CHAPTER 10 One of the most significant effects of World War II was felt over the long term: a shift in the world balance of power. In the 1950s, Britain and France (Allied countries) as well as Germany and Japan (Axis enemies) ceased to be great military powers, leaving only the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) as leaders with the weapons to prove their might.
The evolving decade of the sixties would produce a different kind of power struggle between the government and its citizens. The civil rights revolution would gather greater force and speed; a youth culture no longer willing to accept the status quo would question authority and demand answers; sexual, drug, and feminist revolutions would further change American society; and finally, a war in Vietnam would divide the country and create wounds that would take decades to heal.
Efforts to end the war in Vietnam and return veterans to U.S. soil continued through the 1970s. Richard Nixon had won the 1968 election on his campaign promise to end the war, though he was helped by the opposing party’s disarray. As the years passed, President Nixon became increasingly paranoid. He resented the antiwar movement, and he used his power and influence to intimidate those he saw as enemies. As time wore on, his list of enemies seemed to grow substantially larger.
DURING THE 1940s, President Truman ordered the investigation of applicants for government jobs for fear of communist infiltration. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council were created to focus on new security and intelligence issues.
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IN 1948, AMERICAN writer and editor Whittaker Chambers testified before Representative Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee that he’d been a Communist in the 1920s and 1930s, and that he’d transmitted secret information to Soviet agents. He charged that Alger Hiss, a member of the State Department, was a Communist and that Hiss turned over classified documents to him. Although Hiss denied the charges, Chambers produced document copies implicating Hiss in the matter. After a probe by the Department of Justice, Hiss was indicted for perjury. His first jury failed to reach a verdict, but his second trial in January 1950 handed him a conviction.
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COMMUNISM WAS TAKING hold in China as well, where the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek (which the United States had supported) could no longer withstand the onslaught of Communist forces led by Mao Tse-tung (now often spelled “Mao Zedong”). By the end of 1949, government troops had been defeated, forcing Chiang into exile on Taiwan. Elated by victory, Mao formed the People’s Republic of China.
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TWENTY-THREE NUCLEAR TESTS were carried out at Bikini Atoll (a coral reef island) between 1946 and 1958. The original natives were granted $325,000 in compensation and returned to Bikini in 1974. But they were evacuated four years later when new tests showed high levels of residual radioactivity in the region. They sued the United States and were awarded $100 million in compensation.
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IN 1952, in the Marshall Islands, the United States conducted tests on a weapon of even greater magnitude. In fact, the hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, was 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This thermonuclear device was powered by a fusion reaction rather than the fission reaction of the A-bomb.
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IN A SPEECH given in 1946, President Harry Truman introduced the great wartime leader of Great Britain, Winston Churchill. After receiving an honorary degree, Churchill used the term “Iron Curtain” to describe the line in Europe between self-governing nations of Western Europe and those in Eastern Europe under Soviet Communist control.
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IN 1957, THE Soviet Union successfully launched the first man-made object placed in orbit, which they called Sputnik. This event also fueled fears that the USSR was gaining important ground in the sciences, overtaking the United States.
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CONGRESS PASSED the National Defense Education Act in 1958 to enable scholarships and laboratories for science students, who had to sign an oath vowing they had no Communist sympathies.
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COMMUNIST FEAR FESTERED within government ranks. In February 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that the State Department knowingly employed more than 200 Communists. He later revised his claim to a much lower number, and after an investigation, all of his charges were proved to be false.
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MCCARTHY, AS CHAIRMAN of the Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Operations, launched investigations of the Voice of America as well as the U.S. Army Signal Corps. J. Edgar Hoover, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director, assisted McCarthy in hunting Communist spies and sympathizers, often using the power of his bureau.
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CONGRESS PASSED the McCarran Internal Security Act in 1950, forcing the registration of all Communist organizations and allowing the government to intern Communists during national emergencies. It also prohibited those people from doing any defense work and prohibited entry into the United States to members of “totalitarian” organizations or governments. The act was passed over President Truman’s veto.
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MCCARTHY’S BEHAVIOR BECAME known as McCarthyism, meaning any unfounded accusation of subversive activities. Not only were government officials accused and interrogated, but also film directors, military officers, and others from all walks of life were brought before Senate hearings to name those they knew with Communist ties. As a result, many reputations were ruined and careers left in shambles. A few of the accused even committed suicide.
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AS WORLD WAR II was raging, the Allied powers had agreed that once Japan was defeated, Korea would become an independent state. After Japan’s surrender, General Douglas MacArthur’s plan called for the creation of an artificial line at the 38th parallel in Korea. The line essentially split the country in half. The Japanese forces above the parallel surrendered to the Soviet Union, and those to the south to the Americans.
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IN JUNE 1950, the Communist gove nment of North Korea launched a full-scale military invasion of neighboring South Korea, a capitalist country. Of course, the Soviet Union was modeling the North Korean government on its own example of Communism.
The United Nations (UN) Security Council voted 9–0 to hold North Korea accountable for the attack. The resolution sent a peacekeeping force, virtually all of which was made up of U.S. troops.
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PRESIDENT TRUMAN TERMED the conflict “a police action” and put General MacArthur in command of the UN forces, a post he would hold until his replacement in Aprilop013 b7 1951. MacArthur held his position on the southeastern portion of the peninsula, and American bombing missions crippled North Korean supply lines. In one of his boldest military operations, General MacArthur planned for a large amphibious landing on the west coast of South Korea at Inchon. Once ashore, American troops would push back the enemy and recapture the capital of Seoul.
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AMERICAN FORCES HIT the beaches of Inchon, taking the capital on September 27, 1950. Many thought the war was over with the UN goals having been achieved. The Communists were contained behind the 38th parallel.
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SYNGMAN RHEE, PRESIDENT of South Korea, and his troops crossed the 38th parallel and attacked the North Koreans. When they did, President Truman immediately committed UN forces (with the majority of them being U.S. soldiers) to follow Rhee. The next month, Truman and MacArthur met on Wake Island, hoping to discuss the final phase of the Korean War, which they anticipated ending by Thanksgiving.
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A LITTLE TOO ARROGANT and confident, MacArthur advanced his men too close to the Chinese border, in violation of his instructions. President Truman’s anxiety over MacArthur’s actions eventually led to his replacing him with General Matthew Ridgway. General MacArthur faced a Senate hearing for his insubordination to the commander in chief—threatening the Chinese with a powerful U.S.−UN attack without clearing it first with Truman.
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GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER and his running mate Richard Nixon won the presidential election in 1952. Though peace negotiations had begun in 1951, the new administration inherited the war, and fighting continued for two more years until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
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THE AMERICAN PEOPLE liked Ike, the nickname given to Eisenhower as a teenager; he won a war for them with his strategy to storm the beaches of France on D-day.
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EISENHOWER KEPT HIS campaign promise to end the Korean conflict. He ran the government much as he ran things in the army, by appointing people to office who would take charge under his supervision. With the United States and Soviet Union as contentious superpowers, President Eisenhower cut back defense spending on traditional weapons while boosting nuclear deterrents.
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THE YEAR 1959 brought America two new states. Alaska was admitted as the forty-ninth and most northerly state in January, followed by the volcanic islands in the Pacific—Hawaii—as the fiftieth state in August.
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WITH THE AUTOMOBILE freeing Americans to move about the nation, Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, making good roads a convenient way of life. People were no longer as isolated, and they certainly knew more about the nation and their neighbors with the influences of radio, television, movie theaters and drive-ins, and the handy 45-rpm vinyl records.
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DURING THE 1950s, a very prominent case took center stage, advancing the interests of African Americans. There were laws in seventeen states (mostly Southern) that established racial segregation in public schools. Other states segregated children by district. All justified the practice by using the “separate but equal” standard, according to a Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson) in 1896. But in 1954, the NAACP challenged this doctrine at the elementary school level.
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THURGOOD MARSHALL AND other NAACP lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that children in all-white schools received a better education than those in all-black schools. It was not an easy decision, but Chief Justice Earl Warren used his considerable influence among the two dissenting justices in order to reach a unanimous decision that May. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
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MARSHALL ARGUED THIRTY-TWO cases before the high court, winning twenty-nine of them. In 1967, he became the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.
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IN 1957, PRESIDENT EISENHOWER used federal troops to protect African American students attempting to attend a previously all-white public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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ANOTHER LANDMARK MOMENT that propelled civil rights forward involved a weary seamstress named Rosa Parks, who boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, at the end of her workday. Although the forward section was traditionally reserved for white passengers, Parks sat down there. When asked to give up her seat for a white person and move to the back of the bus, she declined. Arrested and jailed, she became a symbol for the struggle to attain racial equality as the African American community rallied around this refined, mild-mannered woman.
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AFTER ROSA PARKS’S ARREST, local black ministers, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., organized a boycott of the bus system. For over a year, African Americans in Montgomery used carpools, walked to work, or rode horses to get around. Only when the Supreme Court ordered the city to stop segregating black passengers in 1956 did the boycott end.
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MEMPHIS RECORD PRODUCER Sam Phillips often boasted that with “a white boy who could sing black,” he could make a million dollars. In July 1954, Phillips found his ticket to riches and stardom as nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley recorded his first song for Phillips’s Sun Records. Singing the rhythm-and-blues style teenagers coveted at the time, Presley was more acceptable to the racially conscious country because he was white. Soon, Presley became known not only as “Elvis the Pelvis,” but as the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
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IN 1951, CLEVELAND, OHIO, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing, among other types, “race music” for a multiracial audience. Freed is credited with coining the phrase “rock ’n’ roll” to describe the rhythm and blues music. He also organized the first rock ’n’ roll concert, called “The Moondog Coronation Ball” on March 21, 1952.
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FROM 1964 THROUGH 1969, teens listened to a British band called the Beatles. Thirty Beatles songs achieved top-ten status in Billboard magazine charts.
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THE BEATLES, which formed in 1959, was comprised of four musicians born in Liverpool, England. George Harrison and John Lennon played guitar, Paul McCartney was the bassist, and Peter Best (replaced by Ringo Starr in 1962) played drums.
Although their musical style started fresh with early songs such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” it moved to more innovative and experimental works, culminating in the 1967 release of their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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IN 1970, THE Beatles split up to pursue their own musical interests. Speculation about a proposed reunion continued for years until the 1980 murder of John Lennon outside his apartment building, the Dakota, in Manhattan.
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THE BEATLES WERE inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
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AS AMERICANS APPROACHED the 1960 presidential election, many assumed that since Eisenhower had been a popular president, Vice President Richard Nixon would easily win the 1960 election as the Republican nominee. To beat Nixon, Democrats selected a dashing senator from Massachusetts who was certainly groomed if not destined for the presidency. John F. Kennedy (known by his famous initials, JFK) had a successful and wealthy father (Joseph P. Kennedy, who had served in the New Deal) and maternal grandfather (John F. Fitzgerald, also known as Honey Fitz, who had been the mayor of Boston many years before).
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THE MIGRATION OF EAST GERMANS escaping into the West threatened the stability of East Germany. On the night of August 19, 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected as a barricade. President Kennedy commented, “Democracy may not be perfect, but at least we don’t have to build walls to keep our people in.”
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ALTHOUGH KENNEDY HAD the intellect, connections, charm, and World War II heroism (the rescue of his PT-109 crew off the Solomon Islands was well known), he faced certain challenge as the first Irish Catholic to seek executive office. Choosing a Southern running mate—Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas—balanced the Democratic ticket.
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KENNEDY BECAME THE first Roman Catholic president of the United States in American history. Every other president before him had been a Protestant Christian.
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IN A SERIES of debates, the first ever to be televised, the candidates squared off. Their race remained close, but most agreed that Kennedy seemed much more poised on camera, which emphasized Nixon’s haggard appearance. That finesse paid off at the polls, where Kennedy edged ahead in a very narrow defeat of Richard Nixon. In fact, Kennedy garnered 49.7 percent of the popular vote to Nixon’s 49.6, though he clearly won the electoral votes needed (303 to Nixon’s 219).
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AT FORTY-THREE, KENNEDY was the youngest president ever elected (Theodore Roosevelt was slightly younger when he became president, but he had not been elected).
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THE SOVIET LAUNCH of Sputnik in the 1950s and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s outer space journey in 1961 shifted everyone’s attention to mastering space technology before the Russians did. Project Mercury recruited seven brave pilots to become the first astronauts, and soon launched Alan Shepard as the first American in space, followed by John Glenn’s 1962 achievement as the first American to orbit Earth.
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THE TELSTAR 1 satellite became the first telephone and television satellite as well.
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TEST PILOT AND U.S. Air Force officer Chuck Yeager was the first aviator to fly faster than the speed of sound, maneuvering his plane (the Glamorous Glennis) through the shock waves produced as the plane neared the speed of Mach 1.
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ON JULY 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin realized Kennedy’s dream. Crewman Michael Collins watched as his fellow astronauts landed on and explored the lunar surface. “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Armstrong as he set foot on the moon, to a television audience watching in amazement at this great human achievement.
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TEN MORE ASTRONAUTS explored the moon before the Apollo program ended in 1972.
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IN JANUARY 1959, following a coup on the Caribbean island of Cuba, President Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. For much of the 1950s, he had run a police state that favored the wealthy. Fidel Castro led the Cuban rebels—known as “the bearded ones”—along with his second in command, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Triumphant, they took Havana, the capital, making Castro the Cuban leader.
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THE UNITED STATES broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in early 1961, and Castro turned to the Soviet Union for assistance. This brought the threat of Communism within ninety miles of U.S. shores, and it was an unsettling factor for both the outgoing Eisenhower and incoming Kennedy administration.
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ON APRIL 19, 1961, approximately 1,500 Cuban exiles returned to the island to mount an invasion they hoped would incite an uprising and topple the Castro regime. Although no U.S. forces were deployed, U.S. support of what became known as the Bay of Pigs incident was undeniable. The CIA had trained antirevolutionary exiles under the Eisenhower administration, and Kennedy approved the invasion. Armed with U.S. weapons, the exiles landed at the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on Cuba’s southern coast. The invasion was not only a failure, but also an embarrassment for the Kennedy administration.
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IN 1962, U.S. RECONNAISSANCE MISSIONS flying over Cuba photographed Soviet-managed construction work and spotted a ballistic missile in October 1962. Castro, certain that the United States would try another invasion, had agreed to Soviet missiles for his island’s protection.
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FOR SEVERAL TENSE DAYS during the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev communicated through diplomatic channels. The world held its breath for fear of nuclear war between the superpowers. The crisis was solved after the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles and allow U.S. onsite inspection in return for the guarantee not to invade the island nation. Kennedy accepted, agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, and suspended the blockade, but Cuba refused to permit the promised inspection, out of anger at Soviet submission. Aerial photography did reveal that the missile bases were being dismantled.
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PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S FAMOUS SPEECH in Berlin during the summer of 1962 contained the German phrase: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Because President Kennedy did not speak German, he trusted his aides to translate the English phrase “I am a Berliner” into German. However, they didn’t get the wording quite right. In German, the word ein does not exactly translate as “a(n).” In German, when a person is talking about himself he would say, “Ich bein Berliner.” Because President Kennedy put the “ein” in the sentence, he was not saying that he was a “citizen of Berlin” but that he was a kind of jelly donut called a “Berliner.”
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ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, Mrs. Kennedy, the vice president, and Mrs. Johnson, along with Governor John B. Connally of Texas and his wife, accompanied President Kennedy on a visit to Dallas, Texas. En route to a downtown luncheon, the president chose to ride in an open convertible through the motorcade route with his wife sitting beside him. As the motorcade approached an underpass, Kennedy was shot in the head. Rushed to Parkland Hospital, the president never regained consciousness.
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GOVERNOR CONNALLY HAD also been shot, but survived surgery, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who had ridden two cars behind in the motorcade, was sworn in as president before the entourage flew back to Washington that day.
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HOURS LATER AFTER the Kennedy shooting, Dallas police arrested the suspect Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee in a warehouse building along the motorcade route, who was also charged with shooting a police officer the same afternoon. Oswald’s background check quickly revealed he’d suffered a troubled youth, defected to the Soviet Union (where he was denied citizenship), and had obvious Communist leanings.
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OSWALD WAS HIMSELF ASSASSINATED while being transferred from one jail to another. Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby sprang from a group of reporters to shoot the suspect, who also died at Parkland Hospital.
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FOLLOWING THE PRESIDENT’S DEATH and cognizant of his quest for space exploration, NASA renamed its space center on a promontory in eastern Florida, known as Cape Canaveral, the John F. Kennedy Space Center. Today, visitors can watch satellite and space flight launches, view an IMAX presentation, take tours, and learn about America’s space program.
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ON NOVEMBER 24, 1963, the nation mourned as the president’s body was carried by horse-drawn carriage from the White House to the Rotunda of the Capitol. Hundreds of thousands filed past the coffin to pay their respects. A state funeral took place the next day. Foreign dignitaries and heads of state attended. Citizens lined the streets of Washington, DC, as the funeral cortege made its way to Arlington National Cemetery.
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FREEDOM RIDES ACROSS THE SOUTH were common in the decades-old struggle for civil rights in a segregated society. James Meredith made headlines when he tried to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi and the governor personally blocked his attempts despite federal law. This being the early 1960s, President Kennedy had sent in federal marshals. Governor George Wallace of Alabama blocked the University of Alabama, and once again, Kennedy sent in the National Guard.
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MALCOLM X, ASSASSINATED IN 1965, gave voice to the Black Power movement, urging blacks to reject white culture in favor of their own heritage. Although at first he preached violence as a means of expression, he later devoted himself to peace. The Black Panther activists also staged antiwar protests and stood for the black cause.
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THE MOST NOTED of the leaders during the Civil Rights movement was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who had organized the bus boycotts during Rosa Parks’s struggle in the 1950s. As a clergyman, he used his vision of nonviolent confrontation to challenge segregation and the racial divide, and in doing so, he convinced other Americans to join his cause.
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KING, ALONG WITH other black leaders, organized the August 1963 March on Washington. During this march he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King’s speech showed not only his articulate and passionate delivery, but also his moral character, and it gave momentum to his followers and their cause. As a result of his work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
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CONTINUING HIS WORK to speak out for equality, King made another speech in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, where he said, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.” The next evening, on April 4, an assassin gunned down Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood on the balcony of his Memphis motel.
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PRESIDENTS’ DAY IS celebrated in February to honor two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. The holiday is celebrated in the United States on the third Monday in February. Since Presidents’ Day in 1971, two other national holidays were named to honor individuals: Columbus Day and Martin Luther King’s birthday.
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BY 1884, FRANCE had annexed Vietnam, placing it under colonial rule. In 1921, however, the revolutionary Ho Chi Minh created a nationalist party seeking independence from France. During World War II, the Japanese wrested control temporarily from the French, and as Japanese forces surrendered, Ho Chi Minh launched a full-scale revolt, taking Hanoi, the capital.
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FRANCE REFUSED TO allow the independence movement, and by 1946 re-established rule, fearing (along with the United States) that all of Asia could become Communist as China fell to Mao Tse-tung. President Truman sent military supplies and funds for the French war in Vietnam, aiming to stem Communist imperialism.
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A CEASE-FIRE IN JULY 1954 established a buffer zone between North and South Vietnam. The Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, controlled the North, while Ngo Dinh Diem stepped in as interim premier in the south.
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SOUTH KOREA SENT military advisors and aid to assist South Vietnam. Diem’s regime, however, was corrupt, complicating matters for the United States as Vietcong Communists within South Vietnam killed Diem’s authorities. General Maxwell Taylor, one of Kennedy’s top advisors, suggested that sending a few thousand soldiers would quickly take care of the situation, and Vice President Johnson concurred. Kennedy withdrew support of Diem’s regime. Shortly thereafter, the Vietnamese overthrew Diem, who was later murdered.
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PRESIDENT JOHNSON WAS wary of committing U.S. forces, but when North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attacked U.S. naval destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered immediate retaliation. Later investigation cast doubt on whether the North Vietnamese really attacked or whether radar blips confused naval personnel. But this occurred only after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing Johnson to wage war in Indochina with whatever force he desired. By the end of 1964, approximately 20,000 troops had already been sent to the region.
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THE UNITED STATES began a bombing campaign, code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, to stem the stream of supplies from Communist North Vietnam. The operation met with little success. Missions were halted and then stepped up against Hanoi and Haiphong. Relentless aid streamed in to North Vietnam from the Soviet Union and China.
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IN 1965, WHEN it became clear that mere bombing wasn’t enough, the United States sent ground combat troops to Vietnam. Helicopter-borne troops surprised villages harboring suspected Communist supporters. Troops often destroyed such villages, forcing the Vietnamese to find new homes. Fighting became more brutal, as the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese were experts at mine warfare.
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THOUGH THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE elected a new president, the conflict dragged on. In 1968, U.S. troops massacred Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in the aftermath of the Tet offensive in Saigon (where Vietcong soldiers attacked the U.S. embassy as well as multiple military targets throughout all of Vietnam).
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WAR PROTESTS DURING the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago provoked riot police. The objections to the war were so profound that they convinced President Lyndon Johnson not to seek re-election in 1968.
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IN 1970, DURING a demonstration against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of unarmed students, killing four and wounding eleven.
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VISITORS TO WASHINGTON, DC, can visit the Vietnam Memorial, also known as “the Wall.” The walls of the memorial are deep-black granite and form a V, deepest in the earth at the vertex, tapering and rising to ground level over their length of nearly 500 feet. The Wall is a moving tribute to Vietnam veterans, listing the names of 58,249 Americans who perished in the war.
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PEACE NEGOTIATIONS OPENED in Paris in May 1968, and after Nixon won election, he began a gradual withdrawal of forces, which had reached a high of 550,000. South Vietnamese forces with U.S. helicopter support attacked Communist bases in Cambodia in 1970. Nixon continued to withdraw troops while the conflict lingered. Congress withdrew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on December 31, 1970, and peace came in 1973.
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SOUTH VIETNAM’S PRESIDENT announced an unconditional surrender in April 1975.
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LYNDON JOHNSON DECLARED a war on poverty and introduced extensive social legislation, vowing shortly after Kennedy’s death that equal rights for Americans needed to become law. The legislation was passed quickly, but turmoil took its toll despite its passage. Race riots flared up in many cities, such as the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Protests regarding the Vietnam War also escalated to the point that Johnson refused to seek a presidential nomination.
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WITH JOHNSON OUT of the running, Robert F. Kennedy, who had left his post as attorney general to become a senator representing the state of New York, sought the Democratic nomination. Kennedy was a champion of the downtrodden, particularly concerned about problems in urban ghettos and Appalachia.
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AFTER WINNING THE essential California primary, Kennedy gave his victory speech and exited through a hotel kitchen, where a Jordanian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan waited with a gun. Severely wounded, Kennedy died in a Los Angeles hospital the next day, June 6, 1968. His funeral service was held in New York City’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and he is buried not far from the grave of his brother at Arlington National Cemetery.
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VICE PRESIDENT HUBERT HUMPHREY won the nomination that summer and was set to run against Richard Nixon, once vice president in the Eisenhower administration. Having been defeated for the high office in 1960, Nixon, who had once pledged to the media that they wouldn’t have him to kick around again, returned to politics, vowing to end the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Governor George Wallace of Alabama mounted a third-party campaign. Nixon, who had named Governor Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland as his running mate, gained a comfortable majority of the electoral votes (though he won by a slim margin of the popular vote).
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THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL, which was introduced in 1960, gained popularity as well, leading to a sexual revolution and a change in lifestyle for many. By 1973, about 10 million women were using “the pill.”
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SOME OF THOSE who dropped out of traditional society during the 1960s were called “hippies,” and they gravitated to areas such as the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. They became known as “flower children” because they believed that utopia was found in nature.
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THE SUMMER OF LOVE refers to the summer of 1967, when thousands of young people traveled to San Francisco from all over the world and the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness. The Human Be-In (modeled on the sit-in) in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is said to have started the Summer of Love.
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IN AUGUST OF 1969, more than 300,000 young people gathered at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the small Catskills town of Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
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AMERICANS WERE NOW influenced by people like Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and musicians such as the Beatles, who were disciples of transcendental meditation (Eastern religions caught on in force during the decade). After John Lennon married Yoko Ono, the unconventional pair decided to host a “bed-in for peace” for their honeymoon. They stayed in the presidential suite of a large Amsterdam hotel for seven days, protesting the war.
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BERRY GORDY, an African American who made Motown Records of Detroit, Michigan, the most profitable minority business of its time, also built the fortunes and fame of artists such as Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Diana Ross and the Supremes. Their achievements helped break down the racial divide in America.
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AS THE 1960s CONTINUED, folk music carried with it songs of protest with a sense of growing militancy against the war in Vietnam. Peter, Paul, and Mary; Joan Baez; and Bob Dylan caught on with their music and their message. But there was also more traditional music.
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IN 1966, The Sound of Music won an Academy Award for best film, which starred Julie Andrews, fresh from her recent success with Mary Poppins.
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IN THE 1960s, being fashionable meant wearing false eyelashes, Vidal Sassoon hairstyles, and miniskirts, as the rail-thin model Twiggy displayed so well. Knee- or thigh-high boots completed the fashion ensemble.
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TELEVISION CAPTURED AMERICA’S ATTENTION in the 1960s, turning the world into a virtual global village. Soap manufacturing companies began to sponsor dramatic television series that became known as “soap operas.” Sporting events were increasingly broadcast, and cartoons appeared on the television as well.
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COMEDIES AND TALK SHOWS aired at night, and the networks broadcast events such as the landing on the moon. Space exploration of the fictional variety could be seen with the starship Enterprise, as the show Star Trek launched in 1966 with characters Captain James Kirk and Mr. Spock.
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WHEN FRED ROGERS began working at NBC in the 1950s, he knew there had to be a way to make a difference using this new medium. So when educational television began in his home area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Rogers left a promising career to begin his life’s work. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood began airing in the United States in 1968.
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IN 1969, Sesame Street, funded by the Children’s Television Workshop, began as an hour for preschool children in deprived areas. It quickly took hold with characters such as Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Kermit the Frog, helping children everywhere learn their letters, numbers, and social skills.
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NIXON’S INITIATIVES IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS dated back to the Eisenhower administration. As vice president, while escorting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev through a model U.S. kitchen, he debated the merits of the two countries’ political systems in what was termed the “kitchen debate.”
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ON OCTOBER 25, 1971, the General Assembly of the United Nations withdrew their recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China, instead recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government. On November 15, 1971, the People’s Republic of China made its formal entry into the United Nations.
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NIXON WAS THE first president to meet with Communist leaders in Moscow and Beijing, signing trade agreements with both countries and a treaty with the USSR to limit the deployment of antiballistic missile systems. His secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was an especially skilled diplomat, helping to establish strategic détente with both the Soviet Union and China.
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NIXON WAS OUTRAGED when Daniel Ellsberg, a former serviceman turned civilian, compiled a compendium of material that came to be known as “the Pentagon Papers.” The papers were related to the Vietnam War, essentially disclosing that the war’s objectives were not achieved and that the United States had planned to oust another country’s head of state. Ellsberg contacted the New York Times, and the papers began to be published. Nixon sought an injunction to prevent the publication, but the Supreme Court held in a 6-to-3 decision (New York Times Co. v. U.S.) that the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraints and therefore a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of a free press.
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IT WAS ALSO revealed that a White House team had placed illegal wiretaps on Ellsberg’s telephone and had broken into his psychiatrist’s office in an attempt to discredit him.
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IN THE ELECTION OF 1972, Richard Nixon won easily over his Democratic opponent, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Later it came out that White House operatives had dug up information regarding McGovern’s first vice-presidential pick, making out Thomas Eagleton to be mentally ill. McGovern replaced Eagleton on the ticket with Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy in-law and the first director of the Peace Corps.
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VICE PRESIDENT SPIRO AGNEW resigned in October 1973 after his financial misconduct was revealed. The vice president had allegedly accepted $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. President Nixon nominated Gerald R. Ford, a Michigan congressman, to succeed Agnew as vice president.
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IN 1972 THE MUNICH OLYMPIC GAMES were marked by extraordinary accomplishments and unbelievable tragedy. Mark Spitz, a twenty-two-year-old American swimmer, won a record seven gold medals. In an act of terrorism by Black September, an Arab terrorist group, eleven Israeli Olympians were murdered, two at the Olympic Village and nine at the Munich Airport.
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NIXON’S POPULARITY SUFFERED when the economy endured severe inflation, due in some measure to a U.S.−USSR agreement under which the Soviet Union could purchase huge quantities of grain. This devalued the U.S. dollar again. Nixon then cut government funding to many social programs in order to be more fiscally conservative, but this further strained relations with Congress.
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THE FIVE MEN arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) offices at Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington, DC, included Charles Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, and Howard Hunt Jr. Collectively, the group was known as “the White House plumbers,” given the name for their ability to plug White House information leaks. As history would record, however, their duties extended to spying and other odd jobs.
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“THE WHITE HOUSE plumbers” were arrested after a piece of tape left over a door lock tipped off security.
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THE DNC OFFICE break-in targeted the Democratic Party leader Larry O’Brien, who had connections dating back to the 1960 election that Nixon had lost to Kennedy.
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THE TWO WASHINGTON POST JOURNALISTS assigned to cover the break-in—dubbed a “third-rate burglary” by the White House—were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. As they gathered clues, the two pieced together a trail of money and cover-ups that led back to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) and to the Oval Office. U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica remained persistent in his questioning, which also helped crack the case. During the 1973 trial, they learned that this group had attempted to steal documents and had placed wiretaps on telephones.
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FOR NEARLY THIRTY-THREE YEARS, the identity of the main source for Woodward and Bernstein was keep secret and known only as “Deep Throat.” William Mark Felt Sr., a retired agent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, who retired in 1973 as the Bureau’s number two official, revealed himself on May 31, 2005, to be the Watergate scandal whistleblower called “Deep Throat.”
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A SENATE COMMITTEE on the Watergate scandal convened, as did an investigation by special prosecutor Archibald Cox. This investigation truly shed light on the espionage conducted against Nixon’s political rivals. With each revelation, it seemed as if one more official in the Nixon administration was forced out or resigned. The president’s own counsel, John Dean, testified that there was a cancer on the presidency.
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WHEN IT WAS disclosed that the president routinely taped Oval Office conversations, investigators had the tool they needed to chip away at the deception and reveal the truth. Yet President Nixon, claiming executive privilege, refused to hand over the tapes. He viewed them as his personal property.
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WHEN NIXON FINALLY surrendered his tapes, they were extensively edited versions, one with an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap. In the end, Nixon only bought himself some time as pressure mounted to release the tapes in unaltered form.
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THE PRESIDENT SAW many resignations of key advisors and staff. When Nixon ordered the firing of special investigator Cox over the tape matter, he saw yet another of his attorneys general leave the administration. The greatest exodus of staff became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. It outraged the public and diminished everyone’s trust in the president.
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IN OCTOBER 1973, the House Judiciary Committee began considering impeachment proceedings against Nixon, who was stalling with subpoenaed material. The appointment of yet another special investigator, this time Leon Jaworski, did little to quell the outcry. On July 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an appeal, United States v. Nixon, that the president could not use his claim of executive privilege in refusing to hand over the tapes.
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THE HOUSE VOTED to introduce three impeachment articles that same month with the charges of obstructing justice, abusing presidential power, and refusing to obey subpoenas by the House of Representatives.
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ON AUGUST 5, bowing to pressure, Nixon released tapes that clearly showed his involvement in the Watergate cover-up as early as June 1972. The tape that did the most damage, recorded on June 23, became known as “the smoking gun,” for the president could be heard discussing payoffs and other illegal actions.
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AFTER A VISIT from Republican leader Barry Goldwater and others, Nixon announced that he would resign from office. On August 9, 1974, he flew away from the White House in a helicopter, and shortly thereafter, Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president, inheriting a nation in shock and dismay at the problems in their government. He was the first vice president and the first president to ascend to both positions without being elected to those offices.
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IN SEPTEMBER 1974, President Ford issued a pardon to Nixon for all federal crimes he may have committed during his administration. It was an unpopular decision and may have cost Ford re-election in 1976. Yet it spared the nation a great deal of lingering turmoil.
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ALMOST EVERYONE ASSOCIATED with Watergate went on to pen memoirs or accounts of the political saga, including John Dean with his book Blind Ambition. In his retirement, former president Richard Nixon wrote books on political affairs, including No More Vietnams (1985), In the Arena (1990), and Beyond Peace (1994).
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NIXON DIED OF a stroke in 1994 and was buried next to his wife, Pat, on the grounds of his presidential library.
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SOME WOULD SAY that Gerald Ford’s presidency existed in the shadows of disadvantage. He was never elected, even as a vice-presidential candidate. Though he’d served twenty-five years in the House of Representatives, he was barely known on the national scene.
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WHEN HE WAS BORN, future president Gerald R. Ford was not named “Gerald R. Ford,” he was named after his birth father, Leslie Lynch King. When his mother married Gerald R. Ford in Michigan in 1916, Ford adopted her three-year-old son as well. The couple renamed the boy after his adoptive father, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.
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IN THE 1970s, quasi-religions and cults became popular, sometimes with tragic outcomes. In 1978, Jim Jones convinced followers to move to Guyana and commit mass suicide. More than 900 members of the People’s Temple perished after consuming a grape drink mixed with cyanide and Valium.
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JIM JONES’S MASS SUICIDE REHEARSALS called White Nights were actually not voluntary but forced. According to one survivor, people who refused to commit suicide were held down and shot with needles filled with potassium cyanide. They even went around with stethoscopes to see if they still had a heartbeat, and if they did, they’d shoot that person.
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WHEN NEW YORK CITY almost went bankrupt, it turned to Washington for help. At first Ford denied the request, but pressure mounted from other states feeling the fallout of New York’s troubled economy. The cumulative effects of all these factors made it possible for another virtual unknown to hit the political circuit in 1976—Jimmy Carter.
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JIMMY CARTER, with his genuine, toothy smile, was a peanut farmer and former navy man who had studied nuclear physics. When he ran against incumbent Gerald Ford, he won the 1976 presidential election.
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JIMMY CARTER WAS the thirty-ninth president of the United States, but he was first president in one way at least: President Carter is the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.
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CARTER’S BIGGEST OBSTACLE in turning around the economy became the energy crisis. Crude oil prices had continued to rise, leading to a shortage of gasoline, rationing, and long lines at the pumps.
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ONE AREA IN which Carter certainly excelled was hosting President el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel in talks at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, for Mideast peace accords. A state of war had existed between the two nations from 1948 to 1978 when Carter intervened.
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YEARS BEFORE, THE CIA had used covert aid to help restore Muhammad Reza Pahlavi as the shah of Iran in order to protect its interest in this volatile region. But the shah’s regime lost its religious roots and became corrupt and autocratic. Conservative Muslims led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini opposed the Iranian government, inciting a revolution that deposed the shah and sent him and his family into exile. When the shah sought asylum in the United States, the ayatollah demanded his return, along with the billions of dollars the shah had allegedly hidden abroad.
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ON NOVEMBER 4, 1979, a mob of Islamic students attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking sixty-six members of the staff as hostages. Though thirteen were soon released, the other fifty-three remained hostages for 444 days. Negotiations did not secure their return, nor did a failed U.S. commando raid the following April. Carter ordered an airborne rescue attempt in April 1980 that failed miserably. On day 445 of the Iranian hostage crisis, the hostages were released, but only as Jimmy Carter’s presidency ended at noon that day.
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DURING THE LATE 1960s, abortion became the topic of debate in the political arena. “Pro-choice” advocates believed that only a woman and her doctor should decide whether to end a pregnancy. They argued that life begins when the fetus can survive on its own outside the mother’s womb. “Pro-life” advocates argued that life begins at conception and that states should prohibit the procedure. Many women had illegal abortions, risking their health and their lives.
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IN 1973, THE U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Roe v. Wade that the state cannot restrict a woman’s right to an abortion during the first trimester, that the state can regulate the abortion procedure during the second trimester “in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health,” and that in the third trimester, a state can choose to restrict or even to proscribe abortion as it sees fit.
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GLORIA STEINEM, a writer and political activist, founded the magazine Ms. in 1971 when women’s magazines began covering crucial topics such as health and sexuality, law, work, and the arts. Women everywhere began insisting on the title “Ms.” as opposed to “Miss” or “Mrs.,” asserting that the courtesy title of their male counterparts (Mr.) did not reveal their marital status.
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BY AUGUST 1974, the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified by thirty-three of the required thirty-eight states. A congressional mandate had set March 1979 as the deadline for ratification, and by June 1978, only three additional states had approved the ERA. Even when given an extension for approval, the amendment failed to be ratified.
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THE 1970s SAW an increase in all kinds of activism. Gay liberation occurred all over the country, but particularly in areas such as New York’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association issued a position statement that held that homosexuality was no longer to be considered a mental illness or psychiatric disorder.
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RALPH NADER BROUGHT consumerism to the forefront, making him an instant enemy of corporate America, whose products he questioned. There is little doubt that Nader’s efforts raised the quality of goods. In 1965, Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed exposed corruption in the automobile industry, in particular the ability to make cars far safer and the hesitancy to do so.
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IN 1979, THE public’s concern for the environment grew when an accident occurred at Three Mile Island, the site of a pressurized-water nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A maintenance error and a defective valve led to the loss of coolant. The safety systems seemed to have worked properly but when the emergency cooling system was shut off, a partial core meltdown (with resulting damage) occurred, and a small amount of radioactive gas escaped from the containment building. The financial cost to the utility was substantial, but the public scare was even worse.
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BECAUSE OF the incident at Three Mile Island, legislation was soon enacted requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to adopt far more stringent standards for the design and construction of nuclear power plants, as well as preparation of emergency plans to protect public health and the environment. Several nuclear power plants already under construction were canceled.
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IN 1974, HENRY LOUIS “HANK” AARON hit his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record that had stood for thirty-nine years. He was one of the first black players to enter major league baseball.
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MUHAMMAD ALI FIRST came on the scene in the 1960s as Cassius M. Clay Jr., an Olympic gold medalist and later world heavyweight champ, but he was stripped of the title when convicted of draft evasion. He took a new name when he joined a Black Muslim sect, and won a Supreme Court reversal. He regained the heavyweight crown in 1974 against George Foreman.
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THE FIRST BLACK MAN to win a major tennis tournament, Arthur Ashe Jr. began playing the game in the segregated parks of Richmond, Virginia. He won important tennis titles, survived heart surgery, and retired from the game. Later, he developed HIV, likely acquired through blood transfusions. He became an active fundraiser prior to his death.
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WINNER OF THE LADIES’ FIGURE SKATING GOLD MEDAL at the 1976 Winter Olympics, Dorothy Hamill not only gained international popularity but brought a resurgence to figure skating, her own trademark “Hamill Camel” to her spins, and a new hairstyle that was all the rage in America.
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IN WHAT WAS dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes,” the tennis star Billie Jean King defeated her male opponent Bobby Riggs in three straight sets. King was one of the most successful tennis players in the history of Wimbledon.
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BRUCE JENNER WON the Olympic decathlon event at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, and was one of the first athletes to use his Olympic popularity as a springboard to wealth and celebrity off the track.
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AS THE PREMIER pro golfer of the 1960s and 1970s, Jack Nicklaus consistently captured major pro tournaments, including the U.S. Open, Masters, and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Championship.
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THE AMERICAN SWIMMER Mark Spitz won seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. He set world records in many races, including the 200-meter butterfly event.
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DURING THE 1970s, the Pittsburgh Steelers was the first NFL team to win four Super Bowls. Head coach Chuck Noll led the talented quarterback Terry Bradshaw, defensive end “Mean” Joe Greene, running back Franco Harris, and linebackers Jack Ham and Jack Lambert.