The Civil Rights Movement and Postwar Liberalism: A Time of Change and Conflict - Prof. Br, Study notes of World History

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A. The “Fabulous” Fifties?  The Civil Rights Movement: The “Second Reconstruction” o A number of racial equality laws finally get enforced o From the beginning, a movement by black people for black people and deeply rooted in the church o Not as much of a political movement
B. Why the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s?  World War II o Black soldiers sent over and see societies without social segregation o Not allowed in combat o Fight an enemy of white supremacy o Black workers at home began organizing because they were not allowed into Unions  Cold War o Soviets pointed out the treatment of blacks in the South saying that it was not freedom  Contradiction between our ideals and out actions  Expectorations in consumer society
C. The Legal Approach – early 1950’s  Fairly tame approach,  Change the laws, change the society  The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and Brown vs. Board, 1954 o Ruled out that separate but equal is discremitory. All schools must desegregate in all deliberate speed o “Massive Resistance”  George Wallace, Lester Maddox (Chased activist off with axe handles from his restaurant), “school choice,” “segregation academies,” etc.  Wallace was a New Deal Demarcate and was pro- segregation; University of Alabama began to desegregate, he stood in the door way  Private schools began to poop up all over the south  School Choice – committee that choose what school was best for what kid o Little Rock High School desegregated 1957  The governor calls out the National Guard to prevent 9 black students from going and registering in school  States refusing to obey the law; Eisenhower does not take this and sends troops to Arkansas to escort the students to class for a year  School finally shut down
D. The “Civil Disobedience” Approach – 1955 to 1965  Major Inspiration: murder of Emmett Till, 1955 o Visiting his family in Money, Mississippi o He was a kid who was not scared o On a dare went into a store and calls the owners wife “baby” o The wife complained to her husband o Taken, tortured, beaten and drowned o Body found by fisherman and buried quickly o Mother comes and gets his body and has an open casket funeral o Unrecognizable o Bryant put on trial and found not guilty o Testified in “Look” magazine and told their entire story for $4,000; untouchable  Looking ahead to the end of the Liberal Consensus… o Change from Liberal to Conservative idealism o Begins to break up at the end of the 1960’s  Two Liberal Icons: President J.F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson o LBJ- believed in opening up opportunities for people, more liberal than JFK
B. “Camelot” – the Kennedy years, 1960-1963  Kennedy as myth, legend, martyr… o Only in office for 2.5 years o Who liked JFK? o Most known for his foreign policy o Founded the Peace Core  Kennedy and Liberal Anticommunism o Berlin, 1961  Still divided  Soviets build a war through the center of Berlin  Kennedy gives a speech and says that he is a Berliner in German o Cuba, 1960-1962  Late 1950’s – Cuba goes Communist  Fidel Castro: drives out the dictator and take the country over; 90 miles from our borders  CIA assassination attempts  To knock Castro out with help of the mob, poisoning his cigar; many poisoning  The Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961  Try to invade Cuba  Anti communist Cubans in Miami sent back to fight the Communist  Cuban military units meet the exiles when they land  Kennedy has cold feet so No air cover is sent by the US so that they could say that they had nothing to do with it  Exiles captured  Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962  Response to the Bay of Pigs  Castro lets the Soviets put nuclear missiles in Cuba  America comes close to nuclear war; advisors beg for a strike  Kennedy announces that we will blockade Cuba to prevent any more nuclear missiles from entering  Soviets ships are brought back and an agreement is met with Soviet missiles taken out of Cuba if We take out our missiles in Turkey  Kennedy’s domestic liberalism o Minimum wage bill: increased to $1.25 an hour o Social Security increase: failed o Housing Act of 1961: increases government supports for loans o Education funding: $2.3billion increase - fails o Tax cuts: believed it would stimulate the economy
C. The Lyndon Johnson Years, 1964-1968  Concerned for the common people  White South Democrat because of the legacy of the Reconstruction  Race o Punishing Democrats to embrace civil rights o Civil Rights Act of 1964  Prohibited segregation and gender in political places o Voting Rights Act of 1965  To prevent ways from keeping blacks from voting o Executive Order 11246  Make discrimination in companies contracted by the government illegal  The “Great Society” o A “New Deal” for the 1960s  Wants to know why people are still suffering and why poor people are still poor?  Lacked skills and education o Major Programs  Medicare/Medicaid  Medicare – provides health insurance  Medicaid – provides health care to people on welfare  The “War on Poverty”  Help nonwhite urban poor to rise out of poverty  Head Start: series of education programs to help low income kids  Upward Bound: for high school kids  Job Corps: trained young people for successful jobs  VISTA: Peace Core program for inside the U.S.  Community Action Programs: get more people involved in the programs that would help them
D. Mid 1960’s : Liberalism is riding high…but things will change  If we don’t go to Vietnam to stop the communist then all the countries around them will fall to communism. o Funding the French Indochina war  By the end we are basically paying for the entire war  Against the Viet Kong (Formally Viet Minh)  French lose, surrender o Geneva Settlement – 1954  Divides Vietnam north and south  All of the Viet Minh would head to the north, those who were friendly to the French would move to the south  Supposed to be temporary  Have and election 2 years later to elect a leader  A Communist was known to win  U.S. persuades South Vietnam to refuse to vote and to become a sovereign state  No elections – war erupts  Troops sent to the south and secrete cells (communist) that remained in the South begin to rise  U.S. begins to fund the South Vietnam War  Diem was the leader of the South, dictator and corrupt  Fought North Vietnam tooth and nail and was anticommunist
C. Entering the Quagmire  Support for Diem and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam)  JFK and “military advisors” o Ends up sending 16000, green berets o Supposed to train the ARVN and eventually lead them into combat  LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – 1964 o Our excuse for entering the war o August 2nd, 2 US destroyers attacked by Vietnamese gun boats off the coast of North Vietnam (most likely never happened) o Spun as an act of war o Authorizes Johnson to ramp the war up, war never actually declared  Direct US involvement begins – ROLLING THUNDER, Marines at Da Nang, etc. o 1st ground troops land in Da Nang
D. Fighting the War  The ineffectiveness of air power o Cannot break the industrial power of a country that has no industry o Not a target rich environment  The ineffectiveness of the ground war o No obvious front lines, guerrilla war o Not the kind of war that we were used to fighting o Fire power does not solve everything o “Search and Destroy” and “Body Counts”  sent units out into the field and their mission was to kill as many VCs as you could faster than they could be replaced  Counted dead bodies as VCs  Had quotas o Frustration – My Lai massacre
E. Tet Offensive, January 1968  Attack of all US military bases by the VC all at the same time  “Where’d all theses VC come from?”  The “credibility gap” and growing antiwar sentiment at home  The pullout begins o By 1972 virtually all men are out and by 1973 a peace treaty is reached o 1973-1974 North Vietnamese come and take over the South
F. Reaction  Vietnam, the end of liberal dominance and the rise of conservatism  Assigning blame? o “We didn’t go all the way to achieve victory.” o “We should have invaded/nuked the North.” o “The media and protestors lost the war.” o Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1986) and POW myth o The Other Side of the Sixties: Barry Coldwater and the Rise of Postwar Conservatism 03/30/2009
A. Conservatism: from the Political Fringe to the Halls of Power
B. Vox Clamantis in Deserto– Conservatism in the 1950s  The New Deal lived on  Felt left out of the Republican party  Similarities with the New Left (Liberals as well) o College educated, largely white, and well to do o Smart, academic o Aggressive Containment o Strongly Anticommunist o Share belief in individual freedom o Reject strongly that government is an effect tool for social improvement ✗  Government is a threat to improvement, wasteful ✔  Power hungry ✔  Capitalism and Private property and Free enterprise ✔  Traditional Values ✔ C. Core Conservative Belief  Caveat: there are many different kinds of conservatives… o Economic, social, religious, etc.  Core Conservative Beliefs o Mistrust of centralized “big government”  Argue that government is there only to protect your property rights and anything that it does beyond that is unjustifiable  Government is bad at what it does. Inefficient.  Strict constitutionalist – must read constitutional literally o Emphasis on individual rights, especially property rights and free enterprise  Government tramples on economic freedom o Mistrust of “social engineering” i.e. using government as a tool for social improvement  Hated LBJ  No right to support civil rights o Intense anticommunism/patriotism, support for large military  A “big military” in a “small government”  See liberals as weak on communism o “Law and Order”  Three strikes your out  Support your local police o “Traditional Values”  Popular among religious conservatives – but not all conservatives are religious (see Ayn Rand (atheist))  Moral views and typical marital values o Hatred of “moderate” conservatives, e.g. Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller  Call the Rhinos  Hate Ike cause he doesn’t cut down the New Deal
D. Conservative Intellectual Influences  Friedrich von Hayek and The Road to Serfdom (1944) o Argues that any society where the economy is centrally controlled by the government will be come tyrants (dictatorship)  U. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman o Free marketist  Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, The Fountain Head o Objectivism  Russell Kirk and The Conservative Mind o History of Conservative Thinking  William F. Buckley and The National Review o Heart and soul of young conservative movement o Young Americans for Freedom E. Barry Goldwater  Born in Arizona, 1909  Classic conservative: Anti-New Deal, intensely anticommunist/pro- military, deeply opposed to LBJ’s  Supporter of McCarthy  Supporter of the Vietnam War and using nuclear weapons  Jewish  Supporter of planed parenthood  Supporter of gays in the military  Moderates in the party are horrified of him  Only won the deep south and his own state because of High water mark for liberalism   Awarding people who are inherently lazy  The appeal of conservative arguments to Democratic “hardhats” D. Race – the Southern Strategy and Busing  The “Southern Strategy” o Goldwater’s southern success in 1964  Deep south was not republican at all, but went republican for him because of the issue of Race o GOP Lesson – win over southern segregationist Democrats without alienating other Republicans, and win national power  Using broad “strategic language” – “Stat’s Rights,” “getting government off your back,” “cracking down on the lazy and criminal,” etc.  Busing the limits of white Northern liberal support for civil rights  “Morning in America”: The Age of Reagan 03/30/2009
A. The 1980s: Conservatism seizes the brass ring  Ronald Reagan as the “Anti-FDR” o Wanted to put an end to the Liberal Consensus
B. The Political Odyssey of Ronald Reagan  The Hollywood years o 2nd rate movie actor, a lot of Westerns  Reagan the Liberal o New Dealer, Union member  President of the Screen Actors Guild o HUAC testimony  Called up because he was apart of Hollywood  Becoming more sympathetic towards HUAC  Cooperative witness for them  Secret FBI informant (even had a code name) o Reagan’s Move to the Right in the 1950’s  Becomes the face of General Electric and joins the Republican party, a conservative o 1960s – Regan enters politics  The Goldwater campaign of ’64 and “The Speech”  Name floated as a possible candidate for president  Talked on behalf of Goldwater  Elected governor of California, 1966
C. Enter the Bummer Decade…  Conservatism rushes in to fill the void
D. The 1980 Election and After (51% of the vote)  40% of the union votes, vote for Reagan  Redeem America of Liberalism  Four Reagan Administration goals o Revive “traditional” patriotism  Vietnam as “noble cause” – said it to get us over Vietnam  Very strong idea of country  To fight the “Vietnam Syndrome” o Massive increase in military strength  Increases military spending, mostly weapons  “Rollback” = the new “containment”  should stop communist expansion and push them back  funds anti-communist gorillas o Staunch support for aggressive capitalism, opposition to regulation, unions (big business)  Tax cuts, “supply-side” and “trickle-down”  Tax cut for highest bracket to 50%  “Supply side/trickle-down”  cut taxes on businesses, they will invest their profit back into the economy, increase wages, begin to make more money they will grow  Social welfare cuts  Too Little, Too Late o Collapse of the Berlin Wall, 1989  Huge crowds tear down the Berlin wall in the fall of 89 o East Germany dissolves, 1989  Meanwhile the government of E. Germany is collapsing and they become just Germany o Civil War in Romania, 1989  Romanian protests end up in the fiercest combat since WWII o The Big One – Soviet Union dissolves, 1991 o Exceptions: China, Cuba, a few others
C. America and the Soviet Collapse  Reactions o Relief – war was not longer an event that could occur between the Soviets o “We did it!” – an unwarranted ego trip? o Reagan’s role – only one of several factors  Buildings up the military and weapons; Soviets run into bankruptcy  Now What? Foreign Policy after the Soviets and increasing US influence abroad o Leaves us as the only Super power now o Invasion of Panama, 1989  Bush has troops invade Panama to help with the drug trade; situation settled and Captured leader and sent to jail in Miami o The Fist Gulf War, 1991  Short lived war  Sadamn Husain invaded Kuwait and Iraqis killed people taking over oil fields o Iraq – 2003???? D. Clinton and Conservatism/Centrism in the 1990’s  George H. W. Bush – Reagan lite o Not as conservative as Reagan o Liberal style legislation o Small government, no tax guy o Economic downturn, voted out after 1 term  William J. Clinton and Centrism o Clinton’s liberalism: Family and Medical Leave Act, AmeriCorps, Earned Income Tax Credit, raising minimum wage, attempts at universal health care, etc.  Change welfare as we know it o Clinton’s conservatism: Middle class VS Poor, less support for unions, little support for social liberalism (gay rights, feminism, etc.) and “welfare reform: such as the end of AFDC  Southerner