o The presidents agreed, the crisis was over.


o The chronology of events of the

Cold War during Kennedy’s

presidency was:

o the Bay of Pigs,

o Vienna summit,

o Berlin Wall,

o and Cuban Missile Crisis.

Johnson and the World:

o Lyndon Johnson entered the

presidency lacking Kennedy’s limited

prior experience with international

affairs.

o He was eager, therefore, not only to

continue the policies of his

predecessors but also to prove

quickly that he too was a strong and

forceful leader.

Johnson and the World:

o When a left wing nationalist was seeking to overthrow a conservative military government in the Dominican Republic.

o Without evidence claiming that it was a pro-Castro communist regime, Johnson sent 30,000 American troops to quell the disorder.

o Only after a conservative candidate won the election in 1966 did Johnson withdraw American forces.

The Agony of Vietnam:

o George Kennan, who helped devise

the containment doctrine that drew

America into war in Vietnam, once

called the conflict “the most

disastrous of all America’s

undertaking over the whole 200 years

of its history.”


o At first, Vietnam War seemed simply

one more Third World struggle on the

periphery of the Cold War.

o A struggle in which the United States

would try to tip the balance against

communism without becoming too

deeply or directly engaged.


o No single president really “decided”

to go to war in Vietnam.

o Rather, the American involvement

there emerged from years of

gradually increasing commitments

that slowly and almost

imperceptibility expanded.


o Vietnam had a long history of being

both an independent kingdom and a

major power in the region.

o In the mid-nineteenth century,

Vietnam was a colony of France that

fell to the Japanese in World War II.


o After the Japanese defeat, the nationalist

group led by Ho Chi Minh who was a

communist educated in Paris and

Moscow declared that Vietnam was an

independent nation and set up a

nationalist government in Hanoi.


o President Truman was pressured by the

British and French to help support

France’s effort to reassert Vietnam as a

colony.

o France arguing that Vietnam was

essential for its economy and the fact

that the revival of Western Europe’s

economies was a top priority of Truman

led both Truman and later Eisenhower to

support the French efforts.


o The French were ultimately defeated by the Vietnamese nationalists in a brutal siege in Dien Bien Phu.

o This was the First Indochina War.

o An international conference at Geneva planned many months before to settle the Korean dispute and other controversies, now took up the fate of Vietnam as well.


o The Geneva Conference produced an

agreement to end the Vietnam Conflict

without American participation.

o There would be an immediate cease fire

in the war; Vietnam would be

temporarily partitioned along the 17th

parallel with the Vietminh control of

North Vietnam and the pro-western

government in control of the South.


o In 1956, elections would be held to reunite the country under a single government.

o With the French leaving Vietnam, the U.S. stepped in.

o And help support the new government in the South, led by Ngo Dinh Diem.

o Diem was an aristocratic Catholic from Central Vietnam and was a nationalist that did not have ties with collaborating with France.


o The CIA help support his rise to power and the U.S. supported the South Vietnamese president’s refusal in 1956 to permit the elections called by the Geneva accords that Ho Chi Minh would easily win any such election.

o Ho was very popular in the more populous North and had support in the South as well.

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