greetings internet people today we're taking a look at the events of the 1960s covering what went down during JFK and lbj's administration if you're studying for APUSH those are some of the books and how this video lines up to them so we're going to start off with JFK and remember the election of 1960 ked's running against the vice president Richard Nixon and this is an important election because it's the first time candidates face off on television in a series of debates and most people say Kennedy wins the television debate he looks good he has a Swagger to him whereas Nixon is pale and pasty and has the 5:00 shadow so this Begins the transformation of American politics and TV's role in it Kennedy is the first Catholic President elected remember in 1928 we saw Al Smith running and that issue really kind of played a key role in the election Kennedy breaks through that barrier and becomes the first Catholic President President Kennedy runs on a domestic program known as the New Frontier and really he wants Federal money to Education Health Care programs civil rights and Etc but he doesn't really have a decisive win he only wins by a little more than 100,000 votes over Nixon so he's going to be limited in what he's going to be able to accomplish domestically in fact most of his domestic agenda will be blocked by Congress and overshadowed by concerns over Foreign Affairs he is going to openly call on the nation to be the first to put a man on the moon he gives a really passionate speech and you know during Kennedy's Administration the space race is going to continue billions of dollars will be spent this will help the economy and in 1969 the United States will be the first country to put a man on the moon Kennedy also creates the Peace Corp which is created to send Americans to underdeveloped countries to help out now the Cold War continues under Kennedy it's going to be a reality of Life under JFK the new Soviet leader during his administration is Nikita kushev and those two men are going to be competing for influence around the world Kennedy does oversee in 1961 the creation of the alliance for Progress it's an economic development program for Latin America you know some people call it the Marshall Plan for Latin America it has limited results big important event is the Bay of Pigs invasion in Latin America JFK approves of his CIA plan that was actually planned under President eisenh Administration in which the US the CIA would train Cuban Exiles to overthrow the Castro government they would land at the Bay of Pigs and the hope would be that the Cuban people would rise up and remove Castro The Invasion is a complete failure as the Cuban Exiles land in the Bay of Pigs at 1961 and no Uprising comes to their support in fact Castro easily crushes the Rebellion it's a huge embarrassment for JFK it blows up in his face and since the US does not send support The Invasion was doomed to failure and as a result of the Bay of Pigs invasion Castro and kief the Cubans and the Soviets moved closer together in a completely unrelated event the Soviet Union begins construction of the Berlin Wall in East Germany um in 1961 and the Really the goal of the Berlin Wall is to keep East Germans from fleeing to West and you could see Kennedy visiting the Berlin the West Berlin side of that wall and pledging us support for West Berlin a big moment of Kennedy's presidency is the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 in October us U spy planes discover that the Soviets were installing offensive nuclear weapons inside of Cuba these weapons were capable of hitting most American cities and could kill millions of Americans in minutes and you can see on the map some of those cities and times Kennedy orders a naval blockade of Cuba he calls it a quarantine because a blockade is technically an act of War war and he's trying to pressure the Soviets to remove the missiles this is a very tense situation and it's the closest that the two sides ever came to a potential nuclear war Kennedy and kusf are in a 10 standoff there's all sorts of wh ifs in this situation would if the Soviets run the blockade with the US shoot and engage in battle the advisers of JFK overwhelmingly were telling him to attack before the missiles become operational we now know that those missiles were already operation ational and if Kennedy would have attacked it could have been really really bad kief eventually after a 10 standoff agrees to remove the missiles and a couple of things are reached in a deal Kennedy promises that we will not try to invade Cuba and the US would later on 6 months later remove missiles us missiles from turkey that were pointed at the Soviet unions the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis they installed hotline between DC and Moscow so that we can communicate instantly to try to prevent a future crisis and it increases calls for relaxing of tensions dat taunt in fact a nuclear test band treaty where no atmospheric testing is proposed by Kennedy keep in mind during the Cold War the arms race is going to continue even though Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex Kennedy is going to continue the arms race but there's going to be some differences the Kennedy administration moved away from the dullis idea of massive retaliation and the new look policy which relied on nuclear weapons in fact the problem was nuclear weapons could not be used in smaller conflicts in countries such as Vietnam or Lao if there's these small little brush fires you really can't use a nuclear bomb so Kennedy and his defense secretary Secretary of Defense Robert mcnamer very important guy you can see right there they proposed an idea called flexible response this basically said we would increase our spending on Con Conventional Weapons and maintain a variety of options so if there's a situation where the Soviets are providing weapons or money or trading we would be able to go in and help out our side with these variety of options Kennedy does call for the creation of the Green Beret a highly trained Special Forces Unit and defense spending continues to rise under Kennedy this is a part of the Cold War Kennedy's Administration is going to be cut short unfortunately when he is assassinated in Dallas in November of 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswalt there's the gun that was used following Kennedy's assassination his vice president from Texas lynon Baines Johnson becomes the president there he is taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One and Johnson's an interesting character he's a new deal Democrat he's been around for 30e member of Congress and he really wants to expand the reforms of the new deal and use the power of the federal government to create change in fact Lyndon Johnson's domestic program was called the Great Society and it would dramatically increase the size and the scope of the federal government but unlike the New Deal the Great Society will seek to advance the cause of civil rights very important thing to know some of the key areas of reform for lynon Johnson are going to be in the area of immigration reform civil rights education funding and medical help for the elderly so we'll take a look at how those goals were achieved under Johnson's Administration really important you know about the Great Society one of the key aspects of it was the war on poverty in fact Michael Harrington's book called the other America turned the nation's attention on the 40 million people living in poverty in America in fact Johnson one of the first things he does is he declares an unconditional war on poverty Congress created the Office of Economic Opportunity which was an anti-poverty agency and a variety of programs are going to be established one of those is the Head Start program which would provide free preschool for poor for low-income individuals job core which would give vocational education to those people to lift them up out of poverty literacy and legal programs are created and the biggie really not connected to Poverty though is the immigration and nationality Act of 1965 there's Johnson signing it over there by the Statue of Liberty this ends the quotas of the 1920s remember the quota of 1921 the quota of 1924 it ended the quotas designed to restrict certain nationalities and following the Immigration Act of 1965 you get a huge increase of immigrants from Latin America Asia and other countries Johnson runs for reelection in 1964 and he runs with a clear liberal agenda he wants to increase the welfare state increase the size of the federal government it's important to know that Republicans though do not like this they didn't like it under the New Deal and they don't like it under Johnson and they turn to the conservative ative Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona he wants to end the welfare state he wants to balance the budget he does not like programs like Social Security or the TVA or any of these other Great Society new programs that are being proposed and Johnson wins in a landslide Victory but it's important to keep in mind new conservative leaders are emerging in this period of the 1960s they don't like the programs of the new deal or Great Society and you're going to have a conservative reaction action coming 1968 Nixon's going to get elected and during the election of 64 people like Ronald Reagan start coming up and making a name for themselves however for Johnson he has something that Truman did not have he has the presidency and the Democrats control Congress so now he has the power to create change and Johnson's going to do that with a variety of Great Society programs so here are just a few highlights you can't cover them all Medicare is around today gives health care for those people over the age of 65 Medicaid Health Care for the poor and the disabled food stamp programs Federal money for the Arts public housing regulation of the Auto industry and a whole bunch of other Federal programs are created during President Johnson's Administration Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring really shocked the nation when it expose the use of pesticides and how DDT was destroying wildlife in 1962 and it helps stimulates interests and leads to the creation of the clear air and water acts under the Great Society and once again the Great Society expands the welfare state to provide assistance to those previously ignored the poor the disabled the elderly and civil rights it kind of continues what the New Deal was trying to do in a much bigger and broader way however there are lots of critics to the Great Society and it's important you know those many people especially Republicans and conservatives felt these programs were too costly inefficient too idealistic you can't really fix some of these problems and they created a dependency so you're going to see a reaction to the Great Society from those individuals another important thing to keep in mind is the Civil Rights Movement under Kennedy though progress was slow on the issue of civil rights he did not win with a large victory in 1960 so Kennedy just like Roosevelt was was hesitant to really push the issue on a national stage however Grassroots movements keep the pressure up for change we saw the Sens in Greensboro North Carolina there's the freedom rides where the Congress of racial equality members of core try to end segregation in bus facilities by traveling through the South to bring attention to the issue these individuals were often times met by violence you could see one of the freedom ride buses being firebombed by racist individuals in spite of this the movement continued you have JFK eventually sending troops to allow James Meredith to register at the University of Mississippi keep in mind James Meredith is an Air Force veteran the federal court said he could attend the University and protesters try to keep him out Kennedy sends in the troops to allow James Meredith to attend old miss you have Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists were thrown in jail during protest in Birmingham Alabama Alabama was an area of extreme segregation and lack of black voting taking place and so people like King and other ordinary individuals are using nonviolent protest as you could see in the image um to bring attention to this issue King writes the very famous letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he talks about nonviolence and the need for civil disobedience in 1963 you get a extremely important moment where you have the March on Washington of over 200,000 white black and other civil rights um activists and it is at this place where King gives is I Have a Dream speech following the assassination of Kennedy you have really kind of momentum picking up for the Civil Rights Movement President Johnson along with Congress signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there's Johnson shaking hands with King and really what it does is segregation is illegal in all public facilities and it establish the equal employment opportunity commission this ban discrimination and employment everything from race religion sex and national origin discrimination and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows the federal government the power to enforce desegregation in all different areas of life however the Civil Rights Movement still had a really key area to focus on and that is the right to vote there was a lack of voting rights and it remained a major problem in many Southern States the 24th amendment was passed and ratified which outlawed the collection of pole taxes which was a common device used to disenfranchise African-American voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964 there's a huge voter registration driveing Mississippi in Mississippi only 5% of eligible blacks were registered to vote and during the Freedom Summer you have civil rights activists suddenly going missing in 1965 you have the very famous March from Selma to Montgomery and they're trying to bring attention to the issue of voting rights and local law enforcement stops this peaceful nonviolent protest with violence you can see in those images right there LBJ does send in federal troops to protect the nonviolent civil rights protesters and the big moment comes with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which ended efforts to prevent African-Americans from voting in the South for example literacy test are banned with the Voting Rights Act you see black people voting in the Deep South in large numbers for the first time since reconstruction this is a huge transformation of Southern politics in spite of this though there was a growing frustration with the the slow pace of change in fact not too long after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed you have radicalization of the civil rights movement in fact in 1965 the Watts Riots break out in Los Angeles following an arrest of a black motorist by white police officers the riots last for 6 days 34 people are killed hundreds of buildings are destroyed and riots are going to spread to other cities in the years to follow many African-Americans began to question the use of nonviolence in fact there starts to be calls to use black violence to counter white violence most famously Malcolm X joins the Nation of Islam and he emphasized black nationalism self-improvement and separatism so you have the radicalization of some segments of the Civil Rights Movement Malcolm X unfortunately will be assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam but other groups are going to pop up you have the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Comm stokeley carmichel who's really going to call for black power economic power for African-Americans racial separatism and you have in Oakland California a group of people called the Black Panthers founded by Huey Newton and Bobby seal once again this radicalization of the movement is very often times calling for self-rule for African-Americans they were much more militant and as a result they say non-violent protests are not the best path to full equality it's important to keep in mind that that all of these events are taking place at the same time the US involvement in Vietnam is increasing in 1954 while President Eisenhower was still in office the French lose the Battle of dmbn Fu and abandoned Vietnam the US was giving lots of money to France in their effort to recolonize Vietnam following the French removal the US involvement increases under President Eisenhower we continue to give support to the unpopular leader because he was non-communist of South Vietnam named DM there Eisenhower and DM shaking some hands when Kennedy takes office in 1961 he continues to increase and escalate us involvement military advisers are sent into the South to protect the DM regime the regime continues to become unpopular DM is assassinated and when Johnson takes power you have an event a really important event in 1964 called the Gulf of tonan incident LBJ claims the US ship was attacked by North Vietnamese in the Gulf of tonen there are huge questions as to whether or not that attack even took place and the Gulf of tonen incident leads to Congress issuing a blank check for LBJ to send ground troops into Vietnam and we begin the bulk of the fighting in South Vietnam against the Communist forces for 3 years the US public was told that the war was going well that the war was almost over and in 1968 during the Ted offensive a surprise attack by North Vietnam into the South during the Vietnamese New Year shocks the American public because it reveals the war is nowhere near being over and the government was in fact misleading the American people anti-war protests intensifies even more so after 1968 there was already questions about the war before but T just increases those questions and really important point to keep in mind when studying the 60s is there's a variety of movements emerging during this period the Vietnam War deeply divided the nation between Hawks who were pro-war and doves who are anti-war the war also distracted and took away funds from the Great Society and really ruins the presidency of lynon Johnson and you have huge anti-war protests taking place especially on college campuses in fact on college campuses such as UC Berkeley you have the free speech movement developing you have groups like the students for a Democratic Society SDS they issued the port Haron statement and other new left movements spread across college campuses as many people began joining the Civil Rights Movement the anti-war movement and a variety of movements taking place Betty fedan remember wrote the book The Feminine Mystique and later on she would help co-found the National Organization for wom now her group and others would campaign for an equal rights amendment it eventually get defeated in the early '70s but you have the rise of the feminist and the wom's rights movement in American society and in 1969 you have the Stonewall riots when police harassing gay patrons of a place called Stonewall resist and the Stonewall riots gave rise to the modern gay riots movement in American society you're also going to have other movements amongst Latinos American Indians and asian-americans as they also began to demand social and economic equality all right everyone that's a real quick overview of a very complex time in American history make sure you do your reading check out my other videos if the video helped you cck click like peace