Exam 4: chap 15-18 Flashcards

Question

Identify the Great Society

Answer 1

The Great Society was LBJ’s own agenda apart from Kennedy’s New Frontier and accomplished much in the year after JFK’s death, even before he ran on his own. LBJ argued that the U.S. had a wealthy and powerful society but needed to strive towards a great society that demanded an end to poverty and racial injustice- can’t measure success only on wealth. With the like-minded Congress, Johnson was able to pass much legislation fighting poverty- spent federal money on public housing projects and various agencies dedicated to helping the poor gain employment in cities, rural areas and Indian reservations, as well as continuing the food stamp program Kennedy piloted and other nutritional programs. LBJ expanded on the New Deal. The most socialist of all the legislation was the addition of Medicare to Social Security, providing healthcare insurance for senior citizens. Medicare included legislation to desegregate hospitals.

Answer 2

Johnson also helped secure funds for low-income housing, and refused to sign the Southern Manifesto opposing integration. LBJ was not super progressive on civil rights initially, but slowly changed his mind when he came to power. When LBJ became president he was much firmer on his civil rights legislation than JFK. He signed the two most significant civil rights bills since the Civil War: the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed racial discrimination in public places and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that, along with the 24th Amendment of 1964, outlawed restrictions on voting such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses.- this was the critical moment when most southern Whites abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the GOP. Martin Luther King joined him at the signing. The Civil Rights Act was a bipartisan bill signed by a Democratic president (Johnson). The final vote shows that mostly northern GOP voted in favor in greater numbers than the Democrats.-commonly overlooked. In addition to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Congress also passed legislation banning racism from the immigration process and federal housing loans and the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage in all the states. The Great Society, though, was more than just the war on poverty and racism: the government also got behind pollution control and mass transit, started spending tiny sums on public broadcasting (PBS and NPR), outlawed toxins in children’s toys, and funded research into fire prevention. The Wilderness Act of 1964 set aside over 9 million acres of federal land for preservation.

Answer 3

Goaded by Nader’s Raiders, the government outlawed firing employees just before pensions kick in, required that ingredients be listed on food products (like medicine), made one’s own credit scores available to consumers, and forced Detroit automakers to offer optional seat belts.

Answer 4

* Conservatives didn’t take LBJ’s nonsense sitting down.* Their Counter-Revolution commenced as the Great Society unfolded and can be traced to William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and, further to the right, the John Birch Society (1958- ). Birch founder Robert Welch railed against a supposed secret organization of mainstream Democrats and Republicans conspiring with the USSR to “create a worldwide police state, absolutely and brutally governed from the Kremlin.” This was the paranoid style of American politics, Reagan was more mainstream. *The Conservative Counter-Revolution centered on cultural grievances and resisting the growth, role, and scale of government. *California elected Reagan governor in 1966 in the same midterm election that saw moderate Republican George Romney (Mitt’s father) reelected governor of Michigan — a state that post-New Deal Democrats normally relied upon. Goldwater was too extreme, though, going straight for the jugular by trying to dismantle the New Deal itself (i.e., Social Security) rather than chipping away at the Great Society. - Shock jock Joe Pyne was an important voice in the conservative counter-revolution. He had a very popular radio/TV “combat talk” show.

Answer 5

Alabama Governor George Wallace took the lead in attacking civil rights legislation and the general move toward racial integration. (rogue Democrat) He left the Democrats in 1967 to join the paleoconservative American Independent Party. The populist “Hillbilly Hitler'' combined economic liberalism with social/racial conservatism. At first, Wallace seemed to be a purely southern phenomenon, but his popularity transcended Dixie. Many northern Republicans and working-class Democrats resented integration and black political equality, especially those in cities where children now shared classrooms with African Americans and Hispanics. Wallace looked at city maps and found the working-class white neighborhoods that bordered ghettos to give his speeches in. Anxious Whites flocked to Wallace as he mounted a third-party run at the 1968 presidential campaign, winning five states.

Answer 6

- Beatniks (hippie ancestors)/hippies rejected the materialism, violence, and racism of mainstream culture. - They often rejected the American work ethic, leading their detractors to consider them bums. -Beats, blazed the trail for Hippies in the late 1950s and early 60s, with their similar embrace of couter-cultural values, Eastern religion, drugs, music, and art, and their rejection of materialism, militarism, and sexual repression. - A new culture radiated out of London and San Francisco but spread around the Western world by the mid-1960s. Things got rolling in the Bay Area with the Trips Festival at Longshoreman’s Hall in January 1966, headlined by the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin’s band. Another mecca that sold more records and carried over into the 1970s was Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. The Esalen Institute along the coastal cliffs of California’s Big Sur was the base for transcendence and exploring higher planes of consciousness through meditation, LSD (hallucinogenic drug), encounter groups, massage, yoga, “finding your body”, and all manner of beliefs and practices of the New Age (as it was later known). - The counterculture valued mysticism over reason and rationality. - the counterculture included a period of Christian revival known as the Jesus Movement that impacted modern evangelism more than most evangelicals realize. - As for bringing about change in the form of laws, etc., the individualism important in the counterculture’s message undermined group political action. The best results came on environmental regulations. - There were groups like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that advocated for progressive causes with a violent, terrorist faction called the Weather Underground (Weathermen) that originated at the University of Michigan. The Weathermen blew up evacuated government buildings and hoped to overthrow the US government through a civil war, especially aimed at police. But only a few hundred joined them and their bark was bigger than their bite-> provided propaganda gold for right-wingers. - Most hippies, conversely, weren’t very political at first, content with changing society merely by setting a lifestyle counter-example. But they soon merged with radicals from Free Speech, SDS, and New Left opposed to the Vietnam War or promoting other causes like civil rights. -Opposition to the war moved to the forefront of counterculture causes as the death count climbed in Vietnam.

Answer 7

Under Nixon, the FBI undermined organized expression of the counterculture and Civil Rights movement through a project called *COINTELPRO*, a project they set up in 1956 to spy on, infiltrate, and disrupt leftist and far-right political organizations. The government did what they could to foil and disrupt counterculture with the FBI’s COINTELPRO, yet the CIA inadvertently sparked the counter-culture by encouraging LSD experimentation in the mid-60s to see if they could potentially employ mind control. The government also did not like their position against participation in the Vietnam War. In the early 1970s, President Nixon and Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) tried unsuccessfully to get John Lennon deported back to Britain as they feared the ex-Beatle and his wife, Yoko Ono, would lead the anti-war movement from New York’s Greenwich Village (his name also sounded similar to Vladamir Lenin’s). Though Lennon’s “Imagine” (1971) became the most famous anti-war song, the left’s idealistic notions of changing the world had more or less crumbled by the early 1970’s.

Answer 8

- Silicon Valley grew, financially, out of the Cold War spending, but hippiedom seeded the innovators that designed integrated circuits and personal computers that were conceived as a kind of andi-authoritarian response to big business mainframes - Emboldened the sexual revolution - Ushered in shaggier groovy dos and facial hair on males - Reinvigorated popular music - Popularized recreational drug use - Contributed to significant “blue island” portions of the country - introduced widespread use of vibe, mood, and energy - Raised awareness of healthy diets and environmentalism - Promoted introspection, yoga, group therapy, and Esalen-like quests for self-fulfillment - launched the California Cuisine organic, locally-sourced restaurants and gourmet coffee roasters ubiquitous across America today.

Answer 9

Liberal Democrats turned on President Johnson because of his escalation of the Vietnam War. He found it impossible to juggle the dual mandates of a war on poverty at home and war against communism in Vietnam. The result of LBJ’s Great Society was a period of lofty reformism and military crusading in which the reformism bred rioting and conservative resurgence, and the crusading bred intense dissent and military disappointment. By alienating southern Whites over desegregation and northern liberals over Vietnam, Johnson presided over the collapse of the New Deal spirit that he was trying to preserve and extend, instead preparing the way for a profound shift rightward of the political center over the next 20 years. The president was bitter and the Democratic Party was divided. The Party was divided over whether or not to court the vote of young protesters and radicals (by supporting civil rights and de-escalating Vietnam). Doing so threatened to alienate the blue-collar union workers and farmers who’d formed the party base.

Answer 10

In 1968, anti-war protestors crashed the party at the Democrat’s nominating convention in Chicago but ran into another type of Democrat: the old-time machine boss and Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley’s police relished the opportunity to crush some hippie skull while the kids camping in Grant Park trained for their impending showdown by doing Tai Chi. Three days of street brawls ensued as Daley issued a great Freudian slip to the press: “Our police aren’t here to create disorder, we’re here to maintain disorder.” The chaos spread to the convention itself, embarrassing the Democrats and sending a disorganized message to the electorate. The Democratic Party has long been a collection of various groups but, during and after Chicago, they were especially divided between the “hairs” and “cigars” (young liberals and protestors vs. blue collars and old union/party bosses). The chaos of the Democrats’ 1968 convention helped convince other parties to make their primaries binding rather than just serving as popularity polls. Since the 1970s, both parties have avoided open conventions, instead deciding ahead of time who their candidates are through the primary system. This avoids the danger of unpredictability and makes the primaries more important.

Answer 11

The important part of today’s political conventions is the hammering out of the party’s platform, or list of ideas and stances on various topics that they pledge to fight for if elected.

Answer 12

The big beneficiary of the Democrats’ confusion was Richard Nixon. He had been on the sidelines for most of the decade studying the situation. This time, unlike when he lost to John Kennedy in 1960, Nixon would embrace television with the help of producer Roger Ailes. Nixon promised to return “law and order” to American streets if elected in 1968 and a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. He narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, in another close election. Having narrowly lost to Kennedy’s hope and optimism in ’60, *Nixon narrowly won on fear and pessimism (tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen) over Humphrey in ’68.* People understandably thought the world was crashing down around them- 1968 had been a rough year in America, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, setbacks in the Vietnam War, and rioting and crime in the streets. Also, there was a lot of tensions between the races with the Chicago Police killing young civil rights leader Fred Hampton and Charles Manson ordering his cult on a senseless murdering spree in Los Angeles. For good measure, the 1968 Flu Pandemic killed millions of people worldwide.

Answer 13

* Their technology was not keeping up with their space progress and they also needed to account for human error* (pushing the wrong button). Boosting the 36-story high, multi-stage Saturn V Rocket into space required an explosion equal to a two-kiloton atomic bomb (albeit with no radiation) creating 7.5 million tons of exhaust thrust in its second stage, after which it was traveling 7x faster than the speed of sound. The Saturn V’s didn’t take *fuel* measured in gallons; they needed 5.6 million pounds. The new Saturn V’s burned RP-1, a kerosene-based hybrid between jet fuel and the less stable and more expensive liquid hydrogen (LH²). *The US wasn’t entirely sure how they’d handle things once they successfully got something aimed toward the Moon*. Three astronauts burned to death on the *launch* pad in 1967 and several Saturn V engines blew up before engineers returned to the German V-2 for help with combustion stability, separating the air and fuel nozzles and adding baffles to compartmentalize the chamber. * After detaching from the booster rocket, the Apollo 8 command module had to “thread the needle” to get in Moon’s orbit*, angling away enough to avoid crashing into the Moon while decelerating and coming close enough (~ 60 miles) to catch its orbit, which is weaker than Earth’s since it’s smaller. *They were uncertain how the engine would respond in its ten orbits* considering that it was oscillating between 250°F heat on the bright side of the Moon and -250°F on the dark side before firing its thrusters for the 3-day return voyage. Traveling home at 25k m.p.h. required less thrust than the take-off since they weren’t fighting against Earth’s gravity, but *on both trips there and back they were aiming at a moving target*. The other trick was to *pass through the Earth’s atmosphere indirectly enough to not burn up in re-entry but at a steep enough angle to not skip off into oblivion*; without oxygen, the astronauts would’ve died but never decomposed. After settling into orbit like Apollo 8, the Apollo 11 (landing) lunar module (Eagle) not only had to *separate from the command module (Columbia) and land on the Moon without crashing, but also take back off again and re-dock with the command module*, which circled overhead with lone astronaut Michael Collins while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon.

Answer 14

The US and USSR were so intent on exploring the moon not just for national pride but to establish control over the Earth’s atmosphere and space during the Cold War. This would allow the winner to survey their enemies with satellites and use rockets carrying nuclear warheads-improve their long-range missile capabilities.

Answer 15

*All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.* No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Answer 16

Early civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois wanted to use the courts to beef up the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to secure basic rights of citizenship and voting. - Du Bois advocated restoring African pride, solidarity, and culture globally through Pan-Africanism Booker T. Washington argued for a more gradualist approach advocating that Blacks get up to speed in segregated vocational colleges before pushing for full equality - His Atlanta Compromise temporarily allowed white political domination in exchange for education funding and guarantee of due process of law. These strategies weren’t mutually exclusive, but two of them – using the Constitution and promoting education – combined as important strategies of the modern Civil Rights Movement a generation later.

Answer 17

*Not only did minority troops fight in combat, but Americans also looked hard-core racism in the eye when fighting Japan and Germany and didn’t like what they saw.* Japan’s racially justified brutalization of other Asians and the horrific Jewish Holocaust made some, not all, Americans rethink their own racism. *Minority soldiers who fought in the war were also less likely to accept America’s system when they returned.* Josh White’s “Uncle Sam Says” protested the *hypocrisy of asking people to fight for democracy abroad while denying their rights at home.* Many WWII soldiers in the Pacific had relations with Asian/Pacific Islander women or brought home APIA wives. However, as of the 1940s, *mixed-race relationships were illegal in many states*. Yet, the willingness of some politicians to embrace civil rights legislation signaled light at the end of the tunnel. Many *black activists were veterans and some used their military background to train NAACP members on how to defend themselves*. But, so too, many* Klan members were veterans and used their knowledge of munitions* to blow up black churches and homes in the mid-20th century, applying their skills to defeating democracy in their own country. This made the mid-1960s increasingly violent.

Answer 18

*The Emmett Till case shows what a sick joke America’s legal system could be with all-white juries.* The *case gave the TV-watching part of the American public an up-close view of our country’s dark side.* The 14-year old Black boy from Chicago supposedly wolf-whistled and hit on 21-year-old white clerk Carolyn Bryant. *He did not realize that what might pass in Chicago broke important social mores in the Deep South.*The clerk’s husband and stepbrother came to the Till farm, abducted Emmett, and gruesomely murdered him. Tills mother insisted on an open casket so that *the nation could see what the perpetrators had done to Emmett and images appeared in black publications like Jet magazine*. *An all-white jury dropped all criminal charges against the killers*, but they admitted their guilt to the Look magazine four months later, still escaping justice. *Television cameras captured the farcical trial for national news — coverage that did more damage to Jim Crow than a thousand protests* could have before the TV age. The *local press in Mississippi largely condemned the killing at first but some rallied to defend the killers when they learned that northern journalists were also critical of the trial**. *The incident augured things to come: subsequent civil rights battles played out in the nation’s living rooms, as both sides used the camera effectively to get their points across to broad audiences*. Moreover, it *testified to the lingering regional resentment from the Civil War and Reconstruction.*-> representation in a jury is important to make sure justice is served

Answer 19

King distinguished his message from Gandhi’s: unlike the Hindu leader, the Christian King put no stock in fasting, joking that “Gandhi obviously never tasted barbecue.” More importantly, Gandhi lived in a country where 95% of the people were Indian, whereas King operated in a country only 10% black (today ~ 13%). But *like Gandhi, King transferred the moral burden of violence onto his oppressors for all to see*.- when he would be assaulted in public, he would urge those around them not to step in but rather to pray for the aggressor. *Like Thoreau and Gandhi, Reverend King argued that some laws were worth breaking on behalf of a higher moral cause* (encouraged more interaction between the races, ex: whites and blacks sitting at lunch together) in his *Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)*, that he wrote after being incarcerated for non-violent protest.

Answer 20

-Groups like the NAACP and SCLC *used the courts to force integration in public education.* Heman Sweatt, the grandson of slaves, was admitted to the University of Texas’ * “separate but equal” black law school. It was basically an empty desk in the basement with a used textbook on it and no professors or classes. (not equal)* UT scrambled to build a separate black college in Houston, as the case made its way through the lower courts, but eventually *lost in the Supreme Court, forcing the school to integrate its classrooms*. The *Klan terrorized Sweatt* on UT’s campus while the Austin police did nothing, but the *case set a precedent for a broader ruling affecting K-12.* - In 1954, the Court integrated all U.S. public schools in the Brown v. Board case. - President Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t a big fan of the Brown ruling and with him unenthused, *not much happened in the immediate aftermath of Brown v. Board regarding enforcement of integration in the nation’s schools.* He’d appointed Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren under the impression that he was more conservative. Eisenhower overlooked that California had integrated its schools under Warren. Even before Sweatt, Mendez v. Westminster (1946) outlawed segregation in California’s public schools, though that case didn’t challenge the separate but equal clause directly. - Texas state courts partly integrated their schools by re-classifying Mexican-Americans as white in Delgado v. Bastrop Independent Schools (1948). - Most famously, *Ike took a stand against the Arkansas National Guard being used to keep black students out of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957* - Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus eventually closed all the city’s public schools to *protest the courts rejecting an appeal to delay integration a few years*. - It was the *first show of federal force in the South since Reconstruction but didn’t do much to actually integrate schools across the country*. - Over a hundred congressmen signed the 1956 *Southern Manifesto opposing integration in schools or elsewhere*. - *White Flight suburbanization and lack of compliance mostly saved Whites from the feared indignity of their kids sharing classrooms with minorities*. (desegregation without integration) - Whites demonstrated *similar resistance in higher education at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi*, nicknamed Ole’ Miss for a term enslaved workers used for their masters’ wives. - At the *Ole’ Miss Riot of 1962*, federal troops sent in by President Kennedy overcame protesters. Although the rebels continued to harass black students after integration. - At the *University of Alabama, similar rioting ensued and Governor George Wallace (D) took advantage of the media exposure*. With the cameras rolling in 1963, *Wallace blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama and gave the pro-segregation speech that helped launch him to national fame* and a presidential run in 1968. - *Public schools that allowed Blacks too much access incurred the wrath of politicians.* The University of Texas allowed its first class of African-American students in 1956, earlier than most Southern schools. It was costly, though, as they had to re-do all their plumbing so the races weren’t sharing bathrooms or drinking fountains.

Answer 21

*The violence and protests in Alabama swung public opinion more in favor of the civil rights movement.* Protests in Birmingham and in Montgomery, Alabama morphed into a major march on Washington in 1963, where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. President Kennedy feared violence and tried to talk black leaders out of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He expressed public support for a peaceful march as he was starting to rally support for a civil rights bill, but he didn’t want a march on the capitol building, especially, and authorized use of federal troops to control protestors. Instead then, they decided to march towards the Lincoln Memorial where they televised and gathered for King’s inspiring speech in which he put the civil rights movement in the context of American democracy as a whole. *He said the Founders had issued a promissory note [Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence], a sacred obligation that America had fallen short on providing to Black citizens. This appeal only made sense in a country where some sort of obligation, however unfulfilled, was understood to have existed in the first place.* *The March on Washington and events in Alabama (and Mississippi) contributed to major civil rights legislation the following year, passed after Kennedy’s assassination.* *LBJ in response to MLK’s promotion of non-violent tactics, delivered a speech saying that he was done waiting to give Black people justice.* When JFK died, *President Johnson pressured the FBI to crack down on the KKK rather than MLK.* He was committed to promoting civil rights for all minorities. Protests and bombings in Birmingham-> the March on Washington-> 1964 Civil Rights Act-> the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party drew attention to voting discrimination & the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Marches-> 1965 Voting Rights act

Answer 22

*Congress and Johnson signed legislation outlawing racism in public establishments, including privately-owned businesses, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That law beefed up the Fourteenth Amendment considerably to outlaw formal racism anywhere in any state, not just state-sanctioned racism as it had been interpreted since 1883. * * The Voting Rights Act of 1965, combined with the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (1964) beefed up the Fifteenth Amendment, outlawing all the various excuses states used to keep Blacks and Hispanics from voting like literacy tests and poll taxes.* Depending on whom you ask, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has mostly held up, but it’s experiencing pushback on multiple fronts (Photo ID laws). The GOP has weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act in recent years by limiting the amount of ballot locations or making voting easier/harder to access in strategic neighborhoods (gerrymandering)- specifically aimed at lowering Democratic votes. However, it was passed off as incidentally racist. We could see more seemingly race-neutral voting reforms that, by chance, include features that lower minority voter participation, mainly by making voting in urban areas more inconvenient. Tighter voting restrictions also snag Whites as collateral damage, including those that are disabled and/or work hours that make it difficult to get to polls before they close early. * Most bills originate in Congress, but LBJ led the charge himself on civil rights from the executive branch*. *Collectively, the ’64 Civil Rights Act and ’65 Voting Rights Act were the most significant steps forward since Reconstruction* a century earlier, or backward for racists and states’ righters. *While racism, discrimination, and economic inequality still existed, minorities had at last won full U.S. citizenship.*

Answer 23

Three other laws/rulings rounded out the famous legislation of 1964 (Civil Rights) and ’65 (Voting Rights). *Immigration laws mostly shed their racist qualifications with the (1) 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act, as the U.S. once again welcomed people from around the world by abolishing the national origins quota system* that had been in place since the 1920s and slightly loosened up in 1952. President Johnson sensed that immigration reform wasn’t that popular and Congress pushed the legislation through as quickly and quietly as possible. As globalization kicked in by the 1990s, business leaders pushed for lax enforcement of illegal immigration laws. Under the Bill Clinton-era PRWORA Act (1996), legal immigrants can’t receive welfare benefits for the first five years of their citizenship and, contrary to skewed information from the CIS, undocumented immigrants get no benefits beyond public schooling and emergency-room care, though some pay into the system through taxes. The belief that illegals are milking the system is wrong because it’s impossible to receive Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid benefits without a Social Security number.

Answer 24

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in (2) Loving v. Virginia that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law banning interracial couples was unconstitutional per the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning numerous precedent cases and similar laws in fifteen southern states. The Court ruled that marriage was an inherent right.

Answer 25

Congress passed the (3) Fair Housing Act in 1968 as part of another civil rights bill, banning the discriminatory practices in real estate that we covered in Chapter 15.

Answer 26

The National League granted them the franchise with the understanding that they’d try to build the first-ever indoor ballpark. The problem was they needed voters to pass a bond issue to build the new Astrodome and Blacks could now vote. Their only choice was to cave in and allow Blacks to attend events there.

Answer 27

THE GREAT SOCIETY DID NOT STOP SYSTEMIC RACISM President Johnson’s Great Society had mixed results. *Genuine and substantive political gains didn’t translate into dramatic economic reform.* MLK understood the economic components of what we call *structural or systemic racism* and what he called “entrenched financial privilege,” creating equitable economic opportunity would cost billions. The *Great Society tried to address this by lowering the rate of black poverty and malnutrition for pennies on the dollar*, despite taxpayer complaints, bolstering the black middle class. The percentage of African Americans without indoor plumbing dropped from 40% to 17% between the 1960 and ’70 censuses. *Overall poverty rates dropped, but not super significantly*. This success resulted not just from economic aid, but also the various civil rights acts of 1964-68. Yet, *minorities lost ground during the Great Recession starting in 2008*. As of 2020, the average net wealth of African-American families ($17k) was just one-tenth that of white families. Prior to the Great Society, net wealth averaged 5% that of Whites instead of 10%- little growth. *Many African Americans and Hispanics remained in poverty in poor neighborhoods and “second-hand suburbs,” with underfunded public schools and poor municipal sanitation*. *Veterans were denied benefits and veterans’ widows could be denied pensions based on spurious charges of “immorality” not applied to Whites*. The historic legacy of *redlining, subprime mortgages, segregation, and neighborhood covenants was still in place even after the Fair Housing Act, creating residual, systemic racism*. -*African Americans remain far more likely to live in poverty than the rest of the population, and more exposed to pollutants like particulate matter (PM) that damages lungs and likely causes pediatric asthma*. -*Minorities still live in districts in, or adjacent, to those zoned for industry*, and insurance companies can measure life expectancy by zip code partly for that reason - *There is also a history of medical discrimination* (Tuskegee Syphilis Study). African-American women are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. -*School integration hasn’t progressed since the 1980s*, which is especially unfortunate given studies showing that African-American children who benefited from busing in the 1960s and ’70s had higher rates of academic success and lower rates of incarceration than those that didn’t. *Since American public education is often funded by property taxes, resources and money flow to wealthier kids*. - *Landlords are less likely to rent to minorities with the same financial profile as Whites, and federal rental assistance is essentially a lottery system* while, meanwhile, the government continues to pay homeowners through the mortgage-interest tax deduction. The criminal justice system metes out higher bails and longer sentences to minorities than Whites for like crimes and there are even prosecutors who teach workshops on how to toss out minority jurors in the selection process since all-white juries are more likely to convict minorities. *Compounding those problems, young African-American men are still targets of racial profiling by police, employers, and other citizens, making it harder to find good jobs.*

Answer 28

In Los Angeles in 1991, a passerby videotaped *white cops beating up black, unarmed drunk driver Rodney King with batons*. The *police claimed they thought King was on PCP though subsequent toxicology reports showed he wasn’t*. King was a convicted felon (armed robbery) who knew another DUI arrest would violate his parole, leading to the high-speed chase that preceded the beating. An *all-white jury acquitted the police after the city moved the trial to the lily-white suburb of Simi Valley*. The follow-up investigation revealed recordings of *white police joking about pounding “porch monkeys”. * When the city tried to rectify their image by keeping ex-football star O.J. Simpson’s murder trial downtown in 1994-95, *a mostly-black jury acquitted “the Juice” despite DNA evidence implicating him in the death of his wife, Nicole, and Ron Goldman (both white).* *The King and Simpson cases illustrate how difficult it is to find objective, impartial “post-racial” jurors in a mostly segregated, racially-charged city.* The jury in O.J. 's trial didn’t really think he was innocent, they were just balancing out the scale of justice, in their view, for years of racism on the part of the LAPD.

Answer 29

- Some cities improved things by putting more black police on the streets in inner-city neighborhoods. Where possible, precincts partnered officers of different races. - In Newark, New Jersey, black voters took advantage of their voting rights to get on the city council, improving community-police relations in the 1970s. - Camden, New Jersey completely rebooted its police department in 2012 and that either caused or at least coincided with a drop in crime, making it a controversial test case - *One constructive step forward was police wearing body cameras.* - In Rialto, California complaints against police dropped 88% once officers wore cameras - mandatory body cameras, biracial partners on patrol, restrictions against arresting whole neighborhoods full of young, loitering, black men to sort out later at the station, and taking social service workers along on calls involving mentally ill suspects. - Two other things will likely have to change before America improves on its record of disproportionate police brutality toward minorities: (1) police unions will have to be more transparent with the public on releasing records of officer misconduct. (2) states will have to run their own police reform (ex: overturn immunity doctrine)

Answer 30

- Northern Blacks were less likely to accept being attacked by dogs and fire hoses without fighting back than their southern counterparts. - The Black Panthers, originating in Oakland, trained militarily, vowing to defend themselves if attacked by white police and to keep black drug dealers off the streets. The leftist organization saw both racial violence and drug abuse as offshoots of capitalism. - The Black power movement didn’t ally with liberal Whites or seek integration. Some African Americans suggested that the NAACP might’ve been better off focusing on the equal part of “separate but equal”. - Followers of the Nation of Islam, an American branch of Islam started by Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit in the 1930s, endorsed the same segregationist policies as their white oppressors. - The NOI’s apostle, Elijah Muhammad, turned traditional racism around, arguing that Whites were devils invented by an evil black scientist named Yakub 6,600 years ago. - Elijah Muhammad’s most famous followers: Muhammad Ali & Malcolm Little (Malcom X). Malcom trashed early 20th century blacks for bending to the will of Whites and disagreed with MLK’s pacifist teachings. Ali used poetry and staged mock press conference disputes to cruelly and entertainingly trash Uncle Toms his patriotic, Christian, African-American opponents like Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman, whom white conservatives then rallied around. - Young Blacks attracted to Islam dropped their given (slave) names and embraced African culture and ethnic pride. - Black Power never resulted in the substantive political changes of the non-violent movement led by Martin Luther King and others, partly because much of the “low-hanging fruit” had already been plucked by the mid-1960s in terms of voting rights and non-discrimination laws. - Moreover, the nature of the movement would’ve made it difficult for its leaders to work in tandem with progressive Whites or appeal to white voters. - However the Black Power movement inspired Black people to take more pride in their African cultural background. MLK was the primary leader of the early Southern, Christian movement. He avoided criticizing Black Power, but that it grew out of despair and hopelessness that made it rely on threats of violence that sapped its potential moral and political strength- and that racial separatism ignored black people’s need for coalitions strong enough to challenge forms of oppression that transcended race.

Answer 31

``` Across the country, Whites extended similar patterns of segregation and discrimination as that aimed at Blacks to Mexican Americans, especially as they moved north to take factory jobs during World War I. A pattern emerged where Anglos welcomed Mexican workers when they needed them and pushed them back across the border when they didn’t. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were deported during the Great Depression of the 1930s when jobs dried up first for minorities. *World War II ignited a new phase of Hispanic civil rights activism, the same way it did with Blacks*, as Latinos fought in large numbers. *Dr. Hector P. Garcia formed the American GI Forum to protest discrimination in veteran benefits*, but it became the fulcrum for a broader movement. Another interesting note about WWII symbolizes the resistance among Whites to accepting Hispanics on equal terms. In the mid-20th century, *black and Hispanic civil rights movements reinforced each other*. With the help of organizers like Texan Willie Velasquez, Hispanics were *effective in using the vote to gain control over local councils and school boards*. *Like the black civil rights movement, Hispanic leaders didn’t follow a common script. Some promoted gradualism and assimilation while others were more militant*. Many *younger Hispanics embraced a movement of their own roughly similar to Black Power: the Chicano movement*. They embraced rather than minimized the Indian part of their ancestry and demanded Hispanic representation among school administrators and the inclusion of Mexican-American history in curricula. In New York and Chicago, *leftist Puerto Ricans formed the Young Lords, similar to the Black Panthers, that advocated for school breakfast programs and improved health care and sanitation* for working-class Hispanics. *Other Hispanics borrowed from Gandhi’s idea of non-violent protest like MLK (boycotts)*. *Like Martin Luther King in Alabama, Cesar Chavez led a long 300-mile march from his hometown of Delano, California to the state capital in Sacramento* that swelled to 10k protesters. Finally, *like King, Chavez and Dolores Huerta worked with cooperative white politicians like Robert F. Kennedy.* Chavez and Huerta’s movement ended child labor in the fields and led to the first farm worker contracts. The most influential protests were in California and Texas. ```

Answer 32

(Red power movement) American Indians won citizenship with the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. In the 1960s, *Native Americans embraced their indigenous cultures in the same ways similar to the Black Power and Chicano movements*. *Indians also used passive resistance like sit-ins and fish-ins to push back on federal encroachment* for the first time since the 1930s. During their occupation of Alcatraz, President Nixon granted American Indians rights to self-determination.

Answer 33

*Gays that came had come out during this period gravitated toward big cities like blacks during the Great Migration*. Also, *gays protested against discrimination more after WWII like the protesters in the black civil rights movement*, including Army geographer Frank Kameny. He lost his job because of his sexual orientation, but he *fought back in the courts, organized protests in front of the White House*, and challenged psychiatrists labeling gays as mentally ill. Also, when Eisenhower started cracking down against homosexuality the era became known as the Lavender Scare since it was intertwined with the Red Scare. The Stonewall Riot- first police raid when gays fought back against police brutality- led to more *peaceful protests and marches across the city, raising public awareness of the discrimination homosexuals faced (MLK non-violent protest)*. When the military discharged homosexuals during and after WWII, many stayed in San Francisco (especially the Castro District) because it was more tolerant. There for the first time in American history, *Gays openly celebrated their identity, inspired by and roughly simultaneous to the Black Power, Chicano, and Red Power movements*. Also they *backed their arguments with the 14th amendment- guarantee of equal protection under the law- like MLK.*

Answer 34

The Gray Panthers led by Maggie Kuhn advocated on behalf of the elderly, an influential part of the voting electorate. The “Gray Panther” movement led to improved access to public facilities and advocacy groups like AARP (American Association for Retired People) who defend and fight for entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Regardless of race or sexual orientation, all of us can join AARP unless we check out early. Membership qualifies one for discounts at hotels across the country, among other perquisites.- *similarity to black civil rights movement: peaceful protest, voting rights, entitlements*

Answer 35

*Plaintiffs used a Fourteenth Amendment challenge that reached the Supreme Court, appealing to a combination of the Fourteenth’s right to equal protection and its due process clause.* *Weakest dissenting argument: that the Court was legislating without consent of the people- If the judges really thought it was a purely legislative matter then they shouldn’t have taken the case.* The real opposition to same-sex marriage doesn’t come from the Constitution, but rather tradition and/or religion. *Dissenters also believed that marriage was only for having children, though that ignores that it’s legal for married hetero couples to not have children.* *Strongest argument: should the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under law be overridden by religious or cultural convention?* Opponents of same-sex marriage have *shifted tactics in recent years by arguing that having to tolerate homosexuals or treat them with equality violates one’s First Amendment right to religious freedom. *

Answer 36

A key fault line of controversy regarding civil rights today revolves around affirmative action programs mandating the hiring or admission of minorities commensurate with that given groups’ representation in broader demographics. Affirmative action is controversial among both Whites and minorities because *it may or may not go a step beyond the fundamental demand of equal treatment*. The traditional argument against any demand for equality is that *particular groups shouldn’t get special treatment*. But *does affirmative action overstep that demand or blur equality of results with equality of opportunity?* Is this one aspect of civil rights where the zero-sum argument isn’t just a fallacy? Critics — according to some, including Martin Luther King — see affirmative action as going too far. *Some institutions will prioritize admitting minorities into their group over White people to promote diversity which complicates situations where maybe the White person would typically be considered more qualified*. Another complication with affirmative action is that its *beneficiaries might feel their achievements are devalued*. But *without affirmative action, some employers won’t hire any minorities, including those that are equally or better qualified*; mere anti-discrimination laws aren’t enough in those cases to ensure fairness. Affirmative action was initially intended as a means to restrict discrimination against equally or better-qualified minorities. Affirmative action proponents also argue that *tilting the playing field against Whites or Asians isn’t malicious or intended to keep them down, whereas past discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics was*. *Many people that satisfy affirmative action numbers or qualify for schools as legacy preferences (whose parents or relatives attended) are candidates that would’ve otherwise been admitted on merit anyway, but some aren’t*. Legacy preferences are warping admissions numbers even more than affirmative action as time goes by because more and more alumni have children or grandchildren applying to the schools they attended. Others would argue, as did MLK, on behalf of affirmative action that a *compensatory adjustment is necessary to offset the residual impact of past discrimination*. The uneven fields raise thorny questions as to who is disadvantaged and who isn’t, and for how long? If the government does have such a role to rectify justice, for instance, should race trump class?

Answer 37

UT’s policy of automatically admitting the top 6% of Texas public high school students is intended to level the playing field by offsetting the inequality of Texas public schools- a sort of end-around to the demise of quota-based affirmative action (admitting a certain number of minorities)- and is advantageous to both urban minorities and rural Whites.

Answer 38

After the Potsdam Conference toward the end of WWII, the U.S. helped China and Britain liberate the Vietnamese from Japanese control in the northern and southern parts of the country, respectively. After Japan and China retreated, the French weren’t able to regain control over the country, especially in the north, despite U.S. funding. In keeping with the postwar decolonization going on around the world, the Vietnamese wanted independence from France. Regarding Indochina in particular, FDR said in 1943 that the country shouldn’t be given back to France after the war, who despite being there for a century had done nothing to improve the lives of the people there.

Answer 39

After WWII, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed in their 1941 Atlantic Charter to support decolonization, or independence movements, in the postwar world. They both proclaimed support for the rights of all people to choose their own form of government and unlike Churchill, FDR genuinely seemed to dislike colonialism.- he believed that Americans wouldn’t be dying in the Pacific if it hadn’t been for the greed of the French, English, and Dutch.

Answer 40

Under Truman, the U.S. was dedicated to preventing the spread of communism, especially after NSC-68 (1950) advised that they would fight communism anywhere and everywhere on the Eurasian continent (and work on developing a super weapon, the hydrogen bomb). However, Vietnam wanted to be both independent and communist. The US supported decolonization and especially countries gaining their independence from Europeans, but not if the new, independent country was a communist dictatorship or even a socialist democracy. The US wanted to stop the spread of communism out of China, NSC-68 trumped the Atlantic Charter.

Answer 41

American allies Japan and France leaned on the U.S. to prevent Vietnamese independence. Japan still needed the same raw materials from Indochina it had in 1940 and France wanted to at least hang on to the southern part of Vietnam- had their hands full though putting down another colonial uprising in Algeria. The U.S., in turn, needed both alliances. Japan was America’s main democratic-capitalist ally in Asia after WWII and the U.S. needed France to shore up NATO in Western Europe and fend off communism there.

Answer 42

France warned the U.S. that if Vietnam went communist, the rest of the region would “fall like dominoes.” American commitment to Containment and Domino Theory trumped its commitment to supporting independence.

Answer 43

Truman’s narrower “rotten apples in a barrel” policy focused on stopping communism in strategic places. However, if they failed to stop the spread to other places, like the concentrations in Eurasia, the “domino theory” came into play. America slowly expanded its presence in the Vietnam war. First asserting control over leadership, then training Vietnamese people to combat with the North.

Answer 44

President Dwight Eisenhower thought that even fully participating in the Geneva talks approved the communists’ takeover in the north. While the U.S. sent a representative to Geneva, it didn’t sign the agreement, mainly because they knew the wrong guy would win a unified election two years later: Ho Chi Minh would win any election.-> roots of future conflict. By Ike’s estimation, Ho could garner at least 80% of the votes in South Vietnam (and most certainly the majority in Northern Vietnam). They rigged an election so that their preferred candidate, vietnamese-American Ngô Đình Diệm, could take over South Vietnam.

Answer 45

Kennedy (JFK) wanted to influence events without drawing attention to America’s role or putting too many boots on the ground, similar to Eisenhower. *Kennedy’s administration struggled to stabilize South Vietnam and even to distinguish who was on America’s side and who wasn’t*. *The NLF ( National Liberation Front ) and VC (Viet Cong) did everything they could to sabotage the South Vietnamese Republic*, including terrorist attacks, kidnappings, assassinations, and even infiltrating President Diệm’s government to give him counterproductive advice. The Viet Minh had imprisoned Diệm earlier and buried his brother and nephew alive. He got revenge by killing hundreds of communists and imprisoning thousands without trial. *They tried to build up the country’s infrastructure like they had with the New Deal, but these efforts at nation-building proved thankless and frustrating.* American troops would painstakingly extend the electrical grid, dig wells, and start schools in a hamlet, only to have *Viet Cong come in and slit the throats of cooperative village leaders as soon as they left.*-> *townspeople resented the South Vietnamese and Americans for abandoning them and feared the VC enough to join up* American efforts strengthened Ho’s argument to the Chinese that he needed their assistance to help communism spread to the South. Kennedy’s administration tried to segregate the VC and its sympathizers from others by relocating villagers in the Strategic Hamlet Program. But, *people didn’t want to move away from their ancestors’ burial grounds and the program only fostered resentment* among the rural population toward Americans. America’s attempt at building a democracy in South Vietnam was failing and Diệm’s political and military support was dwindling, so Kennedy authorized a coup among Diệm’s generals. However, *the generals had killed Diệm* after promising to let him escape and *weren’t able to find anyone better to replace him. *

Answer 46

In January 1964, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that *the United States shoulder the primary burden against the North Vietnamese*. Then, when President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964,* Goldwater wanted to use at least tactical nuclear bombs to end the war.* *LBJ feared that might mean WWIII with the Soviets, but also wanted to look tough during the election- he did not think that Vietnam was worth fighting for nor that the US could get out. *

Answer 47

*A North Vietnamese torpedo fired on an American destroyer, the USS Maddox, patrolling in the Gulf of Tonkin, closer to the North Vietnamese coast than they usually ventured* as they were covering the South Vietnamese navy as it shelled coastal islands. The torpedo caused just one bullet hole in the Maddox and the captain changed his story several times, so it’s unclear whether LBJ was trying to manufacture a small incident for the election. *LBJ’s staff thought they had to respond as if attacked so that LBJ’s presidential campaign didn’t look soft.* *Johnson got funding from congress to supply a war. The U.S. sent troops up to the northern edge of the demilitarized zone that divided North and South Vietnam along the 17° Parallel*, which the *North took as an act of aggression.* Viet Cong then attacked a mostly Catholic village and blew up American barracks at Qui Nhon. Their next major move was an *attack on an American helicopter base at Camp Holloway, near Pleiku in Vietnam’s Central Highlands (Feb 1965). Johnson responded by bombing North Vietnam*. This *occurred during a visit to Hanoi by Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, helping to convince Kosygin that the USSR should cement its military alliance with North Vietnam*. They had been gradually withdrawing support for Ho Chi Minh , but reconsidered their policy when they saw China gaining influence in Southeast Asia and the Hanoi attacks under LBJ confirmed the Soviet’s decision to reverse policy and back North Vietnam.

Answer 48

For President Johnson, the prevailing historical lesson he *drew on was the Munich Agreement of 1938, when the Allies failed to confront Hitler and demand that he return the territory he’d already seized. Johnson wanted to stop communism’s advance in Southeast Asia while he still could*, avoiding the allies’ perceived mistake in Czechoslovakia in 1938. The president was *increasingly leaning toward bombing the North to help hang onto the South as the war progressed*. The U.S. *hoped to eliminate the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) from South Vietnam but they didn’t want escalation into a major war with China or the USSR. Consequently, they never invaded the North directly other than an aerial bombing campaign (Operation Rolling Thunder)*: bombers ran 12-hour roundtrip missions out of Thailand and Guam.* In the South, the U.S. fought a ground war of attrition, hoping to kill communists on such a scale that the North would capitulate and give up its hope of taking over the South*.-They hoped the VC and NVA would finally run out of troops if enough died. One mistake was to *rely too much on bombing to soften up areas prior to invading with ground troops. The bombings did some damage, but not enough to offset the disadvantage of telegraphing the American infantries’ movements*. Also, the *Vietnamese used a strategy to fight in close quarters so that they couldn’t rely on air support *(fear of friendly fire), which made fighting more vicious for American troops. *American troops carried heavy packs (blended in with citizens sometimes)* with food, water, and medicine kits, moving through hot countryside teaming with silent, camouflaged fighters who usually carried no more than an AK-47 and mosquito net. Before the DEA classified amphetamines, *American soldiers took “speed” to stay alert*. NVA and VC, in turn, were often weakened by hunger as their rations included only small amounts of rice and sugar. American soldiers’ more generous C-ration sometimes made them an enticing target. Also the purpose of American patrols was usually either to *clear the area of the enemy or sometimes take territory that leaders gave back once they realized there was no strategic purpose in holding it.*

Answer 49

The la Drang battle represents the strategic problems the US faced fighting the ground war in South Vietnam as the rough (lots of obstacles, foliage, heat, dangerous species, places for traps, etc.) terrain allowed the Vietnamese fighting on their home turf to decimate many American troops. It was accurate to claim the US won the battle at la Drang because their mission was just to kill as many enemies as they could (clear the area; not to secure la Darang) and The US army had killed ~1,800 North Vietnamese soldiers. But 42 Americans were wiped out in a matter of 3 hours. *US had very little info on Northern Vietnam military and were weak on foreign soil and to guerilla warfare

Answer 50

The VC surprised the Americans and South Vietnamese by simultaneously attacking 55 cities (120 towns overall) in the South with 85k troops (right). They snuck in weapons and sprung the attacks during the holiday celebrations amidst fireworks ( Chinese New Year’s holiday known as Tết)- Americans thought the fighting would cease during this time. *The Tet Offensive caught most of the military and all of the public back home off guard, as communist troops nearly overtook the U.S. Embassy in Saigon live on the American nightly news*. An extremely intense fight broke out, communists massacred thousands of innocents. *The American public and media instead interpreted the Tet Offensive as a setback*. *Some understood that the troops had rallied and everyone heard the Pentagon’s spin that Tet was the enemy’s Battle of the Bulge, referring to Hitler’s last-ditch Belgian offensive in 1944*. *Many army officials told the public that the US was just months away from winning or that Tet had been a disaster for the communists.* *But the American public was also increasingly put off by the brutality they were seeing on the nightly news*. *The Tet Offensive broadened what came to be known as the credibility gap*: the difference between how LBJ and the Pentagon wanted the war spun and how embedded journalists were increasingly coming to report it. *Tet should’ve narrowed the credibility gap since this time there was truth to the Pentagon’s spin, but the public was understandably confused as to how the communists could’ve launched such an attack — even one that failed — just after the authorities were telling the public that victory was imminent*. The growing tension between the Pentagon and media was important because Vietnam was the first war with footage and body counts featured. Many Americans trusted the media (Cronkite) more than LBJ. *Conservative revisionist historian James Robbins, believes that Tet didn’t force America to the negotiating table; LBJ was already at the table (lost his faith in the war) and the Tet defeat forced the communist to the table, which is why talks began shortly thereafter. Historian Pierre Asselin believes that with Tet, the communists “snatched a propaganda victory from the jaws of military defeat.” * * despite public perceptions and media coverage, the U.S. military had ample time (five more years), money, troops, and weapons to prove skeptics wrong, and even Cronkite left the door open to victory in his famous op-ed. *

Answer 51

Liberation campaigns in 1966 alone left over three million Vietnamese homeless, over 20% of the entire population. The worst recorded atrocity was at Song Mỹ village — My Lai and My Khe or “Pinkville” to the U.S. since it was a Viet Cong stronghold. In March 1968, some mentally drained U.S. troops of the Americal Division lost control there, raping, dismembering, and massacring between 350 and 500 civilians for four hours before being dispersed by fellow Americans who happened to pass over in helicopters.- Groups that have endured prolonged periods of fearful vulnerability take out their aggressions savagely when they isolate a more vulnerable group. The liberation policy backfired as many Vietnamese peasants were killed in this gruesome attack and the media documented the scene for a public shocked to see what their own side could do. Several soldiers were court-martialed after My Lai. Second Lieutenant William Calley received a life sentence and hard labor for murdering 22 civilians and some members of the jury were Vietnam veterans, but the severity of his sentence outraged many Americans. What made the military’s obsession with body counts even worse was that lower-ranking officers sometimes included civilians in order to meet their quotas and their superiors were happy to send along inflated stats. *Liberation campaigns did not win over the hearts and minds of those neutral on the strategy. *

Answer 52

LBJ was looking to end the Vietnam War by dividing the country, yet as Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, the last thing he wanted was a successful resolution to the crisis before the election. According to FBI files, Nixon and Henry Kissinger disrupted the three-way peace talks between the U.S., South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, telling the South and its leader, President Thiệu, that if they hung on until Nixon was president, they’d get a better deal by Nixon driving a harder bargain with North Vietnam. Johnson ordered the FBI to wiretap the Nixon campaign and knew that Thiệu was influenced. He confronted Nixon about it but the man denied the charges. Interfering with foreign relations as a private citizen is a felony under the 1799 Logan Act but Nixon and Kissinger got away with it. Ultimately, Johnson and the new Democrat candidate Hubert Humphrey decided that it would be better for the country to not go public with the allegations even though he thought they were treasonous (Mostly, they didn’t want to reveal that LBJ had the FBI wiretap Nixon’s people or the NSA tap the Vietnamese embassy because those actions were illegal, too.). In 2016, historians discovered a phone call note at the Nixon Presidential Library from Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman confirmed that Nixon hoped to hijack the peace talks before the election. There is a lot of good evidence showing that he is guilty of violating the Logan Act. As for the peace talks, Nixon’s sabotage helped doom them but they might have failed anyway. When the parties finally arrived, they argued for weeks over how to arrange the territory as thousands died back home on both sides. In the long run Nixon’s actions were harmful because the 1973 agreement Nixon arranged was the same one he interfered with back in 1968, so the last four years of the war ended up being a waste. It would’ve arguably been worth it if the U.S. had won the war later or actually gotten a better deal. But they didn’t and nearly 40% of the Americans killed in the Vietnam War died after 1968.

Answer 53

Nixon won the presidency and took over in Jan 1969. But his campaign promise of a “secret plan” to end the war *didn’t actually differ much from Johnson’s.* The U.S. *mainly continued to bomb the North and fight a ground war in the South*. *One difference under Nixon was that they gradually handed more responsibilities over to the South Vietnamese Army* (ARVN), just as Kennedy and Johnson had hoped for. *The American forces participating steadily dropped, Nixon called this transfer of fighting responsibilities Vietnamization*. Nixon also *supported blaming JFK for the war*. The *biggest change after 1969 was that Nixon and his advisor Kissinger tried to entice the Chinese and Soviets into stopping their support of North Vietnam by improving relations through their Linkage and détente strategies*. *Nixon also increased the bombing in North Vietnam and mined Haiphong Harbor to prevent shipments from China and the USSR* but the communists didn’t relent. Kissinger was on the verge of a peace agreement around the time of the November 1972 presidential election, that Nixon won decisively. *The key for Nixon and Kissinger was to time their withdrawal just after the ’72 election but not before, and to get the ultimate defeat over with fairly quickly toward the beginning of their second term*. Nixon negotiated a settlement that divided the country in half in 1973 along the 17° Parallel. *(The 1973 truce was the same agreement Nixon interfered with back in 1968).*

Answer 54

Colin Powell was the most influential Vietnam veteran in terms of shaping future policy. His Doctrine built on the lessons of Vietnam by suggesting these future guidelines: 1. Never engage in any war the public doesn’t back. 2. Use overwhelming airpower upfront, destroying the enemy’s air force, then proceed on the ground. 3. Always have both a clear plan of attack and a viable exit strategy. Powell later served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State under George w. Bush. He was influential in shaping strategy during the First Gulf War in 1990-91.

Exam 4: chap 15-18 Flashcards

(78 cards)