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Chapter 28 Study Guide
1. John F. Kennedy's family background played a vital role in his political career. He grew up
in a privileged, well-to-do family, the son of an Irish Catholic businessman who had served in
Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and who nourished hopes of political careers for his sons.
Helped by his distinguished World War II navy record, Kennedy won election to the House of
Representatives in 1946 and the Senate in 1952. Though his record in Congress was
unremarkable, Kennedy set his sights on the White House in 1960 and used his family's fortune
to build a superb political machine.
2. In 1963, President Kennedy, following his economic advisers' suggestion, proposed reducing
taxes to stimulate the economy. This ap3roach of using fiscal policy to encourage economic
growth even when there was no recession was called the "new economics." Congress passed
Kennedy's tax bill in February 1964, and it contributed to the greatest economic boom in two
decades. Critics of the tax cut questioned its impact, however, arguing that the economic surge
was already under way, stimulated by defense spending, new technology, and cheap fuel oil.
Conservatives were afraid that the tax cut would result in a budget deficit, while liberals thought
that it favored corporations and high-income individuals.
3. After Kennedy's assassination, debate continued over how to assess his domestic record,
which included initiatives on taxes, civil rights, and poverty. John Kennedy's domestic record
had been unremarkable in his first two years as president, but his initiatives in 1963 suggested an
important change. Kennedy believed that the economic growth spurred by cutting taxes could
eradicate poverty and solve most social problems. He asked Congress to pass an immense tax
cut in 1963. In addition, he issued a dramatic call for passage of a comprehensive civil rights bill.
The question of whether Kennedy could have persuaded Congress to enact his proposals was left
unanswered due to his assassination on November 22, 1963.
4. Lyndon Johnson was a self-made man from the Texas Hill Country who was elected to the
House of Representatives in 1937 and then to the Senate in 1948. By 1955, he had secured the
top post as Senate majority leader, which he used to forge a Democratic consensus on the Civil
Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and other programs.
5. In August 1964, President Johnson signed comprehensive antipoverty legislation known as
the Economic Opportunity Act. The law authorized ten programs to be administered by the
newly created Office of Economic Opportunity and allocated $800 million for the first year. The
legislation included provisions targeting youth, such as a preschool program for poor children;
loans to businesses willing to hire the long-term unemployed; and aid to small farmers and rural
businesses.
6. In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt articulated what he considered to be four essential
human freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom
from fear—which he pledged the United States to defend. Lyndon Johnson saw federal support
for public education as a natural extension of the New Deal and added a fifth freedom to
Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, "freedom from ignorance." Johnson's Elementary and Secondary
Education Act involved the federal government in K–12 education by providing money,
equipment, and supplies to help in educating poor children, while the Higher Education Act
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expanded federal assistance to colleges and universities for buildings, programs, scholarships,
and low-interest student loans.
7. The Johnson administration invested heavily in the public sector, but funds came from
increasing revenues generated by economic growth and not from new taxes on the wealthier
classes. Spending never approached the amounts needed to overcome poverty. President
Johnson's "War on Poverty" was shaped by his wish to promote consensus and avoid conflict.
As a consequence, he would not take from the rich to provide for the poor.
8. In several cases that resulted in redrawn electoral districts and changes to the criminal justice
system, the Supreme Court grounded its decisions in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme
Court's decision in Baker v. Carr, which required many states to redraw electoral districts,
focused on the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of "equal protection of the laws." In other
judicial decisions, the Court also cited the Fourteenth Amendment when it argued that accused
individuals have the right not to be deprived of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law."
9. Massive direct action for civil rights began in February 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina,
when four African American students sat at a whites-only lunch counter and requested service.
The Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in mobilized hundreds of young people within a few days.
By the end of February 1960, blacks had launched sit-ins across thirty-one cities in eight
southern states. Two months later, activists founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, a major organization of the black civil rights movement.
10. Although some communities met the demands of student activists, authorities and local
citizens typically reacted to demonstrators with violence. In spite of the activists' optimism and
commitment to nonviolent protest, they encountered much resistance from whites, who bombed
black churches and beat and jailed demonstrators. Local police used dogs, clubs, fire hoses, and
tear gas against protesters.
11. In 1963, a campaign to integrate public facilities and open jobs to blacks in Birmingham,
Alabama, was led by Martin Luther King Jr. As leader of the SCLC, Dr. King initiated a
campaign to integrate Birmingham, Alabama, known as the most segregated city in the nation.
The police attacked demonstrators with dogs, electric cattle prods, and water hoses, and hundreds
were arrested. Firebombs exploded at King's motel and at his brother's house, and a few months
later, a bomb killed four black girls attending Sunday school in Birmingham.
12. Of all the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s, the largest one was the March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which 250,000 black and white protesters gathered in the
nation's capital to pressure the government to support African Americans' civil rights. Responses
to the March on Washington D.C. were positive. However, after the euphoria of the day, many
activists returned home to face continued discrimination and violence.
13. President Kennedy initiated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when, in a nationally televised
speech in June 1963, he called civil rights a moral issue and drew attention to the injustices that
blacks were subjected to by whites. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas a few months later, but the
antidiscrimination legislation was shepherded through Congress and signed into law by
Kennedy's successor, President Johnson. In addition to guaranteeing access for all Americans to
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public accommodations, public education, voting, and employment, the act included protections
for the rights of women and of Native Americans on reservations.
14. In September 1965, President Johnson added to his impressive civil rights record by issuing
an executive order that not only banned racial discrimination by employers holding government
contracts but also required them to take affirmative action to ensure equal employment
opportunity. Within a few years of the implementation of President Johnson's 1965 executive
order requiring affirmative action among employers holding government contracts, most large
businesses had come to see affirmative action as a good employment practice. At the beginning,
the policy provoked controversy among people who thought that it served the interests of
unqualified people, but most corporations eventually recognized that affirmative action was
actually a good employment practice.
15. In 1952, Malcolm X began working for the Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam, whose
adherents called themselves Black Muslims, drew on a long tradition of African American
nationalism and separatism. Malcolm X, whose was born Malcolm Little, went to work for the
Nation of Islam in 1952. He attracted many black followers, especially in urban ghettos, by
calling for separation from the corrupt white society and self-defense against white society. In
1964, he shifted his strategy, broke from the Black Muslims, and expressed a willingness to work
with whites.
16. Stokely Carmichael, chairman of SNCC, gave the principles of black nationalism a new
name when he shouted "We want black power" at a 1966 rally in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Carmichael rejected integration and assimilation for African Americans because those courses of
action conceded white superiority. Rather, he and others in the black power movement stressed
the importance of black pride and autonomy and encouraged blacks to strive for independence
from white society: establish their own businesses, schools, and communities and to form allblack political organizations.
17. Several dozen Native American militants—including Dr. LaNada Boyer, the first Native
American to attend the University of California, Berkeley—seized the landmark, Alcatraz Island,
the abandoned federal prison in San Francisco Bay, asserting their right of "first discovery" of
Alcatraz Island. Their occupation of Alcatraz lasted nineteen months, time they used to
publicize injustices against Indians, encourage pan-Indian cooperation, celebrate traditional
cultures, and inspire other activists.
18. To teach the history and values of Indian culture, the American Indian Movement (AIM)
established "survival schools." In Minneapolis in 1968, Dennis Banks and George Mitchell
founded AIM to deal with the maladies of urban Indians. The movement sought to protect
Indians from harassment by police and secure antipoverty funds. AIM's establishment of
"survival schools" was an attempt to disseminate Native American culture, tradition, and identity.
19. The term Hispanic American, or Latino, describes a remarkably varied population
comprised of people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Latin American origins. It was the
fastest growing minority group in America in the 1960s. During the 1960s, people of Puerto
Rican and Caribbean descent primarily settled in cities on the East Coast, but more than 50
percent of America's Latino population—including some six million Mexican Americans—
resided in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Amidst the Latino population
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boom in the 1960s, a new generation of Mexican American activists embraced direct action as a
means to reform and began to call themselves Chicanos, a symbolic departure from traditional
Mexican American reform politics.
20. Cesar Chavez grew up in poverty, moving from farm to farm with his family. In contrast,
Dolores Huerta grew up in an integrated urban neighborhood where she avoided the abject
poverty experienced by migrant agricultural workers. Like Chavez, however, she endured
discrimination at school, where a teacher once discounted Huerta's authorship of a particularly
well-written essay she had turned in.
21. Besides the United Farm Workers, which focused its activity in California, Chicanos
mobilized elsewhere against discrimination. The launched a wave of strikes called "Blow Outs"
spread through the Southwest in 1968; the strikes, which protested racism in the public schools.
They also fought against discrimination in education and employment, tried to win their share of
antipoverty funds, and combated police violence. The radical movements of 1968 and the
activity of the separatist and nationalist political party La Raza Unida had crucial roles in
winning greater representation in government and creating a more effective enforcement of
antidiscrimination legislation.
22. In the fall of 1964, at the University of California, Berkeley, the first large-scale white
student protest arose and became known as the "free speech" movement.” The free speech
movement was triggered when student organizations were banned from a campus site where they
previously had set up tables to gain support for civil rights and other causes. The students
claimed the right to freedom of expression and political action. In protest, the group occupied the
administration building, and more than seven hundred students were arrested before the
California Board of Regents overturned the new restrictions on political expression.
23. The cultural rebellion that came to be known as the counterculture often overlapped both
the New Left—which focused on civil rights, peace, and economic security—and the student
movements. Cultural radicals, or "hippies," stressed personal rather than political and
institutional change and rejected mainstream norms of the time. They settled communes both in
urban areas and on farms and distinguished themselves from the majority of the society with
their clothing, work ethic, cultural life, and sexual behavior.
24. Created in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was responsible for enforcing
existing clean air & water policies and regulating pesticides. The EPA had as its mission the
enforcement of existing environmental laws, most of which related to air, water, and pesticides.
The president and Congress created the agency in response to popular calls for the government to
protect the environment from industrial waste and urban sprawl.
25. Women's increasing participation in the workforce and in higher education between World
War II and 1960 made many women more aware of and willing to protest inequalities between
the sexes. Women were increasingly sensitive to cultural assumptions that they belonged in the
home and nowhere else. Furthermore, greater knowledge of the worlds of work and education
alerted women to the inferior conditions of their employment and gave them more confidence in
their ability to ameliorate any inequalities.
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26. The contradiction between the ideal of equality and the actual status of women in the civil
rights movement was pointed out in 1965 by two SNCC workers, Mary King and Casey Hayden.
Radical feminism emerged simultaneously with the creation of the National Organization for
Women. In 1965, Mary King and Casey Hayden, two white women in SNCC, began to circulate
their ideas about the discrepancies between the ideal of equality and women's actual status within
the civil rights movement. King and Hayden argued that women, like blacks, worked in
hierarchical power structures that excluded them and that women were also subordinated in
personal relations. By 1967, many women had dropped out of New Left organizations and were
on their way to creating an independent women's liberation movement.
27. In the early days of the women's liberation movement, radical feminists differed from the
National Organization for Women in their focus on completely transforming social, economic,
and political institutions. Radical feminists emphasized the need for a complete transformation
of gender relationships as the only way to achieve women's liberation from male domination.
They worked on raising the consciousness of individual women and on protests—like
demonstrating against the Miss America pageant—that criticized the sexist assumptions of
American society.
28. African American feminists like Cellestine Ware believed that the National Organization
for Women and other leading women's rights groups were dominated by middle-class white
women who ignored the concerns of women of color and therefore frequently ignored issues
such as poverty that disproportionately affected women of color.. Nonwhite feminists also
worried that the women's movement might distract attention from the ongoing struggle for social
justice for people of color. Ware and women like her urged white feminists to work on issues
that concerned minority group women.
29. The countermovement against feminists and their campaign for women's rights was led by
Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative Republican activist who campaigned for Barry Goldwater in
1964. She spoke for tens of thousands of conservative women who feared that the Equal Rights
Amendment would destroy what they viewed as their God-given roles as moral nurturers and
family caregivers. Conservative women also regarded abortion as murder. Schlafly's efforts
succeeded in blocking ratification of the ERA.
30. In the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a right
protected by the Constitution. Roe v. Wade prohibited states from interfering with a woman's
ability to obtain an abortion, although later Court rulings opened the door for states to curtail
abortion rights. The feminist argument that denying women control over their own reproduction
jeopardized all of their other rights influenced the Court's decision.
31. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 outlawed gender discrimination in all
aspects of education, including admissions, athletics, and faculty hiring. Over the next thirty
years, this legislation increased access to education for women and helped bring them to parity
with men in medical schools as well as dramatically increased their presence in other fields.
32. During his campaign for the presidency in 1968, Richard Nixon described the Great Society
as a failed waste of billions of dollars, "pouring billions of dollars into programs that have
failed." Nixon appealed to southern whites and other groups who believed the Great Society had
cost too much and upset traditional social relationships without yielding any positive results
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33. During Richard Nixon's presidency, government assistance programs grew. Despite
campaigning against the domestic programs of the Great Society, Nixon actually increased
spending on domestic concerns during his administration. He did so because he believed in
some of those policies and could not overcome opposition from Congress and the American
public on others. Under Nixon, Social Security benefits increased, low-income housing
subsidies tripled, and the food stamp program was dramatically expanded.
34. During the Nixon administration, antipoverty programs such as the Office of Economic
Opportunity continued. Despite President Nixon’s campaign against the Great Society and its
antipoverty programs, Democrats, who supported antipoverty measures, remained in control of
Congress after Nixon won the presidency. Nixon tried to eliminate certain government
assistance programs, but Democrats used their congressional majority to block his efforts and
keep them alive. Nixon also sought the continued support of Republican moderates and hoped to
attract Democrats to the Republican ranks.
35. In response to rising prices and decreasing employment in 1971, Nixon devalued the dollar
and taxed imports as well as imposed controls on wages and prices. Nixon decreased the dollar's
cost in international currency markets by decoupling the price of gold from the value of the
dollar. These measures helped to stimulate American exports and create more jobs in
manufacturing by making American-made products cheaper in foreign markets. Those policies
would have boosted inflation if Nixon had not simultaneously frozen wages and prices. Nixon's
economic program succeeded in stimulating the economy for the short term, but the president
abandoned it after winning reelection in 1972, and by 1974, inflation was soaring and
unemployment had crept back up.
36. In 1973, Arab nations cut off oil shipments to the United States in response to the Nixon
administration's support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Prior to the 1970s, cheap fuel
costs boosted American economic growth. Americans assumed that energy would always
remain in plentiful supply at low costs. This assumption discouraged measures to conserve
energy and increased Americans' reliance on foreign sources of fuel. In 1973, Arab oil producers
embargoed their fuel shipments to the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in the
Yom Kippur War. The oil embargo drove gasoline prices sky high and added significantly to the
problem of inflation. Although Nixon philosophically opposed government activism in the
economy, he tried to lower fuel prices and conserve supplies by imposing controls on fuel
consumption, such as gasoline rationing and a lower speed limit.
37. President Nixon did not want to use federal power to compel school integration. In his
1968 presidential campaign, Nixon had exploited enmity toward civil rights protests in an effort
to draw votes from white southerners. In that same year, two-thirds of African American
children in the South were still in completely segregated schools. Nixon's Justice Department
tried to delay court-ordered desegregation, but in 1969, the Supreme Court overruled those
efforts. The Court compelled Nixon to enforce the law, and the process of integration moved
forward. By the time of Nixon's resignation, the integration of southern schools was nearly
complete.
38. In regard to women's equality, President Richard Nixon privately expressed relief that there
were no women in the presidential cabinet. Nixon did not sympathize with the movement for
women's liberation, remarking privately that women were more "emotional" and "erratic" than
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men and expressing relief that there were no women in his Cabinet. During his presidency,
Nixon publicly opposed abortion and vetoed a bill that would have expanded federal aid to childcare programs. However, Nixon did sign some important legislation, like Title IX of the
Education Amendments Act, which combated gender discrimination.
39. Richard Nixon responded to Native Americans' demands for justice with moderately strong
support. Nixon did not give in to radical demands from Native Americans, but his
administration dealt cautiously with protests like the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
and the village of Wounded Knee. Nixon approved measures that returned lands to Indians in
New Mexico and Alaska and restored tribal status to the Menominee. Along with these victories,
Native Americans also secured more control over their schools and other service institutions
during Nixon's time in office.