Thursday's Notes

I. Economic Oppertunity Act of 1964

-provided:

• loans for rural and small buisness developments
• a work studies program for college students
• for the creation of additionally federally funded social programs to be planned in cooperation with local community groups

-Johnson got an enormously important Civil Rights package passed in Civil Rights Act of 1964

• set up Equal Employment Oppertunity Commission
• strengthened federal remedies for fighting job discrimination
  
• ended legal segregation; prohibited racial discrimination in public accomodations connected with interstate commerce like hotels and restaurants
• Title VI barred discrimination based on gender also

II. Freedom Summer
-In the summer of 1964, civil rights activists tried to help African Americans register to vote in Mississippi(this called Freedom Summer)

• 6 civil rights workers were killed for trying to help

III. Election Year
-1964 was presidential election year
-Johnson ran against Republican Barry Goldwater

• Goldwater's campaign created the image of a radical right and extremist
  
• Johnson won election easily

IV. The Great Society
-Johnson built on his early successes by announcing Great Society in his first days in office
Some programs are still here:

• Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

V. Voting Rights Act of 1965
-law mandated federal oversight of elections in the South

• federal marshals authorized to oversee voter registration drives
• result was that African Americans got registered and voted

VI. Other Great Society Programs
-Many other programs were part of the Great Society

• Model Cities Program
• rent supplements to low income families
• food stamps
• head Start
• legal services program
• Community Action Program

VII. End of Great Society
-Great Society became controversial when economic problems hit the US. Congress and the United States did not have enough money to do Great Society and the Vietnam War

I. Vietnam
-Resident Johnson fell pressured to uphold Kennedy's pledge to fight communism. He saw no alternative than to fight Vietnam; did not want to be seen as a president who was "soft" on communism
-when USS Maddox was fired on by North Vietnam torpedo boats and was threatened by an another attack few days later

• Johnson got Congress to authorize Tonkin Gulf Resolution which justified fighting back, which in turn, justified fighting the war

II. Escalation
-Following election in 1964, Johnson escalated the war in face of South Vietnam incompetence and government instability

• started a sustained aerial bombardment on North Viet. called Rolling Thunder

• gave South economic aid

1. More Escalation
   

• North rejected proposed peace plan
• Ho Chi Minh stepped up affairs
• more US troops sent and employed "search and destroy" tactics
• US warplanes began to bomb South Vietnam heavily as well

I. Students for a Democratic Society
-1960's college students led way to a new interest in political thinking. Wanted to reject ideas of their parents (middle-class traditions, morals, and lifestyle & post WWII welfare state policies)

• on the political right was the Young Americans for Freedom
• on the political left was Students for Democratic Society

1. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)

• SDS endorsed the cause of ending racial discrimination, founding the Port Huron Manifesto which pledged to the above statement (ending racial discrimination) and pledged to attack the "lonliness, estrangment, and isolation" of post-war society