Chapter 38 (JFK and LBJ/ 1960s)

• JFK's domestic Program was known as the "New Frontier"

  • Gave money to education, civil rights, healthcare programs
• Peace Corps - sent Americans to underdeveloped countries

  • humanitarian effort
• Bay of Pigs Invasion: JFK approves of CIA plan to invade Cuba to overthrow Castro

  • Fails TERRIBLY
• The Berlin Wall (1961) kept East Germans from fleeing to West Germany
• Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

  • naval blockade of Cuba to pressure the Soviets to remove missiles pointed toward the US
  • Resulted in the relaxation of tensions, detente.
• JFK created Flexible Response which increased spending on conventional weapons to maintain a variety of fighting tactics
• Lyndon B Johnson expanded the reforms of the New Deal in

  "The Great Society" program which sought to advance Civil Rights, unlike the new deal

  • Immigration reform
  • Civil Rights
  • Education funding
  • Medical help for the elderly
• LBJ created the Office of Economic Opportunity (antipoverty Agency)

  • Head Start program (created preschool)
  • Job Corps ( vocational education)
  • Literacy and legal programs
• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965: abolished the national origins quota system, allowed immigrants from any country to enter the US

  • IMPORTANT
• Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" exposed the use of pesticides (1962)

  • clean air and water acts created
• Freedom Rides

  • try to end segregation in bus facilities
• Grassroot Movements

  • kept up the pressure for change
• March on Washington (1963) MLK's famous "I have a dream" speech
• Civil Rights Act (1964) segregation illegal in all public facilities
• 24th Amendment outlawed collection of poll taxes
• Freedom Summer

  • helped African Americans register to vote in Mississipi
• Voting Rights Act 1965 ended efforts to prevent African Americans from voting in the south
• Tet Offensive (1968) - surprise attack by North Vietnam

  • created distrust of the government
• Stonewall Riots (1969) gave rise to modern gay rights movements
• Watts Riots (1965) broke out following an arrest of a black motorist by white police officers

  • Civil Right movement radicalizes
• Gulf of Tonkin INcident:

  • LBJ claimed US ship attacked by North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin
• True or False: Congress issued a "blank check" for LBJ to send ground troops into Vietnam?


  True