Decades of Change (1960 – 1980). New Conservatism.
By 1960 almost three out of five Southern blacks lived in towns and cities, concentrated in large metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Large-scale migration to cities spurred rising aspirations, soon evident in the postwar civil rights movement. The civil rights movement expanded on February 1, 1960, when four black college students at North Carolina A&T University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by sitting at whites-only lunch counters and waiting to be served. Within days the sit-ins spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks they reached cities across the South. To continue students’ efforts and to give them an independent voice in the movement, college students in 1960 formed another civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Students and activists soon adopted other methods of protesting segregation, such as freedom rides—bus trips throughout the South in order to desegregate buses and bus stations. A powerful civil rights movement was underway.
Responding to African American calls for action, Kennedy in June 1963 declared civil rights “a moral issue” and proposed a comprehensive civil rights measure. Congress did not act on the bill, but the civil rights movement intensified. In August 1963 more than 200,000 Americans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand equal rights. The audience heard Martin Luther King, Jr., explain his dream of brotherhood, freedom, justice, and nonviolence. In July 1964, at Johnson’s prompting, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations; gave the federal government new power to integrate schools and enfranchise blacks; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop job discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or gender. The law heralded a new phase of activism.
The voting rights campaign of the mid-1960s had results. In 1965 Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which authorized federal examiners to register voters and expanded black suffrage by suspending literacy tests for voting. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the poll tax in federal elections. A 1966 Supreme Court decision struck down the poll tax in all elections. These measures more than tripled the number of registered black voters in the South. Just as the federal government responded—after almost a century of inaction—to civil rights demands, waves of violence and disorder signaled a change in the civil rights movement.
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By the end of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had strongly influenced other groups, which adopted its protest tactics. Native Americans had mobilized early in the decade and convened in Washington in 1964 to press for inclusion in the War on Poverty. In 1968 Native American leaders demanded Red Power in the form of preferential hiring and reimbursement for lands that the government had taken from them in violation of treaties. Mexican Americans supported César Chávez, president of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Chavez sought improved working conditions for migrant workers and organized national consumer boycotts of grapes and other products. The Hispanic movement also campaigned for bilingual and bicultural education, and Chicano studies in colleges. Finally, the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, especially, derived inspiration from the civil rights precedent.
Kennedy and the Cold War
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy vigorously pursued the Cold War policy of containment. He expanded U.S. aid to other nations, boosted the size of the armed forces, stockpiled missiles, and strove to end Soviet influence in Cuba, just 90 miles off the tip of Florida. In 1959 a revolution in Cuba brought Fidel Castro, a leftist, to power. When Castro took control, he implemented policies designed to eliminate differences between social classes in Cuba. Tensions increased between the United States and Cuba. In 1962 the United States discovered that Khrushchev had set up nuclear missile bases in Cuba from which rocket-powered missiles could be launched. Kennedy faced a crisis: To destroy the bases might lead to world war; to ignore them risked an attack on the United States. In October 1962 Kennedy demanded that the USSR remove the missiles, and after a few days of suspense, the Soviets agreed to do so.
Cold War warriors in the United States believed that Communist aggression posed a threat in Asia. They especially feared a Communist takeover of Vietnam. If Vietnam fell, they believed, Communism would engulf all of Southeast Asia. The United States supported non-Communist South Vietnam and increased its commitment to the region. Kennedy continued Eisenhower’s efforts in Vietnam by expanding the number of military advisers from about 700 to more than 16,000. In 1963 the United States approved a coup led by South Vietnamese military officers to overthrow Diem, who was killed. A few weeks later, Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson became president. Johnson inherited the problem of U.S. commitment to South Vietnam, where Communist insurgents were gaining strength.
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Johnson enlarged the war in Vietnam. In August 1964, he authorized limited bombing raids on North Vietnam. At the administration’s request, Congress then offered an almost unanimous resolution that enabled the president to use military force in Vietnam. In 1965, after a victory in the 1964 election Johnson again continued American involvement. By 1968 more than 500,000 troops were in Vietnam, and the United States had begun heavy bombing of North Vietnam.
The United States never declared war on North Vietnam or made a total commitment to winning the war. Vietnam remained a limited war, one in which the United States purposely refrained from employing all its military strength. In January 1968 the Vietnamese launched a massive attack which severely damaged U.S. forces and reached the American embassy compound in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. South Vietnam and the United States finally turned back the Offensive, but with heavy losses. Americans could not see an end to the war, and its costs, both economic and human, rose alarmingly.
Under Nixon, American troop strength in Vietnam contracted but the war effort expanded. Nixon began a program of Vietnamization, which meant decreasing the number of U.S. troops, offering only advice and assistance, and turning the war effort over to the South Vietnamese. U.S. ground troops gradually returned from Vietnam, but the United States increased its bombing of North Vietnam. Nixon also extended the war into Cambodia and Laos, where he secretly authorized bombing to block enemy supply routes on Vietnam’s border. Finally, Nixon sought a diplomatic escape from war. He visited China and the USSR and sent Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, to secret talks in Paris with the North Vietnamese. Antiwar protests, meanwhile, continued. In May 1970 Ohio National Guard troops killed four Kent State University students during an antiwar protest, spurring widespread outrage.
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In 1973, as Nixon began a second term, the United States and North Vietnam signed a peace treaty in Paris, which provided for a cease-fire. The terms of the cease-fire included: American withdrawal of all remaining forces from Vietnam, Vietnamese return of American prisoners captured during war, and the end of all foreign military operations in Laos and Cambodia. American troops left Vietnam, but the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam continued. South Vietnam finally fell in April 1975, as North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon. More than 58,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam, and over 300,000 were wounded. Even after the war’s end, Americans continued to debate its purpose and the meaning of its failure.
The Vietnam War affected the United States in many ways. Most immediately, it spurred policy changes. The United States ended the military draft and switched to an all-volunteer army. Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over Nixon’s veto in November 1973. The resolution limited the president’s ability to send troops into combat without congressional consent. Its passage reflected legislators’ desire to restrain presidential power and to prevent U.S. involvement in a war like that in Vietnam.
Watergate
On June 17, 1972, with a presidential campaign in progress, police officers in Washington, D.C., arrested five men caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, located in a residence complex called the Watergate. The incident initially attracted little attention, but two Washington Post reporters began investigating the break-in. From their articles and from Senate hearings, Americans learned that the president, his aides, and campaign officials had conspired to sabotage Nixon’s political foes. Nixon initially denied involvement in the scheme. But a series of special prosecutors, whom the president was forced to appoint, investigated the scandal. They soon determined that Nixon and his aides tried to cover up the president’s link with the Watergate break-in and to obstruct the Watergate investigation.
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In July 1974 the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to produce tape recordings that he made of conversations in the White House. The transcripts contained evidence that Nixon had broken the law and knew about the cover-up. At the end of the month, the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment that charged Nixon with abusing power, obstructing justice, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas. Before the House could vote on Nixon’s impeachment, the president resigned, on August 9, 1974. Vice President Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and pardoned Nixon in September.
Watergate undermined presidential authority and made citizens fear excessive state power, such as Nixon’s secret bombings of Cambodia and his wiretapping of public officials and journalists. Nixon’s resignation ended an era of turmoil and animosity. Two presidents in succession, elected by vast majorities, had left office either diminished, in Johnson’s case, or disgraced, in Nixon’s case. The Vietnam War eroded the nation's self-confidence and left a legacy of skepticism. Watergate further enlarged citizens’ suspicions of government. In the next few elections, voters sought heads of state untainted by overexposure to power in Washington, D.C.
The end of Cold War
In the decade after Watergate, the United States continued its policy of easing of Cold War tensions that began under Nixon and Kissinger.
The first signs of the end of the Cold War appeared during the Reagan administration, in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. To reverse the process of economic decline in the USSR that had been under way since the 1970s, Gorbachev declared a policy of perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political openness). Under Gorbachev, freedom increased but the economy deteriorated. Blaming Communist Party bureaucrats for the economic problems, Gorbachev replaced them with a freely elected legislature.
After George H. W. Bush took office in 1989, a series of revolutionary changes occurred. Within a short time, from 1989 to 1990, the Communist Party in the USSR lost control of the government, and Communists lost power in the Eastern European countries as well. The Soviet revolution that dominated the 20th century ground to a halt. The Cold War was over.
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