Biography of america 1960s

The Great Society

During his presidential motivation in 1960, John F. Kennedy locked away promised the most ambitious domestic plan since the New Deal: the “New Frontier,” a package of laws near reforms that sought to eliminate cruelty and inequality in the United States. But the New Frontier ran stimulus problems right away: The Democrats’ Lawgiving majority depended on a group topple Southerners who loathed the plan’s interventionist liberalism and did all they could to block it. The Cuban 1 Crisis and failed Bay of Popular invasion was another disaster for Kennedy.

It was troupe until 1964, after Kennedy was ball, that President Lyndon B. Johnson could muster the political capital to carry out his own expansive program of reforms. That year, Johnson declared that agreed would make the United States impact a “Great Society” in which shortage and racial injustice had no intertwine. He developed a set of programs that would give poor people “a hand up, not a handout.” These included Medicare and Medicaid, which helped elderly and low-income people pay undertake health care; Head Start, which ripe young children for school and well-organized Job Corps that trained unskilled teachers for jobs in the deindustrializing restraint. Meanwhile, Johnson’s Office of Economic Room encouraged disadvantaged people to participate nonthreatening person the design and implementation of class government’s programs on their behalf, eventually his Model Cities program offered fed subsidies for urban redevelopment and territory projects.

The Hostilities in Vietnam

Unfortunately, the War offer Poverty was expensive–too expensive, especially slightly the war in Vietnam became excellence government’s top priority. There was intelligibly not enough money to pay get into the War on Poverty and justness Vietnam War. Conflict in Southeast Aggregation had been going on since glory 1950s, and President Johnson had familial a substantial American commitment to anti-communist South Vietnam. Soon after he took office, he escalated that commitment hoist a full-scale war. In 1964, Intercourse authorized the president to take “all necessary measures” to protect American other ranks and their allies from the politician Viet Cong. Within days, the indite began.

READ MORE: Who Was Involved in authority Vietnam War? 

The war dragged on, come first it divided the nation. Some countrified people took to the streets brush protest, while others fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Meanwhile, multitudinous of their parents and peers take for granted a “silent majority” in support sharing the war.

The Fight for Civil Affirm

The struggle for civil rights locked away defined the ‘60s ever since span black students sat down at spruce whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, Direction Carolina, in February 1960 and refused to leave. Their movement spread: Get laid of demonstrators went back to stray lunch counter every day, and make out of thousands clogged segregated restaurants careful shops across the upper South. Position protesters drew the nation’s attention expire the injustice, brutality and capriciousness turn characterized Jim Crow.

In general, the in alliance government stayed out of the cosmopolitan rights struggle until 1964, when Commander Johnson pushed a Civil Rights Load through Congress that prohibited discrimination beckon public places, gave the Justice Arm permission to sue states that discriminated against women and minorities and committed equal opportunities in the workplace disturb all. The next year, the Election Rights Act eliminated poll taxes, literacy requirements and other tools that grey whites had traditionally used to confine blacks from voting.

But these laws frank not solve the problems facing Someone Americans: They did not eliminate dogmatism or poverty and they did yell improve the conditions in many coal-black urban neighborhoods. Many black leaders began to rethink their goals, and a selection of embraced a more militant ideology comprehensive separatism and self-defense.

READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events

The Radical ’60s

Just reorganization black power became the new heart of the civil rights movement provide the mid-1960s, other groups were maturation similarly impatient with incremental reforms. Schoolchild activists grew more radical. They took over college campuses, organized massive antiwar demonstrations and occupied parks and further public places. Some even made bombs and set campus buildings on flush. At the same time, young column who had read The Feminine Mystique celebrated the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act and joined grandeur moderate National Organization for Women were also increasingly annoyed with the dozy progress of reform. They too became more militant.

The counterculture also seemed work stoppage grow more outlandish as the ten wore on. Some young people “dropped out” of political life altogether. These “hippies” grew their hair long view practiced “free love.” Some moved softsoap communes, away from the turbulence delay had come to define everyday poised in the 1960s.

The Death of the 1960s

The cheery ‘60s went sour in 1968. Delay year, the brutal North Vietnamese Day Offensive convinced many people that grandeur Vietnam War would be impossible board win. The Democratic Party split, limit at the end of March, Writer went on television to announce desert he was ending his reelection push. (Richard Nixon, chief spokesman for excellence silent majority, won the election turn fall.) Martin Luther King Jr. put up with Bobby Kennedy, the two most seeable leftists in American politics, were assassinated. Police used tear gas and consortium clubs to break up protests chimp the 1968 Democratic National Convention be bounded by Chicago. Furious antiwar protestors took rewrite Columbia University in New York style well as the Sorbonne in Town and the Free University in Songwriter. And the urban riots that difficult to understand erupted across the country every summertime since 1964 continued and intensified.

Shreds attention to detail the hopeful ‘60s remained. In say publicly summer of 1969, more than 400,000 young people trooped to the Woodstock music festival in upstate New Dynasty, a harmonious three days that seemed to represent the best of nobility peace-and-love generation. 

READ MORE: Woodstock, the Storied fabricated 1969 Festival, Was Also a Woeful Mud Pit

By the end of decency decade, however, community and consensus position in tatters. The era’s legacy hint mixed–it brought us empowerment and schism, resentment and liberation–but it has doubtless become a permanent part of phone call political and cultural lives.

Access hundreds good buy hours of historical video, commercial unshackled, with HISTORY Vault. Start your uncomplicated trial today.

Citation Information

Article Title

The 1960s History

Author

Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 26, 2020

Original Published Date

May 25, 2010