Transcript for:
Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

hello everyone so in this module we're focusing on the politics of the 1950s and 1960s with a particular attention on the rise of the modern civil rights movement and i say modern civil rights movement with some hesitancy because really we're talking about a whole series of different activist groups and movements that we're all working towards some common goals really we tend to periodize or break into a sort of time chunk this sort of set of movements from 1945 to the middle of the 1960s that's really what i'm going to talk about today when we focus on civil rights with an understanding of course that civil rights activism had been going on well obviously well before that point and obviously continues to this day and i think we look at modern or contemporary i should say civil rights activity and activism things like black lives matter for example really does trace its connection a connection its heritage to some of the things i'm going to talk about today um and i will be talking about in the next module when we talk about liberation movements um so we can definitely see some a through line here um but there is a real shift that happens after world war ii um during this period um that we just sort of talked about the sort of age of american anxiety in the period of domestic containment so i'm going to talk a little bit about the roots of of this modern civil rights movement in the 1940s and 1950s all the way up through some of the most important successes of this movement in the 1960s then i'm going to just do a brief overview of of american politics in the 1960s we got us started getting a little bit of a taste of this in the last module talk a little bit about president kennedy and president johnson and some of the major policy initiatives of those to those two presidents a new frontier for president kennedy and great society for president johnson okay so let's go ahead and jump in so where we left off we were we were talking about the 1950s we're talking about this period you know um that's noted for this this concept of domestic containment and containment not just of communism abroad but also the creation of a new set of cultures and values in the united states that actually kind of form some of the bedrock of of what we see today when people say traditional values or you know traditional american perspectives or family values a lot of those attitudes um were actually constructs of the late 40s and throughout the 1950s and early 1960s as a reaction to your response to the perceived threat of communism or totalitarian socialism and so it was a certain kind of american-ness in the culture that was very much a set of ideals that a lot of americans most americans couldn't really live up to but as it turns out this was sculpture of containment was also a predominantly white culture in a middle class or upper middle class culture even though it was largely embraced by working-class whites a lot of them didn't necessarily have access to this until they had actually access to social mobility and it's interesting i can sort of think about this right we'll talk more about this um as the course progresses in the next few modules but it's it's an interesting sort of development because a lot of the folks who actually benefited from policies like we think about some of the policies of the 1950s and 19 late 40s 50s and 60s that economic expansion that had a lot to do with um the role of government or the the sort of place of government in the economy and in the the larger world of americans during this time period right that intervention that certain kind of tax rate we talked a little bit about this in the last module right those are people that will ultimately in the contemporary period look back on this um with that those kinds of policies with certain kinds of disdain certain working-class whites will see that as actually um not in their interest when in fact historically those were things that helped those folks out now i call attention to this because the culture of containment was not a culture that necessarily supported civil rights activity although it was a real challenge for the united states to make an argument on the international stage particularly with countries in the so-called global south so latin america sub-saharan africa south and southeast asia to make an argument that america and and free market capitalism and democracy was the way to go when those those countries in those places were inhabited primarily by people of color and here in the united states people of color particularly black folks were treated um as i think i remember historians describing them as second-class citizens but really actually lacking citizenship as a result of jim crow laws at the state and local level and if you remember we talked about this several modules ago this idea of jim crow is still very present in the united states in the 1940s and 1950s particularly in the american south but not just in the american south so um black folks in particular were faced huge obstacles in getting the access to the right to vote even though it was constitutionally guaranteed rendering votes from from black people in many parts of the united states um really difficult like it's really really hard to actually have a guaranteed right to vote um and in addition to that in addition to lacking access to to sort of these kinds of democratic rights like the right of the franchisor to vote um segregation was also pretty ubiquitous in the united states again not just in the south but in other parts of the united states as well i think we tend to highlight or think about the places where segregation was so overt and obvious um that it was you know sort of like a chilling thing but actually in large parts of the united states and i would say throughout almost all the united states where you had more diverse populations discrimination in housing particularly through a practice called redlining where real estate agents and mortgage brokers chambers of commerce city governments would literally carve out whole neighborhoods that were exclusively white and then small places where black folks could live could rent or buy a home so this is um sorry a little technical hiccup there uh this this is actually pretty common in fact it wasn't um in places like california it wasn't actually illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and housing until 1964 and then the 1963 and then in 1964 voters in california voted to bring that law that discrimination back uh which is pretty amazing there was a proposition um the state of california and i'm laughing because um it's not because it's funny but it's kind of ridiculous if you think about it um but that that should be that should tell you something right that we again we tend to associate these forms of discrimination jim crow laws that um really regulated and limited access to the rights of citizenship um to people of color specifically to black folks and segregation we tend to think of those as a southern problem when in fact this was a national problem in the united states um and i think most it was most visible and most maybe odious and obvious to outsiders looking in at the south but really it was a problem that we we saw in various forms all throughout the united states now there was no real way to tackle this um problem right so activists activists who are interested in achieving sustained citizenship rights and dismantling institutions of segregation it was very you know you couldn't run for office if you were black in the south right this was going to be a real challenge there were no real electoral paths to doing this where you would be able to find sustained support and remember these laws for segregation and the the so-called jim crow laws these were all state and local laws these were not federal this was not federal law the federal government has essentially turned its back um on these practices really since the end of reconstruction when they started to um become dominant and more present so the real the real route was through consciousness raising and activism but particularly through testing laws in the courts um and this is something sometimes people derisively call this judicial activism but um that's really what the term really applies to when a judge is engaging in an activist stance in their interpretation of the law but this kind of using of judicial channels to test the constitutional nature of laws was a major pathway and this is actually where we see really important legal figures like thurgood marshall who eventually sit on the supreme court this is where they're going to make their career by using organizations like the naacp and the aclu is balanced they're going to go in and challenge these stated local laws one after the other until they reach a point where they can get some sort of legal precedent that will help them dismantle these laws in other places i mean a great example of this is probably maybe one of the most famous examples of this um uh during the civil rights era is brown versus the school board of topeka kansas and this is all to do with a third grader a girl named linda brown who was actually forced to cross town in order to go to the black school in topeka she could not go to her neighborhood school because it was a white school a lawsuit was brought against the school board which then made its way all the way to the supreme court now um in in 1953 we actually have a new chief justice of the supreme court the former republican governor of the state of california earl warren now warren was not necessarily perceived he was actually nominated and put into place by a republican president um and that of course is dwight d eisenhower with the idea that there wouldn't be a whole lot of so-called judicial activism on the warren court um but warren in receiving this case along with the other justices of the supreme court realize that there's really no other way around it right and there's no other there's no solution to this problem that this is a clear violation of constitutional rights and and this is what leads to the unanimous decision of brown versus school board now i'll show you there's a here we have this this is actually from um topeka um kansas itself is the topeka newspaper school segregation band supreme court refused doctrine of separate but equal and separated equal actually goes back to the late 19th century um 1896 a case called plessy versus ferguson that was decided by the supreme court in the decision of brown versus school board the court argues that separate is inherently unequal that you can't have separate facilities and have them be equal when it's on the basis of race in fact that's what played out in every segregated school district all across the united states now segregation sometimes was by intent right in in cases like in topeka and in large parts of the american south there were separate schools that were built explicitly for different races of people but in a lot of the rest of the united states segregation was just by the the natural discrimination the natural issue that's the wrong word by the discrimination that took place in housing and jobs i mean other factors of life that essentially confined certain groups of people to certain neighborhoods and allowed others to live where they pleased and so segregation was going to be a really difficult thing now brown versus school board this decision desegregated one school district it was not this inclusive decision that essentially opened everything up it actually desegregates one school district and as a result right you're going to see numerous cases that are going to be filed all across the united states to try to use the precedent event brown versus school board to desegregate the schools now 10 years later so this was 1954 the decision comes down 1964 do you know what percentage of school districts were actually desegregated 10 years later 2 in fact most education scholars argue that today we have actually entered into a process of re-segregation because of increasing discrimination on the basis of race and housing right in fact this process of gentrification something that we see in the bay area has amplified this um even more so so actually the mechanism that would allow for easy desegregation it wasn't going to happen a lot of communities resisted it a great example that's close by to us is oakland actually in oakland california there was a real pushback on the part of white the white community there it was one of the reasons why members of the white community started to form some of their own schools we actually see the rise of private and independent schools they start mushrooming up all across the united states as white families pull them their children out of newly integrated schools um so brown versus school board this was is a in a lot of ways we tend to think of this as a pretty sort of iron-clad decision but and one that's based in now deep legal precedent but it was incredibly controversial then and arguably among some americans even controversial today now brown versus school board set into motion a series of events right you have more and more cases where um you see people essentially trying to sue their way into desegregating their school districts that's something that happens in little rock arkansas the little rock school district is desegregated in 1957 the court orders them to begin allowing for the matriculation of black students including at little rock central high school now little rock central high in 1957 had 3 500 students it was a big high school and they admitted nine black students now you probably are thinking these white folks in arkansas they're probably okay just nine that can't be that big of a deal of course they're not going to be super upset by that it won't cause a lot of pro oh actually actually it did cause a lot of problems there were lots of folks who were very upset and you can see that woman actually should linger a little bit on this image right imagine that that's how you become famous in american history being a racist and screaming at a 9th grade black girl who's trying to come to high school on her first day of high school this is a pretty um intense kind of moment it's actually a different angle on a pretty classic shot i like showing this image though so you can because you can really see there's this whole group of white people that have surrounded right this young woman as she's trying to attend her first day of school um at little rock central high this is the so-called little rock nine now this the court order that that mandated desegregation and opened the door for these nine students was rejected um very much by the white political establishment in the american south and in arkansas in particular obviously the governor of arkansas was a man named orville fabus i mean that name fantastic like really what an interesting name orville father and fabulous is actually kind of a colorful figure so to speak um in southern political history he famously said about the english language that if it was good enough for jesus it was good enough for him um and of course you have to think about this a little bit because of course jesus did not speak english um fabulous was very upset by this desegregation order and the arrival of these students and so he tried to mobilize um state troopers right to essentially stop these students from coming in and this is actually going to raise the ire of president eisenhower eisenhower was not a supporter of desegregation in fact he didn't want it to happen at all he was very frustrated with the warren court by this point certainly um but he could not allow for essentially a re-fighting of the civil war almost a hundred years um after it it had started um and so he's actually going to send in national troops to protect the little rock knight we have this militarized force to allow nine students to go to chemistry and uh english you know go to high school right and when we think about i think sometimes we tend to think we're a really divided country today i mean we certainly are in in many ways particularly around the issue of race right this is actually a deep history we have not this is not something that was at one point resolved it was it's never really been resolved and it's in these moments and these fissures when it comes to light as part of a popular consciousness but it's something that people of color have to deal with and fight with on a daily basis right um and so it's in this context where you see the success of these legal cases that we see activists starting to rise up um and starting to use their presence to call attention to examples of segregation and discrimination that exist on the basis of race all throughout the united states but particularly the american south and i think the one we tend to sort of highlight or focus on the most is dr reverend martin luther king jr and of course his role first as the leader of the southern christian leadership conference and then um certainly as a national figure of great importance his role was really very much setting the tone in the stage of activism by using an incredible eloquence um in writing and in speech to communicate really a whole set of concerns and values um that were very much at the forefront of this movement right the idea here was not that king was going to the courts right king was actually going to the people he was using activism to call attention to the processes and problems that faced black folks in the united states and this is really key and really important because i think especially when we think about contemporary activism a lot of the sort of negative reaction that some white folks have to movements like say like black lives matter is they're like well this isn't my experience i don't see this right or the why are you only saying that that this group of people matters right the sort of retort of well all lives matter and the whole point of course the black lives matter is to call attention the fact that in the day-to-day black people are not treated in an equal or equitable way and they're not treated in a way that allows for their safety and well-being either that they're subjected to violence and hostility on a regular basis right and so really what king and all of this this whole group of people really fantastic like amazing squad of folks right who are involved in this activist work they were really working not just to come up with solutions to the problem or find legal mechanisms but really to call attention um to what was actually happening to black people in the united states um a story that did not have the same kind of attention so it's interesting in 1957 at the time where we see the desegregation of little rock central high right is when we also see congress fairly start to wrestle with civil rights it's actually the first time since reconstruction that congress will entertain a civil rights act um so and a lot of this has to again to do with this sort of nascent activism of course king becomes much more influential in the early 1960s becoming involved in a series of protests and boycotts all throughout the american south using um tactics that essentially call attention to by occupying space by having folks gather and and peaceably demonstrate something we've seen in recent years obviously as well right to call attention to the problem so it becomes impossible to ignore and i'll come back to this in just a moment um but once we get into the beginning of the 1960s this kind of this kind of protest this sort of um individuals who are acting are becoming much more coalesced around organizations and really key is the activism of young people right so certainly college-aged folks and i say that is sort of a bit of a misnomer because anyone can go to college at any age but you know that sort of traditional demographic demographic of age 18 to 25 a lot of these are the people who are leading movements and creating movements like stokely carmichael who goes on in 1960 to found snick the student nonviolent coordinating committee um these this was a group that actually um advocated for voting rights here are two snick buttons which are kind of cool actively advocated for voting rights and desegregation all throughout the united states particularly in the american south through doing things like sit-ins where they would literally physically occupy the space now i love this button because it calls attention to the fact that this was an effort that incorporated not just black folks advocating for black folks but also white allies and accomplices as well and and why this is important is because this strategy at the beginning of the 1960s will give way to a different strategy later on so i want to call attention to it now because when we think about these movements most of them were movements that were advocating not for equity but for equality equal under the law right ability to be able to vote ability to live wherever you want to live based on your means these were all things about equal access and equality under the law and that was the major thrust really of civil rights activity up until we get into the middle of the 1960s and that's when things will shift and we'll talk more about equity but that'll come in the next module okay so this activism is actually going to prompt a response so we talked about the judicial process we talked about social activism right and this these are protests like the you know protest in montgomery and birmingham right where you have people in the streets you have people engaged in boycotts things like boycotting the bus system for example right and that are trying to call attention to the problem as it exists okay and then you have finally the federal government stepping in so it's not going to just let state and local governments have these kinds of racist laws that stay in place but the federal government is going to eventually step in now what prompts the federal government really prompts real federal government intervention a lot of it actually has to do with the fact that these kinds of incidents which could be covered up you know as local stories before the era of television no longer could be and we start to see actually the tel really televise police violence against black people particularly against these protesters in the summer of 1963 for example the early summer of 1963 it was something you would see you would turn on the television tv news all across the country and you would see fire hoses being turned on black folks both children and adults police dogs attacking um these people because you had journalists who were going in and documenting what was happening right and this is going to create a real moral outrage amongst a lot of folks people who had been insulated because of their privilege and power insulated from police brutality who are now seeing it on their television um and it's actually this it's this is going to prompt president kennedy in the summer of 1963 to give a national address where he says that civil rights is a moral issue and more imperative for the united states and that he called in congress to take up a new civil rights act in the fall of 1963 and of course that that year is when kennedy will be assassinated in november of 1963 um but this is what will initiate the process now it is his assassination and death in some ways that kind of gives builds up pressure and steam to push through legislation through congress because you see lyndon johnson a southern white democrat who had been vice president a southern man from texas he had been in the senate before that a new deal democrat very old school who will take up the call and actually has a little bit of political capital and which he will use to some extent um around the passage of the civil rights act and later on the voting rights act was part of certainly part of his own legacy now johnson supported these pieces of legislation is pretty complicated and i don't want to get too far into the weeds but certainly this is these are things that he will really be part of an important part of how we remember his presidency um and he certainly did sign this legislation too but the opposition to it was even more complicated because you had white southern democrats who opposed it as well as white southern republicans because of course the democratic party in the south which had been white dominant and really controlled all of southern politics by this point in 1960s really starting in the 1940s had 30s and 40s had given way to a growing conservative movement amongst white republicans so you had this coalition of white folks from the south and not in other parts of the united states too democrats and republicans who opposed it the democratic party was increasingly embracing civil rights and was increasingly relying on in large part particularly people of color to support their initiatives in other parts of the country um and so the this is that polarity shift that i sort of hinted at that the political parties were becoming really different it's really after this era that the party of lincoln republicans of the party civil rights is completely obliterated it just doesn't exist anymore in fact we start to see more sort of pitched opposition um to things like the civil rights act and voting rights act so the civil rights act comes through and this is going to bar discrimination in public and private facilities on the basis of race um this is pretty controversial legislation and their opponents actually they come up with a solution they're like hey let's add a poison pill which is an amendment a poison pill is a type of amendment that you put you latch on to a bill that's so objectionable that you lose votes people can't support it like so if i said you know like free candy for all and also you know release all of the murderers into public schools on a daily basis people would not that's the the second part is the poison pill people couldn't support it so um the civil rights act actually added gender in a few different places in addition to race because they thought maybe people would support um equal equality under the law for people of color but never for women and it still passed okay now that is a real this is really important civil rights act passes and it provides this really important foundation um for a lot of american law and certainly american practice it obliterates jim crow right um and uh in in league with the voting rights act right it gets rid of a lot of these these kinds of legally sanctioned practices in different parts of the american south and in other parts of the united states too that the civil rights act is passed in 1964 the voting rights act in 1965 actually officially wipes out all jim crow laws um essentially barring these kinds of racially selective uh restrictions to the vote and also set up within the department of justice observation of places particular states in the united states where voting restrictions against black folks and and and uh had been really common now what's interesting is just a few years ago that part of voting rights act was actually dismantled by the supreme court in a very important split decision the supreme court actually said that certain parts of the voting rights act were unconstitutional now the second that happened we started to see voter suppression laws and anti-voting rights laws actually start to pop up throughout the american south and in other parts of the united states too including selectively applied voter id laws so so there was a reason that mechanism was in place racism was not cured in the south or anywhere in the united states and the second that those controls were lifted you start to see voter suppression becoming much more common this is true in south carolina in georgia for example it's a pretty famous case in 2018 of accusations of voter suppression it's pretty well documented actually so so we have we see civil rights being legislated and this is all dealing with equality equality under the law we'll come back to that in the next module so don't forget that now shifting gears a little bit i want to talk more broadly about american politics in the 1960s um ken when kennedy wins election in 1960 it really is the dawn of a new age he's the first of his generation to occupy the white house and we have to think about there are these kinds of important historical markers bill clinton similarly had was the first of his generation the first baby boomer talking by the white house when he won in 1992 kennedy when he wins in 1960 is the first of the so-called greatest generation the generation that you know lived through depression and fought world war ii um as young folks right to occupy the white house and he came in with very much with a set of agenda items and policies he called this new frontier some of these were things that will come to have long-term influence in the united states um others not necessarily fully fulfilled although to be fair to kennedy kennedy was one of the most productive presidents in his first term in office he didn't even finish his first term due to being assassinated he's killed while he's in office but is able to get through quite a bit of legislation through congress now i'm just going to touch on a few things that kennedy had advocated for one of them was a program called the peace corps and the peace corps is actually a program that still exists to this day um we tend to this we call this is the best part of domestic policy because it's a kind of employment program it's very new dealish right um the peace corps was a sort of an opening that sort of allowed people um from all walks of life to live and work in different countries all throughout the world essentially to do service that was compensated and i use that loosely because it's not a lot of money but compensated by the federal government and so people were sent all across the world and they would do you know projects to help support places that were seen as quote unquote developing countries now this is a domestic policy because it's employing americans abroad um but it's also you can see when i said abroad it's a hint it's also foreign policy and it was actually anti-communist foreign policy the idea was if you send out thousands of americans particularly younger americans to these different parts of the world that were in vulnerable states that might turn to totalitarian socialism it will help turn the tide providing service to these places but also bringing american ideas and american perspectives so the peace corps is still very much active it's something you absolutely can do um the other thing kennedy was is what i want to sort of call attention to in terms of domestic policy was tax cuts kennedy is actually the part of a sort of a vanguard this is really starts a trend of reducing federal taxation particularly on the wealthy to actually sort of lower that graduated tax rate so we do see tax cuts during the kennedy administration that will start a process we'll see these cuts actually continue on through into the 21st century it is an important thing he's using this as an attempt a little bit as an attempt at stimulus to keep the economy growing in a time of still ongoing but maybe a little sluggish growth um but it establishes a really difficult precedent it's very difficult to raise taxes it's actually really popular to cut them okay um so so there's that now in terms of foreign policy kennedy had a lot of struggles one of the things that we have to understand is that kennedy kennedy came in there was a lot of fear and suspicion that kennedy would not be as virulently anti-communist as his predecessor and so he had to sort of establish himself in that way and one of the ways he does that is actually increasing the presence of the united states through foreign observers in the the nation of vietnam was in that which was in the midst of a pretty um upsetting and terrifying civil war between north and south vietnam you can kind of see that illustrated in this map here this was a war just like the war in korea between the communists and the capitalists so to speak really western aligned folks um who control the south and folks that were more aligned with um communist china in the north led by ho chi minh the viet so-called viet cong right and so um this was a war that we will become really deeply invested in throughout the 1960s and it's actually kennedy that starts us really on the path to growing involvement although the united states had been present before this point um with a really sustained presence starting in 1954 once the french finally withdraw from vietnam at the start of the civil war between north and south vietnam it's really under kennedy and then later johnson that this becomes a conflict that's truly an american conflict in fact johnson is the one who will um secure through the gulf of tonkin resolution secure congressional authority to spend billions of dollars and and hundreds of thousands of american soldiers um and other service personnel to send them to vietnam the other foreign policy incident that the incidents that i want to call attention to were also tied to anti-communism but were related to cuba now at the end of the eisenhower administration a plan was hatched this is a cuban revolution that was completed in 1959 that led to the rise of fidel castro a non-aligned albeit communist right totalitarian socialist leader right um but not aligned really with the soviet union entirely um uh there was a whole there were a whole slew of cuban expatriates who wanted to leave the charge and take their back their country and there's a lot of american invested interest in cuba they um american companies actually controlled more than 50 of the cuban economy before the revolution um particularly in tourism sugar production etc and so you had very wealthy cubans who had fled the country when castro took power who now want to come back in and so they hatched a plan um during the eisenhower invented this in our administration to sort of invade and displace cuba and displace castro and cuba um kennedy inherits this plan and then executes it very poorly they choose to invade at a place called the bay of pigs um and they send over 4 000 cuban ex-patriots no american troops but supported by the american government and it's a total flop it's a huge failure and this this act takes castro who was suspicious of the united states and not super happy with them and basically says the us is an enemy and pushes him into the arms of the soviet union he'll actually agree to host and hold nuclear missiles for the soviets and this is again cuba is less than 100 miles off of the american shore and this is what triggers the so-called cuban missile crisis when the united states will create a blockade against soviet ships bringing um these missiles to cuban missile sites um and for about two weeks we are as close as we had ever gotten to full-on nuclear hostilities with the soviet union um ultimately this um conflict will be resolved uh the cuban missile crisis will be resolved with greater communication there's actually a permanent line installed between the so the kremlin the soviets and and the white house um that permanent line of communication is obviously really important but we also see a pulling back the soviets agreed to pull their missiles out and the united states actually uh agrees to sort of um demilitarize a little bit as well to pull back um from central europe and in germany where they had a sustained presence as well now after kennedy's assassination in november of 1963 and the rise of um lyndon johnson johnson will actually run for election and his own right in 1964 on a platform he calls great society and here's actually this is a campaign ad for great for great society for johnson and what you see is his face at the bottom in the bottom right but above him you see three important democratic figures luminaries right franklin delano roosevelt harry truman and the recently slained john f kennedy um johnson will win um election in 1964 and will push through this set of initiatives called great society which was his attempt to end poverty as we knew it in a generation through federal government intervention in the economy now to be clear the federal government has been intervening in the economy since we're going way back to the start of this course right we talked about this right um the federal government was very much active in in doing this kind of work but it is under great society this sort of attempt to great society is to um really step up this kind of this kind of intervention in a different way not on behalf of big business or corporations but on on behalf of people by providing things like health care to the elderly and disabled that's medicare it's a government health care program the most popular government program ever really ever created and to create bureaus of the federal government like the department of transportation which you see here is dot and the housing and urban development department or hud as you see it here these are new cabinet level bodies that provide for the expansion and development of infrastructure and provide new forms of housing particularly public housing to those who are poor not just in urban places but also in rural places in fact that really was johnson's inspiration here's actually a picture of lyndon johnson um and first lady lady bird johnson um uh in appalachia visiting a a poor white family and johnson saw that the federal government and the united states had incredible amounts of wealth and that if it was applied and used in strategic ways that you could actually dismantle the systems that perpetuated poverty for lots of americans and so that was the purpose of great society now unfortunately lots of aspects of great society won't continue when johnson leaves office after night um 1968 although certain portions of it certainly like medicare department transportation housing and urban development will continue there are lots of other aspects with this plan that really won't get fulfilled under the new republican administration now as i wrap up i want to talk about two sort of important things that will help set the stage um for the next module we talk about the 1960s and 1970s and the first is a really important piece of legislation which is passed in 1965 the immigration act of 1965 which finally puts an end to the racially specific um racial quotas of immigration policy that had existed in the united states going back to the chinese exclusion act right in the 1880s um so this was a a part of a longer process actually revision of this immigration policy had started after world war ii the immigration act really creates a brand new structure that opens the doors of migration to the united states from different parts of the world other than christian northern europe and so when we look at actually the racial makeup and the ethnic makeup in the united states today which is incredibly diverse a lot of this has to do with the fact that immigration will actually open up to places like in south asia southeast asia east asia in ways that had been blocked off sub-saharan africa in ways that had been blocked off before latin america and it creates the model of immigration law that exists today i mean the united states although it has been amended so this is a really obviously important moment which changes the the very makeup of the united states this brings us to 1968 now johnson will choose not to run again in 1968 will not run for reelection he had the ability to do that even though you're limited to two elected terms he'd only been elected to one he'll end up withdrawing um and this kind of opens the door for a real sea change a big power shift in washington and that is of course represented by richard nixon now 1968 which we'll talk about this is where we'll begin in the next module 1968 was a time of social cultural and political revolution in america everything was in upheaval it was a pretty dynamic kind of amazing time and the united states look at the sun is on me in a weird way oh we can all laugh about that that did not i want to shut this curtain man it's not shutting all the way there we go kind of i'll move over this way okay um this is a time of like incredible upheaval and we elect a kind of it's like it's fascinating we elect a president who is antithetical to that right is very much not connected to that kind of um to that kind of movement he is the opposite of that and that's richard nixon he's a conservative republican this is this kind of weird this weird seeming contradiction um that we'll kind of we'll start to explore when we talk about the 1960s and 1970s when things really kind of ramp up i really look forward to your responses in the discussion board this in this module and i can't wait to talk to you about the 60s and 70s in the next module