The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964 marked the beginning of large-scale student protests across US campuses in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was still needed to enforce black voting rights. Despite gains, riots in Watts showed continuing tensions. US involvement in Vietnam escalated throughout Johnson's presidency despite growing domestic opposition, undermining his Great Society programs.

2. Learning Goal
0 CRN Benchmark: 13.11.3 S-
0 Identify the key ideas and evaluate the results of
popular protest movements of this era (Civil Rights
movement, resistance to the war in Vietnam)

3. The Free Speech Movement,
Berkeley, California, 1964. The
Free Speech Movement on the
campus of the University of
California at Berkeley marked
the first of the large scale student
mobilizations that rocked
campuses across the country
throughout the rest of the 1960s.
Here a student schooled in
passive resistance is dragged by
police to a waiting bus.

4. The LBJ Brand on the
Presidency
0 After prodding from President
Johnson, Congress passed the
landmark Civil Rights Act of
1964, banning racial
discrimination in most private
facilities open to the public.
0 It strengthened the federal
government's power to end
segregation in schools and other
public places.
0 It also created the federal Equal
Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) to eliminate
discrimination in hiring.
0 Part of the act's Title VII passed
with sexual clause ensuring some
special attention for women.

5. Affirmative Action
0 In 1965, President
Johnson issued an
executive order requiring
all federal contractors to
take "affirmative action"
against discrimination.
0 Included policies of the
government aimed at
increasing access to jobs,
schooling, and
opportunities to people
previously discriminated
against

8. The Great
Society
0 Johnson added proposals
of his own to Kennedy's
stalled tax bill to allow for
a billion-dollar "War on
Poverty."
0 He dubbed his domestic
program the "Great
Society" - a sweeping set
of New Dealish economic
and welfare measures
aimed at transforming the
American way of life.

9. Johnson Battles Goldwater
in 1964
0 The Democrats nominated
Lyndon Johnson to run for
president for the election of
1964.
0 The Republicans chose
Senator Barry Goldwater.
0 Goldwater attacked the
federal income tax, the Social
Security System, the
Tennessee Valley Authority,
civil rights legislation, the
nuclear test-ban treaty, and
the Great Society.

10. Goldwater and the Premier
Attack Ad
0 In the 1964 election, Republican Barry Goldwater campaigned on a right-
wing message of cutting social programs and aggressive military action.
0 Goldwater's campaign suggested a willingness to use nuclear weapons in
situations when others would find that unacceptable, something which
Johnson sought to capitalize on.
0 For example, Johnson used Goldwater's speeches to imply that he would
willingly wage a nuclear war, quoting Goldwater: "by one impulse act you
could press a button and wipe out 300 million people before sun down."
0 In turn, Goldwater defended himself by accusing Johnson of making the
accusation indirectly, and contending that the media blew the issue out of
proportion.
0 While Johnson wished to de-escalate the Vietnam War, Goldwater was a
supporter and even suggested the use of nuclear weapons if necessary.
0 The attack ad was designed to capitalize on these comments.

11. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
0 In August 1964 in the Gulf of
Tonkin, U.S. Navy ships had
been cooperating with the
South Vietnamese in raids
along the coast of North
Vietnam.
0 On August 2th and August
4th, two U.S. ships were
allegedly fired upon.
0 Johnson called the attack
"unprovoked" and moved to
make political gains out of the
incident.

12. Tonkin Gulf Resolution
0 He ordered a "limited"
retaliatory air raid against the
North Vietnamese bases.
0 He also used the event to spur
congressional passage of the
Tonkin Gulf Resolution;
lawmakers [Congress] virtually
gave up their war-declaring
powers and handed the
president a blank check to use
further force in Southeast Asia.
0 Lyndon Johnson
overwhelmingly won the
election of 1964.

13. TRUTH REVEALED
0 In 2005, an internal
National Security Agency
historical study was
declassified; it concluded
that the Maddox had
engaged the North
Vietnamese Navy on
August 2, but that there
were no North Vietnamese
Naval vessels present
during the incident of
August 4.
0 The report stated regarding
August 2:
0 At 1505G, Captain Herrick
ordered Ogier's gun crews to
open fire if the boats
approached within ten
thousand yards.
0 At about 1505G, the Maddox
fired three rounds to warn off
the communist boats.
0 This initial action was never
reported by the Johnson
administration, which
insisted that the Vietnamese
boats fired first

14. No attack
0 Regarding August 4:
0 It is not simply that there is a different story as to what
happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In
truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but
the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2
0 US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara failed to inform US
President Lyndon B. Johnson that the U.S. naval task group
commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, had
changed his mind about the alleged North Vietnamese
torpedo attack on U.S. warships he had reported earlier
that day.
0 In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For all I
know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

15. 1964 Election
486 52

16. The Great Society Congress
0 Congress passed a flood of
legislation, comparable to output
of the Hundred Days Congress.
0 Escalating the War on Poverty,
Congress doubled the funding of
the Office of Economic
Opportunity to $2 billion.
0 Congress also created two new
cabinet offices: the Department
of Transportation and the
Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD).
0 The National Endowments for
the Arts and the Humanities was
designed to lift the level of
American cultural life.

17. Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965
0 The Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965
abolished the quota system that
had been in place since 1921.
0 It also doubled the number of
immigrants allowed to enter the
country annually.
0 The sources of immigration
shifted from Europe to Latin
American and
Asia. Conservatives charged
that the problem of poverty
could not be fixed with money
spent by the Great Society
programs, yet the poverty rate
did decline in the following
decade.

18. Giving Thanks for Medicare. An elderly woman showed her gratitude to
President Lyndon B. Johnson for his signing of the Medicare Bill in April, 1965,
providing basic medical care for the aged. In tribute to former president
Truman’s unsuccessful effort to pass a national medical insurance program
twenty years earlier, Johnson flew to Truman’s Missouri home to sign the bill
that he claimed would deliver “care for the sick and serenity for the fearful”. No
one acknowledged that Truman’s earlier plan had been much more
comprehensive or that Johnson, a young Texas congressman, had opposed it.

19. Battling for Black Rights
0 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave
the federal government more
power to enforce school-
desegregation orders and to
prohibit racial discrimination in all
kinds of public accommodations
and employment.
0 President Johnson realized the
problem that few blacks were
registered to vote.
0 The 24th Amendment, passed in
1964, abolished the poll tax in
federal elections, yet blacks were
still severely hampered from
voting.
0 Congress passed the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, banning literacy tests
and sending federal voter registers
into several southern states.

20. Watts Riot
0 Days after the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 was passed, a
bloody riot erupted in Watts, a
black ghetto in Los Angeles.
0 Blacks were enraged by police
brutality and burned and
looted their own
neighborhoods for a week.
0 The Watts explosion marked
increasing militant
confrontation in the black
struggle

21. MALCOLM X
0 Malcolm X deepened the
division among black
leaders.
0 He was first inspired by
the militant clack
nationalists in the Nation
of Islam.
0 He rallied black separatism
and disapproved of the
"blue-eyed white devils."
0 In 1965, he was shot and
killed by a rival Nation of
Islam.

22. Malcolm X. The charismatic
black leader was a
hypnotizing speaker who
could rivet and arouse crows
with his call for black
separatism. At the end of his
life, Malcolm began to temper
his separatist creed.

24. Black Power!
0 The violence or threat of
violence increased as the
Black Panther party
emerged, openly carrying
weapons in the streets of
Oakland, California.
0 Just as the civil rights
movement had achieved its
greatest legal and political
triumphs, more riots erupted.
0 Black unemployment was
nearly double than for whites.

25. Combating Communism in
Two Hemispheres
0 In April 1965, President Johnson sent 25,000 troops to the
Dominican Republic to restore order after a revolt against
the military government started.
0 Johnson claimed, with shaky evidence, that the Dominican
Republic was the target of a Castrolike coup.
0 He was widely condemned for his actions.
0 In February 1965, Viet Cong guerrillas attacked an
American air base at Pleiku, South Vietnam, prompting
Johnson to send retaliatory bomb raids and, for the first
time, order attacking U.S. troops to land.
0 By the middle of March 1965, "Operation Rolling
Thunder" was in full swing - regular full-scale bombing
attacks against North Vietnam.

26. South Vietnam’s Woes
0 The South Vietnamese watched as
their own war became more
Americanized.
0 Corrupt and collapsible
governments fell one after
another in Saigon, yet American
officials continued to talk of
defending a faithful democratic
ally.
0 Pro-war hawks argued that if the
United Sates were to leave
Vietnam, other nations would
doubt America's word and
crumble to communism.
0 By 1968, Johnson had put more
than 500,000 troops in Southeast
Asia, and the annual cost for the
war was exceeding $30 billion.

27. Overburdened
0 Over commitment in Southeast
Asia tied America's hands
elsewhere.
0 In June 1967, after numerous
military threats presented by
Egypt, Israel launched a pre-
emptive attack on Egypt's air
force, starting the Six-Day
War.
0 Following the war, Israel
gained the territories of the
Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip,
and the West Bank.
0 Arab Palestinians and their
Arab allies complained about
Israel's doing, but all to no
avail.

28. Vietnam Vexations
0 Antiwar demonstrations
increased significantly as
more and more American
soldiers died in the Vietnam
War.
0 Protesters' sayings included,
"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids
did you kill today?”
0 Senator William Fulbright
staged a series of televised
hearings in 1966 and 1967 in
which he convinced the
public that it had been
deceived about the causes
and "winnability" of the war.

30. A Most Unpopular War
0 When Defense Secretary
McNamara expressed discomfort
about the war, he was quietly
removed from office.
0 By early 1968, the war had
become the longest and most
unpopular foreign war in the
nation's history.
0 The government failed to explain
to the people what was supposed
to be at stake in Vietnam.
0 Casualties, killed, and wounded
had exceeded 100,000, and more
bombs had been dropped in
Vietnam than in World War II.

31. The Vietnam Quagmire. Marine PFC Phillip Mark Wilson of Wolforth, Texas,
carries a rocket launcher across a stream near the “demilitarized zone” [DMZ] that
separated North and South Vietnam. Wilson was killed in action soon after this
photo was taken, just five days after his 21st birthday.

32. Goodbye to Civil Liberties
0 In 1967, Johnson
ordered the CIA to spy
on domestic antiwar
activists. He also
encouraged the FBI to
turn its
counterintelligence
program, code-named
"Cointelpro," against
the peace movement.

33. Vietnam Topples Johnson
0 In January 1968, the Viet Cong
attacked 27 key South Vietnamese
cities, including Saigon.
0 The Tet Offensive ended in a
military defeat for the VC, but it
caused the American public to
demand an immediate end to the
war.
0 American military leaders
responded to the attacks for a
request of 200,000 more troops.
0 President Johnson himself now
began to seriously doubt the
wisdom of continuing to raise the
stakes.

34. President
Lyndon
Johnson
Haunted by
Specters of
Vietnam, 1967

35. Tet Offensive
0 1968; National Liberation Front and North
Vietnamese forces launched a huge attack on the
Vietnamese New Year (Tet), which was defeated after
a month of fighting and many thousands of casualties;
major defeat for communism, but Americans reacted
sharply, with declining approval of LBJ and more anti-
war sentiment

37. An Era of New Democrats
0 Eugene McCarthy and Robert F.
Kennedy both entered the race
for the 1968 Democratic
presidential nomination.
0 On March 31, 1968, President
Johnson issued an address to
the nation stating that he
would freeze American troop
levels and gradually shift more
responsibility to the South
Vietnamese themselves.
0 Bombing would also be scaled
down.
0 He also declared that he would
not be a candidate for the
presidency in 1968.

38. Johnson Declines the
Nomination

39. The Assassination of MLK JR
0 On April 4, 1968,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
was shot and killed by a
sniper in Memphis,
Tennessee.
0 Black voter registration
eventually increased,
and by the late 1960s,
several hundred blacks
held elected office in the
Old South.

40. The Presidential
Sweepstakes of 1968
0 On June 5, 1968, the night of the California primary, Robert Kennedy was
shot and killed by an Arab immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan, resentful of the
candidate's pro-Israel views.
0 When the Democrats met in Chicago in August 1968, angry antiwar
zealots, protesting outside the convention hall, violently clashed with
police.
0 Hubert H. Humphrey, vice president of Johnson, won the Democratic
nomination.
0 The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon for president and Spiro T.
Agnew for vice president.
0 The Republican platform called for a victory in Vietnam and a strong
anticrime policy.
0 The American Independent party, headed by George C. Wallace, entered
the race and called for the continuation of segregation of blacks.

42. The Siege of Chicago, 1968. Antiwar protesters staged demonstrations in the streets of
Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August, 1968. Some 2,500 members
of the radical Youth International Party [known as the Yippies] planned a peaceful “festival
of light” across the street from the convention hall, but instead found themselves drawn in
a melee with the police and National Guardsmen. The confrontation badle tarnished
Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. His Republican
opponent Nixon, won the presidency with calls for an “honorable peace” in Vietnam and
“law and order” at home.

43. Victory for Nixon
0 Richard Nixon won the
election of 1968 as
Humphrey was scorched
by the LBJ brand.
0 Nixon did not win a single
major city, attesting to the
continuing urban strength
of the Democrats, who also
won about 95% of the
black vote.

44. Election of 1968

45. The Obituary of Lyndon
Johnson
0 No president since Lincoln had done
more for civil rights than LBJ.
0 By 1966, the Vietnam War brought
dissent to Johnson, and as war costs
sucked tax dollars, Great Society
programs began to wither.
0 LBJ was persuaded by his advisors that
an easy victory in Vietnam would be
achieved by massive aerial bombing and
large troop commitments.
0 His decision to not escalate the fighting
offended the "hawks," and his refusal to
back off altogether provoked the
"doves."

46. The Cultural Upheaval of
the 1960s
0 Everywhere in 1960s
America, a newly negative
attitude toward all kinds of
authority took hold.
0 Disillusioned by the
discovery that American
society was not free of
racism, sexism,
imperialism, and
oppression, many young
people lost their morals.

47. Radical Protests
0 One of the first organized
protests against established
authority took place at the
University of California at
Berkeley in 1964, in the
Free Speech
Movement. Leader Mario
Savio condemned the
impersonal university
"machine."
0 Angered by the war in
Vietnam, some middle class
sons and daughters became
radical political rebels.

48. The Sexual Revolution
0 The 1960s also
witnessed a "sexual
revolution."
0 The introduction of the
birth control pill made
unwanted pregnancies
easy to avoid.
0 “Whether a woman has
children or not is the
biggest single
determinant of whether
she's educated or not,
poor or not, and healthy
or not,…” –Gloria
Steinem

49. Gays Become Militant
0 By the 1960s, gay men
and lesbians were
increasingly emerging
and demanding sexual
tolerance.
0 The Mattachine
Society, founded in
1951, was an advocate
for gay rights.

50. The Stonewall Riots
0 Stonewall Rebellion
(1969) Uprising in
support of rights for gay
people sparked by an
assault by off-duty police
officers at a gay bar in New
York. The rebellion led to a
rise in activism and
militancy within the gay
community and furthered
the sexual revolution of the
late 1960s.
“Let's pay them off!"

51. The First Gay Pride Parade, New York City, 1970. On the first anniversary of
homosexuals’ celebrated resistance to police harassment at the Stonewall Inn, on
June 27, 1969, two hundred men and women marched from Greenwich Village to
Central Park, initiating a tradition that now has spread to many other American
cities and around the globe, attracting thousands of paraders, onlookers, and even
prominent politicians.

52. Worries in the 1980s of AIDS
and other sexually
transmitted diseases finally
slowed the sexual revolution.

54. Societal Unrest
0 Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), had, by the
end of the 1960s, spawned an
underground terrorist group
called the Weathermen.
0 The upheavals of the 1960s
could be largely attributed to
the three Ps: the youthful
population bulge, protest
against racism and the
Vietnam War, and the
apparent permanence of
prosperity.