all right gangs let's continue our discussion of civil rights under Lyndon Johnson one of the big events is Freedom Summer which takes place in the summer of 64. and this is efforts to register black voters in the south so there are Freedom schools which are there to educate folks about what the voting rights are how to pass voting tests and then to increase democracy in the southern states for black Americans and this is a multi-racial group of volunteers and it's kind of like that Rhythm that we talked about last week where there's progress but then there's backlash so this boils over where three Mississippi civil rights workers are killed by local law enforcement the next big thing is Selma which took place through January in February of 1965 and this was a March for voting rights and Selma is in Alabama which if we remember the Presidential nominee for 64 was George Wallace who was a big time segregationist and populace and in Selma this is Sheriff Jim Clark he doesn't want to tolerate the peaceful Civil Disobedience so he's going to arrest three thousand demonstrators including Martin Luther King and John Lewis is this is this the stick leader we talked about how there was one group of the Civil Rights organization that was there motivating Young Americans to make progress towards civil rights so on February 10th protesters are forced out of town and what's known on Bloody Sunday it was the plan March from Selma to Montgomery on uh uh March 7th to again Civil Disobedience but peaceful you can watch us on YouTube by the way where you see local law enforcement headed by Jim Clark they're mounted they're wearing gas masks they're armed with batons and they just kind of just mow over these peaceful protesters and this is one of those things where the media is there to capture it it is um uh gonna change the minds of a lot of Americans but one thing too that um that the civil rights leaders they had kind of thought that Lyndon Johnson wasn't going to do much about it um uh because to them this is kind of more of the saying that had been happening for decades now but they underestimated him Johnson in the wake of the events of Bloody Sunday in Selma is going to make a televised address to the full Congress where he understands that there's a need for voting rights and again with his brand of liberalism he believes that the federal government are the ones to fix it and also him himself so he's also going to put pressure on George Wallace where it's like you need to get the National Guard and local law enforcement away from the protesters and the Marchers um and he actually meets with Wallace at the White House gives him the Johnson treatment Wallace caves and then you have on March 21st led by Martin Luther King 25 000 Americans are going to March towards the capital in support of voting rights and this is not the end of the story as Johnson is going to use his power as a politician to influence Congress to make the Voting Rights Act go through the legislative branch he's going to sign it into law which the federal government is going to essentially Outlaw racial discrimination and allow more Americans to vote in those Southern States so a lot of civil rights progress happens under Johnson um it builds upon those trends that we saw last week where there is progress backlash but now Johnson is going to correct it by using the power of the federal government and then making sure that there are laws to protect Americans throughout the country now the Civil Rights Movement we talked about how there were multiple organizations multiple groups multiple perspectives but during the 60s it's even going to kind of split after 1968 it'll fracture as Martin Luther King and the Young Americans doing sit-ins marches Civil Disobedience are not the only ones we've got Malcolm X Stokely Carmichael um that are more uh in favor of black nationalism or black power and oftentimes they're at odds with the peaceful protest of Martin Luther King that they argue that you aren't doing enough things are not happening fast enough Gonna Leave civil rights for a little bit and we're going to talk about more of lbj's view of liberalism and the liberalism that was encompassed a large part of the 60s so kind of building on that war on poverty Lyndon Johnson wants to improve the conditions of the United States by using big government to fix the problems so the Great Society is what he calls this package of federal legislation and it creates a lot of Institutions and entitlement welfare programs that are around today Medicare is one of them that guarantees medical coverage for Americans over 65 so he wants to take care of the elderly Medicaid is medical care for low-income families there's the Head Start program there's the elementary and secondary Education Act and also the Higher Education Act which gives folks Grant scholarships and loans now really quick what Lyndon Johnson accomplishes in terms of legislation and how he was able to motivate Congress to make bills into laws is unprecedented and no modern president has been able to live up to this whether or not individuals agree with the motivations and the outcomes of these programs just the fact that Civil Rights Act of 64 the Voting Rights Act of 65 the Great Society programs just in terms of the stuff accomplished is um awesome in its most literal definition awe-inspiring now it's going to under sorry about that what's going to undermine him though is he inherited the mess in Vietnam and this will ultimately kind of undo his presidency as you can see the quote here that [ __ ] of a war killed the lady I really loved the Great Society Lyndon Johnson was not a foreign policy president and those folks who were in the Kennedy administration the best and the brightest they're going to be the architects of the war in Vietnam and even they feel that they're kind of Trapped By it because this is the Cold War you can't let South Vietnam fall the communism um but South Vietnam has plenty of problems that it just gets worse and worse and worse this ultimately started under the Truman Administration when they had supported France's designs on imperialism that was continued under Eisenhower um France wanted to keep their empire and keep France or Indochina as a colony the Vietnamese wanted self-determination and communism was appealing to them as an alternative of capitalist imperialism the French go to the United States and say hey this is a cold war matter don't let South Vietnam go communist and then that's a really quick Reader's Digest version of how America viewed the problem in Vietnam Johnson you can see how troop levels increased the goal of these troops was simply to help the South Vietnamese fight the North Vietnamese but obviously they're the ones who are doing a lot of the fighting the ground war was in South Vietnam in North Vietnam they were being bombed by United States Air Force and Navy aircraft the Vietnam War featured a lot of modern military equipment and Technology from the United States the Vietnamese did not have this technology by and large we had fighter aircraft and bomber aircraft the North Vietnamese had his tiny ass Air Force that was uh purchased from the Soviet Union but they didn't have the amount that we had one one of the technological advances that we were using were defoliants and defolians are chemicals that were sprayed on top of trees to strip the leaves off them as Vietnam was you know canopy jungle a lot of forests and if your enemy is hiding you need to be able to see them it's like agent orange is the most infamous chemical that was used and the full answer there to try to take that jungle cover away from the enemy another tech Advance is we're using helicopters and helicopters were able to fly soldiers in drop them off and then the helicopters would fly out they could also drop supplies in ammunition reinforcements um it can also drop soldiers Behind Enemy Lines is that this this is an interesting combination of Cavalry and parachutes as you don't need to necessarily parachute soldiers in Behind Enemy Lines anymore as a helicopter can drop them off it's a little bit different than World War II the American Military is very mobile during the Vietnam War and also napalm Napalm is jelly gasoline that would be dropped in canisters from aircraft and it would fling that jelly gasoline and it would be sticky so it would stick to trees buildings in the people and then it would ignite uh milliseconds after it would get stick to everything and then it would blow up into a ball of Fire so it was relevant to use in Jungle combat as it could stick to trees and then you know burn but there were a lot of civilians who had suffered attacks or collateral damage from Napalm strikes so American escalation because it wasn't initially our war but it kind of became it you had the the North and the South that were fighting one another once the French leave so we had the Gulf of Tonkin incident which is where it was alleged that American warships were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin Congress gives President Johnson permission to meet the escalation as he sees fit he approves airstrikes which was known as Operation Rolling Thunder and retaliation communist forces in Vietnam are going to attack an air base at a place called pleco in South Vietnam and then in order to protect that air base the United States is going to land ground troops in the United States Marines at Danang to protect the airfields and play coup so the Marines who had landed at Danae are going to engage in combat against the Vietnamese communists the military leader who is heading up this these efforts was a army General named William Westmoreland and his strategies are going to be different than what we had saw in the second world war the first world war he just thinks that eventually all we need to do is just seek out the enemy and kill them we will increase a body count so the more dead Communists that there are eventually there will be a crossover point where they will not be able to replenish their forces in other words it's a battle of attrition it's a war of attrition if we kill enough of them they won't be able to replenish their army we're going to be Reliant upon air power and strategic bombing a lot of this is rooted in the successes from World War II there's going to be covert missions from CIA Special Forces like Navy Seals Green Berets and also psychological operations where we try to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese folks and the way that the Vietnamese Communists were fighting was an Insurgent Warfare by and large insurgents are combatants that are dressed like civilians they blend into the civilian population this is pretty much what we talked about with Belgium during the first world war when those Frank tours were attacking German soldiers and then they Blended back into the Belgian population this is how the majority of the war was fought in South Vietnam against American ground troops they're the insurgents would take pot shots against the American forces they would set up booby traps bombs and then they would blend in Back to the population so it became very frustrating for American soldiers as um there wasn't much that that they could do about that so they had to start targeting um Vietnamese civilians for interrogation resentment had built up and this is what Indochina looked like so here's Vietnam this is North Vietnam South Vietnam and this Ho Chi Minh trail is what's supplying the insurgents in South Vietnam so it goes from it goes into Laos and Cambodia which technically we were not at war with and then you get these supply lines that are fueling these insurgents the American Military the resentment starts boiling over and then that's when they start burning villages um they start becoming disenchanted with why we're fighting that war and um morale is going to start taking a hit so I'm going to go ahead and end this video here and I'll see you in episode three