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Suggest pagesUS History/Contents/Kennedy and Johnson
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[edit] The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis
On April 17, 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched an attack on Cuba, using 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles. The exiles were to invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs in southwestern Cuba. The forces made many mistakes, and at the last moment, Kennedy was advised not to send air support, and he did not. The invasion was a complete failure and within days, Cuban forces crushed the U.S. troops. Kennedy never trusted military or intelligence advice again, and the Soviet Union concluded that Kennedy was a weak leader. The invasion also angered many Latin-American nations.
In 1962, the Soviet Union was desperately behind the United States in the arms race. Soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe but U.S. missiles were capable of striking the entire Soviet Union (missiles were located in Turkey). In late April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. A deployment in Cuba would double the Soviet strategic arsenal and provide a real deterrent to a potential U.S. attack against the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was looking for a way to defend his island nation from an attack by the U.S. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro felt a second attack was inevitable. Consequently, he approved of Khrushchev's plan to place missiles on the island. In the summer of 1962 the Soviet Union worked quickly and secretly to build its missile installations in Cuba.
The crisis began on October 15, 1962 when U-2 reconnaissance photographs revealed Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba. The next morning, Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. Immediately the executive committee (EX-COMM) made up of twelve of his most important advisers was formed to handle the crisis. After seven days of guarded and intense debate, EX-COMM concluded that it had to impose a naval quarantine around Cuba, which would prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
On October 22, Kennedy announced the discovery of the missile installations to the public and his decision to quarantine the island. He also proclaimed that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba.
On the 25th Kennedy pulled the quarantine line back and raised military readiness to DEFCON 2.
On the 26th EX-COMM heard from Khrushchev in an impassioned letter. He proposed the removing of Soviet missiles and personnel if the U.S. would guarantee not to invade Cuba.
October 27 was the worst day of the crisis. A U-2 was shot down over Cuba and EX-COMM received a second letter from Khrushchev demanding the removal of U.S. missiles in Turkey in exchange for Soviet missiles in Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy suggested ignoring the second letter and contacted Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to tell him of the U.S. agreement with the first.
Tensions finally began to ease on October 28 when Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba. Further negotiations were held to implement the October 28 agreement, including a United States demand that Soviet light bombers be removed from Cuba, and specifying the exact form and conditions of United States assurances not to invade Cuba.
[edit] NASA
After the launch of Sputnik and the success of Yuri Gagarin, America was behind in the Space Race. In May 1961, Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American to make a space flight. Kennedy lobbied for increased funding for space research. In an address to congress on May 25, 1961, Kennedy said, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
[edit] American Tragedy
On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was at a campaign rally in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy and his wife rode through the streets in an open car, turning into Dealy Plaza at Houston and Elm, and suddenly several shots rang out. Kennedy fell against his wife. The car sped to the nearest hospital, Parkland Memorial, but it was too late; the beloved President was dead. The nation was stunned. Shortly after, while on Air Force One, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office as President.
Although many "conspiracy theories" exist concerning this assassination, the rough consensus is that Kennedy's assailant, a young drifter and loner named Lee Harvey Oswald with left-wing sympathies, shot the President acting alone.
[edit] Americans in Vietnam
Like Eisenhower, Kennedy had viewed Vietnam as a crucial battle in the fight against communism. He sent many special forces troops to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese troops. Kennedy also put pressure on South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem to make political and economic reforms that would prevent communism from taking root in South Vietnam. After Diem refused to comply and restricted the rights of Buddhists (the majority religion in South Vietnam), he lost support, and a political coup ensued. Diem was assassinated on November 1, 1963.
At the end of November, the United States had almost 15,000 troops in Vietnam as advisers. The U.S. sent the Secretary of Defense on a fact-finding mission to find if involvement was still needed in Vietnam. He concluded that the South Vietnamese could not hold off the Vietcong, or Vietnamese communists, without more American backing. In 1964, Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese patrol ships attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, and Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President broad control over troops in Vietnam.
In 1965, Johnson gradually built up the involvement of America in Vietnam. At the end of 1965, about 180,000 troops were in Vietnam. By 1967, there were over 500,000. The U.S. also began a bombing campaign in North Vietnam, and by 1968, more bombs had been dropped than the U.S. had dropped in World War II.
As Americans fought the war, frustration mounted. Soldiers had to fight through dense jungles and muddy land. It also seemed that for every Vietcong or North Vietnamese killed, many more would be replacements. The bombing campaign in the North actually heightened the morale of the North Vietnamese rather than lowering it, and the United States' losses increased. By the end of the decade, many outraged American citizens angrily opposed and protested the war. Opposition to the war was growing in the capital, too. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara no longer believed that the war could be won.
At home, protesters, especially college students, became increasingly bitter about the war. Others who tended to be older and more conservative, defended the war and sought to suppress the "traitors." This division between the young and the old became known as the generation gap. Officials at the University of California tried to limit recruiting efforts of protesters, and students were outraged. They held a protest that stopped the school for days. This type of protest spread across the nation, and many related ideas and activists became known collectively as the New Left.
Many of those who made up the New Left also made up the counterculture, a movement that questioned basic American values and social customs. Parents found themselves increasingly disagreeing with their children. The counterculture was also expressed in pop culture, with many icons expressing the need for peace and reform.
Eventually, some adults came to resent the war. As adults began to disagree about the war more, they were called doves (those who wanted peace) and hawks (those who supported the war). Students also had a major gripe about the war: if the legal age to be drafted to go to war was eighteen, why was the legal voting age as high as twenty-one? Eventually, the twenty sixth amendment was passed in 1971, which met the demands of the students and lowered the legal voting age to 18.
Division in the country about the war became increasingly harsh and bitter. In October 1967, 50,000 people opposed to the war marched to the Pentagon in Washington D.C. to protest. Many students stuck flowers or other symbols of peace in the barrels of the guns held by those who guarded the pentagon. By the beginning of 1969, well over fifty percent of the nation opposed the war.
[edit] The "Great Society" and Civil Rights Under Lyndon B. Johnson
In January 1964, the new President Johnson made a series of proposals which he called the "Great Society" and began a "war on poverty." He signed many programs into law that helped Americans in poverty, that is, those who do not make enough money to survive. During this time two of the most important programs signed into law were Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provided cheap health insurance to senior citizens and Medicaid provided health insurance for the poor. Cities and school also received boosts with the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
[edit] Equal Rights
Protests were growing in the 1960's. Blacks and whites in high schools and colleges in the South and the North staged sit-ins, protests that are accomplished by sitting down and not being productive or letting people pass.
Another kind of protest was growing in the South. In 1961, groups of African Americans began riding buses from Washington D.C. that were bound for New Orleans to make sure that the Rosa Parks Supreme Court decision was being enforced. These bus riders were known as freedom riders. The rides went smoothly until the buses reached Alabama, where the freedom riders would be greeted with violence from angry whites.
In the spring of 1963, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Martin Luther King Jr. targeted Birmingham, Alabama for segregation protests. Birmingham, a city in the deep South, was a hotbed for racism and segregation. City police arrested hundreds of protesters, as well as King himself, but protests continued. National television showed snarling dogs being set on the unarmed protesters and children being washed away on the impact of the water from fire hoses. As the nation watched in horror, President Kennedy announced a civil rights bill that would outlaw segregation nationwide.
On August 28, 1963, nationwide support for the civil rights bill boiled over. Over 200,000 people of all races and colors came to Washington D.C. to participate in a massive march organized by the SCLC and Mr. King. There, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King read the words that would become one of history's greatest speeches:
" I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'...I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing...'Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' "
After Kennedy's death, Johnson, a firm believer in equal rights, promised that the bill would be signed into law. In the first July of Johnson's term, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law made discrimination illegal against African Americans in employment, public accommodations, and voting. The act not only protected African Americans, but it also prohibited discrimination by sex, religion, and ethnicity. It was followed in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act.
[edit] A Second Tragedy
On the morning of April 4, 1968, King was preparing to lead a march from the balcony of a hotel when shots rang out. Friends inside rushed outside to find King shot in the jaw. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pronounced dead a few hours later. The nation was in complete shock. Shortly thereafter, rioting plagued America's streets as a profound sadness and anger gripped the nation. This would be one of many assassinations that would befall the country, including those of, Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X.
