LIBERTY EQUALITY POWER · 1970 U.S. troops enter Cambodia • Student demonstrators killed at Kent...

LIBERTY,EQUALITY,

POWERA H I S T O R Y O F T H E A M E R I C A N P E O P L E

V o l u m e I I : S i n c e 1 8 6 3F i f t h E d i t i o n

John M. Murrin Princeton University, Emeritus

Paul E. Johnson University of South Carolina, Emeritus

James M. McPherson Princeton University, Emeritus

Alice FahsUniversity of California, Irvine

Gary Gerstle Vanderbilt University

Emily S. Rosenberg University of California, Irvine

Norman L. Rosenberg Macalester College

Australia • Brazil • Canada • Mexico • Singapore • SpainUnited Kingdom • United States

05406_00_fm-VOL-II-SE.qxd 1/22/07 4:23 PM Page i

Copyright 2008 Thomson Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

© 2008 Thomson Wadsworth, a part of The Thomson Corporation.Thomson, the Star logo, and Wadsworth are trademarks used hereinunder license.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by anymeans—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, taping, Web distribution, information storage and retrieval systems, or in any other manner—without the written permission ofthe publisher.

Printed in Canada1 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 0 0 9 0 8 0 7

ExamView® and ExamView Pro® are registered trademarks ofFSCreations, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of the MicrosoftCorporation used herein under license. Macintosh and PowerMacintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Usedherein under license.

© 2008 Thomson Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Thomson Learn-ing WebTutorTM is a trademark of Thomson Learning, Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006933547

ISBN 13: 978-0-495-116073ISBN-10: 0-495-11607-6

Thomson Higher Education25 Thomson PlaceBoston, MA 02210-1202USA

For more information about our products, contact us at:Thomson Learning Academic Resource Center1-800-423-0563

For permission to use material from this text or product, sub-mit a request online at http://www.thomsonrights.com

Any additional questions about permissions can be submitted by email to [email protected]

Publisher: Clark Baxter Production Service: Lachina Publishing ServicesSenior Acquisitions Editor: Ashley Dodge Text Designer: Cheryl CarringtonDevelopment Editor: Margaret McAndrew Beasley Photo Manager: Sheri BlaneyAssistant Editor: Kristen Tatroe Photo Researcher: Sarah EvertsonEditorial Assistant: Ashley Spicer Cover Designer: Cheryl CarringtonAssociate Development Project Manager: Lee McCracken Cover Printer: Transcontinental—BeaucevilleSenior Marketing Manager: Janise Fry Compositor: International Typesetting and CompositionMarketing Assistant: Kathleen Tosiello Printer: Transcontinental—BeaucevilleMarketing Communications Manager: Tami Strang Cover Art: Marion Post Wolcott, Man Playing Guitar on Porch,Senior Content Project Manager: Joshua Allen Natchitoches, Louisiana. 1940. © The Ogden Museum ofSenior Art Director: Cate Rickard Barr Southern Art, University of New Orleans, Gift of thePrint/Media Buyer: Doreen Suruki Roger H. Ogden CollectionPermissions Editor: Roberta Broyer

Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume II: Since 1863, Fifth EditionJohn M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherson, Alice Fahs, Gary Gerstle,

Emily S. Rosenberg, and Norman L. Rosenberg

05406_00_fm-VOL-II-SE.qxd 1/22/07 4:24 PM Page ii


America duringIts Longest War,1963–1974

The Vietnam War MemorialThis memorial, a kind of wailing wall that bears the names of all Americans whodied in the Vietnam War, was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982.

29

© J

osep

h So

hm; C

hrom

oSoh

m In

c./C

ORBI

S

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 896


The years from 1963 to 1974 brought political, social, and

cultural upheaval to most areas of the world, including the

United States. Lyndon Baines Johnson promised to finish

what John Kennedy had begun, but popular memory has

come to recall LBJ’s troubled presidency (1963–69) more negatively than

Kennedy’s. When looking at foreign policy, Johnson faced a critical ques-

tion: Should the United States deploy its own combat forces to prop up

South Vietnam, its beleaguered ally? When surveying the domestic scene,

where Johnson hoped to focus his attention, he already knew what he

would do: mobilize the federal government’s power to promote greater

liberty and equality. Very quickly, however, Johnson saw his domestic

dreams begin to vanish in the face of the ongoing foreign nightmare in

Vietnam and turmoil at home. By 1968, the United States was politically

polarized and awash in both foreign and domestic crises.

The polarization so much in evidence during 1968 seemed to worsen

during the years that followed. By 1974, when a series of political scan-

dals, known as the “Watergate Crisis,” forced Richard Nixon to leave the

presidency under pressure of impeachment, the nation’s political and

social fabrics looked very different from those of 1963.

THE GREAT SOCIETYClosing the New Frontier The Election of 1964 Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Evaluating the Great Society

ESCALATION IN VIETNAMThe Gulf of Tonkin ResolutionThe War Continues to Widen The Media and the War

THE WAR AT HOMEThe Movement of MovementsMovements on College Campuses:

A New LeftThe Counterculture African American Social MovementsThe Antiwar Movement

1968Turmoil in VietnamTurmoil at Home The Election of 1968

THE NIXON YEARS, 1969–1974Lawbreaking and ViolenceA New PresidentThe EconomySocial PolicyEnvironmentalism Controversies over Rights

FOREIGN POLICY UNDER NIXONAND KISSINGER

Détente and NormalizationVietnamization The Aftermath of War Expanding the Nixon Doctrine

THE WARS OF WATERGATEThe Election of 1972 Nixon Pursued Nixon’s Final Days

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 897


898 C H A P T E R 2 9 : Am e r i c a d u r i n g I t s L o n g e s t Wa r, 1 9 6 3 – 1 9 7 4

The Great Society

How did the Johnson admini-

stration define Great Society goals, and how did

it approach problem solving? Why did the Great

Society produce so much controversy?

Lyndon B. Johnson lacked Kennedy’s media-friendlycharisma, but he possessed other political assets. As amember of the House of Representatives during the late1930s and early 1940s and as majority leader of the U.S.Senate during the 1950s Johnson mastered the art ofinterest-group horse trading. Few legislative issues, itappeared, defied an LBJ-forged consensus. Every significantinterest group could be flattered, cajoled, or threatened intolending this towering Texan its support. During Johnson’stime in Congress, his wealthy Texas benefactors gainedvaluable oil and gas concessions and lucrative constructioncontracts, while Johnson acquired his own personal for-tune. Johnson’s skill in gaining federal funding for ambi-tious building projects brought economic growth to citiessuch as Dallas and Houston and to much of the Southwest.

Kennedy’s death gave Johnson, who had been frus-trated by his limited job description while serving as JFK’svice president, the opportunity to display his political skillson the presidential stage. Confident of being able to forge anational consensus behind a bold program for social andeconomic change, Johnson began his presidency by askingCongress to honor JFK’s memory. He urged passage of leg-islation that Kennedy’s administration had proposed andbombarded legislators with much grander proposals of hisown. Between January 8, when he delivered his first State ofthe Union address, until August 27, 1964, when he acceptedthe Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Johnsonconcentrated on three domestic issues: tax cutting, civilrights, and economic inequality.

Closing the New Frontier Even as Johnson closed JFK’s New Frontier, he staked outadditional political territory. In May 1964, during anaddress at Michigan University, Johnson declared it wastime to “move upward to the Great Society,” which restedon “liberty and abundance for all.” The Great Society,according to LBJ, would not provide Americans with “asafe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finishedwork,” but rather “a challenge constantly renewed, beck-oning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our livesmatches the marvelous products of our labor.”

To stimulate the economic growth needed to producethe Great Society’s abundance, Johnson had first, severalmonths earlier in his presidency, emphasized the importance

of cutting taxes. Intensively lobbying members of Congresswho opposed the budget deficits that tax reductions wouldproduce, he secured passage of the $10 billion tax-cutpackage JFK had earlier proposed. Its supporters hailed themeasure as the guarantor of continuing economic growth.Although economists continue to disagree as to how muchthis tax measure actually contributed to the economic boomof the mid-1960s, it appeared to work. GNP rose 7 percent in1964 and 8 percent the following year, unemploymentdropped, and inflation remained low.

Advocating greater liberty and equality, Johnsonpushed a more extensive version of Kennedy’s civil-rights

Focus Question

C H R O N O L O G Y

1963 Johnson assumes presidency and pledges to continueKennedy’s initiatives

1964 Congress passes Kennedy’s tax bill, the Civil RightsAct of 1964, and the Economic Opportunity Act • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gives Johnson authorityto conduct undeclared war • Johnson defeats BarryGoldwater in presidential election

1965 Johnson announces plans for the Great Society • Malcolm X assassinated • U.S. intervenes inDominican Republic • Johnson announces significantU.S. troop deployments in Vietnam • Congresspasses Voting Rights Act • Violence rocks LosAngeles and other urban areas

1966 Black Power movement emerges • Miranda v.Arizona decision guarantees rights of criminalsuspects • Ronald Reagan elected governor ofCalifornia • U.S. begins massive air strikes in North Vietnam

1967 Large antiwar demonstrations begin • Beatlesrelease Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

1968 Tet offensive accelerates debates over war (January)• Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated (April) • RobertF. Kennedy assassinated (June) • Violence rocksDemocratic national convention in Chicago • CivilRights Act of 1968 passed • Vietnam peace talksbegin in Paris • Richard Nixon elected president

1969 Nixon announces “Vietnamization” policy • Reportsof My Lai massacre become public

1970 U.S. troops enter Cambodia • Studentdemonstrators killed at Kent State and Jackson State• First Earth Day observed • EnvironmentalProtection Act passed • Clean Air Act passed

1971 Pentagon Papers published • White House“Plumbers” formed • Military court convictsLieutenant Calley for My Lai incident

1972 Nixon crushes McGovern in presidential election

1973 Paris peace accords signed • Roe v. Wade upholdswomen’s right to abortion • Nixon’s Watergatetroubles begin to escalate

1974 House votes impeachment, and Nixon resigns • Ford assumes presidency

1975 Saigon falls to North Vietnamese forces

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 898


T h e Gre a t S o c i e t y 899

proposal through Congress. In early February 1964, theHouse of Representatives passed its own civil-rights bill. Itincluded an amendment, Title VII of the measure eventu-ally signed into law, that barred discrimination based notsimply on “race” but on “sex” as well. Some southernDemocrats had hoped that such a provision might scuttlethe entire bill, but other House members saw the additionas a welcome victory for women. This provision wouldsoon assist an already resurgent women’s movement.

Although Johnson was championing the civil-rightsbill as another memorial to Kennedy, he fully recognizedthat southerners in the Democratic Party would continuetrying to block it. Consequently, he and his allies in theU.S. Senate courted crucial Republican support for cur-tailing a southern-led filibuster, for hammering out com-promises on key provisions, and for reconciling the differ-ing bills passed by the two houses of Congress.

Johnson finally obtained the Civil Rights Act of 1964,a truly bipartisan measure, in July 1964. It strengthenedexisting federal remedies, to be monitored by a new Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), againstjob discrimination. More controversially, the act’s “publicaccommodations” provision, which resembled an 1875civil-rights law that an earlier Supreme Court had invali-dated, prohibited racial discrimination in all facilities—such as hotels, motels, and restaurants—in any way con-nected to the flow of interstate commerce. Opponents ofthis section saw it as an overextension of federal powerand an attack on the personal liberties of property owners.Its proponents predicted, correctly as it turned out, thatthe current Supreme Court would reject these constitu-tional claims.

Finally, Congress responded favorably to Johnson’sthird domestic priority, legislation to deal with socioeco-nomic inequality. A month after passage of the CivilRights Act of 1964, under constant prodding from theWhite House, legislators adopted another landmark meas-ure, the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA). Coming onlysix months after Johnson had called for “an unconditionalwar on poverty in America,” during his January 1964 State

The Presence of Lyndon B. JohnsonAs both senator and president, Lyndon Johnson employed body language—the “Johnson treatment”—as a favored means oflining up support for his policies.

�

G eor

ge T

ames

/ N

YT P

ictu

res

Geor

ge T

ames

/ N

YT P

ictu

res

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 899



of the Union address, the EOA provided LBJ with themeans to launch a multifront campaign.

A new executive agency, the Office of EconomicOpportunity (OEO) would coordinate a variety of differ-ent initiatives. LBJ charged the OEO, first headed by R. Sargent Shriver, a member-by-marriage of the Kennedyfamily, with eliminating “the paradox of poverty in themidst of plenty.” In addition to establishing the newagency, the EOA mandated federal-government loans forrural and small-business development; established awork-training program called the Jobs Corps; created Vol-unteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic versionof the Peace Corps; provided low-wage, public service jobsfor young people; and began the “work-study” program toassist college students. In addition, it authorized grass-roots social initiatives, Community Action Programs(CAPs), to be planned by local community groups butfunded by Washington.

Meanwhile, however, Lyndon Johnson and the rest ofthe nation could already see signs that conflict wouldsurely accompany change, particularly on the issue of civilrights. During the same summer that Congress passed theCivil Rights Act of 1964 and created the OEO, violenceconnected to racial issues broke out in different parts ofthe country. In New York City, tensions between policeofficers and African American demonstrators, protestingpolicing practices that had led to the fatal shooting of ablack youth, flared into confrontations during mid-July.

At almost the same time, a different kind of violencerolled through those parts of Mississippi where a coalitionof civil-rights groups was sponsoring what it called “Free-dom Summer.” This campaign to register black voters, byan interracial group of young volunteers including whitenorthern college students, produced a murderous back-lash from some segregationists. At least six civil-rightsworkers met violent deaths during that blood-soakedMississippi summer. In the most notorious incident,whose legal fallout would last into the 21st century, KKKmembers and law-enforcement officials from NeshobaCounty, Mississippi, conspired to kidnap and brutallymurder three volunteers—James Chaney, Michael Schwer-ner, and Andrew Goodman.

Other activists pressed forward, only to see the grass-roots organizing of that summer frustrated by LyndonJohnson and a majority of the national Democratic Party.Pressured by LBJ, the 1964 Democratic convention votedto seat Mississippi’s “regular” all-white delegates, peoplewho clearly intended to desert LBJ and the national partyduring the fall election. Democratic leaders gave onlytoken recognition to members of the alternative, raciallydiverse “Freedom Democratic Party” (FDP). This rebuffprompted people, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, who hadrisked their lives to create the FDP, to recall earlier suspicions

about Lyndon Johnson. Although LBJ seemed more com-mitted to civil rights than John Kennedy had been, wherewould Johnson—and Hubert Humphrey, his handpickedvice presidential running mate—stand after the 1964 elec-tion? During a bittersweet meeting with Humphrey,Fannie Lou Hamer pointedly wondered if a willingness toreject the FDP signaled that this longtime supporter mightsoon abandon the civil-rights cause altogether.

The Election of 1964By the fall of 1964, changes occurring within GOP ranksmade Democratic support seem especially important tocivil-rights forces. After a series of bitterly contested pri-mary contests, the Republicans nominated Senator BarryGoldwater of Arizona, the hero of conservatives from theSouth and Far West, to challenge Lyndon Johnson. Strate-gists for Goldwater predicted that an aggressive campaign,based on an unabashedly conservative platform, would stirthe hearts of the millions of voters who presumably rejectedboth Democratic policies and Dwight Eisenhower’s moder-ate Republican ones. Goldwater denounced Johnson’s for-eign policy for tolerating communist expansion andattacked his domestic agenda, including strong support forcivil rights, for destroying individual liberties. One of onlyeight Republican senators who had opposed the 1964 CivilRights Act, Goldwater denounced the measure as an unwar-ranted extension of national power to meet the kind ofproblem, discrimination, which only state and local govern-ments could remedy.

As the presidential campaign heated up, Goldwater’swell-documented tendency for making ill-considered pro-nouncements haunted his candidacy. Goldwater once sug-gested that people who feared nuclear war were “silly andsissified.” He wondered, out loud, if Social Security shouldbecome a voluntary program. His proclamation, at the1964 Republican convention, that “extremism in the pur-suit of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the pursuit ofjustice is no virtue,” fed Democratic claims that Goldwaterrepresented political “extremism” rather than Republican,or even principled conservative, values. In time, Demo-crats succeeded in denying Goldwater one of his primaryassets, his refusal to temporize on most controversialissues. Instead, they successfully portrayed the blunt-speaking Goldwater as wildly mercurial, perhaps evenfanatical or mentally unbalanced. Republicans, for theirpart, leveled equally outsized charges against LBJ. Oneanti-Johnson tract, A Texan Looks at LBJ (1964), accusedhim of everything from stuffing ballot boxes to plottingmurderous violence against political opponents.

As fantastical name-calling of this kind marked the1964 campaign trail, a significant bloc of normally Repub-lican voters deserted Goldwater, whose candidacy seemed

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 900


T h e Gre a t S o c i e t y 901

to have strayed too far from middle-of-the-road sign-posts. The senator from Arizona led the GOP to a spec-tacular defeat in November. Johnson carried 44 states andwon more than 60 percent of the popular vote; theDemocrats also gained 38 additional seats in Congress.On the surface the 1964 election seemed a triumph forLyndon Johnson’s vision for using governmental power tochange domestic life.

In retrospect, however, the 1964 election signaledimportant political changes that would soon reboundagainst Johnson and, in time, the national DemocraticParty. During the Democratic primaries, Alabama’s segre-gationist governor, George Wallace, had run strongly as a“protest candidate” against the president in several states.Already well-positioned as an opponent of the civil-rightsmovement, Wallace began to broaden his message,denouncing any kind of “meddling” by Washington inlocal affairs. The 1964 election proved the last in which theDemocratic Party would capture the White House byproposing to expand the domestic reach of the nationalgovernment.

The GOP’s 1964 effort, in contrast, merely provided arefueling stop for the conservative political machine thathad propelled Goldwater’s candidacy. His staff pioneeredseveral innovative campaign tactics, such as direct-mailfundraising. While working to refine these techniques,conservative strategists insisted that 1964 would mark thebeginning, not the end, of the Republican Party’s move-ment to the right.

Goldwater’s stand against national civil-rights legisla-tion, his supporters noted, helped him carry five southernstates. These victories—along with George Wallace’s ear-lier appeal during the Democratic primaries—suggestedjust how much the GOP might gain by opposing addi-tional civil-rights measures. After many years of tentative

courtship, the Republican Party finally seemed ready towin over southern whites who had once been solidlyDemocratic. In an important sign of desertions to come,Senator J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina announcedduring the 1964 campaign that he was permanently leav-ing the Democratic Party and joining the GOP.

Less-noticed voting trends in California providedconservatives with another sign of how racial issues werecontinuing to reshape political alignments. Although theJohnson-Humphrey ticket easily carried California, win-ning more than 60 percent of the popular vote, a coalitionof real-estate interests and suburban activists sponsored asuccessful referendum, “Proposition 14.” It repealed thestate’s recently enacted “Rumford Act,” which prohibitedracial discrimination in the sale or renting of housing. Tooverturn this statewide open housing measure, propo-nents of Proposition 14, which gained 65 percent of thevote throughout the state and much higher percentages innewer suburban areas, downplayed racial issues. Instead,they denounced the Rumford Act—because it regulatedwhat property owners could do with their homes andapartment buildings—for trampling on personal libertiesand constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

The Goldwater campaign of 1964, especially in Cali-fornia and the Sunbelt states, also introduced an impor-tant group of conservative activists to national politics.Ronald Reagan—previously a radio personality, Holly-wood actor, labor leader, corporate spokesperson, andRoosevelt Democrat—proved such an effective cam-paigner in 1964 that conservative Republicans in Califor-nia began grooming him for electoral politics. Youngerconservatives, such as William Rehnquist and NewtGingrich, entered the national arena by working for Gold-water. Historians now generally credit Goldwater’s 1964candidacy for helping to refashion conservatism as a

LBJ’S 1964 Campaignagainst BarryGoldwater

In this television ad from the1964 campaign, LyndonJohnson’s supportersexploited Republican BarryGoldwater’s image as a far-right extremist who might takethe nation into a nuclear war.

�

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 901



political force capable of dismantling the Democratic coali-tion that had dominated national politics since the 1930s.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great SocietyDuring the fall of 1964, however, the Democratic ranksseemed stronger than they had been in decades. Confi-dent of his political support, Lyndon Johnson hoped tomove quickly. Detailing plans he had hinted at during his1964 campaign, Johnson fully unveiled a domestic visiondesigned, in his words, to “enrich and elevate ournational life.”

Some parts of LBJ’s Great Society seemed constructedon top of the designs of his Democratic predecessors.Nationally funded medical coverage for the elderly(Medicare) and for low-income citizens (Medicaid)appeared to be capstones to efforts begun during the NewDeal and Fair Deal eras. Similarly, an addition to the pres-ident’s cabinet, the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment (HUD), built on earlier plans for improvingcoordination and execution of urban revitalization pro-grams. This new cabinet post, LBJ promised, would pre-vent urban renewal from becoming urban removal (seechapter 28).

In 1965, Congress enacted two other milestone mea-sures, both of which addressed matters long discussed—and long avoided. A new immigration law, the first measureever directed through the Senate by newly elected EdwardKennedy, finally abolished the geographically discrimina-tory “national origins” quota system established in 1924.Henceforth, all nationalities of people wishing to immi-grate to the United States faced roughly the same set ofhurdles. This change, in practice, removed some of theprevious barriers to people coming from regions outsideof Europe (see chapter 31). The Voting Rights Act of 1965,which created a federal oversight system to monitor elec-tion procedures in the South, capped a long-term effort toend racial discrimination at the ballot box.

Other Great Society proposals rested on the economicgrowth that seemed, during the mid-1960s, destined to goon forever. Even an increasingly costly war in Southeast Asiacould not dampen Johnson’s optimism. Continuing pros-perity would provide the tax dollars the president needed tounderwrite his bold expansion of national power.

The array of Johnson-sponsored initiatives that rolledthrough Congress in 1965 and 1966 heartened LBJ’s sup-porters and appalled his conservative critics. By one count,legislators passed nearly 200 new laws. The “Model CitiesProgram” offered smaller-scale alternatives to urbanrenewal efforts. Rent supplements and an expanded foodstamp program went to help feed low-income families.Head Start provided educational opportunity for childrenwho came from backgrounds social scientists labeled

“disadvantaged.” New educational programs targeted fed-eral funds for upgrading classroom instruction, especiallyin low-income neighborhoods, and the Legal Services pro-gram promised government lawyers for clients who couldnot afford private attorneys. Planners of the Great Societystressed that measures such as these would provide socialservices that could help people fight their own way out ofeconomic distress. This service-based approach to domes-tic social policy, Johnson insisted, would give people a“hand up” rather than a “handout.”

The CAP initiative, part of the earlier EOA legislation,took a significantly different tack. Although drawing onsocial-science expertise, which had guided and informedother Great Society measures, this initiative ultimatelysought to free ordinary citizens from the dictates anddirections of social-service bureaucracies. CAP proposedto empower grassroots activists, working through neigh-borhood organizations rather than through politicalchannels dominated by local city hall establishments, todesign community-based projects. The most promising ofthese, EOA legislation promised, could gain funding fromWashington.

Those who embraced CAP hailed its potential forredistributing power. It offered local communities theleverage that came from enjoying adequate financialresources while still allowing them, rather than outsidebureaucracies, the political power to make crucial decisionsabout their own needs and priorities. By promoting “max-imum feasible participation” by ordinary citizens ratherthan relying entirely on the expertise of social planners oron the political clout of party leaders, the architects of CAPhoped to grow new varieties of grassroots democracy thatcould change U.S. political culture from the bottom up.

Evaluating the Great SocietyHow did the Great Society—most of which initially enjoyedlarge, sometimes bipartisan majorities in Congress—become so controversial, so quickly? Most obviously, pro-grams that further extended Washington’s influence rekin-dled old debates about the use of the powers of thenational government, as both an issue of constitutionallaw and a matter of pragmatic policy making. The GreatSociety, in this sense, gave an already well-positioned con-servative movement another set of convenient targets. Inaddition, Johnson’s extravagant rhetoric, such as promis-ing to win an “unconditional” victory over poverty, raisedexpectations that no administration could possibly satisfywithin the time frames voters normally use to judge thesuccess or failure of governmental initiatives.

Perhaps most importantly, the expectation that con-tinued economic growth would generate tax revenues suf-ficient to finance new social programs faded as the nation’s

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M 02


E s c a l a t i o n i n Vi e t n a m 903

economic engine began to sputter. Facing financial wor-ries of their own, many people who had initially been will-ing to accept the Great Society became receptive to theargument, first popularized by George Wallace and theGoldwater campaign, that bureaucrats in Washington weretaking their hard-earned dollars and wasting them onflawed social experiments. Worsening economic conditions,exacerbated by the escalating cost of the war in Vietnam,made federal expenditures on domestic social welfare mea-sures more controversial than at any time since the 1930s.

Although historians agree about how Johnson’sdomestic programs lost support, there has been consider-able disagreement about the Great Soiety’s impact on dailylife. Charles Murray’s influential Losing Ground (1984)framed one powerful view. This study first charged thatLBJ’s social programs encouraged antisocial behavior. Itargued that too many people, lured by what they couldgain from Great Society measures, abandoned the goals ofmarrying, settling down, and seeking employment. More-over, the money given over to Great Society programs cre-ated government deficits that slowed economic growth.Had ill-advised social spending not undermined personalinitiative and disrupted the nation’s economy, continuedeconomic growth could have provided virtually all work-ers with a comfortable lifestyle. This conservative argu-ment portrayed the Great Society as the cause of, not thesolution for, economic distress and social disarray.

Most other close students of social policy treated theGreat Society slightly more kindly. They found scant evi-dence, as opposed to colorful anecdotes, for the claim thatmost people preferred receiving welfare to seeking mean-ingful work. They generally blamed spending in the militarysector because of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam, ratherthan outlays for domestic social programs, for generatingthe soaring budget deficits and a burgeoning nationaldebt. Funds actually spent on Great Society programs, inthis view, neither matched Johnson’s promises nor reachedthe lavish levels claimed in conservative studies such asLosing Ground.

From a different perspective, many antipovertyactivists faulted the Great Society for not seriously chal-lenging the prevailing distribution of political and eco-nomic power in the United States. The Johnson adminis-tration, they argued, remained closely wedded tolarge-scale bureaucratic solutions, forged and then directedby people connected to Washington elites and entrenchedinterest groups. The White House jettisoned, for example,the CAP model for grassroots empowerment after localpolitical officials complained about having to competewith activist groups for federal funds. In addition, byassuming that economic growth would continue to under-write the financing of most federal initiatives, the peoplewho planned the Great Society had also failed to consider

revision of the tax code and other measures designed toredistribute income and wealth more equitably. Proponentsof this critique concluded that the Johnson administrationnever seriously tried to fulfill its own domestic promises.

Most economists and historians have come to agreethat the Great Society signaled a significant, though notrevolutionary, break with the past. The national govern-ment, for the first time in several decades, devoted sub-stantial new funding to social welfare programs. Washing-ton’s financial outlay on the domestic front increasedmore than 10 percent during every year of LBJ’s presi-dency. According to one study, federal spending on socialwelfare in 1960 constituted 28 percent of total govern-mental outlays; by 1970, this figure had risen to more than40 percent. Moreover, some Great Society programs pro-duced significant change. Medicaid, the legal services pro-gram, and job training initiatives gave many low-incomefamilies access to things that more affluent families hadlong taken for granted. Civil-rights laws, even if they failedto eliminate all forms of discrimination, did use federalpower to expand legally protected freedoms.

The Great Society, however, proved a political failure,unable to retain the popular support it had claimed in1964–65. Variations on the severe evaluation framed inLosing Ground came to dominate popular memory andpolitical culture. Continued allegiance to the Great Societyagenda, as a matter of political pragmatism, could becomea serious liability for nearly all Republican and mostDemocratic politicians during the late 1960s and early1970s. Over time, as a highly critical view of the Great Soci-ety’s flaws and failures helped energize the conservativewing of the GOP, fewer Democrats would risk stepping for-ward to defend Lyndon Johnson’s vision. In short, Johnson’sdomestic policies helped inflame political passions, whichsoon turned against LBJ and his Great Society. A new gen-eration of Democrats eventually came to dismiss “big gov-ernment” as a relic of the past (see chapter 32).

Escalation in Vietnam

Through what incremental steps

did the Johnson administration involve the United

States ever more deeply in the war in Vietnam?

What seemed to be the goal of its policies?

Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson’s ultimately divisive crusadeto build a Great Society at home found its counterpartabroad. His pledge to preserve South Vietnam as a non-communist, pro-U.S. enclave demanded ever more of hisnation’s resources. Even as Johnson’s policies in Vietnamstrained the U.S. economy, they polarized its politics andculture.

Focus Question

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 903



The Gulf of Tonkin ResolutionImmediately after John Kennedy’s assassination, Johnsonhesitated to widen the war in Southeast Asia. A committedCold Warrior, however, LBJ hated the thought that hispolitical associates—let alone the general electorate—might judge him “soft” on communism. He soon acceptedthe recommendation of his military advisers: Only the useof air strikes against targets in North Vietnam could savethe South Vietnamese government from imminent col-lapse. He prepared a congressional resolution authorizingsuch an escalation of hostilities.

Events in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of NorthVietnam, provided the rationale for taking this resolutionto Capitol Hill. On August 1, 1964, the U.S. destroyerMaddox, while on an intelligence-gathering mission indisputed waters that North Vietnam claimed as its own,exchanged gunfire with North Vietnamese ships. Threedays later, the Maddox returned to the same area, accom-panied by the Turner Joy. During severe weather, whichdistorted radar and sonar readings, U.S. naval command-ers reported what possibly could have been signs of afailed North Vietnamese torpedo attack.

Although the Maddox’s commander later radioed thatthe episode needed further analysis, Johnson immediatelydenounced “unprovoked aggression” by North Vietnamagainst the United States and appealed to Congress forsupport. (A subsequent study concluded that the initialattack had likely occurred, but that reports of hostile fireon the second occasion lacked credible supporting evi-dence.) Congress quickly, and overwhelmingly, authorizedthe president to take “all necessary measures to repelarmed attack.” Johnson treated this “Gulf of Tonkin Reso-lution” as tantamount to a congressional declaration ofwar and cited it as legal justification for all subsequent U.S.military action in Vietnam.

Despite his vigorous response to events in the Gulf ofTonkin, Lyndon Johnson successfully positioned himselfas a cautious moderate during the presidential campaignof 1964. When Barry Goldwater demanded stronger meas-ures against North Vietnam and even hinted at possibleuse of tactical nuclear weapons, Johnson’s campaign man-agers cited Goldwater’s proposed strategies as further evi-dence of his extremist bent. One notorious TV ad evenportrayed the Republican candidate as a threat to the sur-vival of civilization. Johnson seemed to promise he wouldnot commit U.S. combat troops to any land war in South-east Asia.

Soon after the election, however, Johnson decisivelydeepened the U.S. involvement there. More than a yearafter the 1963 coup against Diem (see chapter 28), SouthVietnam faced continued political chaos. The incompe-tence of successive governments in Saigon was still fuelingpopular discontent, and South Vietnamese troops were

still deserting at an alarming rate. In January 1965, anotherSaigon regime collapsed, and factional discord stalled theemergence of any viable alternative.

Lacking an effective ally in South Vietnam, Johnsononce more pondered his options. His close aides offeredconflicting advice. National Security Adviser McGeorgeBundy predicted Saigon’s defeat unless the United Statesgreatly increased its own military role. Arguing for thissame option, Walt W. Rostow assured Johnson that onceNorth Vietnam recognized the United States would neverabandon its commitment, this small nation could onlyconclude that it would never overrun South Vietnam.Undersecretary of State George Ball, by contrast, warnedthat the introduction of U.S. combat troops could not pre-serve South Vietnam. He wrote that “no one has demon-strated that a white ground force of whatever size can wina guerrilla war . . . in jungle terrain in the midst of a pop-ulation that refuses cooperation to the white forces.”Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who held anadvanced degree in Asian history, urged Johnson to findsome way of reuniting Vietnam as a neutral country. TheJoint Chiefs of Staff, afflicted by interservice rivalries, pro-vided conflicting readings of the current military situationand no clear guidance on how Johnson might proceed.

Although privately doubting U.S. chances of preserv-ing an anticommunist South Vietnam, Johnson becameobsessed about the political and diplomatic consequencesof a U.S. pullout. He feared that the domestic reaction toanything resembling a communist victory—such asWashington’s acceptance of a coalition government inSaigon that included the NLF—would enrage conservativeactivists in the United States and thereby endanger hisGreat Society programs. Moreover, Johnson accepted thefamiliar Cold War proposition that a U.S. withdrawalwould undoubtedly set off a “domino effect,” topplingnoncommunist governments in Asia. A pullback therewould, then, encourage communist-leaning insurgenciesin Latin America, increase Soviet pressure on West Berlin,and damage U.S. credibility around the world. BothEisenhower and Kennedy, before him, had staked U.S. pres-tige on preserving a noncommunist South Vietnam. John-son either had to abandon that commitment, by allowingSouth Vietnam’s government to collapse, or chart anuncertain course by employing U.S. power to prop it up.

While remaining pessimistic about the results of hisdecision, Johnson chose the second option: dramaticallyexpanding U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. Heordered a sustained campaign of bombing in NorthVietnam, code-named “Rolling Thunder.” He also deployedU.S. ground forces in order to help the government inSaigon regain lost territory, expanded U.S.-directed covertoperations, and stepped up economic aid to the beleagueredSouth Vietnamese government. Only six months after the1964 presidential election, with his advisers still divided,

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 904



Johnson decided the United States had no choice but towage a wider war.

The War Continues to WidenThe war grew more intense during 1965. Hoping to breakthe enemy’s will, U.S. military commanders sought to

inflict ever-increasing casualties. The Johnson adminis-tration authorized use of napalm, a toxic chemical thatalmost instantly charred both foliage and people, andallowed the Air Force to bomb new targets. AdditionalU.S. combat troops also arrived in South Vietnam, butevery U.S. escalation seemed to require a further one.After North Vietnam rejected a Johnson-sponsored peace

17th Parallel

HOCHI M

INHTRAIL

HO CHI MINH

TRAI

L

�

�

�

�

�

Red R.

Red R.

Mekong

R.

Mekong

R.

Gulf of Tonkin

SOUTH CHINA

SEA

Gulf ofThailand

MekongRiver Delta

Dien BienPhu

Haiphong

Vinh

Da NangPhu Bai

Hue

Chu Lai

PleikuQui Nhon

Hanoi

Saigon

Phnom Penh

Bangkok

Vientiane

Demarcation Line, July 1954

Demilitarized Zone(DMZ)

Hainan

PEOPLE’S REPUBLICOF CHINA

CAMBODIA

LAOS

THAILAND

BURMA

U.S. bombing and defoliationalong Ho Chi Minh Trail 6

Invasion of Laos,Feb.–March 1971

8

Invasion of Cambodia,April–June 19707

Gulf of Tonkin Incident,August 1964 1

U.S. mines harbor,May 1972 9

Tet Offensive,Jan.–Feb. 1968

3

My Lai Massacre,March 1968

U.S. air raids,1966–1968, 1972

2

5

Tet Offensive,Jan.–Feb. 1968

4

Surrender of South Vietnam,April 30, 1975 10

U.S. Military Bases

South Vietnam

North Vietnam

0

100 200 Kilometers0

100 200 Miles

Map 29.1 Vietnam WarThe war in Vietnam spread into neighboring countries as the North Vietnamese ran supplies southward along a network calledthe Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the United States tried to disrupt their efforts. Unlike the Korean War (see map on p. 836), thisguerrilla-style war had few conventional “fronts” of fighting.View an animated version of this map or related maps at http://www.thomsonedu.com/history/murrin

�

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/18/07 12:42 PM Page 905



plan, which it viewed as little more than an offer forHanoi to surrender, the United States once again steppedup its military effort. North Vietnam’s leader, Ho ChiMinh, who was now pursuing a long-term strategy ofattrition, became convinced that Johnson could not con-tinue to find public or congressional support in the UnitedStates to fight such a costly war so far from U.S. shores.

In April 1965, Johnson applied his Cold War, anti-communist foreign policy closer to home. Responding toexaggerated reports about a communist threat to the gov-ernment of the Dominican Republic, Johnson sent U.S.troops to unseat a left-leaning, but legally elected, presi-dent and to install a Dominican government eager to sup-port U.S. interests. This U.S. incursion into the DominicanRepublican violated a long-standing “good neighbor”pledge, by the United States, to avoid military interventionin Latin America. Although Johnson’s action angered crit-ics throughout the hemisphere, the overthrow of a leftistgovernment in the Dominican Republic seemed to steelthe White House’s determination to hold the line againstcommunism in Vietnam.

Later that same spring as yet another government, thefifth since Diem’s 1963 murder, appeared in Saigon, U.S.strategists continued to wonder how they might stabilizeSouth Vietnam. General William Westmoreland, whodirected the U.S. military effort there, recommendedmoving even more aggressively and sending additionalnumbers of U.S. troops on “search and destroy” missionsagainst communist forces. In July 1965, Johnson publiclyannounced he would send 50,000 additional military per-sonnel to Vietnam. Privately, LBJ pledged that the Penta-gon could have another 50,000, and he left open the pos-sibility of sending even more. To supplement thesearch-and-destroy strategy, he also approved “saturationbombing” in the South Vietnamese countryside and anintensified air campaign against North Vietnam.

Some advisers urged Johnson to admit candidly thegreatly expanded scope of the U.S. effort. They recom-mended seeking an outright declaration of war by Con-gress or at least legislation allowing the executive branch towield the economic and informational controls that previ-ous presidential administrations had used during wartime.But Johnson worried about arousing greater protests inCongress and from a growing antiwar movement. Ratherthan risk debates that could ramp up dissent against hispolicies, Johnson decided to stress the administration’swillingness to negotiate and to act as if the war the UnitedStates was now fighting was not really a war. As the Johnsonadministration talked of seeing “light at the end of thetunnel” in Vietnam, it apparently hoped that most peoplein the United States would remain largely in the dark.

Over the remaining years of Lyndon Johnson’s presi-dency, U.S. involvement steadily grew. By late 1965, the

number of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam totaled morethan 200,000; three years later, this figure had more thandoubled, to about 535,000. The level of violence escalatedas well. In pursuit of “Operation RANCHHAND,” aneffort to eliminate the natural cover for enemy troopmovements, the United States dropped huge quantities ofherbicides, scorching South Vietnam’s croplands anddefoliating roughly half of its forests. Approximately 1.5million tons of bombs—more than all the tonnagedropped during the Second World War—pounded NorthVietnamese cities and pummeled villages and hamlets inthe South. Still, Johnson carefully avoided bombing close tothe North Vietnamese–Chinese border or doing anythingelse that might provoke either China or the Soviet Union togo beyond supporting and supplying North Vietnam.

Despite all of the troops and violence, Vietnamremained a “limited” war. The U.S. strategy concentratedon straining the NLF and North Vietnam by continuallyescalating the cost they would pay, in lost lives andbombed-out infrastructure. Once the price of continuingto fight became too high, the Johnson administration rea-soned, the other side would finally stop its effort to displacea pro-U.S., anticommunist government in South Vietnam.

The weekly “body count” of enemy purportedly killedbecame the primary measure for gauging U.S. progress inSouth Vietnam. Pentagon estimates that a kill ratio of 10to 1 would force North Vietnam and the NLF to pull backnot only encouraged the U.S. military to unleash morefirepower but also to inflate enemy casualty figures. This

An Image That ShockedThis 1968 photo, widely reproduced because of the absenceof formal governmental censorship during the Vietnamconflict, shows a South Vietnamese military officersummarily executing a suspected Viet Cong leader on thestreets of Saigon. The prevalence of images such as this onecomplicated the U.S. government’s attempt to portray itssupport of South Vietnam as a fight for freedom and the ruleof law.

�

AP Im

ages

/Edd

ie A

dam

s

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 906



same calculation provided an automatic justification formore U.S. troops: Whenever the number of enemy forcesseemed to increase, the Pentagon required additional U.S.troops to maintain the desired kill ratio. Johnson, whosenotorious temper flared at the first hint of bad news, wel-comed improving kill statistics as a tangible sign that vic-tory was around the corner. North Vietnam, assisted bythe Soviet Union and China, however, managed to matchevery U.S. escalation. Conscripting younger fighters andemploying more women in support positions, the NorthVietnamese continued to funnel troops and supplies intothe South, using a shifting network of roads and pathscalled the “Ho Chi Minh Trail.” By the end of 1967, severalof Johnson’s key aides, most notably Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara, decided that the United States couldnot sustain, from any reasonable costs versus benefits per-spective, its seemingly open-ended commitment to SouthVietnam. The majority of Johnson’s advisers, however,refused to accept such a gloomy assessment.

Meanwhile, the destruction wreaked by U.S. forceswas giving NLF, North Vietnamese, Chinese, and Sovietleaders a decided advantage in what had become an inter-national war of images. Critics of the U.S. effort, in theUnited States and around the world, highlighted picturesshowing the results of Johnson’s strategy. Demonstrationsagainst the United States became especially prominentfeatures of political life in Western Europe. Antiwar pro-testors hounded LBJ and members of his administration,everywhere they went, and the president began complain-ing of becoming a prisoner in his own White House.

In addition, the United States failed to find an attractive,or even very effective, ally in South Vietnam. The devastationof the countryside, the economic destabilization caused bythe flood of U.S. dollars, and the corruption in Saigon tooktheir toll. The “pacification” and “strategic hamlet” pro-grams, which gathered Vietnamese farmers into tightlyguarded villages, sounded viable in Washington but createdgreater chaos by uprooting at least one-quarter of the SouthVietnamese citizenry from its villages and ancestral lands.Buddhist priests persistently demonstrated against foreigninfluence. When, in 1967, two generals, Nguyen Van Thieuand Nguyen Cao Ky, after having sustained a military regimelonger than any of their predecessors, tried to legitimatetheir rule with a nationwide election, the effort fell short. Avoting process marked by corruption only highlighted theprecariousness of their political position and underscoredtheir dependence on support from Washington.

The Media and the WarJohnson continually gave presidential lectures about thenecessity for upholding the nation’s honor and diplomaticcommitments, but dissent slowly mounted. During the

Second World War and the conflict in Korea, presidentialadministrations had restricted media coverage. Hoping toavoid the controversy that overt censorship would surelyhave caused, the Johnson administration employed infor-mal ways of managing the flow of information aboutVietnam. Many of the print reporters sent to SoutheastAsia seemed content, at first, to accept the reassuringreports handed out by U.S. officials in Saigon. Only a rel-atively few, such as David Halberstam, ventured into theSouth Vietnamese countryside, where they saw a differentconflict than the one being described back at U.S. head-quarters. Even before media pundits started talking abouttelevision making Vietnam a “living room war”—onethat people in the United States could watch in their ownhomes—Johnson kept three sets playing in his office inorder to monitor what viewers might be seeing. Most ofwhat he saw, early on, he liked.

Antiwar activists continually assailed what theyviewed as the U.S. media’s uncritical reporting aboutevents and policies in Vietnam. According to a commoncomplaint, too many media executives appeared willing toaccept story frames constructed by the White House, andtoo many journalists seemed to base their stories on offi-cial handouts. During the early years of U.S. involvement,few print publications or TV reports contained stories thatdissected either the U.S. military effort or the travails ofWashington’s South Vietnamese ally.

In time, however, the tone and substance of mediacoverage changed. Images of unrelenting destructioncame across television screens. After gazing at his TV sets,LBJ began telephoning network executives, castigatingthem for critical broadcasts and urging them to root forthe United States, not its communist enemies. Print jour-nalists generally outpaced their TV counterparts in break-ing away from the government line, and some followedHalberstam in forthrightly challenging U.S. officials inSaigon. Gloria Emerson’s grim reports portrayed the U.S.effort as one in which poor and disproportionately non-white troops seemed to be fighting, and dying, so thatwealthy families, many with “fortunate sons” who helddraft exemptions, might reap war-related profits. In 1966and 1967, Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times sentback stories from North Vietnam that highlighted theimpact U.S. bombing missions exacted on civilian targets.Accounts by younger journalists, such as those publishedby Michael Herr in Esquire, represented the war as a vio-lent, amoral, and drug-drenched venture into the surreal.

As the conflict dragged on, the media began to talkabout a “war at home” that paralleled the one in Viet-nam. TV and most print media adopted a stark, bipolarstory frame: It pictured “hawks”—those who wanted tofight, as long and as hard as necessary, until the UnitedStates defeated the communist forces—fighting against

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:00 M Page 907



“doves”—those who, whatever their earlier views, nowdesired to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam as quickly aspossible. In response to those who called for an even greateruse of military force, President Johnson insisted his admin-istration was following time-tested containment policies.His secretary of state, Dean Rusk, warned doves of the dan-gers of “appeasement.” But an increasing number of influ-ential U.S. politicians, led by J. William Fulbright ofArkansas, dissented. This influential head of the powerfulSenate Foreign Relations Committee warned of misplacedpriorities and of an “arrogance of power.” Meanwhile, theantiwar movement merged into several other movements,many of which were coming to challenge the larger direc-tion of U.S. politics and culture.

The War at Home

What domestic social move-

ments emerged during America’s longest war?

How did they seek to change U.S. political

culture and the direction of public policy? What

role did commercial media play in the “move-

ment of movements”?

Millions came to oppose the war in Southeast Asia, andsupport for the Great Society at home began to erode. By1968, tensions escalated into confrontation, violence, andone of the most divisive presidential election campaigns inU.S. history.

The Movement of MovementsPopular memories generally will recall the 1960s as thetime of a “youth revolt.” Young people from a “New Left,”most of them college students, protested against the war inVietnam and in favor of social change, especially in racerelations. Other imagery from the 1960s displays the col-orful signs of a “Counterculture,” again viewed as a pre-occupation of the college-aged population. Devotees ofthis Counterculture urged people to expand their minds,often with a little help from drugs and rock music, and toseek alternative ways of seeing, and then living out, theireveryday world. Another set of iconic images from thistime represents new forms of racial and ethnic conscious-ness, beginning with the “Black Power” movement. Nowmore easily accessible than ever before, all of this memo-rable imagery has etched pictures of life during America’slongest war deeply into historical memory.

Increasingly, though, historians look beyond individ-ual pictures of separate movements, each of which canclaim its own background and trajectory, to a kaleido-scopic panorama composed of what one historian calls a

“movement of movements.” All across the political andcultural spectrum—not simply on some New Left oramong the young or African Americans or cultural dissenters—people joined movements that aimed to chal-lenge key parts of the established order. Activists from awide variety of different backgrounds and circumstancesplaced their energies at the active service of one movementor another.

The combined energy produced by this movement ofmovements tended to tilt, albeit in different ways, againsttwo dominant ideals of the 1950s and early 1960s: the faithin political (or interest group) pluralism and the parallelconviction that deeply held spiritual beliefs ultimatelyunited, rather than divided, the nation and its diversepeople (see chapter 28). As the war in Vietnam dragged on,people increasingly doubted that the existing politicalsystem could actually solve problems. At the same time,disparate movements based on deeply held values—involving issues such as war and peace, race relationships,

Focus Question

Antiwar Demonstration in Washington, D.C.Mass rallies against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam Warbecame an important part of antiwar politics during the late1960s and early 1970s.

�

© T

he G

rang

er C

olle

ctio

n, N

ew Y

ork

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/18/07 12:45 PM Page 908


T h e Wa r a t Ho m e 909

gender politics, the environment, and sexuality—appearedheaded in different directions or on collision courses.

Ultimately, this movement of movements producedpolitical, social, and cultural polarization. No one group,say a New Left or a youth culture, could lay exclusive claimto the historical era often called “the Long Sixties,” theperiod from roughly 1963 to 1974, which coincided withAmerica’s longest war. Numerous social movementssought to redirect national life down different paths, oftenwith no clear maps.

Most movements could not avoid dealing with com-mercial, particularly visual, media. Media imagery did notcreate or manufacture, for popular consumption, thismovement of movements. Activists recognized, however,that even the briefest of time in the media spotlight couldhelp them display their deep personal commitments anddemonstrate their passionate disdain for policies theyopposed. Often beginning with posters and pamphlets,movements such as the one pressing for a rapid U.S. with-drawal from Vietnam began to produce increasinglysophisticated imagery and to stage media-catching publicdemonstrations.

Television, in particular, offered these social move-ments a potentially vast audience. Some movementactivists became media celebrities. In a 1965 internalmemo, the then-head of SNCC referred to himself, tonguein cheek, as “Mr. Stokely Carmichael (star of stage, screen,and television).” Behind the scenes, less famous activistsworked both to sustain their movements as viable organiza-tions and to help script the kind of political performancesthat could attract media attention.

Four of the earliest and most prominent of the move-ments that accompanied America’s longest war involvedthe New Left, the Counterculture, “Black Power,” and anti-war protest.

Movements on College Campuses:A New LeftColleges and universities became important sites formobilizing students and organizing them as forces forsocial change. Only a relatively small number of collegestudents ever became active in social movements, but theiractivities set the tone for campus politics, attracted exten-sive media interest, and eventually generated popular con-troversy.

In 1962, two years after conservatives had alreadyformed the YAF (see chapter 28), students at the left end ofthe political spectrum established Students for a Demo-cratic Society (SDS). Young men, mostly of Europeandescent and eager to link their grand ideals to specificpolitical activities, dominated the early SDS effort. Begin-ning with a call for mobilizing the power of government toexpand liberty and promote equality, SDS endorsed mea-sures, such as civil-rights laws, that seemed little differentfrom those that Lyndon Johnson would soon champion.

SDS attracted far greater attention, however, for themore spiritual and personalized style of its politics. The“Port Huron Statement” of 1962, SDS’s founding mani-festo, pledged opposition to the “loneliness, estrangement,isolation” that supposedly afflicted so many people. Itcharged that arrogant political elites, immersed in the

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0March1966

May1966

Res

pons

e (in

per

cent

)

February1967

July1967

February1968

April1968

February1969

October1969

January1970

May1970

January1971

Yes

No

American Attitudes Toward the Vietnam WarResponses to the question: “Do you think that the United States made a mistake in sending troops to fight there?”

�

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 909



techniques of interest-group pluralism, ignored underly-ing moral values. These insiders allegedly prized theexpertise of bureaucrats over active engagement by ordi-nary citizens and favored policies promoting economicgrowth over opportunities for meaningful work. SDSclaimed to speak for alternative visions. In politics, itcalled for “participatory democracy”—grassroots politicalactivities and small-scale institutions responsive to theneeds of local communities.

Students from North Carolina A&T University hadearlier sparked the sit-in movement of 1960 (see chapter28), and college students continued to play importantroles in many of the civil-rights dramas that followed.Localized struggles in communities throughout theSouth, such as those waged during Freedom Summer inMississippi, seemed tangible examples of participatorydemocracy. They appeared to promise a regeneration ofthe nation’s politics and a reorientation of its moral com-pass. Organizing efforts in the Deep South thus attractedidealistic white students from schools in the North. Onlypartially aware of the violence and social challenges theywould face, these activists left their own campuses to workalongside those from historically black institutions, suchas Tuskegee, who were trying to register African Americanvoters and organize them for political action. Some ofthese students remained in the South; others turned theirenergies to neighborhood-based political projects innorthern cities; and some brought their experiences in theSouth back to their own campuses.

New Left activists insisted on a constantly expandingview of what counted as “politics.” Political practice shouldbe broadly participatory, but active participation by largenumbers of ordinary people only provided the startingpoint. Although voter registration drives in the South didseek greater access to the existing political process, New Leftactivists placed far greater emphasis on alternative, often dis-ruptive political forms, such as sit-ins and demonstrations.

Their emerging vision of politics favored action overcontemplation, improvisation over careful advance plan-ning, and personal feelings over extended political analysis.As Mario Savio, a Berkeley graduate student who had par-ticipated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, proclaimedin 1964, the dominant political machinery sometimes“becomes so odious” that “you can’t even tacitly take part”in its operations. Instead, people needed to put their own“bodies upon the gears” and try “to make it stop.” Later, aprominent Jewish rabbi, Abraham Herschel, offered a sim-ilar formulation of this basic political ideal: “Mere knowl-edge or belief” could sometimes be “too feeble a cure,” andthe “only remedy was the kind of personal sacrifice” exem-plified by activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students attracted to an expansive concept of personal-ized politics saw their own campuses as centers for testing

new political styles more than as places for ingesting thewisdom of the past. Seeing older academic-activists, suchas C. Wright Mills, as attractive role models, these collegestudents viewed their generation as uniquely situated toconfront a political system dominated by powerful andentrenched interests. Although a worldview focused onpersonally expanding the range of political optionsseemed to appeal more to students in the humanities andsocial sciences than to those in the “hard” sciences, busi-ness, or engineering, plenty of potential recruits remained.The rapid expansion of higher education, along with theBaby-Boom population bulge, greatly swelled the numberof young people who enrolled in colleges and universitiesduring the early 1960s.

Students who embraced movement politics, followingin the footsteps of academics such as Mills, saw activismand intellectualism as complementary pursuits. Theydenounced courses and research projects that appearedirrelevant to the pressing issues of the day. They confrontedadministrators who tried to impose lifestyle restrictions,such as sex-segregated living arrangements and dormhours, on students that state laws otherwise treated asadults. Far worse, these politically active students argued,giant universities, accepting funding from the Pentagonand corporations, seemed oblivious to the social and moralimplications of their war-related research. Althoughaccounts of campus activism once highlighted only afew institutions, such as the University of California atBerkeley, recent histories have shown most schools, someeven earlier than Berkeley, played host to social and politi-cal movements. Still, events at a few select schools, includ-ing Berkeley, dominated the media spotlight.

Initially working to mobilize around domestic issuessuch as civil rights, student-led movements at Berkeleybecame generational lightning rods. Protests on and aroundthe Berkeley campus, which began in earnest in 1964, overrestrictions against on-campus political activity, providedsome of the most prominent, and lasting, symbols of whatmedia pundits came to call “the war on campus.” Afterorganizing a “Free Speech Movement,” in opposition tolimits on political expression, students and sympathetic fac-ulty mounted the “Berkeley Revolt.” This effort included sit-ins, boycotts of classes, contention among faculty members,and intermittent clashes between dissenting students andlaw enforcement officials. Activists demanded an end to anycultural divide, let alone legal regulations, which tried toseparate activism on campus from that in the wider world.

The CountercultureBerkeley also came to symbolize the interrelationship,however uneasy, between political movements associatedwith a New Left and the vertiginous energies of a

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 910



Counterculture. The Counterculture of the 1960s hasalways seemed a difficult “movement” to identify, espe-cially since one of its self-defining slogans proclaimed “DoYour Own Thing.” It elected no officers, held no formalmeetings, and maintained no central office to issue mani-festos. Bursting into view in low-income neighborhoods,such as San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury area, and alongthoroughfares bordering college campuses, such asBerkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, the Counterculture main-tained a vague sense of unity through a loose infrastruc-ture of small shops, restaurants, and overcrowded livingunits. People who claimed to speak for the Countercultureespoused values, styles, and institutions hailed as both“utopian” and as “realistic” alternatives to those of the pre-vailing or “straight” culture. Countercultural groups suchas San Francisco’s Diggers, a commune that mixedimprovisational street-theater productions with social-service projects, distanced themselves from Great Societyorganizations.

Dissenting cultural ventures did not spring upspontaneously but drew on earlier models, such as the“Beat movement” of the 1950s. A loosely connectedgroup of writers and poets, the Beats had denied thateither the material abundance or conventional spiritualideals of the 1950s fulfilled the promise of liberty.Rejecting the “people of plenty” credo, the Beats claimedthat an overabundance of consumer goods, a commer-cialized culture industry, and oppressive technologiescondemned most people to wander through alienatedlives that seemed oppressive, emotionally crippling, orjust plain boring.

Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, author of On theRoad (1957), praised the rebels of their generation.They saw nonconformists like themselves challengingsettled social routines and seeking more instinctual,more sensual, and more authentic ways of living. TheBeat poet Allen Ginsberg, in works such as Howl (1956),decried soulless materialism and puritanical moralcodes for tempting a culture already awash in alienationto acts of madness and despair. In search of alternativevisions and oppositional lifestyles, Ginsberg’s poetrycelebrated the kind of liberty that drugs, Eastern mysti-cism, and same-sex love affairs could supposedly pro-vide. Beats such as Ginsberg, in contrast to critics whomerely condemned conformity (see chapter 28),seemed commited to testing the possibilities of libertyby seeking to live their everyday lives beyond conven-tional boundaries.

Many of the Beats, especially Ginsberg, nonethelesshad recognized how conventional commercial mediamight play to their advantage. Media exposure, respectfuland (more often) disdainful, helped the Beats sustainbohemian-style communities in San Francisco’s North

Beach and New York City’s Greenwich Village. In time, asinfluential cultural critics and college professors praisedthe Beats, young people began encountering their writingsand poetry in humanities courses and literary-mindedbookstores. Ginsberg’s status as a dissenting celebrity con-tinued to grow, especially on college campuses, and heeagerly promoted his iconic status as a link between theBeat movement of the 1950s and the Counterculture ofthe 1960s.

This Counterculture—perhaps best seen as a collec-tion of alternative subcultures rather than a singleimpulse—left its imprint on a wide range of movements.These included nonprofit urban cooperatives, radicalstrains of feminism, environmentalism, and the fightagainst restrictions, especially involving sexuality, onlifestyle choices.

Mass media of the 1960s, however, initially treated theCounterculture as a source for titillating stories aboutlongish and unkempt hair styles, flamboyant clothing, anduninhibited sexuality. The media also liked to portraycountercultural lifestyles, among young people who cameto be known as “hippies,” as being on the cutting edge of asupposedly massive, fun-filled youth rebellion. Observersof this Counterculture also highlighted its use of drugs,particularly marijuana and LSD, and its preference, oftenbecause of financial necessity, for communal livingarrangements.

New musical stylings, such as the folk-rock of TheByrds and the acid-rock of The Grateful Dead, also helpedidentify the Counterculture. The singer-songwriter BobDylan, who had abandoned acoustic folk music and “goneelectric” in 1965, gained unwanted recognition as theCounterculture’s prophet-laureate. Fusing musical idiomsused by African American blues artists such as MuddyWaters with poetic touches indebted to the Beats, Dylan’s“Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) exploded onto both the Top-40 charts of AM radio and the freewheeling play lists of thealternative FM stations and college radio stations linked tothe Counterculture. Publications primarily aimed at col-lege students, including the magazine Rolling Stone, dis-patched youthful journalists to report on—and also par-ticipate in—the countercultural scene.

The more traditional commercial marketplace alsowelcomed images and products from the Counterculture.The ad agency for Chrysler Motors, alert to the appeal ofcountercultural imagery, urged car buyers to break awayfrom older patterns, purchase a youthful-looking 1965model, and thereby join the “Dodge Rebellion.” The cloth-ing industry marketed colorful countercultural-lookingstyles as the latest in “hip” fashions. For women, this gen-erally meant expensive versions of bohemian-style garb,which typically displayed a considerable amount of skin(as with the miniskirt) and avoided restrictive foundation

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 911



garments (as in the braless look). Marketers urged menseeking a more youthful appearance to exchange whiteshirts and regimental neckties for more colorful and morecasual clothing styles.

Recognizing the appeal of bands such as San Fran-cisco’s Jefferson Airplane, the popular music industrysaw profits to be made from the sound, as well as the look,of the Counterculture. An early countercultural happen-ing,“the Human Be-In,” organized by community activistsfrom San Francisco in early 1967, provided a model forsubsequent, commercially dominated music festivalssuch as Monterrey Pop (later in 1967) and Woodstock(in 1969).

Back on college campuses, some of the students andfaculty attracted to New Left political movements seemedbaffled by the Counterculture. The novelist and LSD-guruKen Kesey, for example, shocked a 1965 political demon-stration at Berkeley with a style of politics indebted to thetheatrics of the Counterculture. Accompanied by veteransfrom the Beat movement and youthful members of hiscommunal group, “the Merry Pranksters,” Kesey ridiculedother speakers. They were playing the same tired politicalgame—parsing the details of alternative foreign policies—as Lyndon Johnson. Between singing choruses of “Homeon the Range,” Kesey advised pursuing pleasurable activi-ties of genuine interest to oneself and, ultimately, of realhelp to others. Everyone should abandon conventionalpolitics and pursue a more personalized political agenda,one focused on revolutionizing, especially through drugssuch as LSD, how they lived their own lives.

African American Social Movements Meanwhile, this movement of movements—and changingideas about the nature of politics—also reshaped specificefforts to achieve freedom and equality for people ofAfrican descent. Initiatives that still looked to Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr., faced growing criticism for embracing toolimited a vision of political action. Moreover, as with otherareas of movement politics, the battle against discrimina-tion involved differences over how to address the ever-present commercial mass media.

Early on, Dr. King tacitly acknowledged how muchSCLC campaigns depended on commercial media, espe-cially the weekly news magazines and television. NetworkTV images of the violence directed against his 1965 voterregistration drive in Selma, Alabama, substantially aided hiscause. In a moment that dramatically framed the politics atstake in Selma, ABC television interrupted the network pre-miere of Judgment at Nuremberg, an anti-Nazi movie, infavor of pictures showing all-white squads of Alabama statetroopers beating peaceful voting-rights marchers. LyndonJohnson also recognized the power of these images. Goingon television several nights later, to urge Congress to speedpassage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, hepromised that “we shall overcome” the nation’s “cripplinglegacy of bigotry and injustice,” supposedly evident topeople looking at TV images from Selma.

At the same time, however, other people interpretedsuch TV images differently. Growing numbers of peoplesaw direct-action movements for liberty and equality as

Violence in Detroit,1967

Outbreaks of violence,rooted in economicinequality and racial tension,swept through many U.S.cities between 1965 and1969. The 1967 violence inDetroit, which federal troopshad to quell, left manyAfrican Americanneighborhoods in ruin.

�

© B

ettm

ann/

CORB

IS

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 912



pike Lee, the U.S. film industry’s best-knownAfrican American director, campaigned aggres-

sively to make a movie about Malcolm X. For nearly25 years, Hollywood moguls had been trying to por-tray the Black Power leader who was gunned down in1965 and whose Autobiography became a literary clas-sic. Delays in obtaining financing, crafting a script, andfinding a director always stymied production plans.

Lee, who had denounced the Hollywood estab-lishment for passing over his celebrated (and contro-versial) Do the Right Thing (1989) for an AcademyAward nomination, insisted that only he could do jus-tice to the story of Malcolm X. Initially buoyed by a$34 million budget, Lee eventually encounteredproblems of his own, including his insistence onreleasing a movie that ran for more than three hours.

Lee called Malcolm X “my interpretation of the man.It is nobody else’s.”

The finished film displays Lee’s desire to showthe presence of the past in the present. Produced byLee’s own independent production—whose name,“Forty Acres and a Mule,” recalls the land-distributionprogram advanced by advocates of Radical Recon-struction after the Civil War—the movie argues forMalcolm X’s continuing relevance to social and racialpolitics.

The segments that begin and end the movieemploy collages of iconic images that underscorethis aim. Against the backdrop of the Warner Broth-ers logo, the soundtrack introduces the actual voiceof Malcolm X, decrying U.S. history as a story ofracist actions. Malcolm’s accusations continue as agiant American flag, perhaps a reference to the pop-ular film Patton (1970), appears on screen. Then, theimage of the flag is cut into pieces by jagged imagesfrom the homemade videotape of the 1991 incidentin which Los Angeles police officers beat an AfricanAmerican man named Rodney King. Next, the flagbegins to burn until, revealed behind it, a giant “X,”adorned with remnants of the flag, dominates thefilm frame. The ending uses substantial archivalfootage of Malcolm, along with images of SouthAfrican freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, while thesoundtrack features the voice of Ossie Davis, thecelebrated African American actor, giving a eulogy toMalcolm X.

Released near Thanksgiving, the film opened topacked houses and took in considerably moremoney than Oliver Stone’s JFK had garnered when ithad debuted only one year earlier. Despite a multi-media publicity blitz, Malcolm X’s box-office rev-enues steadily declined. Reviewers and industryspokespeople reported that the lengthy, episodicmovie seemed to tax the patience and attentionspan of most filmgoers.

Watching Malcolm X on video or DVD, how-ever, can allow a viewer to concentrate on its manystunning sequences, speeding by ones that seem todrag, and returning to ones that may seem unclear atfirst viewing. Malcolm X remains a fascinating cine-matic history of the early Black Power movementand, more generally, of the social ferment thatgripped the nation during its longest war. n

S

H I S T O R Y T H R O U G H F I L MM A L C O L M X ( 1 9 9 2 )

Directed by Spike Lee.

Starring Denzel Washington (Malcolm X), Angela Bassett (Betty Shabbaz),Al Freeman, Jr. (Elijah Muhammad).

Denzel Washington stars as Malcolm X.

Ever

ett C

olle

ctio

n

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/18/07 12:47 PM Page 913



More than 3 billion people, from around the globe,were watching television on a summer night in

1996. Speculation centered on which American—ideally,one instantly recognizable throughout the world—wouldlight the ceremonial fire for the Olympic Games inAtlanta. Might it be former president Jimmy Carter, aGeorgia native whose post-presidential diplomatic careerhad made him an international celebrity? The slightlystooped and graying middle-aged man who shuffled for-ward to light the flame, however, was better known to theworld than any former U.S. president.

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., inLouisville, Kentucky, in 1942) first came to dominatewhat one TV network once called “the wide world ofsports.” After his 1960 Olympic triumph, he turned pro-fessional and gained the heavyweight championship in1964. His first title defense attracted only several thou-sand people to a makeshift arena in Maine. When Aliconcluded his career in 1978, however, he had fought

before adoring crowds all over the world. Governmentsrather than sports promoters, Ali once bragged, negoti-ated his fights.

Once heavyweight champion, the 22-two-year-oldfighter set out to establish a global presence that couldtranscend sports. He declared himself a member of theMuslim faith, officially changed his name, and pro-claimed that, as a world champion, he would “meet thepeople I am champion of.” In 1967, Ali became themost prominent opponent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam after refusing induction into the military.Temporarily stripped of his boxing honors in theUnited States, Ali traveled widely, especially to Africaand the Middle East, and became as well known abroadas at home. Eventually gaining a legal victory in hisbattle to obtain conscientious-objector status, Alireturned to the ring, staging his most memorable (and physically damaging) bouts in Zaire and thePhilippines. Despite increasing physical ailments—theharsh legacy of his profession—Ali has continued totravel abroad and to reconfirm his status as one of thebest-known Americans of his generation.

ALI IN EGYPT, 1964 After becoming the World’s Heavyweight Boxing Crown, as Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., the youthful champion announced his conversion toIslam and his new name. Seen here praying at a mosque in Cairo, Egypt, Mohammed Ali emphasized his embrace of Islam and his desire tosymbolize more than prizefighting. This initial pilgrimage to the Middle East became the first of Ali’s many forays onto the world stage.

AMERICANS ABROADCassius Clay/Muhammad Ali:Champion of the Whole World

© E

xpre

ss/E

xpre

ss/

Getty

Imag

es/H

ulto

n Ar

chiv

e

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/18/07 12:48 PM Page 914



subversive agitation and demanded a renewed commit-ment to conventional forms of politics and to measuresrestoring law and order.

Less than a week after congressional passage of theVoting Rights Act, six days of violent conflict devastatedparts of Los Angeles. The violence apparently began withan altercation, near the largely African American commu-nity of Watts, between a white California highway patrolofficer and a black motorist. A growing crowd, additionallaw-enforcement officers, long-standing differences overpolicing practices in LA, and deep-seated grievances withinWatts soon spiraled into what some called a “riot,” othersan “insurrection” or an “uprising.” By whatever name,burning and looting swept over Watts and edged into otherareas of south-central Los Angeles. Thirty-four peopledied; fires consumed hundreds of businesses and homes;heavily armed National Guard troops patrolled the city’sstreets; and platoons of television camera crews carriedimages from LA across the nation and around the world.

What should be the response to events in Watts,people immediately asked? Most local political leaders,including LA’s mayor and police chief, denied any respon-sibility for the violence, blamed civil-rights “agitation” forthe troubles, and sought additional resources for theLAPD. Dr. King rushed to the scene, preaching the politicsof nonviolence, only to encounter, as he had expected,anger from both LA’s political establishment and localblack organizations. Only aggressive, sometimes even vio-lent, forms of political action, some black activists wereinsisting, could get the attention of Californians whoignored racial inequalities in jobs, housing, and lawenforcement. Only the previous year, white suburbaniteshad voted overwhelmingly to scrap the Rumford Act, thehard-won open-housing law. Lyndon Johnson, stunned bywhat he saw on his trio of TV sets, quickly respondedthrough the kind of politics he understood best. Even asfires continued to burn, LBJ ordered up new social-welfareresources for LA: “Let’s move in—money, marbles, andchalk.” Groups more attuned to participatory democracybegan reorganizing local movements and creating newones, such as the Watts Writers’ Workshop, convinced thatchanging times dictated shifting forms of response.

Among African Americans, new movement initiativeshad been appearing throughout the 1950s and 1960s (seechapter 28). Some of the most recent looked to Malcolm X,a charismatic African American minister whose February1965 death amplified, rather than silenced, his powerfulvoice. While still calling himself Malcolm Little, he hadengaged in petty criminal activities, served time in prison,and reoriented his life by joining the Nation of Islamduring the 1950s. As Malcolm X, he soon became a leaderof this North American–based group, popularly known asthe “Black Muslims,” which had emerged during the 1930s.

Malcolm X’s fiery denunciations of the civil-rightsmovement, which gained him a lurid reputation in com-mercial media, found a receptive grassroots audience inmany urban black neighborhoods in the North and West.Dr. King’s gradualist, nonviolent campaign for new civil-rights laws, Malcolm X charged, simply ignored theeveryday problems of most African Americans and theundesirability—indeed, the impossibility—of integra-tion. “White America” would never accept persons ofAfrican descent as equals, and dark-skinned people shouldthus work, as the Nation of Islam and other “black nation-alist” groups had long urged, to build and strengthen theirown communities. Although he never advocated initiatingconfrontation, Malcolm X strongly endorsed self-defense,“by any means necessary.”

Although mainstream media continued to portrayMalcolm X as a dangerous subversive, he offered morethan angry rhetoric. He called for pride in African Ameri-can cultural practices and for economic reconstruction.He urged African Americans to “recapture our heritageand identity” and “launch a cultural revolution tounbrainwash an entire people.” Seeking a broader move-ment, one that could forge multiracial coalitions, MalcolmX eventually broke from the Black Muslims and estab-lished his own Organization of Afro-American Unity.Murdered by enemies from the Nation of Islam, MalcolmX soon became, especially after the posthumous publica-tion of his Autobiography (1965), a source for black-oriented political and cultural visions.

These visions, which reshaped many older movementsand inspired new ones, diverged from the political perspec-tives that dominated Lyndon Johnson’s administration.Officially committed to additional civil-rights legislation,particularly a national open-housing law and to new GreatSociety programs, the president was also coming to sensethat many federal laws ignored the root causes of currentconflicts. He began listening to members of his administra-tion who suggested social programs, which would later becalled “affirmative action” measures, specifically intended toassist African Americans. In a 1965 speech, he suggestedthat centuries of racial discrimination against people ofAfrican descent had produced “wounds” and “weaknesses”that had become “the special handicaps of those who areblack in a Nation that happens to be mostly white.”

Although Johnson intended his words to soothe, theytended to inflame. African Americans who now viewedempowering black communities as a major civil-rightsgoal, for example, wondered if the president’s subliminalmessage might be that laws could not adequately advanceliberty and equality because black culture and societyseemed, from his perspective, “inadequate”? CouldJohnson be hinting that differences in America arosebecause of “superior” and “inferior” societies and cultures?

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 915



Disparate answers from different movements to ques-tions such as these—along with growing opposition tospecific Johnson administration policies—became evidentduring the fall of 1965. When the president invited severalhundred black leaders to the White House for a “racialsummit,” two veteran activists, A. Philip Randolph andBayard Rustin, used the occasion to lobby for their “Free-dom Budget,” an implicit indictment of LBJ’s funding pri-orities. They called for a 10-year plan for spending $100billion on infrastructure projects in low-income neighbor-hoods. Other critics denounced a recent study written byDaniel Patrick Moynihan, a social scientist who hadworked for both JFK and LBJ. The Moynihan Report,apparently intended as a prelude to new White Houseproposals but widely seen as a response to Watts, arguedthat social conditions within African American communi-ties often made laws mandating equality largely irrelevant.It singled out the prevalence of families headed by singlewomen.“The harsh fact is that . . . in terms of ability to winout in the competition of American life,” this report con-cluded, African Americans were simply “not equal to mostof the groups with which they will be competing.”

People such as Rustin, who focused on pocketbookissues and on brick-and-mortar matters, dismissed this“black family debate” as a distraction. Most younger move-ment activists, however, argued that Moynihan’s singlereport spoke volumes about the Johnson administration’spaternalistic mindset. Accustomed to dealing with compet-ing interests from which he could cobble a consensus,Lyndon Johnson privately denounced movement leadersfor using, in reference to the Freedom Budget, his summitto start “raising un-shirted hell and saying it’s got to be a100 billion.”

Meanwhile, events in the South also highlighted theincreasingly frenetic—and the also gradually more effective—movement-of-movements phenomenon. SNCCand Dr. King’s SCLC continued to press forward, thoughoften along separate paths. Their movements constantlyfaced the threat of violence and death and confronted stateand local legal systems seemingly unable to restrain orpunish vigilantes who attacked, or even killed, civil-rightsworkers. White southern legal officials, moreover, appearedno better at overseeing electoral contests. Charging thatvote-counters had robbed of victory a SNCC-sponsoredslate in a local election in Lowndes County, Alabama,Stokely Carmichael began to organize, against the adviceof King’s SCLC, an all-black political organization in thatlocale. To symbolize the militancy of this third-partymovement, the “Lowndes County Freedom Organiza-tion,” SNCC commissioned a special logo: a coiled blackpanther.

The following spring, SNCC joined other movementsin a well publicized foray into Mississippi. In June 1966, a

KKK gunman shot James Meredith, who was conductinga one-person “March against Fear” from Memphis, Ten-nessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Convinced of the need todefy violence, representatives from most of the individualmovements that comprised the wider antidiscriminationcause hastily gathered in Mississippi. Although state offi-cials provided only minimal protection and armed KKKvigilantes assembled at almost every crossroad, mostactivists, including Stokely Carmichael and Dr. King,remained determined to stay on course.

An enlarged March against Fear became the firstlarge-scale movement project—in contrast to the 1963March on Washington or the 1965 voting-rights campaignin Alabama—that did not seek new civil-rights legislation.In this sense, it seemed an effort to demonstrate thatmovements for liberty and equality now also emphasizedstruggles for dignity, pride, and empowerment. Moreover,highly symbolic political activities of the kind coming intoprominence obviously relied on media visibility, andMeredith’s shooting had already focused national newscoverage on Mississippi. Considerations such as theseseemingly justified a difficult and dangerous group effortto complete the quixotic crusade one person had begun.Displaying a remarkable degree of solidarity—if notalways unanimity—the March Against Fear ended with aninterracial crowd of 15,000 people, most of whom hadarrived in Mississippi just before the finale, marching intoJackson in late June.

This march also underscored differences, in rhetoricaland programmatic emphases, among (and within) variousmovements. As Stokely Carmichael played to theomnipresent TV cameras, Dr. King, an old hand at thispolitical art form, admiringly acknowledged the youngeractivist’s shrewd grasp of media routines. After beinghauled off to jail, during one of the local voter registrationcampaigns that accompanied the march, an enragedCarmichael claimed he would never again, passively andnonviolently, submit to arrest.

Carmichael now explicitly urged that the struggle notremain just one for “Freedom,” the byword of the SCLC,but also for “Black Power.” As different movements withinthis march’s ranks chanted “Black Power,” others called for“Freedom.” During one lengthy debate among themarchers, Carmichael rejected a compromise slogan,“Black Equality,” and insisted that Black Power bestdescribed the kind of politics that direct-action move-ments such as SNCC should now embrace.

Black Power did not magically spring forth from theMarch against Fear. Always a slippery concept to grasp,especially when applied to constantly shifting politicalvalues and strategies, Black Power provided an apparentlyinflammatory label for a sometimes commonsensical setof claims. At different times and places during the 1960s,

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 916



African American activists determined that they shouldseek greater on-the-ground power both in—and for—their own communities. If black-led movements in citiessuch as LA and Oakland, for example, could not count ontheir state’s hard-won open-housing law to remain inforce or if local political establishments could block fed-eral funding of CAP initiatives, seeking greater power fora grassroots black politics seemed a logical, if politicallyuncertain, move.

Operating from this perspective, in 1966, several col-lege students from Oakland, who were already active incommunity-based projects, announced formation of anew Black Power organization. Taking its name, the “BlackPanther Party,” from SNCC’s earlier effort in LowndesCounty, this movement issued a platform that employedmilitant rhetoric on behalf of 10 objectives, many alreadyfamiliar to local civil-rights groups. These included greatereconomic opportunities—for housing, education, andemployment—and greater legal protections, especiallyagainst police misconduct and flawed legal proceedings.The group also created its own grassroots social programs,including ones to improve health and nutrition in low-income black neighborhoods.

The Panthers quickly became a media phenomenon.Adapting quasi-military symbols and organizationalforms from Third World revolutionary movements, a trioof media-savvy young men—Huey Newton, Bobby Seale,and Eldridge Cleaver—quickly gained national attentionfor the Black Panthers. A 1967 rally on behalf of theSecond Amendment right to use firearms for self-defense,against what armed demonstrators called “fascist pig”police officers, attracted the notice of J. Edgar Hoover. TheFBI head eventually made destroying the Black PantherParty, by almost any available means, a key goal.

Far less flamboyantly than the Black Panthers,other groups and movements extended Black Powerideals to a wide range of issues. Fully embracing theword black and a cultural agenda that stressed racialidentity, they asserted their power to pursue separate,African American–directed routes not just toward libertyand equality but, sometimes,“liberation” from the prevail-ing U.S. political culture. Receiving a more generous hear-ing from commercial media than Malcolm X had gainedduring his lifetime, many Black Power efforts, moreimportantly, forged political links and cultural networkswithin African American communities. “Black Is Beauti-ful” became a watchword. James Brown, the “Godfather”of soul music, captured this new spirit with his “Say ItLoud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968).

Against this rapidly changing backdrop, the U.S. Con-gress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. A central provi-sion of this omnibus measure, the last new civil-rights leg-islation of the 20th century, sought to eliminate racial

discrimination in the real estate market. This section ofthe law, popularly known as the “Fair Housing Act,” pro-vided a national version of open housing legislation. Itsinitial proponents, however, considered the final versionshot through with exemptions and plagued by enfeebledenforcement mechanisms. Moreover, another section ofthe same Civil Rights Act declared it a crime to cross statelines in order to incite a “riot.” Supporters hailed this pro-vision as a law-and-order measure, while critics insisted itillegally targeted specific political activists, especially onesespousing Black Power. Whenever tested in federal court,though, this section passed constitutional scrutiny.

The Antiwar MovementMeanwhile, one movement began to overshadow all others. Even as campus-centered ferment, countercultural activities, and African American empowerment efforts continued—and other movements, such as environmental-ism and second-wave feminism, began to emerge—the onethat sought to pressure Lyndon Johnson into abandoninghis crusade in Vietnam dominated U.S. politics and culture.

The antiwar movement, as with the broader movement-of-movements impulse, never fell into neatcategories. The dominant media frame of the day, hawksagainst doves, failed to account for the diverse coalitionthat came to oppose the Johnson administration. Some ofthe strongest “antiwar” sentiment, for example, blamedLBJ for not prosecuting the war aggressively enough.Convinced that he would never strive for a clear-cut vic-tory, some people in this camp decided to oppose contin-ued U.S. involvement, at least on Johnson’s terms. At theother end of the antiwar spectrum, as the White Houseand its supporters constantly noted, were small move-ments that called for a North Vietnam–NLF victory. “Ho,Ho, Ho Chi-Minh/NLF’s Gonna Win” went a chant thatenraged Johnson and distressed many members of theantiwar coalition.

The broad middle ground of the anti-Johnson, antiwaralliance could never fully agree on many issues. A diverseconstituency, in another concrete example of participatorydemocracy, continually debated how and why the UnitedStates had ever become committed to preserving a non-communist South Vietnam. They also split over how and ifthe antiwar movement could change LBJ’s course. In addi-tion, the antiwar cause faced the same questions as all othermovements of the 1960s: What kind of politics bestexpressed the ethical and spiritual values of its supporters?And how might mass-mediated images of this movement’sactivities represent its politics to a broader audience?

By 1967, the issue of Vietnam had become the contro-versy on most college campuses. At a series of “teach-ins,”supporters and opponents of the war had already debated

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 917



their positions. Later, these events had given way tostreet demonstrations, in both local communities and inWashington, D.C., against Johnson’s Vietnam policies.Most male students possessed a direct stake in such activ-ities. Their local draft boards normally granted them edu-cational deferments, but these expired at graduation andcould be revoked or denied, sometimes because of a youngman’s view of Johnson’s policies. Many students, joiningthe less fortunate sons who did not attend college, com-plied with draft regulations, and a good number volun-teered for service in Vietnam. A strong draft-resistancemovement, often symbolized by the burning of draft cardsand sometimes marked by the flight to foreign countries,especially Canada, also emerged. During October 1967,campus protests against war-related activities passed acrucial threshold when a pitched, bloody battle broke outbetween antiwar demonstrators and police at the Univer-sity of Wisconsin in Madison.

That same year, 1967, saw two other important anti-war milestones. Long critical of the war, Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr. now faced intensive pressure, especially fromactivists among the clergy, to spell out his moral and spir-itual position. At the same time, many of his civil-rightsallies warned against doing anything that might break hisalready severely strained relationship with the JohnsonWhite House and escalate attacks from enemies such asJ. Edgar Hoover. Speaking in early April 1967, at NewYork’s Riverside Church, Dr. King boldly laid out his views.In an analysis similar to that of Black Power spokespeopleand of critical journalists such as Gloria Emerson, Dr.King noted a black-and-white truth. African Americantroops, mostly from low-income communities, served anddied in numbers far greater than their proportion of theU.S. population “for a nation that has been unable to seatthem together in the same schools” with the white soldiersnow at their side in Vietnam. The immoral “madness” inVietnam “must cease,” Dr. King thundered, but he alsowondered if “the world now demands a maturity of Amer-ica that we may not be able to achieve.”

This speech provided an important gauge of both thegrowing antiwar movement and the expanding polariza-tion within the country. Although Dr. King had expected abacklash, he failed to anticipate that voices from all acrossthe political-media spectrum would condemn his address.Although the editorial board of the New York Times didnot, as some commentators did, call King a “traitor,” itread his antiwar pronouncement through the familiarframe of narrowly imagined interest groups. The Timescharged him with seeking media attention and with dam-aging the civil-rights cause by expounding on a matterabout which he likely knew little and on which he mightlack the political credentials to comment intelligently.Why should people give his foreign policy opinions more

weight than those of the boxer Muhammad Ali, who hadbeen widely condemned for his antiwar statements (onAli, see Americans Abroad)?

The same interrelated issues raised by King’s speech—the nature of politics and the role of the media—also sur-rounded popular discussion of a massive 1967 antiwardemonstration in Washington, D.C. This event under-scored how the politics of the New Left and the spirit ofthe Counterculture marched together, at least when inopposition to Lyndon Johnson’s policies in Vietnam.

Noting the visual media’s voracious appetite for pic-tures of political and cultural dissent, a small group ofexperienced activists decided to feed media outlets auniquely prepared supply of imagery. To do this, theyinvented a kind of “nonmovement movement,” whichbypassed the hard work of mobilization and organizationin favor of hoping media images would do the mobilizingand organizing for them. Two members of this group,Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, proclaimed themselvesleaders of a (nonexistent) “Youth International Party”—or“YIPPIE!”—and simply waited for media coverage to sur-round their activities, as they knew it would.

Hoffman and Rubin raised the curtain on a neo-vaudevillian, countercultural style of politics. In onefamous incident, they tossed fake money onto the floor ofthe New York Stock Exchange. Invoking the sit-in move-ment, they joked about staging department-store “loot-ins” to strike at “the property fetish that underlies genoci-dal war” in Vietnam. Even more audaciously, theyannounced their contribution to the 1967 antiwar marchwould be a separate trek to the Pentagon. There, theyclaimed, marchers chanting mystical incantations wouldlevitate this five-sided head of the military-industrialcomplex several hundred feet into the air.

Although the Pentagon remained firmly planted,events around its perimeter generated eye-catching TVfootage and gained novelist Norman Mailer a NationalBook Award for his first-person report. According toMailer’s admirers, his book Armies of the Night (1968), byinterweaving Mailer’s personal politics with a journalisticaccount of a public event, reinvented orthodox politicalreporting in a way that seemed to parallel how activistswere reinventing what counted as politics.

1968Other observers of events at the Pentagon and harshercritics of Armies of the Night’s journalistic style dissented.Might not media images of colorful quipsters such asHoffman and Rubin be helping to fuel cultural polarizationrather than to provide new models of useful political action?Might the media’s taste for spectacular demonstrations be

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 918


1 9 6 8 919

trivializing underlying issues, including moral ones?Questions such as these became even more pressing duringthe tumultuous 12 months of 1968, a year that saw violenceand upheaval span most of the globe.

Turmoil in VietnamJanuary of 1968 had not even concluded when LyndonJohnson’s crusade in Vietnam, though not the violenceaccompanying it, effectively ended. Late that month duringa truce declared in observance of Tet, the Vietnamese lunarNew Year celebration, NLF and North Vietnamese forcessuddenly went on the attack throughout South Vietnam.One group even temporarily seized the grounds of the U.S.embassy in Saigon. U.S. strategists had fully expected someviolation of the Tet truce, but they never anticipated thebreadth and ferocity of the communist offensive.

The Johnson administration tried to assess the fallout.Militarily, U.S. forces emerged victorious from this Tetoffensive. After regrouping, they inflicted heavy casualtieson NLF and North Vietnamese troops, who gained rela-tively little territory at considerable cost. Supporters of thewar in the United States soon blamed media imagery forexaggerating the effect of the early attacks, ignoring NLFand North Vietnamese losses, and thereby turning “vic-tory” into “defeat.” Critics of the war countered that theTet offensive had initially caught U.S. military command-ers ill-prepared and, later, highlighted their inability toeffectively pursue the badly mauled enemy forces.

In any case, Tet proved a defeat for the Johnsonadministration. Events seemed to belie its constant assur-ances of improving fortunes and imminent victory. WalterCronkite, the esteemed CBS-TV anchor, returned from apost-Tet tour of Vietnam and proclaimed, to a nationaltelevision audience, that the United States would neverprevail militarily on the battlefield and needed to considernegotiating its withdrawal. Reportedly, Lyndon Johnsonmused that if he had lost the celebrity anchor then knownas “the most trusted person in America,” he had also lostmuch of the rest of the country.

LBJ received more bad news when he summoned hismost trusted advisers and a distinguished group of elderlystatespeople, the so-called wise men, to consider GeneralWestmoreland’s request for an additional 206,000 U.S.troops. To Johnson’s surprise, a majority advised againstanother massive infusion of U.S. troops. If South Vietnamwere to survive, its own forces needed to shoulder more ofthe military burden. Johnson capitulated to this argument,conceding that another large increase in U.S troops, evenif forces could have been spared from other duties, wouldhave further fanned opposition to his policies.

The Tet offensive threw Lyndon Johnson’s own politi-cal future into question. Faced with open revolt by antiwar

Democrats, who rallied behind a presidential bid bySenator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, Johnson recon-sidered, for the final time, his political options. AlthoughLBJ controlled enough party-selected delegates to buryMcCarthy’s candidacy at the Democratic national conven-tion, McCarthy’s primary campaigns against Johnson,which attracted youthful volunteers and abundant mediacoverage, revealed how little political capital the presidentnow possessed.

Eugene McCarthy, who was athletic enough to haveconsidered a professional baseball career and sufficientlyacademic to have been a college professor, had alwaysseemed uncomfortable with the path he did choose, elec-toral politics. After serving, capably but as if on autopilot,in both houses of Congress, McCarthy suddenly achievedinstant political fame as an unorthodox presidential hope-ful. LBJ technically defeated McCarthy in the 1968 NewHampshire primary, but the antiwar message of “CleanGene” (as media pundits dubbed him) resonated both withvoters who favored the United States bombing its way tovictory and with those who favored a speedy withdrawal.

With McCarthy poised to defeat LBJ in the Wisconsinprimary, Johnson surprised all but his closest aides andreconfigured the diplomatic and political landscapes. OnMarch 31, 1968, he went on TV to declare a halt to the U.S.bombing of North Vietnam, to announce an offer to beginpeace negotiations, and to proclaim he would not seekreelection. Deprived of his greatest asset, not being LBJ,Eugene McCarthy pledged to continue his fight for theDemocratic nomination, He prepared to square offagainst his former senatorial colleague from Minnesotaand Johnson’s ever-loyal vice president, Hubert H.Humphrey.

Turmoil at HomeAmong the many former LBJ supporters gladdened by theturn in political events, was Dr. Martin Luther King., Jr. Hehoped that the Democratic Party would reject Humphreyand embrace an antiwar candidate, preferably SenatorRobert Kennedy (RFK) of New York, JFK’s youngerbrother, who had belatedly entered the presidential sweep-stakes after Johnson’s surprise announcement.

Less than a week after seeing glimmers of politicalhope, on April 4, 1968, King met the violent death he hadlong anticipated. While visiting Memphis, Tennessee, insupport of a labor strike by African American sanitationworkers, the civil-rights leader received an almost instantlyfatal head wound, as he stood on the balcony of the LorraineMotel. Law enforcement officials soon identified (andeventually apprehended) the alleged shooter: James EarlRay, a drifter with a lengthy criminal record. Ray quicklypleaded guilty to having assassinated King, waived a jury

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 919



trial, and received a 99-year sentence. Subsequently,though, Ray recanted and claimed to have been a pawn insome larger white supremacist conspiracy. Ray died in1998, still insisting on his innocence, a claim that intriguedseveral members of the King family but convinced veryfew legal observers or historians.

As news of King’s murder spread, violent protestsswept through urban neighborhoods. More than 100 citiesand towns witnessed outbreaks; 39 people died; 75,000regular and National Guard troops were called to duty.When President Johnson proclaimed Sunday, April 7, as aday of national mourning for the slain civil-rights leader,parts of the nation’s capital city, including neighborhoodsnear the White House, remained ablaze.

Claiming he would devise policies to end violence athome and in Vietnam, Robert Kennedy mounted a non-stop campaign for the Democratic presidential nomina-tion. Unwilling to risk a test of his personal popularity,Humphrey stayed out of the Democratic primaries, inher-iting most of the nonelected delegates previously pledgedto LBJ and leaving RFK and McCarthy to fight over therest. His celebrity-assisted campaign recalling memoriesof JFK’s, Robert Kennedy sought to convince Democratspledged to Humphrey or favoring McCarthy that onlyanother Kennedy could win the presidency in November.

Then, on June 5, after besting Eugene McCarthy inCalifornia’s primary, RFK fell victim to an assassin’sbullets. Bystanders immediately grabbed Sirhan Sirhan,a Palestinian-born immigrant, who was later chargedand convicted of killing Kennedy. Television coverage ofKennedy’s body being returned to Washington, D.C.,

and of his funeral provided poignant, and disturbing,reminders of Dr. King’s recent murder and of the assas-sination of JFK five years earlier. Was there, somepeople wondered, some “sickness” afflicting U.S. politi-cal culture? Did “government by gunplay” rather thanpolitical pluralism best describe the prevailing systemof governance?

The violence of 1968 continued. During the Republi-can national convention in Miami, presidential candidateRichard Nixon promised to restore law and order. Insidethe convention hall, he unveiled a surprise choice as hisrunning mate, Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland, anoutspoken critic of movement activists. Outside, in alargely African American section of Miami, clashes brokeout between police and citizens, during which four peoplelost their lives. Later that summer, in Chicago, thousandsof people, drawn from a cross-section of the antiwarmovement, converged on the Democratic Party’s conven-tion to protest the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, whowas still loyally supporting Johnson’s policy in Vietnam.Responding to acts of provocation by some demonstra-tors, including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, policeofficers struck back. Some used indiscriminate forceagainst antiwar activists and members of the media.Although an official report later talked about a “policeriot,” opinion polls showed that most people approved ofhow police officers had acted in Chicago. Humphrey easilycaptured the Democratic presidential nod, but differingviews over Johnson’s Vietnam policy and over the mean-ing of the violence in Chicago left his party bitterlydivided.

The Funeral Processionof Dr. Martin LutherKing, April 9, 1968

A vast crowd of mourners,composed of both ordinarypeople and dignitaries,accompanied the body ofDr. King through the streets ofAtlanta, Georgia. The simple,horse-drawn wagon hadbecome the symbol of one ofhis final efforts, a Poor PeoplesCampaign, that was to include amarch on the nation’s capital.After Dr. King’s assassination inMemphis, a wagon would bearhis body through the streets ofthe city in which he had grownup, gone to college, andachieved his greatest fame.

�

© B

ettm

ann/

CORB

IS

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 920


1 9 6 8 921

The Election of 1968Both Humphrey and Nixon worried about the candidacyof Alabama’s George Wallace. After adroitly organizing athird-party run, Wallace stumbled badly by tabbing retiredgeneral Curtis LeMay, who immediately hinted at the pos-sibility of using nuclear weaponry against North Vietnam,as a running mate. With his own views in favor of victoryin Vietnam and against civil rights well established, Wal-lace could play to opinion polls that suggested growingsentiment against the Counterculture and the antiwarmovement. If any “hippie” protestor ever blocked hismotorcade, Wallace once announced, “it’ll be the last carhe’ll ever lay down in front of.” Declaring his indepen-dence from the interest groups that supposedly controlledthe political process, Wallace also courted voters who sawthemselves as captive to “tax-and-spend” bureaucracies inWashington.

George Wallace never expected to gain the presidency.He hoped, however, to secure enough electoral votes todeny Humphrey or Nixon a majority. Then, as the U.S.Constitution prescribed, the selection of a presidentwould rest with the House of Representatives, where Wal-lace might act as a power broker on behalf of his favoriteissues and his own political fortunes.

Nixon narrowly prevailed in November. Hinting at asecret plan to honorably end the war in Vietnam, Nixonalso promised to restore tranquility at home. Although theformer vice president won 56 percent of the electoral vote,he outpolled Humphrey in the popular vote by less than 1percent. Humphrey had benefited when Johnson ordered

a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam and pledged tobegin peace talks in Paris, an initiative that Nixon secretlyworked to undermine through back-channel negotiationswith the South Vietnamese government. In the end,Humphrey carried only Texas in the South. George

Robert F. Kennedy’s FuneralAn elaborately staged funeral alsofollowed the 1968 assassination ofRobert F. Kennedy. The shootingsof the two beloved leaders—Kingand Kennedy—prompted widespreadconcern about the stability ofAmerica’s social and political fabricand added to the tensions of thistumultuous year.

�

WA9

OR6

CA40

NV3

MT4

ND4

SD4WY

3

ID4

UT4 CO

6

AZ5

AK3 HI

4

NM4

TX25

OK8

KS7

NE5

MN10

IA9

LA10

AR6

MO12

FL14

MS7

AL10

GA12

SC8

TN11

NCN-12 W-1

KY9

WI12 MI

21

IL26

IN13

OH26

VA12

WV7

PA29

NY45

ME4

NH4VT

3

MD10

DE3

NJ17

MA14

CT8

RI4

DC3

Humphrey(Democrat)

191 35.5 31,275,166 42.9

301 56.0 31,785,480 43.6

46 8.5 9,906,473 13.5

Nixon(Republican)Wallace(American Independent)

Electoral Vote Number %

Popular Vote Number %

Map 29.2 Presidential Election, 1968George Wallace’s independent, third-party candidacyinfluenced the election of 1968. Compare this map with onesof earlier and later election years to see how the southernstates gradually left the Democratic column and, in time,became a base of Republican power.

�

© B

ettm

ann/

CORB

IS

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 921



Wallace picked up 46 electoral votes, all from states in theDeep South, and 13.5 percent of the popular vote nation-wide. Nixon won five crucial southern states and claimedthe support, from all across the country, of those whom hecalled “the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, thenon-demonstrators.”

The Nixon Years, 1969–1974

What new domestic and

foreign policies did the Nixon administration

initiate?

Raised in a modest Quaker home in southern California,Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 asthe kind of leader who could restore domestic tranquility.The beginning of Richard Nixon’s presidency, however,coincided with more, rather than less, turmoil.

Lawbreaking and ViolenceA handful of people on the political fringe, such as thosein a tiny group known as the “Weather Underground,”openly embraced violence. According to one assessment,authorities logged approximately 40,000 bomb threats,most unfounded, during the first 18 months of Nixon’sfirst term. There were, though, nearly 200 actual andattempted bombings on college campuses during the1969–70 academic year, with an explosion at the Univer-sity of Wisconsin claiming the life of a late-working gradstudent. Nonlethal attacks rocked other targets, includingthe Bank of America, the Chase Manhattan Bank, andeven the U.S. Congress. On one highly publicized occasionin 1970, three members of the Weather Underground blewthemselves apart when their own bomb factory exploded.

At the same time, governmental officials stepped uptheir use of force. Several prominent Black Power figures,including Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers and thecelebrated prison activist George Jackson, died under cir-cumstances their supporters likened to political assassina-tion but public officials considered normal law enforce-ment activities. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI went beyondshadowing members of entirely peaceful antiwar andwomen’s organizations to harass activists, plant damagingrumors, and even operate as agent provocateurs, urgingprotestors to undertake actions that officials might laterprosecute as criminal offenses. After a lengthy investiga-tion of COINTELPRO—a once-secret FBI programaimed at disrupting a wide range of activist groups—acongressional committee concluded that the FBI had ille-gally ruined careers, severed friendships, besmirched rep-utations, bankrupted businesses, and even endangered

lives. The Bureau terminated COINTELPRO in 1971, onlyafter documents stolen by antiwar activists from an FBIoffice in Pennsylvania revealed its existence.

State and local officials stepped up their own efforts torestore order. During the fall of 1971, for instance, NewYork’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller suddenly broke offnegotiations with representatives for more than a thou-sand prison inmates, who had seized several cell blocksand taken a number of guards hostage while protestingwhat they considered to be intolerable living conditions atAttica State Prison. Rockefeller then ordered heavilyarmed state troopers and National Guard forces into thecomplex. When this “Attica Uprising” finally ended, 29prisoners and 11 guards lay dead. At the same time, on col-lege campuses, local officials and administrators seemedincreasingly ready to employ force against demonstrators,a course praised by law-and-order advocates and decriedby civil libertarians.

A New PresidentRichard Nixon continued to insist that his vast publicexperience made him the ideal president for such troubledtimes. After graduating from Whittier College, Nixon hadstudied law at Duke University and served in the Navyduring the Second World War. He then enjoyed a meteoricpolitical career that took him to the House of Representa-tives in 1946, the Senate in 1950, and the vice presidencyin 1952. His 1960 presidential defeat, at the hands of JohnKennedy, began an equally rapid descent. After his failure,in 1962, to win the California governorship, Nixondenounced media commentators and announced his retire-ment from politics.

Nixon, however, seemed to thrive on confronting aconstant series of personal challenges. He entitled an earlymemoir of his political life Six Crises. The defeat of Gold-water, for whom Nixon had doggedly campaigned in 1964,and Johnson’s problems resurrected the former vice presi-dent’s political fortunes. He emerged from the 1968 elec-tion more confident than ever before, it seemed, of hisleadership abilities.

Once in the White House, Nixon even expected totame a media that had long bedeviled him. Although hisstaff remained suspicious of media figures, and eventuallyclashed with many of them, the president and his key aidesfelt they possessed more skill than Johnson’s administra-tion in the image-making arts. Media personalities mightbe considered “con artists,” Nixon once mused, but politi-cians could expend “energy to try to rig the news . . . theirway.” Public officials and media reporters entered “the ringtogether, each trying to bamboozle the other.” Nixon’sclose advisers, many with backgrounds in advertising andin Southern California’s image-driven popular culture,

Focus Question

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 922


T h e Ni x o n Ye a r s , 1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 4 923

threw themselves into the sport of shaping media portray-als of the Nixon White House.

The EconomyOne area in which Nixon seemed less prepared to actalmost immediately threatened to upset his political plans.Nixon’s presidency coincided with economic problemsthat would have been unthinkable only a decade earlier.No single cause can account for these difficulties, but mosteconomic analyses begin with the war in Vietnam. Thisexpensive military commitment, along with increaseddomestic spending and a volatile international economy,began curtailing economic growth.

Lyndon Johnson, determined to stave off defeat inIndochina without cutting Great Society programs or rais-ing taxes, had concealed the true costs of the war, evenfrom his own economic advisers. Nixon inherited a dete-riorating (although still favorable) balance of trade andrising rate of inflation. Between 1960 and 1965, consumerprices grew an average of only about 1 percent per year; by1968, this figure exceeded 4 percent.

By 1971, just as the Nixon administration began plan-ning for the 1972 election, economic conditions worsened,with the unemployment rate topping 6 percent. Accordingto conventional wisdom, expressed in a technical economic

concept called “the Phillips curve,” when unemploymentincreases, prices should stay flat or even decline. Yet bothunemployment and inflation remained on the rise. Econ-omists coined the term stagflation to describe this puz-zling convergence of economic stagnation and price infla-tion. Stagflation contributed to another disturbing trend:U.S. exports becoming less competitive in internationalmarkets. For the first time in the 20th century, the UnitedStates ran a trade deficit in 1971, importing more productsthan it exported.

With his plans for a two-term presidency perhaps injeopardy, Richard Nixon faced yet another of his crises.Long opposed to governmental regulation of the economybut now fearful of the political consequences of stagflationand trade imbalances, he needed a quick cure for thenation’s economic ills. Suddenly, in what one observerlikened to a religious conversion, Nixon proclaimed hisbelief in governmentally imposed economic controls andannounced, in August 1971, his “new economic policy.” Itincluded a 90-day freeze on any increases in both wagesand prices, to be followed by government monitoring todetect “excessive” increases in either.

Seeking to address the trade deficit, Nixon radicallyrevised the relationship between the United States and theworld monetary structure. Dating from the 1944 BrettonWoods agreement (see chapter 26), the United States had

Tota

l Fed

eral

Exp

endi

ture

s fo

r So

cial

Wel

fare

as P

erce

nt o

f Tot

al F

eder

al G

over

nmen

t O

utla

ys

1960 1970 1980 1990

As a Percentage of Total Spending

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Tota

l Fed

eral

Exp

endi

ture

s fo

r So

cial

Wel

fare

Pro

gram

s(m

illio

ns o

f dol

lars

)

1960 1970 1980 1990

700,000

600,000

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

0

Total Expenditures

Social Welfare Spending, 1960–1990These charts seem to present two very different views of social welfare spending in the 1970s and 1980s. What do each measure,and which measure seems most useful?

�

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 923



tied the value of its dollar to that of gold, at the rate of $35per ounce of the precious metal. To guarantee stability incurrency markets, the United States stood ready toexchange, at this rate, its dollars for gold whenever anyother nation’s central bank requested it to do so. As dollarspiled up in foreign banks because of trade deficits and mil-itary spending abroad, however, the fixed value of the U.S.dollar came under pressure from the threat that foreignbanks might suddenly demand massive gold conversion.There had been a brief flurry of this kind of activitytoward the end of LBJ’s presidency, prompting Johnson toinstitute a “tax surcharge,” but gold again steadily pouredout of the United States under Nixon’s watch.

The president had little choice but to abandon the fixedgold-to-dollar ratio in August 1971. Henceforth, the U.S.dollar would “float” in world currency markets. This meantits value, no longer pegged to a fixed price in gold, couldfluctuate in relationship to that of all other currencies. TheU.S. dollar, consequently, quickly devalued, and the Nixonadministration expected U.S. goods would become cheaper,and thus more competitive, in global markets.

Social PolicyAt the urging of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratwho had written the controversial 1965 report on blackfamily structures, Nixon also proposed an equally dra-matic overhaul of social welfare policy. A special presiden-tial adviser on domestic issues, Moynihan suggested Nixoncould sponsor truly “radical” changes because his popularpolitical image as a “conservative” would help deflect crit-icism from within his own Republican party and fromsouthern Democrats.

Following Moynihan’s lead, Nixon advanced a“Family Assistance Plan” (FAP). Under FAP, every familywould be guaranteed an annual income of $1,600. FAPalso proposed scrapping most existing welfare measures,particularly the controversial and increasingly costly Aidto Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which pro-vided government payments to cover basic care for low-income children who had lost the support of a bread-winning parent. Moynihan touted FAP as advancingequality because it would replace existing arrangements,which assisted only those with special circumstances (suchas mothers eligible for AFDC), with a system that aided alllow-income families. The sheer simplicity of FAP, Nixonalso promised, would allow for significantly trimmingback federal bureaucracies

The FAP proposal debuted to tepid reviews. Conser-vatives decried the prospect of governmental incomesupplements for families with regularly employed, albeitlow-paid, wage earners. From this perspective, FAP lookedtoo costly—and too much like “socialism.” People with a

more favorable view of assistance programs, in contrast,argued that FAP’s income guarantee seemed too miserly.The U.S. House of Representatives approved a modifiedversion of FAP in 1970, but a curious alliance of senatorswho opposed Nixon’s proposal for very different publicpolicy reasons blocked its passage. In time, Nixon seemedto lose interest in pressing his own plan, and the nation’swelfare system would not be overhauled until the 1990s.

Meanwhile, however, the Nixon White House andCongress agreed on several significant changes in domesticpolicy. In one important move, Congress passed the presi-dent’s revenue-sharing plan, part of Nixon’s “new federal-ism.” It returned a portion of federal tax dollars to state andlocal governments in the form of “block grants.” Insteadof Washington specifying how these funds could be used,the block grant concept allowed state and local officials,within general guidelines, to spend the funds as they sawfit. In some areas, such as the construction of low-incomehousing, Nixon’s new federalism provided state and localgovernments with significantly more federal money thanthey had earlier received under Great Society programs.

A Democratic-controlled Congress and a RepublicanWhite House also cooperated on other social-welfare mat-ters. Although Nixon vetoed a congressional measure thatwould have established federally funded day-care centersfor use by women who worked outside of their homes, heendorsed a less comprehensive bill that provided tax bene-fits for those who used existing facilities. The two branchesof government also agreed to increase funding for manyGreat Society initiatives, including Medicare, Medicaid,rent subsidies for low-income people, and SupplementarySecurity Insurance (SSI) payments to those who were eld-erly, blind, or disabled. Moreover, in 1972, Social Securitybenefits were “indexed,” which meant they would increasealong with the inflation rate.

The reach of federal social-welfare programs actuallyexpanded during Nixon’s presidency. According to oneestimate, the amount spent for nondefense programsgrew nearly 50 percent during the years between LyndonJohnson’s last budget and Richard Nixon’s 1971–72 one.In addition, the percentage of people living below thegovernmentally defined “poverty line” dropped duringNixon’s first term as president. After reflecting on Nixon’sdomestic record, a prominent political scientist sug-gested, only partly in jest, that this Republican chief exec-utive might well be called “the last Democratic president”of the 20th century.

EnvironmentalismA new environmental movement became a significantpolitical force during Nixon’s presidency. Landmark legis-lation of the 1960s—such as the Wilderness Act of 1964,

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 924


T h e Ni x o n Ye a r s , 1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 4 925

the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, and theNational Trails Act of 1968—had already protected largeareas of the country from commercial development.During the early 1970s, a broader environmental move-ment focused on people’s health and on ecological bal-ances. Accounts such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring(1962) had raised concern that the pesticides used in agri-culture, especially DDT, threatened bird populations. Airpollution in cities such as Los Angeles had become so toxicthat simply breathing became equivalent to smoking sev-eral packs of cigarettes per day. Industrial processes,atomic weapons testing, and nuclear power plants hadprompted fear of cancer-causing materials. The Environ-mental Defense Fund, a private organization formed in1967, went to court in an effort to limit use of DDT andother dangerous toxins. “Earth Day,” a festival-like eventfirst held in 1970 and growing out of counterculturalmovements, aimed at raising popular awareness about thehazards of environmental degradation.

Although the Nixon administration did not sign up tohelp sponsor Earth Day, it did take environmental issuesseriously. The White House supported creation of theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Nixonsigned several major pieces of congressional legislation.These included the Resources Recovery Act of 1970 (deal-ing with waste management), the Clean Air Act of 1970, theWater Pollution Control Act of 1972, the Pesticides ControlAct of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.National parks and wilderness areas were expanded, and anew law required that “environmental impact statements”be prepared in advance of any major government project.

The new environmental standards brought both unan-ticipated problems and significant improvements. TheClean Air Act’s requirement for taller factory smokestacks,for example, moved pollutants higher into the atmosphere,where they produced a dangerous by-product, “acid rain.”Still, the act’s restrictions on auto and smokestack emissionscleared smog out of city skies and helped people with respi-ratory ailments. This law would reduce six major airbornepollutants by one-third in a single decade. Lead emissionsinto the atmosphere would soon decline by 95 percent.

Controversies over RightsNew legislation on social and environmental concernsaccompanied political struggles over constitutionally guar-anteed rights. The struggle to define these rights embroiledthe U.S. Supreme Court in controversy.

A majority of justices, supporters of the Great Soci-ety’s political vision, had stood ready to announce anexpanding list of constitutional rights. As this group hadcharted the Court’s path during the 1960s, two Eisenhowerappointees, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justice

William Brennan, often led the way. Although nearly all ofthe Warren Court’s decisions involving rights issues drewcritical fire, perhaps the most emotional cases involvedpersons entangled in the criminal justice system.

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) had held that the Consti-tution required police officers to advise persons suspectedof having committed a felony offense of their constitu-tional rights to remain silent and to consult an attorney,with the government providing a lawyer to people withoutmoney to hire their own. Defenders of this decision, whichestablished the famous “Miranda warning,” saw it as thelogical extension of precedents involving liberty andequality. The Court’s critics, in contrast, accused its major-ity of inventing liberties not found in the original Consti-tution or in any of its amendments. Amid rising publicconcern over crime, political conservatives made Mirandaa symbol of the judicial coddling of criminals and theWarren Court’s supposed disregard for constitutionallimits on its own power.

Richard Nixon had campaigned for president as anopponent of the Warren Court and promised to appointfederal judges who would “apply” rather than “make” thelaw. Apparently worried about a Nixon victory, EarlWarren announced, prior to the 1968 election, his inten-tion to retire as Chief Justice. A Republican–SouthernDemocratic alliance in the Senate, however, blindsidedLyndon Johnson and blocked his plan to anoint AssociateJustice Abe Fortas, an LBJ confidante, as Warren’s succes-sor. Consequently, the victorious Nixon could appoint aRepublican loyalist, Warren Burger, to replace EarlWarren. Subsequent vacancies, including one produced bythe resignation of a scandal-plagued Fortas, allowedNixon to bring three additional Republicans—HarryBlackmun, William Rehnquist, and Lewis Powell—ontothe High Court.

This new “Burger Court” faced controversial rights-related cases of its own. Lawyers sympathetic to the GreatSociety vision advanced claims of a constitutionally pro-tected right to receive federal economic assistance suffi-cient to provide an adequate living standard. TheSupreme Court, however, rejected this claim when decid-ing Dandridge v. Williams (1970). It held that states couldlimit the amount they paid to welfare recipients and thatpayment schedules could vary from state to state withoutviolating the constitutional requirement of equal protec-tion of the law.

Rights-related claims involving health-and-safety leg-islation generally fared better. A vigorous consumer move-ment, drawing much of its inspiration from Ralph Nader’sexposé about auto safety (Unsafe at Any Speed, 1965),joined with environmentalists to gain laws that recognizedrights to workplace safety, consumer protection, andnontoxic environments. Overcoming opposition from

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 925



many business groups, their efforts found congressionalexpression in such legislation as the Occupational SafetyAct of 1973 and stronger consumer and environmentalprotection laws. The Burger Court invariably supportedthe constitutionality of these measures.

At the same time, a newly energized women’s rightsmovement pressed another set of issues. It first sponsoredan “Equal Rights Amendment”(ERA) to the Constitution.This measure, initially proposed during the 1920s andsupported by both Republicans and Democrats, promisedto explicitly guarantee that women possessed the samelegal rights as men. Easily passed by Congress in 1972 andquickly ratified by more than half the states, the ERA sud-denly stalled. Conservative women’s groups, such as PhyllisSchlafly’s “Stop ERA,” charged that this constitutionalchange would undermine traditional “family values” andexpose women to new dangers, such as those they wouldencounter when serving in the U.S. military on a equal

basis with men. The ERA failed to attain approval from thethree-quarters of states needed to ratify any amendmentto the Constitution. Ultimately, women’s groups aban-doned the ERA effort in favor of using the judicial systemto adjudicate equal rights claims on a case-by-case, issue-by-issue basis.

One of these issues, whether a woman possessed aconstitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, became farmore controversial than the ERA. In Roe v. Wade (1973),the Burger Supreme Court narrowly ruled, with Republi-can Harry Blackmun writing the key opinion, that a statelaw making abortion a criminal offense violated awoman’s “right to privacy.” The Roe decision outragedantiabortion groups, which countered with their ownrights-based arguments on behalf of unborn fetuses. This“Right-to-Life” movement soon provided important newsources of support, especially from religious groups, forthe still expanding conservative wing of the Republican

Women’s Rights Demonstrators,August 16, 1970

Activists, who have gathered in Washington,D.C., to demonstrate on behalf of women’srights, take time to rest. Symbolically, theyeffectively “occupy” a statue erected in honorof a 19th-century military hero, AdmiralDavid G. Farragut.

�

A P Im

ages

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 926


Fo re i g n Po l i c y u n d e r Ni x o n a n d Ki s s i n g e r 927

Party. On the other side, movements organizing on behalfof women’s issues made the rights of privacy and individ-ual liberty, especially as related to reproductive decisions,central rallying calls.

Outside of the Supreme Court spotlight, RichardNixon’s administration pressed forward, often relativelyquietly, on several rights-related matters. With little con-troversy, the president signed a bipartisan congressionalextension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. AnotherNixon-approved measure, popularly known as “Title IX,”banned sexual discrimination in higher education. Intime, it became the legal basis for pressing colleges toadopt “gender equity” in all areas of their programming,including intercollegiate athletics. In addition, Republicanappointees of the Nixon administration, who assumedleadership positions in agencies such as the EEOC, suc-cessfully pressed for small policy changes that expandedthe federal government’s role in monitoring and enforcinglaws barring both gender and racial discrimination inemployment.

Perhaps most surprisingly, members of Nixon’sadministration refined the “affirmative action” concept,which had surfaced during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.Beginning with the limited “Philadelphia Plan” of 1969,which was applicable to a single city, the White Housebuilt on a campaign pledge to give African Americans tan-gible economic assistance. Ultimately, Nixon’s Depart-ment of Labor required that all hiring and contracting thatdepended on federal funding take “affirmative” steps toenroll, without being held to any bright-line quota, greaternumbers of African Americans as union apprentices.When Nixon’s critics claimed to detect a clever plan tounsettle labor–union politics, other political observersnoted how an important group in the Nixon administra-tion hoped to chart a political course that could gain theGOP new support from African Americans.

Foreign Policy under Nixon and KissingerIn 1968, while campaigning for the White House, RichardNixon had promised an administration that would “bringus together.” Instead, as it struggled with the issue that hadbrought down Lyndon Johnson, U.S. policy in Vietnam,Nixon’s administration found itself making decisions thatseemed to promote greater violence in Indochina andmore divisiveness on the home front.

Even as it wrestled with domestic policy concerns, theNixon White House appeared far more interested in inter-national matters. Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national secu-rity adviser and then secretary of state, laid out a grand,

three-part strategy: (1) “détente” with the Soviet Union,(2) normalization of relations with China, and (3) disen-gagement from direct military involvement in SouthVietnam.

Détente and NormalizationAlthough Richard Nixon had built his early political careeron a hard-line version of anticommunism, he andKissinger considered themselves “realists” who favoredflexibility when trying to advance the interests of theUnited States in the international arena. By seeking to easetensions with the Soviet Union and China, the Nixon-Kissinger team expected that improving relations couldlead these two major communist nations to reduce theirsupport to North Vietnam, thus increasing chances for asuccessful U.S. pullback from the war in Southeast Asia.

Arms-control talks took top priority in U.S.–Sovietrelations. In 1969, the two superpowers opened the Strate-gic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT); after several years ofhigh-level diplomacy, they signed an agreement (SALT I)that limited further development of both antiballistic mis-siles (ABMs) and offensive intercontinental ballistic mis-siles (ICBMs). SALT I’s impact on the arms race provedrelatively limited because it said nothing about thenumber of nuclear warheads that a single missile mightcarry. Still, the ability to conclude any arms-control pactsignaled the possibility of improving relations betweenWashington and Moscow.

Nixon’s overtures toward the People’s Republic ofChina brought an even more dramatic break with theCold War past. Secret negotiations, often conducted per-sonally by Kissinger, led to a slight easing of U.S. traderestrictions and, then, to an invitation from China for U.S.table-tennis players to compete against Chinese teams.This much-celebrated “ping-pong diplomacy” presagedmore significant exchanges. Most spectacularly, in 1972Nixon visited China, with the U.S. media firmly in tow. TVcrews pictured the president, once a bitter foe of “RedChina,” talking with communist leaders, including MaoZedong, and strolling along China’s Great Wall. A fewmonths later, the UN admitted the People’s Republic asthe sole representative of China, and in 1973 the UnitedStates and China exchanged informal diplomatic mis-sions.

VietnamizationIn Vietnam, the Nixon administration decided to speedwithdrawal of U.S. ground forces, the policy called“Vietnamization.” Putting this move, which had quietlybegun under Johnson, in a grander frame, the presidentannounced, in July 1969, a “Nixon Doctrine.” It pledged

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 927



that the United States would extend military assistance toanticommunist governments in Asia but would requirethem to supply their own combat forces. From the outset,Vietnamization imagined the removal of U.S. groundtroops without accepting a coalition between the NLF andthe government in Saigon or permitting North Vietnameseforces to defeat those of South Vietnam. While officiallyadhering to Johnson’s 1968 bombing halt over the North,Nixon and Kissinger accelerated both the ground and airwars by launching new offensives inside South Vietnam. In1970, they approved a controversial military invasion ofCambodia, an ostensibly neutral country, through whichNorth Vietnam had been sending troops and military sup-plies into the South. A quick strike into Cambodia, theWhite House gambled, would buy further time for execut-ing its Vietnamization strategy.

The 1970 Cambodian invasion, which gained theUnited States a scant military payoff, set off a new wave ofprotests around the world and in the United States. As the

campus antiwar movement revived, many colleges anduniversities exploded in angry demonstrations. Bombthreats prompted some schools, which were besieged bystudent protestors, to begin the 1970 summer vacationearlier than originally planned. White police officersfatally shot two students at the all-black Jackson StateCollege in Mississippi, and National Guard troops at KentState University in Ohio opened fire on unarmed protestors,killing four students. As antiwar demonstrators descendedon Washington, President Nixon seemed personallyunnerved by the domestic furor surrounding his Vietnampolicies.

The continuing controversy over the “My Lai inci-dent” further polarized sentiment over continuing thewar. Shortly after the 1968 Tet episode, troops had enteredthe small Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and murderedmore than 200 civilians, most of them women and chil-dren. After a bungled cover-up, news of this massacrebecame public in 1969 and refocused debate over U.Spolicy. Military courts convicted only one officer, Lieu-tenant William Calley, of any offense. This controversialdecision prompted charges that higher-ups had offeredCalley up as a scapegoat for a failed strategy that empha-sized body counts and lax rules of engagement. (Nearlyforty years later, researchers found evidence of many othersmaller-scale incidents resembling that at My Lai.) Inject-ing the White House into the Calley controversy, Nixonordered that the young lieutenant, pending the results ofhis appeal, be confined to his officer’s quarters rather thanimprisoned. Ultimately, a higher military court orderedthat Calley, because of procedural irregularities, bereleased from custody.

Meanwhile, the Nixon administration widened itsoperations to include Laos as well as Cambodia. Althoughthe United States denied waging any such campaign, itsbombing ravaged large areas of these largely agriculturalcountries. As the number of refugees in Cambodia swelledand food supplies dwindled, the communist guerrillaforce there—the Khmer Rouge—became a well-disciplinedarmy. The Khmer Rouge eventually came to power and, ina murderous attempt to eliminate dissent, turned Cambo-dia into a “killing field.” It slaughtered more than a millionCambodians. While Nixon continued to talk about U.S.troop withdrawals and to conduct peace negotiations withNorth Vietnam and the NLF in Paris, the Vietnam Warbroadened into a conflict that seemed to be destabilizingall of Indochina.

Even greater violence was yet to come. In spring 1972,a North Vietnamese offensive approached within 30 milesof Saigon, and U.S. generals warned of imminent defeat.Nixon responded by resuming the bombing of NorthVietnam and by mining its harbors. Just weeks before theNovember 1972 election, though, Kissinger again promised

Jackson StateIn 1970, the violence associated with America’s longest warcame home. In May, police gunfire killed two students andwounded 15 others at Jackson State University in Mississippi.This picture was taken through a bullet-riddled window in awomen’s dorm.

�

© B

ettm

ann/

CORB

IS

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 928


Fo re i g n Po l i c y u n d e r Ni x o n a n d Ki s s i n g e r 929

peace and announced a ceasefire. After Nixon’s reelection,when peace negotiations again stalled, the United Statesunleashed even greater firepower. During the “Christmasbombing” of December 1972, the heaviest bombardmentin history, B-52 planes pounded military and civilian tar-gets in North Vietnam around the clock.

By this time, however, the Nixon administration foundit increasingly difficult to carry out its war policies. Sup-port, all across the political spectrum, seemed to grow everthinner. Critics condemned the violence in Asia and theadministration’s effort to expand its domestic power whenresponding to dissent at home. Perhaps most importantly,sagging morale among troops in the field began to under-mine the U.S. effort. An increasing number of soldiersquestioned the purpose of their sacrifices; some refused toengage the enemy; and a few openly defied their own supe-riors. At home, Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW),a new organization, joined the antiwar coalition.

Running out of options, Nixon proceeded towardfull-scale Vietnamization. In January 1973, the UnitedStates signed peace accords in Paris that provided atimetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. As U.S.ground forces departed, an increasingly demoralized andineffectual South Vietnamese government, headed byNguyen Van Thieu, continued to fight with U.S. support.In spring 1975, nearly two years after the Paris accords andwith Nixon’s successor in office, South Vietnam’s armyand Thieu’s government would collapse as North Viet-namese armies entered the capital of Saigon. America’slongest war ended in defeat.

The Aftermath of WarBetween 1960 and 1973, approximately 3.5 million Amer-ican men and women served in Vietnam: 58,000 died,150,000 were wounded, and 2,000 were classified as miss-ing. In the aftermath of this costly, divisive war, peoplestruggled to understand why the United States failed toprevail over a small, barely industrialized nation. Thosewho supported the war to the end argued that it had beenlost on the home front. They blamed an irresponsiblemedia, a disloyal antiwar movement, and a Congressafflicted by a “failure of will.” The war, they still insisted,had been for a laudable cause. Politicians, by setting unre-alistic limits on the Pentagon, had prevented militarystrategists from attaining victory.

By contrast, others doubted the possibility of any U.S.“victory,” short of devastating North Vietnam and riskinga wider war with China. These analysts stressed theoverextension of U.S. power, the misguided belief innational omnipotence, and the miscalculations of decisionmakers. Many concluded that the United States had wageda war in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. The con-

flict’s human costs, to the United States and the people ofIndochina, outweighed any possible gain from preservinga pro-U.S., non-communist South Vietnam.

Regardless of their positions on the war, most Ameri-cans seemed to agree on a single proposition, whichcarried different meanings: There should be “no moreVietnams.” For most national leaders, this meant theUnited States should not undertake another substantialmilitary operation unless it involved clear and compellingpolitical objectives, sustained public support, and realisticmeans to accomplish a goal that clearly advanced thenational interest. Eventually, however, the people whowanted to aggressively reassert U.S. power in the world,worried that what they called “the Vietnam syndrome”might shape a timid and ineffective foreign policy.

Expanding the Nixon DoctrineMeanwhile, Nixon and Kissinger extended the premise ofthe Nixon Doctrine to the entire world. The White Housemade it clear that the United States would not dispatch itsown troops to quash insurgencies but would generouslyaid anticommunist governments or factions willing tofight their own battles.

During the early 1970s, U.S. Cold War strategy cameto rely on supporting staunchly anticommunist regionalpowers. These included nations such as Iran under ShahReza Pahlavi, South Africa with its apartheid regime, andBrazil with its repressive military dictatorship. All of thesecountries built large, U.S.-trained military establishments.U.S. military assistance, together with covert CIA opera-tions, also incubated and protected anticommunist dicta-torships in South Korea, the Philippines, and much ofLatin America. U.S. arms sales to the rest of the world sky-rocketed. In one of its most controversial foreign policies,moreover, the Nixon administration employed covertaction against the elected socialist government of SalvadorAllende Gossens in Chile in 1970. After Allende tookoffice, Kissinger pressed for the destabilization of his gov-ernment. On September 11, 1973, the Chilean militaryoverthrew Allende, immediately suspended democraticrule, and announced that Allende had committed suicide.

Subsequent debates about U.S. foreign policy underNixon and Kissinger often highlighted events in Chile inorder to illustrate broader claims. Democratic SenatorFrank Church, for example, directed Senate hearingsduring the mid-1970s that suggested policies toward Chileexemplified how the Nixon administration, in the name ofanticommunism, often had wedded the United States toquestionable covert activities and military dictators. Sup-porters of Nixon and Kissinger, in contrast, praised thepair for conducting a pragmatic foreign policy that com-bined détente directed toward the communist giants, the

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 929



USSR and China, with containment directed toward thespread of revolutionary movements, including that ofAllende’s government in Chile.

The Wars of Watergate

What political and legal

controversies entrapped the Nixon admin-

istration, and how did Watergate-related

events ultimately force Nixon’s resignation?

Nixon’s presidency ultimately collapsed as a result of fate-ful decisions made in the Oval Office. Nixon and his clos-est aides came to Washington with a view of politics thatwas as expansive as that espoused by many of the socialmovements the Nixon White House abhorred. The “newNixon” endorsed a “new politics”—evidenced in his for-eign policy moves toward China and the Soviet Union andin his short-lived enthusiasm for FAP.

At the same time, reminders of the “old Nixon” con-stantly surfaced. Long known as a political loner, whoruminated about taking revenge against his enemies,Nixon often seemed to be his own greatest foe. Even as hisadministration publicly built a domestic record that oftenseemed sympathetic to matters of liberty and equality, itsecretly pressed the power of the presidency in constitu-tionally suspect, and often simply foolish, ways. It orderedthe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to harass prominentDemocrats with expensive audits, placed antiwar andBlack Power activists under illegal surveillance, and con-ducted risky covert activities on the domestic front. Someof these activities even rattled the constitutional sensibili-ties of an old Nixon ally, J. Edgar Hoover, who rarely wor-ried about legal niceties when his own FBI swung intoaction. The Nixon administration prosecuted leading anti-war activists for allegedly impeding the Selective Serviceprocess and on various conspiracy charges. It also encour-aged Vice President Spiro Agnew to assail media commen-tators for daring to criticize White House policies.

Largely isolated from political give-and-take, with aclose-knit group of advisers, Nixon eventually created hisown secret intelligence unit, which set up shop in theWhite House. The Nixon administration planned to usethis group to undertake secret presidential missionsagainst selected enemies. Its first job, to plug “leaks” ofinformation about Vietnam to the media, soon providedthe unit with a name, “the Plumbers.”

During the summer of 1971, stories in the WashingtonPost and, later, the New York Times enraged the president.These papers had culled their revelations about deceptionsand miscalculations by previous presidential administra-tions from a top-secret history of U.S. involvement in the

Vietnam War, popularly known as the Pentagon Papers.Daniel Ellsberg, an antiwar activist who had once workedin the national security bureaucracy, had sent photocopiesof this lengthy, classified document, commissioned in1967 by Robert McNamara, to selected media outlets.

Although the material in the Pentagon Papers con-cerned events that preceded Nixon’s presidency, hisadministration responded angrily. It became determinedto make an example of what would happen to anyone elsewho trafficked in leaked and classified documents. Theadministration’s legal counterattack failed when theSupreme Court rejected, by a 6-3 margin, an attempt tohalt through court injunction all media publications basedon the Papers. More ominously, the White Houseunleashed its “plumbers.” Seeking information that mightdiscredit Ellsberg, this clandestine unit burglarized hispsychiatrist’s office. Thus began a series of “dirty tricks”and outright crimes, sometimes financed by fundssolicited for Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign, whichwould culminate in the constitutional crisis that becameknown as “Watergate.”

The Election of 1972Because Republicans had fared rather poorly in the mid-term elections of 1970, Nixon’s political strategists worriedthat domestic and foreign troubles might deny the presi-dent another term. Creating a campaign organization sep-arate from that of the Republican Party, with the ironicacronym of “CREEP” (Committee to Re-elect the Presi-dent), they secretly raised millions of dollars, much of itfrom illegal contributions.

As the 1972 presidential campaign took shape,Nixon’s chances for reelection dramatically improved. Anassassin’s bullet crippled George Wallace. Senator EdmundMuskie of Maine, initially Nixon’s leading Democraticchallenger, made a series of blunders (some of them,perhaps, precipitated by Republican dirty tricksters) thatderailed his campaign. Eventually, Senator GeorgeMcGovern of South Dakota, an outspoken opponent ofthe Vietnam War but a lackluster campaigner, won theDemocratic nomination.

McGovern never seriously challenged Nixon. Earlyon, opinion pollsters suggested, a majority of votersdecided that McGovern seemed too closely tied to theantiwar movement, New Left activists, and the Counter-culture. His key issues—a call for higher taxes on thewealthy, a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans,amnesty for Vietnam War draft resisters, and the decrim-inalization of marijuana—fell outside of what mostpotential voters considered the “political mainstream.” Inforeign policy, McGovern urged deep cuts in defensespending and an immediate peace initiative in Vietnam.

Focus Question

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 930


T h e Wa r s o f Wa t e r g a t e 931

Nixon successfully portrayed these proposals as signs ofthe South Dakota senator’s “softness” on communism and“weakness” on foreign policy.

Nixon won an easy victory in November. He receivedthe Electoral College votes of all but one state and the Dis-trict of Columbia. Although the 26th Amendment, ratifiedone year before the election, had lowered the voting age to18, a surprisingly small number of newly enfranchisedvoters cast ballots. Never seriously interested in helpingother GOP candidates, Nixon watched the Democratsretain control of Congress.

Nixon PursuedIn achieving victory, the president’s supporters left a trailof crime and corruption. In June 1972, a surveillance teamwith links to both CREEP and the White House Plumbershad been arrested while fine-tuning eavesdroppingequipment in the Democratic Party’s headquarters inWashington’s Watergate office complex. Apparently, Nixonand his aides feared that Democratic leaders possesseddocuments that might hinder the president’s reelectiondrive. In public, Nixon’s spokespeople initially dismissedthe Watergate break-in as a “third-rate burglary” and,then, as an unseemly incident unconnected to anyone ofsubstance at the White House. Privately, though, the

president and his inner circle immediately launched acover-up campaign, which gradually unraveled. They paidhush money to the Watergate burglars and ordered CIAofficials to misinform the FBI that any investigation bythat agency would jeopardize national security operations.The White House succeeded in limiting the politicaldamage until after the 1972 election, but events soon over-took their efforts.

While reporters from the Washington Post pursued thetaint of scandal around the White House, Democrats inCongress and federal prosecutors sought evidence of ille-gal activities during the 1972 campaign. In 1973, JudgeJohn Sirica, a Republican appointee presiding over thetrial of the Watergate burglars, pushed for additionalinformation, and Senate leaders convened a special, bipar-tisan Watergate Committee. Headed by North Carolina’sconservative Democratic senator Sam Ervin, it enjoyedbroad power to investigate election-related issues, includ-ing the Watergate break-in. Then, prosecutors uncoveredevidence that seemed to link key administration figures,including John Mitchell, Nixon’s former attorney generaland later the head of CREEP, to illegal activities.

During the spring of 1973, one of the Watergate bur-glars and other witnesses testified before the Senate’s Water-gate Committee about various illegal activities committedby CREEP and the White House. Senator Ervin calledNixon’s closest aides, though not the president, before thecommittee, and the televised hearings became a daily polit-ical drama that attracted a large and loyal viewer audience.Ultimately, testimony from John Dean, who had been thepresident’s chief legal counsel, linked Nixon to attempts toconceal the Watergate episode and to other seemingly illegalactivities. The president steadfastly denied Dean’s charges.

Along the way, though, Senate investigators discov-ered that Nixon had ordered installation of voice-activatedtaping machines, which had recorded every conversationin his Oval Office. These tapes (now housed at theNational Archives) opened the way to determiningwhether the president or Dean, Nixon’s primary accuser,was lying. While maintaining he was not “a crook,” Nixonalso claimed an “executive privilege” to keep the tapesfrom being released to either Congress or federal prosecu-tors, but Judge Sirica, Archibald Cox (a special, independ-ent prosecutor in the Watergate case), and Congress alldemanded access to the tapes.

If Nixon’s own problems were not enough, his out-spoken vice president resigned in October 1973, afterpleading no contest to charges of income-tax evasion.Spiro Agnew agreed to a plea-bargain arrangement toavoid prosecution for having accepted illegal kickbacks,which he had not reported as income, while in Marylandpolitics. Acting under the 25th Amendment (ratified in1967), Nixon appointed—and both houses of Congress

WA9

OR6

CA45

NV3

MT4

ND3

SD4WY

3

ID4

UT4 CO

7

AZ6

AK3 HI

4

NM4

TX26

OK8

KS7

NE5

MN10

IA8

LA10

AR6

MO12

FL17

MS7

AL9

GA12

SC8

TN10

NC13

KY9

WI11 MI

21

IL26

IN13

OH25 VA

N-11H-1

WV6

PA27

NY45

ME4

NH4VT

3

MD10

DE3

NJ17

MA14

CT8

RI4

DC3

McGovern 17 3.1 29,170,383 37.5(Democrat)Nixon 520 96.7 47,169,911 60.7(Republican)Hospers 1 0.2 3,673 ----(Libertarian)Schmitz ---- ---- 1,099,482 1.4 (American)


Popular Vote Number %


Popular Vote

Map 29.3 Presidential Election, 1972This map shows what is commonly called a landslideelection. Less than two years later, however, Nixon wouldresign from the presidency to avoid facing impeachmentcharges connected to his role in the Watergate burglary andother “dirty tricks” associated with his presidency.

�

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 931



confirmed—Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan, aRepublican Party stalwart, as the new vice president.

Nixon’s Final DaysNixon’s clumsy efforts to protect himself, while retaininghis tapes, backfired. During the fall of 1973, Nixon orderedthe Justice Department to dismiss Archibald Cox, a moveintended to prevent the special prosecutor’s office fromgaining access to the White House tapes. When Cox’sfiring only seemed to confirm suspicions of a Nixon cover-up, political pressure forced the president to agree to theappointment of an equally tenacious and independentreplacement, Leon Jaworski. Nixon’s own release of editedtranscripts of some Watergate-related conversations deliv-ered another self-inflicted wound. These flawed docu-ments only helped strengthen the case for independentears hearing the original recordings. Finally, by proclaim-ing that he would obey only a “definitive” Supreme Courtdecision, Nixon all but invited the justices, including oneshe had appointed, to deliver a unanimous ruling on thequestion of the tapes. On July 24, 1974, the Court did justthat in the case of U.S. v. Nixon. A claim of executive priv-ilege could not override the refusal to release evidencerequired in an ongoing criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, the Democratic-controlled Congress,with support from some Republican members, begansteps to impeach Nixon and remove him from office.After televised deliberations, a bipartisan majority of theHouse Judiciary Committee voted three formal articles ofimpeachment against the president—for obstruction ofjustice, violation of constitutional liberties, and refusal toproduce evidence. Nixon promised to rebut these accusa-tions before the Senate, the body authorized by the Con-stitution (Article I, Section 3) to render a verdict of guiltyor not guilty after impeachment by the House.

Nixon’s aides, however, were already orchestrating hisdeparture. One of his own attorneys had discovered that atape Nixon had been withholding contained the long-sought “smoking gun,” clear evidence of a criminaloffense. This recording confirmed, during a 1972 conver-sation, that Nixon had helped hatch the plan by which theCIA would advance its fraudulent claim of national secu-rity in order to stop the FBI from investigating the Water-gate break-in. At this point, Nixon’s own secretary ofdefense ordered military commanders to ignore any orderfrom the president, the constitutional commander-in-chief, unless the secretary countersigned it. Now aban-doned by almost every prominent Republican, mostnotably Barry Goldwater, and confronted with enoughSenate votes to convict him of the impeachment charges,Nixon capitulated. He went on television on August 8,

1974, to announce his resignation. On August 9, GeraldFord, who had never even been elected to the vice presi-dency, became the nation’s 38th president.

The events that ended Nixon’s presidency have helpedto highlight some of the dynamics of historical memory.Shortly after Nixon’s departure, most people told pollstersthey considered the “Watergate Crisis” to be one of thegravest threats by unchecked power to constitutional lib-erty in the long history of the republic. As time passed,though, the details of Watergate faded away. Opinion pollsconducted on the 20th anniversary of Nixon’s resignationsuggested that most people already only dimly recalledwhat had prompted Nixon to leave office.

What specific forces could account for this change?One of these might be that Nixon avoided being prose-cuted for his actions. Although nearly a dozen members ofhis administration—including its chief law enforcementofficer, John Mitchell—were convicted or pleaded guilty tohaving committed criminal offenses, Nixon received anunconditional pardon from his successor. Gerald Fordclaimed he wanted to spare the nation another mediaspectacle: one featuring a former president undergoing alengthy trial process. Ford’s action, however, also pre-vented any authoritative accounting, in a court of law, of atraumatic political-legal episode.

Another reason for changing memories may be themedia’s habit of affixing the Watergate label to nearlyevery political scandal of the post-Nixon era. The suffix-gate became attached to apparently grave constitutionalepisodes and to obviously trivial political events. As theNixon presidency receded in time, many people came toconsider “Watergate” a synonym for “politics as usual.”Finally, the specific images of what the historian StanleyKutler calls the “wars of Watergate” have tended to blendinto the broader pictures of the political, social, economic,and cultural turmoil that accompanied U.S. involvementin the nation’s longest war.

Conclusion

A ttempts to extend the power of the national govern-ment marked the years between 1963 and 1974.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society provided a blueprint forwaging a War on Poverty, and his administration dra-matically escalated the war in Vietnam. This use of gov-ernmental power prompted divisive debates that helpedpolarize the country. During Johnson’s presidency, boththe war effort and the economy faltered, top leadersbecame discredited, and Johnson abandoned the officehe had so long sought. His Republican successor, Richard

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 932


Co n c l u s i o n 933

Nixon, became implicated in abuses of power that ulti-mately drove him from the White House. The hopes ofthe early 1960s—that the U.S. government could aggres-sively promote liberty and equality both at home andthroughout the rest of the world—ended in frustration.

The era of America’s longest war was also a time ofchanging ideas about politics, cultural and racial pat-terns, and definitions of patriotism. It saw the slow con-

vergence of a wide array of social movements, a veritablemovement of movements. As different groups invokeddifferent explanations for the failures of both the GreatSociety and the war effort, divisions from this era wouldshape U.S. politics and culture for years to come. Manypeople became skeptical, some even cynical, aboutenlarging the power of the federal government in thename of expanding liberty and equality.

Questions for Review and CriticalThinking

Review

1. How did the Johnson administration define Great Societygoals, and how did it approach problem solving? Why did theGreat Society produce so much controversy?

2. Through what incremental steps did the Johnson administra-tion involve the United States ever more deeply in the war inVietnam? What seemed to be the goals of its policies?

3. What domestic social movements emerged during America’slongest war? How did they seek to change U.S. political cul-ture and the direction of public policy? What role did com-mercial media play in the “movement of movements”?

4. What new domestic and foreign policies did the Nixonadministration initiate?

5. What political and legal controversies entrapped the Nixonadministration, and how did Watergate-related events ulti-mately force Nixon’s resignation?

Critical Thinking

1. What long-term repercussions did America’s longest war exacton the U.S. economy, social fabric, political culture, and for-eign policy?

2. Great Society proposals prompted growing debates over theextension of government power and over definitions of civiland personal liberties. How did issues of race, gender, and thedistribution of wealth and income figure in these debates?

3. Why were the 1960s marked by so much protest and unrest?How would the polarization of views during that era continueto affect how people saw the history and future of the UnitedStates?

Identifications

Review your understanding of the following key terms, people, andevents for this chapter (terms are defined or described in the Glos-sary at the end of the book).

Suggested Readings

On Lyndon Johnson, see Robert J. Dallek, Flawed Giant: LyndonJohnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (1998), Irving Bernstein, Gunsor Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1996), and RandallB. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (2006).

The many outstanding overviews of U.S. involvement inVietnam include George Herring, America’s Longest War: TheUnited States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (rev. ed., 2001); Robert D.

Lyndon B. JohnsonCivil Rights Act of 1964Freedom SummerGreat Society

Voting Rights Act of 1965Vietnam WarGulf of Tonkin Resolutionnapalm

saturation bombingliving room warhawksdovesCountercultureenvironmentalismhippiesBeatlesBlack PowerMalcolm XCivil Rights Act of 1968Tet offensiveRichard Nixonstagflationblock grants

Rachel CarsonEnvironmental ProtectionAgency (EPA)Equal Rights Amendment(ERA)Roe v. WadedétenteVietnamizationJackson State (incident)Kent State (incident)Plumbersdirty tricksWatergateGerald Ford

D O I N G H I S T O R Y O N L I N E

The Pentagon Papers

The publication of the Pentagon Papers touched off one of themost intense controversies of the Vietnam era. Because thereport, which was turned over to the press by Daniel Ellsberg,revealed damaging information about the U.S. role in the war,the Nixon administration went to court in an effort to preventits publication. Read the Supreme Court decision, New YorkTimes Co. v. United States.

Visit the ThomsonNOW Web site atwww.thomsonedu.com/login/ to access primary sources

and answer questions related to this topic. Theseexercise modules allow students to e-mail their responses

directly to professors from the Web site.

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 933



Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam,1941–1975 (1997); David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy,Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000); FrederickLogevall, The Origins of the Vietnam War (2001); James Mann, AGrand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (2001); andJames H. Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left andSouth Vietnam Lost its War (2004). Working-Class War: AmericanCombat Soldiers and Vietnam (1993) and Patriots: The VietnamWar Remembered from All Sides (2003), both by Christian Appy,provide a wide range of perspectives. See also, Odd Arne Wested, TheGlobal Cold War (2005) and Jussi Hanhimaki, The Flawed Archi-tect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (2004). JeffreyKimball, The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History ofNixon-Era Strategy (2004) collects and skillfully organizes a reveal-ing set of documents. Finally, David Maraniss, They Marched intoSunlight: War and Peace; Vietnam and America October 1967(2003) moves back and forth, between Vietnam and the home front,during a single crucial month.

The “movement of movements” during the 1960s can be sur-veyed, from diverse vantage points, in David W. Levy, The Debateover Vietnam (rev. ed., 1994); Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtain,The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Con-flict (1997); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, AmericaDivided: The Civil War of the 1960s (1999); and Edward K. Spannand David L. Anderson, eds., Democracy’s Children: The YoungRebels of the 1960s and the Power of Ideals (2003).

On the civil-rights movement and its larger context, TaylorBranch concludes his multivolume history with Pillar of Fire:America in the King Years, 1963–1965 (1998), and At Canaan’sEdge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968 (2006). William L. VanDeburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement andAmerican Culture, 1965–1975 (1992), along with Kathleen Cleaver

and George Katsiaficas, eds., Liberation, Imagination, and theBlack Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy(2001) offer useful overviews, while Robert Self, American Baby-lon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (2003) provides asuperb local study, as does Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: TheWatts Uprising and the 1960s (1995). See also, Robin D.G. Kelley,Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Tradition (2002).

On the late 1960s and early 1970s, begin with the opening por-tions of Bruce J. Shuman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in Amer-ican Culture, Society, and Politics (2001) and Andreas Hillen, 1973Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America (2006). The year of 1968 is the subject of numerousvolumes, including Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and DetlefJunker, eds, 1968: The World Transformed (1998); Tariq Ali andSusan Watkins, 1968: Marching in the Streets (1998); MarkKurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World (2003); and thebroader account by Jeremy Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revo-lution and the Rise of Détente (2003).

On the riddle that was Richard Nixon, see Richard Reeves,President Nixon: Alone in the White House (2001); DavidGreenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (2003); andMark Feeney, Nixon at the Movies (2004). Stanley I. Kutler, ed.,Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (1997) provides evidence ofNixon’s approach to politics and constitutional limits, in his ownwords, along with commentary that updates Kutler’s own The Warsof Watergate (1992). John D. Skrentny, The Minority Revolution(2002) details the bureaucratic activism that expanded rights duringthe Nixon years, while interpretations of activism on the SupremeCourt can be found in Morton J. Horwitz, The Warren Court andthe Pursuit of Justice (1999) and in Lucas A. Powe, Jr., The WarrenCourt and American Politics (2000).

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 934


Co n c l u s i o n 935

Visit the Liberty Equality Power Companion Web site for resources specific to this textbook:http://www.thomsonedu.com/history/murrin

Also find self-tests and additional resources at ThomsonNOW. ThomsonNOW is an integrated online suite of services and resourceswith proven ease of use and efficient paths to success, delivering the results you want—NOW!

www.thomsonedu.com/login/GR

AD

E A

IDS

05406_29_ch29_p896-935.qxd 1/17/07 10:01 M Page 935


FrontmatterWinslow Homer, Sunday Morning in Virginia, 1877. CincinnatiArt Museum John J. Emery Fund. Acc.#1924.247

Chapter 17p. 510: Winslow Homer, Sunday Morning in Virginia, 1877.Cincinnati Art Museum John J. Emery Fund. Acc.#1924.247;p. 513: Courtesy Chicago Historical Society; p. 515 (left): Libraryof Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 515 (right):Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 517(top): Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division;p. 517 (bottom): Photographs and Prints Division, SchomburgCenter for Research in Black Culture, The New York PublicLibrary, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; p. 518: Library ofCongress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 519 (left): © StockMontage, Inc.; p. 519 (right): Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division; p. 521: Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division; p. 524: © CORBIS; p. 528: © CORBIS;p. 529: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 531: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 533: © The Granger Collection, New York

Chapter 18p. 538: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 546: Erwin E. Smith Collection ofthe Library of Congress on deposit at the Amon Carter Museum,Fort Worth; p. 547: TM and Copyright © 20th Century Fox FilmCorp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection; p. 548:Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas; p. 550: Library ofCongress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 555 (top): © 2006Harvard University, Peabody Museum Photo 2004.24.30439A;p. 555 (bottom): © 2006 Harvard University, Peabody MuseumPhoto 2004.24.30440A; p. 556 (top): Smithsonian Institution,Bureau of American Ethnology; p. 556 (bottom): © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 560: © The Granger Collection, New York

Chapter 19p. 566: © 2006 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; p. 569:Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 573:© Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 574: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 576: TheMetropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Edith Minturn PhelpsStokes ( Mrs. I.N.), 1938 (38.104) Photograph © 1992 TheMetropolitan Museum of Art; p. 579: Library of Congress, Printsand Photographs Division; p. 585: North Wind Picture Archive;p. 587: The Kansas State Historical Society Topeka, Kansas; p. 590:© The Granger Collection, New York

Chapter 20p. 594: John Sloan, The City from Greenwich Village, 1922.National Gallery of Art. Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1970.I. I.;p. 597: © Lake County Museum/CORBIS p. 600: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 601: © Hulton Archive/ Getty Images; p. 604: BrownUniversity Archives; p. 607: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 608: © Museumof the City of New York/CORBIS; p. 611: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 613: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 616: A’Lelia Bundles/WalkerFamily Collection/www.madamcjwalker.com; p. 617: © CORBIS;p. 618 (top): Underwood Photo Archives; p. 618 (bottom): © The

Granger Collection, New York; p. 619: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 620: © Bettmann/CORBIS

Chapter 21p. 624: Culver Pictures; p. 627: Culver Pictures; p. 628: GeorgeBellows, “Cliff Dwellers” 1913. Oil on canvas. Los Angeles CountyMuseum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund; p. 629: ColumbiaUniversity Library; p. 630: Brown Brothers; p. 631: © CORBIS;p. 634: © Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p. 638: © CORBIS;p. 640: Wisconsin Historical Society; p. 642: 20th CenturyFox/THE KOBAL COLLECTION; p. 643: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 646: © Private Collection/© Christie’s Images/The BridgemanArt Library; p. 648: Brown Brothers; p. 649: Library of Congress,Prints and Photographs Division; p. 652: © Bettmann/CORBIS

Chapter 22p. 656: Culver Pictures; p. 659: State Historical Society ofWisconsin; p. 660: Smithsonian Institution Photo No. 85-14366;p. 662: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 663: ChicagoHistorical Society; p. 665 (left): Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division; p. 665 (top right): © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 665 (bottom right): © The Granger Collection, New York;p. 668: © CORBIS; p. 669: “A Philippine Album: American EraPhotographs” by Jonathan Best. (Bookmark, Manila 1998);p. 671: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress;

p. 672: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 676: © Underwood &Underwood/CORBIS; p. 677: North Wind Picture Archive;p. 680: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Chapter 23p. 684: © Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works; p. 688:Imperial War Museum, London; p. 690: Wisconsin HistoricalSociety; p. 692: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 695:© CORBIS; p. 697: Digital Image © The Museum of ModernArt/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; p. 699 (top): NationalArchives; p. 699 (bottom): Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division; p. 700: National Archives; p. 703: ImperialWar Museum, London; p. 704: New York Times, 1919; p. 705:© Bettmann/ CORBIS; p. 707: © CORBIS; p. 710: Library ofCongress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 711: © ParamountPictures/Courtesy: Everett Collection. ; p. 712: Art © Estate of BenShahn/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Collection of WhitneyMuseum of American Art (gift of Edith and Milton Lowenthal inmemory of Juliana Force); p. 713: Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division

Chapter 24p. 716: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 721: The ArtArchive/Bodleian Library Oxford; p. 722 © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 723: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division;p. 725: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS; p. 726: © CORBIS;p. 728: © CORBIS; p. 729: Brown Brothers; p. 730: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 734 (top): Brown Brothers; p. 734 (bottom): Libraryof Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 735: © TheGranger Collection, New York; p. 738 –739: Mural: The Scopes

Photo Credits

C-1

05406_35_Credits-VOL II.qxd 1/22/07 2:37 PM Page C-1


C-2 C R E D I T S

Trial; Vanderbilt University Law School; Artist: J. William Myers,Nashville TN; p. 740: © John Springer Collection/CORBIS; p. 741:© National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource,NY; p. 743: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 745: Security PacificCollection/Los Angeles Public Library; p. 746: © Leonard deSelva/CORBIS; p. 747: © The Granger Collection, New York

Chapter 25p. 750: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 753: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 755: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 758: © The GrangerCollection, New York; p. 760: Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs; p. 761: FDR Library; p. 762: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 764: © Lester Lefkowitz/CORBIS; p. 766: © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 767: © The Detroit Institute of Arts, USA/The Bridgeman ArtLibrary; p. 770: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 774 (top):Photo © Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington,DC/Art Resource, NY. Art © Estate of Moses Soyer/Licensed byVAGA, New York, NY; p. 774 (bottom): AP Images; p. 775: TheMichael Barson Collection; p. 776: Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division; p. 779: Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division

Chapter 26p. 786: Courtesy Northwestern University Library; p. 790:© Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 793: © The Granger Collection, NewYork; p. 795: San Diego Historical Society; p. 802: NationalArchives #127-N-69559-A; p. 805 (top): © Bettmann/CORBIS;p. 805 (bottom): © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 807: National Archives;p. 808: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 809: Library of Congress, Printsand Photographs Division; p. 813: Everett Collection;p. 814: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 815: © CORBIS;p. 817: © Universal Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection;p. 818: FDR Library

Chapter 27p. 824: The Michael Barson Collection; p. 827: © The GrangerCollection, New York; p. 829: Courtesy of the George C. MarshallResearch Library, Lexington, Virginia; p. 830: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 834: Courtesy of the Truman Library; p. 839 (top):© Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 839 (bottom): Library of Congress,Prints and Photographs Division; p. 840: © SUNSET BOULE-VARD/CORBIS SYGMA; p. 846: © Margaret Bourke-White/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images; p. 847: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 849:The Michael Barson Collection; p. 850: © Hulton Archive/GettyImages; p. 853: The Michael Barson Collection

Chapter 28p. 856: © The Granger Collection, New York; p. 859: AP Images;p. 865 (top): © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 865 (bottom): © Elliott

Erwitt/Magnum Photos, Inc.; p. 866: No credit necessary; p. 867:© Joe Munroe/Photo Researchers, Inc. ; p. 870: Library ofCongress, Prints and Photographs Division; p. 871: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 875: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 877: © Don Cravens/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images; p. 884: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 890:© Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos, Inc. ; p. 891: AP Images/BillHudson; p. 892: WARNER BROS/THE KOBAL COLLECTION;p. 893: Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House, in the JohnF. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Chapter 29p. 896: © Joseph Sohm; ChromoSohm Inc./CORBIS; p. 899 (left):George Tames/ NYT Pictures; p. 899 (right): George Tames/ NYTPictures; p. 906: AP Images/Eddie Adams; p. 908: © The GrangerCollection, New York; p. 912: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 913:Everett Collection; p. 914: © Express/Express/ Getty Images/HultonArchive; p. 920: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 921: © Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 926: AP Images; p. 928: © Bettmann/CORBIS

Chapter 30p. 936: © MCA/Universal Pictures - Courtesy: Everett Collection;p. 941: © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 942:© Bettmann/CORBIS; p. 947: © Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos, Inc.;p. 949: © Galen Rowell/CORBIS; p. 950: © Bettmann/CORBIS ;p. 955: © Owen Franken/CORBIS; p. 960: Reprinted by permis-sion of Ms. Magazine, © 1972; p. 962: © Reuters/CORBIS; p. 964:© Gary A. Conner/PhotoEdit; p. 965: © Andre Jenny/The ImageWorks; p. 967: © Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS; p. 969: © Bettmann/CORBIS

Chapter 31p. 972: © Richard T. Nowitz/CORBIS; p. 977: © RichardCummins/CORBIS; p. 980 (top): California Department ofTransportation; p. 980 (bottom left): California Department of Transportation; p. 980 (bottom right): California Departmentof Transportation; p. 982: © Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS; p. 983:© Keren Su/CORBIS; p. 988: Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox/THEKOBAL COLLECTION; p. 990: TM and Copyright © 20thCentury Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved./ The EverettCollection; p. 993: © Rebecca Cook/Reuters/CORBIS

Chapter 32p. 996: © Lee Snider/Photo Images/CORBIS; p. 1003: © Reuters/CORBIS; p. 1006: AP Images/Gary I. Rothstein; p. 1007: APImages/Pablo Martinez Monsivais; p. 1008: AP Images/DennisPaquin; p. 1010: AP Images/Khalid Mohammed; p. 1012: © TedSoqui/CORBIS; p. 1015 (top): © Smiley N. Pool/Dallas Morning News/CORBIS; p. 1015 (bottom): © Jason Reed/Reuters/CORBIS

05406_35_Credits-VOL II.qxd 1/22/07 2:37 PM Page C-2


LIBERTY EQUALITY POWER · 1970 U.S. troops enter Cambodia • Student demonstrators killed at Kent...

Documents

Transcript of LIBERTY EQUALITY POWER · 1970 U.S. troops enter Cambodia • Student demonstrators killed at Kent...