Burning America: In the Best Interest of the Country? The Death of Liberalism

                                         Curriculum Guide 

History Grade 8

Teacher Guide and Notes

Unit: _ Days __-__

Concept: The Death of Liberalism

Overview of this concept:

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support civil rights, secularism, racial equality, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the divine right of kings with representative democracy and the rule of law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies and other barriers to trade, instead promoting free markets. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty, and property, adding that governments must not violate these rights based on the social contract.

Leaders in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of royal tyranny. During the 19th and early 20th century, liberalism in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East influenced periods of reform such as the Tanzimat as well as the rise of secularism, constitutionalism, and nationalism. These changes, along with other factors, helped to create a sense of crisis within Islam, which continues to this day.

The principles of the American Founding, embodied in the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the Constitution, came under assault by Progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Progressivism rejects the Founders’ ideas of natural rights, limited government, and the separation of powers, representation, and federalism. Progressive government, exemplified by the modern administrative state, has fundamentally transformed key aspects of the American way of life.

Progressives taught that stringent restrictions on government power were no longer necessary to protect liberty, since human nature and science had advanced greatly during the 19th century. Progressives did not believe that individuals are endowed with inalienable rights by a Creator; rather, they believed that rights are determined by social expediency and bestowed by the government. In conjunction with this new theory of rights, Progressivism holds that government must be able to adapt to ever-changing historical circumstances.

Before 1920, the main ideological opponent of classical liberalism was conservatism, but liberalism then faced major ideological challenges from new opponents: fascism and communism. However, during the 20th century liberal ideas also spread even further—especially in Western Europe—as liberal democracies found themselves on the winning side in both world wars.

In Europe and North America, the establishment of social liberalism (often called simply “liberalism” in the United States) became a key component in the expansion of the welfare state. The fundamental elements of contemporary society have liberal roots. The early waves of liberalism popularized economic individualism while expanding constitutional government. Liberals sought and established a constitutional order that prized important individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association; and independent judiciary and public trial by jury. Later waves of modern liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights.

For example, when individual rights were the focus of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, advances were made by entrepreneurs. In the free market, the music business overcame segregation, prejudice, and racism. In the mid to late 1950s Elvis Presley, and in the early 1960s, Motown, and other musical groups and artists integrated audiences, consumers, teenagers, and music purchasing young people through popular music, radio, and concerts. In the latter 1960s, arguably the most acclaimed lead guitarist during the rock era was an African-American, Jimi Hendrix. Equal rights were achieved in many fields, music, sports, and other industries. However, mid-1960s social programs, focused on equality of results, such as LBJ’s Great Society effort, were ineffective: the death of liberalism. The cost of welfare stifled the free market. Liberalism did not successfully contain communism in South East Asia and led to the deaths of over 58,000 young Americans in Vietnam. The “New Left” of the 1960s combined the initial pacifist tendencies of early 1960s activists and the radicals of the mid to late 1960s into a potent and growing protest movement against the War in Vietnam. In short, Liberalism failed to successfully address the pressing concerns regarding student and urban unrest, the war in Vietnam, foreign affairs, and the elimination of poverty.

Student Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this concept (in order of introduction):

·         History of a Free Nation, Volume 2, Chapters 31-33 (Read before beginning unit)

·         Basic History of the U.S., Vol. 5 (Read before beginning unit)

·         Source #1 (“Long Telegram,” George F. Kennan, 1946)

·         Source #2 (“Truman Doctrine,” March, 1947)

·         Source #3 (“Eisenhower Doctrine,” January 1957)

·         Source #4 (“How I Got Over," Mahalia Jackson)

·         Source #5 (“Buked and Scorned,” Mahalia Jackson)

·         Source #6 (“If I Had a Hammer [Bob Seeger],” Peter, Paul, and Mary)

·         Source #7 (“Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan)

·         Source #8 (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bob Dylan)

·         Source #9 (JFK on the “Negro Question,” dispensation, job quotas by government intervention, News Conference 60, August 20, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, State Department Auditorium, Washington, D.C., August 20, 1963)

·         Source #10 (U.S. Constitution, Article One [section 8], Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment)

·         Source #11 (“The Great Society at Fifty: The Triumph and the Tragedy,” Nicholas Eberstadt, the American Enterprise Institute)

·         Source #12 (Making Peace With the ‘60s, David Burner)

·         Source #13 (“Bodies Upon the Gears,” or “Operation of the Machine,” Mario Savio

·         Source #14 (“For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield)

·         Source #15 (“Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival)

·         Source #16 (“The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture,” TIME)

·         Source #17 (“Black Power,” Stokely Carmichael, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]),

·         Source #18 (“Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” James Brown)

·         Source #19 (Excerpted from "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing [Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself], James Brown)"; “America Is My Home,” James Brown)"

·         Source #20 (“Revolution,” the Beatles)

·         Source #21 (“Chicago,” Crosby, Stills, & Nash)

·         Source #22 (Various historic sources on the issue of a standing army)

·         Source #23 (“Ohio,” Neil Young, as performed by Mott The Hoople)

Overarching Questions/Themes Students will be evaluating at the end of this unit:

·         How did the free market successfully address inequities in the distribution of wealth in America? What entrepreneurial examples can be provided to demonstrate social progress?

·         Liberalism failed to successfully address the pressing concerns regarding student and urban unrest, the war in Vietnam, and the elimination of poverty. 

·         How did individuals, such as Mahalia Jackson, express their individual quest for freedom? What did they say and how did they say it in songs such as “How I Got Over,” and “Buked and Scorned”? Jackson sang both songs live during the March on Washington in 1963.

·         In the early 1960s, how did liberal social activists influence American culture towards civil rights and freedom?

·         When individual rights were the focus of the Civil Rights Movement what advances were made?

·         Were social programs effective once they were concentrated on equality of result?

·         In the mid to late 1960s, once the government was involved, was progress made in civil rights and the elimination of poverty?

·         What advances in the elimination of poverty, if any, were made by black power movements?

Additional Resources for Teacher:

·         History of a Free Nation, Chapter 30 Section 1; Chapter 31 Section 4; Section 5 pp. 935-936

·         Basic History of the U.S.

Day 1

Objectives:

·         SWBAT the desire to protect self-government and how the Eisenhower administration set the precedent of aiding countries threatened by communism and how the Russian presence in Cuba threatened the U.S.

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         History of a Free Nation, Volume 2, Chapters 30-31 (Read before beginning unit)

·         Source #1 (“Long Telegram,” George F. Kennan, 1946)

·         Source #2 (“Truman Doctrine,” March, 1947)

·         Source #3 (“Eisenhower Doctrine,” January 1957)

Review—Key Question (s)

·         How did the role of government in American democracy change during the Depression and the New Deal? What changes persist to the present?

·         How did fear of communism become a serious threat to American democracy during the Truman administration? What ended the threat during the Eisenhower administration?

·         Describe the progress made by African Americans during the New Deal and World War II.

·         Explain the purposes of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

·         How did World War II and the Cold War permanently change United States foreign policy?

·         Describe United States efforts to contain the spread of communism worldwide from 1948-1960. What were the results of these efforts?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         Guide students on a discussion of the Cold War in the world that emerged from the Second World War.

o   There was distrust, suspicion, and hostility engendered by the Cold War. What happened at the end of World War II? (The Cold War began when the United States, without question the most powerful country in the world following World War II, tried to use its power to proclaim a new global order based on democracy and capitalism. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, which undeniably bore the brunt of the fighting during the war, with an astounding 23 million dead, rejected the American world order, favoring instead communism and a world revolution in the name of the worker).

o   Why did the Soviets fear the West and view it as a threat? (It also more simply wanted to create a buffer of countries friendly to its communist system. After all, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union twice in thirty years, and used Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe to do so. The Soviets saw a protective barrier of friendly states).

o   At the same time, what did the United States see? (The U.S. saw communism on a revolutionary march to dethrone capitalism).

o   What was the result? (The result was an ideological, economic, and military contest known as the Cold War that shaped American politics, economic life, and even its cultural and social developments throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s).

·         Guide students in a discussion about the ideology of Marxism.

o   What did American politicians think about the ideology of Marxism? (The Cold War was decades in the making. American politicians had long been suspicious of a communist ideology that called for the destruction of international capitalism via worldwide revolution).

o   What did the primary theorist of communism, the German intellectual Karl Marx (1818-1883), maintain about capitalism? (Marx diagnosed many of the inherent problems of capitalism).

o   What was the role of the workers in Marxism? (Marx predicted that workers would not put up with economic inequalities forever; they would revolt, taking power from the wealthy and the powerful and putting themselves in charge).

o   Once the revolution started what would happen next? (Once the revolution started, so Marx’s prediction went, it would spread to other nations, taking down one capitalist country after the next. The workers of the world would unite).

·         Why have most Americans been committed to capitalism?

o   (Most Americans feared a worker’s revolution and the American commitment to capitalism makes some sense. The United States had, after all, emerged in the early twentieth century as the wealthiest nation in the world because of its commitment to industrialized capitalism).

o   Had the United States pushed back against communism? (Throughout the twentieth century the United States pushed back against the growth of communism not only within its own borders but abroad as well. In 1918, in the notable Polar Bear Expedition, the United States even landed 5,000 troops in Russia in an unsuccessful bid to aid anticommunist forces during the Russian Revolution that first led the communists to power).

o   Why were Americans leery about Marxism after World War II? (Throughout the twentieth century, then, many Americans were perpetually leery that Karl Marx’s prediction might come true. After World War II, two issues mushroomed this long-standing distrust into a hostile Cold War: (1) atomic power and (2) the Soviet Union’s attempt to create buffer states between it and Western Europe).

·         What questions then arose between the two Cold War powers?  

o   (Was communism advancing or was the Soviet premier Joseph Stalin just trying to protect his nation from European invasion? Despite Stalin’s declarations, the United States saw communism on the march).

o   What is the “long telegram?” Read Source #1. (The “long telegram” was drafted in 1946 by George F. Kennan, the senior American diplomat stationed in Moscow).

o   What did the Americans develop in the telegram? (Kennan’s response to communist expansion came to be called containment).

o   What was clear about the policy of containment? (As the policy of containment went into effect, it was clear the United States was not only in an ideological war with communism and the Soviet Union, but was also willing to back it up with military might and economic support).

·         Guide students in the policy of containment and what it requires of the U.S. (In his “long telegram,” Kennan suggested that communism was on a collision course with capitalism and that the Soviets would do four things in order to win: (1) perpetually seek to expand their territory unless checked by economic, political, and military pressure; (2) undermine Western colonial development in Africa and the Middle East; (3) develop their own economic bloc closed off to the rest of the world; and (4) attempt to penetrate Western civil society to promote Soviet interests. (Cf. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm).

·         In their own words, students should be able to summarize the “long telegram.”

o   (Kennan proposed that Western governments fight back. They should educate their public about the Soviet threat, promote democracy abroad, and work to solve their own social problems in order to prevent exploitation by communists. What the West needed to do was contain communism and not let it advance any farther than it already had).

o   In your own words, summarize the domino theory. (Many understood the policy of containment in terms of the Domino Theory, which held that the United States was obligated to prevent the communist “dominoes” from falling for fear that they would tip off the next dominoes and begin a process of communist world domination).

o   How long was the domino theory held? (The idea of containing the dominoes propelled American foreign policy for the next five decades).

·         What implications does the Domino Theory have about funding and the Marshall Plan? (Shortly after the Marshall Plan was unveiled, Moscow declared that Soviet-occupied countries would not be permitted to take American funds. Stalin was afraid that capitalism and democracy might stimulate anti-Soviet governments to form along its border, threatening Soviet security. In 1948, Stalin consolidated his control of Eastern Europe by ousting the last eastern European government not dominated by communists in Czechoslovakia).

·         What did Stalin form against the Marshall Plan? (In 1955, the members of the Stalinist union formalized their organization with the Warsaw Pact. The sides were beginning to harden. Disagreement and suspicion were turning into an armed standoff).

·         Read Source #2. In your own words, summarize the March, 1947 Truman Doctrine.

o   (Truman stated: “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. . . . The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this own nation.”).

·         What does the Truman Doctrine commit subsequent presidents to do? (The U.S. must support free peoples against subjugation, to maintain freedoms, and if our leadership fails the world’s peace and our welfare is endangered).

·         Read Source #3. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the Eisenhower Doctrine in January 1957, and Congress approved it in March of the same year. What will happen under the Eisenhower Doctrine? (Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.”).

o   What is Suez Crisis and did Eisenhower act wisely? (The Eisenhower Administration’s decision to issue this doctrine was motivated in part by an increase in Muslim Arab hostility toward the West, and growing Soviet influence in Egypt and Syria following the Suez Crisis of 1956. The Suez Crisis, which had resulted in military mobilization by Great Britain, France, and Israel—as well as United Nations action—against Egypt, had encouraged pan-Arab sentiment in the Middle East, and elevated the popularity and influence of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. President Eisenhower believed that, as a result of the Suez conflict, a power vacuum had formed in the Middle East due to the loss of prestige of Great Britain and France. Eisenhower feared that this had allowed Nasser to spread his pan-Arab policies and form dangerous alliances with Jordan and Syria, and had opened the Middle East to Soviet influence. Eisenhower wanted this vacuum filled by the United States before the Soviets could step in to fill the void. Because Eisenhower feared that radical nationalism would combine with international communism in the region and threaten Western interests, he was willing to commit to sending U.S. troops to the Middle East under certain circumstances.)

o   What happened in the first real test of the Eisenhower Doctrine in 1958 in Lebanon? (The threat was not armed aggression or a direct Soviet incursion. Lebanon’s President, Camille Chamoun, requested assistance from the United States in order to prevent attacks from Chamoun’s political rivals, some of whom had communist leanings and ties to Syria and Egypt. Eisenhower responded to Chamoun’s request by sending U.S. troops into Lebanon to help maintain order. Although Eisenhower never directly invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine, the American action in Lebanon was meant not only to help Chamoun’s Government against its political opponents, but also to send a signal to the Soviet Union that it would act to protect its interests in the Middle East.)

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·         Who determined the U.S. Post-War policy during the Cold War?

·         What were the major statements of U.S. Post-War policy?

·         What did the major statements state?

·         How did the Soviets react?

·         What crises emerged in the Post-War period?

Prompt Question for Next Lesson:

·         In the early 1960s, what social movements emerged to significantly change American society?

Day 2

Objectives:

·         SWBAT explain the important musical developments in America indicating significant social change.  

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         Source #4 (“How I Got Over," Mahalia Jackson)

·         Source #5 (“Buked and Scorned,” Mahalia Jackson)

·         Source #6 (“If I Had a Hammer [Bob Seeger],” Peter, Paul, and Mary)

·         Source #7 (“Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan)

·         Source #8 (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bob Dylan)

Review/Key Question (s):

·         As the U.S. fought for freedom abroad what were racial conditions in the U.S. like?

·         How did the U.S. fight for freedom abroad and can a domestic Marshall Plan work?

·         Can economic opportunities improve for African-Americans in the early 1960s? How?

·         Were the influential ideological forces in America foreign or domestic?

·         Were individuals in the African-American community prospering in the early 1960s? Why?

·         Did the government assist African-Americans with quotas and affirmative action in the early 1960s?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         How did individual musical entrepreneurs overcome segregation, prejudice, and racism?

o   (Rock ‘n’ roll developed in the mid-1950s. It was a derivation of the rhythm and blues that black musicians had created for black audiences years before. Elvis Presley in fact first recorded in a studio already legendary among black artists. Elvis and others broke down color barriers between whites and blacks with their music overcoming segregation, prejudiced, and racism.)

o   How did entrepreneurs take advantage of the privileges of citizenship and flourish during early 1960s America? (In 1959, with the encouragement of Miracles leader Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family to create an R&B record company).

o   Was the free enterprise system offering opportunities for individual African-Americans in the early 1960s? (Yes, hard-working talented people prospered. “Bad Girl” by the Miracles was an immediate hit as was Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want) in 1960. In 1960, Gordy signed an unknown singer Mary Wells, who became the fledgling label's first star, with Smokey Robinson penning her hits “You Beat Me to the Punch,” “Two Lovers,” and “My Guy”).

o   How did Motown’s slogan, “The Sound of Young America,” become a reality in the early 1960s? (The Miracles' hit “Shop Around” peaked at No. 1 on the national R&B hit list in late 1960 and at No. 2 on the Billboard pop charts in 1961, which established Motown as an independent company exceptionally worthwhile in the American free market. Later in 1961, Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” made it to the top of both charts).

o   How is talent and hard work rewarded in the free enterprise system? Gordy's gift for identifying and bringing together musical talent, along with the careful management of his artists' public image, made Motown initially a major national and then international success.)

o   Does a successful company open doors for others? Over the next decade, Gordy signed such artists as the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Commodores, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5. Of those signed, he innovatively and carefully controlled their public image, dress, manners and choreography for across-the-board appeal).

·         Were individuals in the African-American community prospering in the early 1960s?

·         Guide students in a discussion about the March on Washington and what ideas the singers relied upon.

·         What individualistic themes expressed by singers or musical groups, such as Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Bob Dylan, indicate that liberal social change is coming?

·         Read Source #4. According to her sister, Willa Ward, the inspiration for “How I Got Over” was an experience by composer Clara Ward, Willa, their mother, Gertrude, and members of their singing group had traveling in the racially segregated Southern States in 1951. In route to Atlanta, Georgia, they were besieged by a group of white men. The men were enraged that black women were riding in a luxury vehicle, a Cadillac, and surrounded their car and terrorized them with racist taunts. The women were rescued when, in a burst of inspiration, Gertrude Ward feigned demonic possession, spewing curses and incantations at the men, who fled.

Ø  Direct students to read the lyrics of the song. What does the composer rely on? What individualist themes are in the song? (Various but students may identify soul, Lord, Jesus, religion. She made it individually with the help of God. This is an example of personal salvation in Reformation theology).

·         Read Source #5. Direct students to read the lyrics of “Buked and Scorned” which Mahalia Jackson also sang at the March. Is this corporate, or individual, salvation? (The lyrics indicate rebuking and scorning but individually the songwriter is “Tryin' to make this journey all alone.” Social talking or gossiping will never drive her out but Jesus has died to free her on her journey as an individual). 

·         Read Source #6. Direct students to read the lyrics to “If I Had a Hammer.” What themes can be identified? (Various: the objects, including song, send out a message, love between my brothers and my sisters, justice, freedom, and love). What does the song urge people to do? (The song is about social activism and how individuals are to change society and increase civil rights).

·         Read Source #7. Bob Dylan wrote “Only a Pawn in Their Game” about the assassination of activist Medgar Evers.

o   Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary of the NAACP, and World War II veteran, having served in the United States Army. He was assassinated by a white supremacist and Klansman. Evers was assassinated in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. All-white juries failed to reach verdicts in the first two trials of Beckwith in the 1960s. He was convicted in 1994 in a new state trial based on new evidence.

·         Dylan sang the song at the podium months before it was released on his ground-breaking album The Times They are a-Changin'.

o   Direct students to read the lyrics. Why would the song stir controversy? (Dylan suggests that Evers’ killer shared responsibility for the crime with the wealthy elite who pitted poor whites against blacks. Individuals are only pawns of society. Be sure to point out that Evers’ murder was a catalyst for the 1963 march).

·         Read Source #8. Direct students to read the lyrics to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” What themes can be identified? What must a man do? (Various: Dylan should be recognizable as an anti-war activist from the line about cannon balls being banned, a key theme is that change is coming and blowing in the wind, people should be allowed to be free, people should hear the cries of the oppressed, Dylan cleverly connects the civil rights movement with growing anti-war efforts in this iconic song).

o   Students should grasp that individuals from traditional religious and moral backgrounds, i.e., Christian gospel singers, social justice folk-singers, and Bob Dylan (who is Jewish), are in the forefront of liberal social change in the civil rights movement and early anti-war efforts. They view activism as an application of their Judeo-Christian freedom and justice principles.

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·         How were African-Americans making financial strides in the early 1960s?

·         How was the individualistic civil rights movement gaining strength in the early 1960s?

·         How did music break down barriers of racism and prejudice in the early 1960s?

Prompt Question for Next Lesson:

·         How did the government intervene through significant Civil Rights legislation in the mid-1960s?

Day 3

Objectives:

·         SWBAT the shift in government intervention in the mid-1960s, constitutional issues, and evaluate the Great Society programs of LBJ.  

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         Source #9 (JFK on the “Negro Question,” dispensation, job quotas by government intervention, News Conference 60, August 20, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, State Department Auditorium, Washington, D.C., August 20, 1963)

·         Source #10 (U.S. Constitution, Article One [section 8], Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment)

·         Source #11 (“The Great Society at Fifty: The Triumph and the Tragedy,” Nicholas Eberstadt, the American Enterprise Institute)

Review/Key Question (s):

·         What is the difference between free-market solutions to social problems and government intervention in the economy?

·         How did liberal policy change during the mid-1960s?

·         How is the Constitution adapted for political debates during a contentious period such as the 1960s?

·         What is the goal of Great Society programs?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         If African-Americans were making financial strides and the individualistic civil rights movement was gaining strength in the early 1960s what happened?

·         The government intervened through legislation.

·         Social programs that focused on equality of result were ineffective.

·         One of liberalism’s 1960s icon was one of America’s most popular presidents -- handsome, charismatic, a war hero. He firmly opposed racial quotas. Can you name him? Here’s one more clue: He was not a Republican. (The answer is: John F. Kennedy).

·         Read Source #9. When he was elected president in 1960, Kennedy’s views were considered mainstream in the Democratic Party. Is Kennedy’s 1960s liberalism supported by the liberals of today? (But while the Kennedy name is still revered by the Democrats today, the policies he espoused are not. Ronald Reagan, America’s 40th president, who was a Democrat much of his life, famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”).

·         So, if Kennedy were alive now, which party would he belong to? (It’s impossible to know, of course. But we can compare his political positions to those of today’s Democratic Party).

·         On race: JFK disliked the idea of using racial preferences and quotas to make up for historic racism and discrimination. What is Democratic Party policy today about affirmative action? (Today, affirmative action is Democratic Party orthodoxy, but Kennedy thought such policies were counterproductive. “I don't think we can undo the past,” Kennedy said. “We have to do the best we can now...I don't think quotas are a good idea...We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.”).

·         Today, if a Democrat advocated the positions on race and other important issues that our 35th president once did, would he be a Democrat? (No, he’d belong to that other party. [Cf. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-60; https://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2017/02/16/john-f-kennedy-what-would-he-think-of-his-party-n2286611]A leading liberal of the 1960s would not be considered a liberal in American politics today [Cf. JFK, Conservative, Ira Stoll, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013]).

·         During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

·         What was the conflict about during the Cuban missile crisis?

·         Why was there a crisis in the first place in Cuba? (After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959, leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets (and their respective allies) were engaged in the Cold War (1945-91), an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes).

·         What would be the problem if Castro allied himself with the Soviet Union? (The Soviet missile threat would be 90 miles off the U.S. coast.)

·         What is the tagline of actor Kevin Costner’s movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis titled "Thirteen Days"? (Released in 2000, the movie's tagline was "You'll never believe how close we came.").

·         How did the U.S. find out about the Soviet presence 90 miles off the U.S. coast?

o   (The two superpowers plunged into one of their biggest Cold War confrontations after the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation).

·         President Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16, and he immediately called together a group of advisors and officials known as the executive committee, or ExCom. How long did the crisis last? (For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union).

·         Why was the threat so pressing to Kennedy?

o   (For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland–just 90 miles south of Florida. From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans.)

·         What was the Soviet strategy? Why did they understand the U.S. to be an immediate threat to the Soviet Union?

o   (Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gambled on sending the missiles to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation’s nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island–the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961–and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S. aggression).

·         What do think the American strategy ought to be? Appeasement, aggression, or something else? What reaction do you think was appropriate for Kennedy and ExCom?

o   (From the outset of the crisis, Kennedy and ExCom determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge facing them was to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict–and possibly a nuclear war. In deliberations that stretched on for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including a bombing attack on the missile sites and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed).

·         How did the American public find out about Kennedy’s position?

o   (In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the blockade and made it clear that the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas.)

·         How do you think the Soviets should react to Kennedy’s statement? Appeasement, aggression, or something else?

o   (A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the blockade. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the blockade would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade.)

·         What should be done about the existing missiles already in Cuba?

o   (Although the events at sea offered a positive sign that war could be averted, they did nothing to address the problem of the missiles already in Cuba. The tense standoff between the superpowers continued through the week.)

·         How should Kennedy react to a combat casualty?

o   On October 27, an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. (The 35-year-old pilot of the downed plane, Major Rudolf Anderson, is considered the sole U.S. combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.) “I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see,” recalled U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009), as quoted by Martin Walker in “The Cold War.” A similar sense of doom was felt by other key players on both sides.

§  (Despite the enormous tension, Soviet and American leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.)

·         Kennedy received two messages. What should Kennedy do in response?

o   (Officially, the Kennedy administration decided to accept the terms of the first message and ignore the second Khrushchev letter entirely. Privately, however, American officials also agreed to withdraw their nation’s missiles from Turkey. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925-68) personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, and on October 28, the crisis drew to a close.)

o   Both the Americans and Soviets were sobered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. How could communication be improved? (The following year, a direct “hot line” communication link was installed between Washington and Moscow to help defuse similar situations, and the superpowers signed two treaties related to nuclear weapons. The Cold War was far from over, though. In fact, another legacy of the crisis was that it convinced the Soviets to increase their investment in an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. from Soviet territory).

·         What lessons about American foreign policy can be gleaned from the Cuban missile crisis? Should we accommodate aggression or forcefully counter it? (Various: some may argue that aggression can be accommodated and peace achieved. Others think that aggression should be forcefully countered).

·         What role should the Eisenhower Doctrine play in American foreign policy? (Refer back to the Eisenhower Doctrine in Source #3 if need be as a reminder.). 

·         After JFK’s tragic assassination, landmark legislative acts passed in 1964. What is the Civil Rights Acts of 1964? (The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a momentous civil rights and U.S. labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations).

o   How did Congress assert its authority? (Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment).

·         Which political party, Democrat or Republican, favored civil rights in 1964? (Students may engage in differences between which party best advocates civil rights. However, it may be revealing to drill down and consider the actual voting and the respective voting of Democratic and Republican members of Congress).

o   The Civil Rights Act -- which is best known for barring discrimination in public accommodations -- passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964 by a margin of 290-130. When broken down by party, 61% of Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill (152 yeas and 96 nays), and a full 80% of the Republican caucus supported it (138 yeas and 34 nays).

o   When the Senate passed the measure on June 19, 1964,--nine days after supporters mustered enough votes to end the longest filibuster in Senate history--the margin was 73-27. Better than two-thirds of Senate Democrats supported the measure on final passage (46 yeas, 21 nays), but an even stronger 82% of Republicans supported it (27 yeas, 6 nays).

·         Read Source #10.

o   Did Congress rightfully exercise its authority? Are civil rights interstate commerce? Are civil rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment? Are civil rights protected under the Fifteenth Amendment? (Various: some may argue that Congress was correct or others may disagree. In any case, Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment).

·         What is the Great Society? (The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Democratic landslide in the 1964 election brought many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938. Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. Many of these programs including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford).

o   Should the government promote social justice through legislation? (Various but the essential point is to discuss the difference between social programs that focused on equality of result, as opposed to the free market of opportunity, and if these social justice programs are effective).

·         How effective were the Great Society programs that focused on equality of result?

o   Five decades, nearly $22 trillion and roughly 80 welfare programs later, it’s fair to ask how we’re doing. The short answer? Not well.

o   In important ways the War on Poverty is an abject failure. As social critic Irving Kristol has observed, “the welfare state came gradually to be seen less as a helping hand to those in need, a ‘safety net,’ and more as a communal exercise in compassion toward an ever-expanding portion of the population.”

o   It’s easy to see why it was “ever-expanding”: The War on Poverty created negative incentives. Instead of promoting the growth of healthy families, the welfare system discouraged them. A single mother could receive larger payments from Uncle Sam by remaining single than by marrying the father of her child.

§  Should children be without fathers in the home and rely on the government?

o   (Over time, many fatherless children entered the world. The welfare checks showed up month after month, regardless of how their parents spent their days. As these boys and girls grew up without fathers around, they came to regard such households as natural. The social safety net, designed to be a temporary help to the people in need, instead kept them trapped in government dependency).

o   The disincentive for fatherhood continued for three, even four generations until 1996 when a Republican Congress passed historic welfare reform legislation (over President Clinton’s veto — twice) that began turning things around. It transformed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program into one known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

§  Should recipients on welfare be required to work?

o   Did the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program assist recipients?

§   The program required recipients to perform at least 20 hours per week of work or job preparation activities in exchange for the cash benefit.

§  What were the results of the program?

§  Overnight, welfare agencies became job placement offices, and people who had been dependent on government began seeking employment. Within the first five years after the reform, caseloads were cut in half. Employment for single mothers also increased dramatically, and child poverty plummeted.

o   Are recipients able to provide for themselves? (The reform is far from done, though. Today the federal government runs roughly 80 means-tested welfare programs providing cash, food, housing and social services to low-income persons).

o   How much does the U.S. spend on welfare in a decade?

o   The United States will spend approximately $14 trillion on means-tested welfare over the next decade.

·         Read Source #11. In your own words, how has the American Enterprise Institute characterized the Great Society? (As Nicholas Eberstadt points out in the American Enterprise Institute’s publication “The Great Society at Fifty: The Triumph and the Tragedy”: “So deeply impressed is the Great Society into our consciousness that, as a practical matter, it is scarcely possible for most citizens now alive even to imagine the American way of life in the days before our huge, activist, modern welfare state came into existence.”).

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·         Did government assistance assist individuals and strengthen the economy?

·         What were the Constitutional issues at stake during the 1960s?

·         If we were to evaluate the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s would you say that were successful? Why or why not?

·         Are Americans now accustomed to entitlement programs since the 1960s?

·         Are citizens more or less free with a huge, activist, modern welfare state?

Prompt Question for Next Lesson:

·         What impact did the Great Society have in the African-American community and what radical movements began in the mid to late 1960s?

Day 4

Objectives:

·         SWBAT explain the birth of radicalism in the mid to late 1960s.

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         Source #12 (Making Peace With the ‘60s, David Burner)

·         Source #13 (“Bodies Upon the Gears,” or “Operation of the Machine,” Mario Savio

·         Source #14 (“For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield)

·         Source #15 (“Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival)

·         Source #16 (“The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture,” TIME)

Review—Key Question (s):

·         With social improvement lagging why were the radicals disappointed and how then did the new movements try to speed up progress?

·         Did the radicals look to the Constitution for social progress?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         Read Source #12.

o   What document did the liberal civil rights movement attempt to fulfill for black Americans? (The Declaration of Independence).

o   Nonviolence liberated people to foster what? (Self-discovery and self-making).

o   What alternative vision of black America arose? (Race).

o   Race as a concept was seen as nearly exclusively whose? (The nearly exclusive foundation of the identity of African-Americans).

o   Blackness came close to negating what? (The Civil Rights movement).

o   Black power was associated with America or what part of the world? (The Third World).

o   Freedom for the black power movement was individual or collective? (Collective).

o   What group was the basis of exclusion against in the black power groups? (Whites, i.e., even well-meaning liberals who supported the Civil Rights movement.)

o   Black Americans have been more prey to what forces corrosive of social order? (Drugs, crime, illiteracy, and shattered families).

·         Who kills more blacks: the Ku Klux Klan or other blacks? (Other blacks).

·         Does black rage effectively address the ills that threaten black communities? (No vocabulary of black rage effectively addresses forces that corrode: drugs, disintegrating families, and street violence).

·         The “New Left” was inspired by the civil rights movement and radical student activism began to spread across America’s college campuses in the early 1960s. The seminal group was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), founded in 1959. SDS garnered public notice for declaring that young people were tired of older political movements, even older radical ones. The members of SDS formed the core of a self-conscious “New Left” movement, which rejected the Old Left’s ideologies of economic justice in favor of an ideology of social justice.

·         Read Source #13. What do you think Mario Savio was saying about students in higher education? What should students do in college?

o   One of the seminal points in the movement was a speech by Mario Savio on the Sproul Hall Steps at Berkeley, on December 2, 1964. He stated that University students were “raw material” of production instead of being seen as “human beings.” This is generally seen as the moment that student radicalism began as he said you have to put your body on the line to stop the machine. He stated: “unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!").

·         Social justice efforts of the New Left did not result in tangible advances in civil rights.

·         Read Source #14. Although "For What It's Worth" is often mistaken as an anti-war song, Stephen Stills was inspired to write the track because of the "Sunset Strip riots" in November 1966. The trouble, which started during the early stages of the counterculture era, was in the same year Buffalo Springfield had become the house band at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

·         It was within this period that local residents and businesses had become increasingly annoyed by late-night traffic congestion caused by crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip. In response they lobbied the city to pass local ordinances that stopped loitering and enforced a strict curfew on the Strip after 10pm.

·         How do you think young music fans reacted to these restrictions? (Young music fans felt the new laws were an infringement of their civil rights).

o   On Saturday, November 12, 1966, fliers were distributed on Sunset Strip inviting people to join demonstrations later that day. Several of Los Angeles' rock radio stations also announced that a rally would be held outside the Pandora's Box club on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. That evening as many as 1,000 young demonstrators, including celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda (who was handcuffed by police), gathered to protest against the enforcement of the curfew laws. Although the rallies began peacefully, trouble eventually broke out among the protesters and police. The unrest continued the next night and periodically throughout the rest of November and December forcing some clubs to shut down within weeks.

o   Against the background of these civil disturbances, Stills recorded the song on December 5, 1966. Buffalo Springfield – “For What It's Worth,” 1967

·         Describe the teen scene described in the song. (People don’t really understand what is happening but the threat of guns, sounds, and violence is looming. Battle lines are drawn. Young people are speaking up but they face resistance. People are in the streets, paranoia is rampant, and if you are out of line the police will get you. The major point is that something unsettling is about to occur but people don’t understand what is happening.)

·         The late 1960s are also associated with hippies. Who are the hippies? (The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world).

·         Its origins may be traced to European social movements in the 19th and early 20th century such as Bohemians.

·         What are the hippie influences? Is it an individualist or communal philosophy? Traditional American or international? What musical group is representative of the hippies? (Hippies were influenced by Eastern religion and spirituality. From around 1967, its fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, and the widespread use of recreational drugs — spread around the world during the counterculture of the 1960s, which has become closely associated with the subculture. For example, the Beatles went to India which was an important movement. In February 1968, the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to take part in an advanced Transcendental Meditation [TM] training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The visit followed the group's denunciation of drugs in favor of TM, and received widespread media attention. Led by George Harrison’s commitment, the band's interest in the Maharishi's teachings changed Western attitudes about Indian spirituality and encouraged the study of Transcendental Meditation. The visit was also the most productive period for the band's songwriting. While in India, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Harrison wrote many songs, and Ringo Starr finished writing his first. Eighteen of those songs were recorded for The Beatles ["the White Album"], two songs appeared on the Abbey Road album, and others were used for various solo projects).

·         What happened to the beatniks of the 1950s and early 1960s?

o   (The change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" occurred after the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where Allan Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting "Om". Ginsberg was also at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, and was friends with Abbie Hoffman and other members of the Chicago Seven. Stylistic differences between beatniks, marked by somber colors, dark shades and goatees, gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair worn by hippies. While the beats were known for "playing it cool" and keeping a low profile, hippies became known for flaunting their flamboyant lifestyle).

·         Why was San Francisco so important during the hippie era? 

·         On January 14, 1967, the outdoor Human Be-In in San Francisco popularized hippie culture across the United States, with 30,000 hippies gathering in Golden Gate Park.

·         The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16 to June 18 in 1967 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love." The Pop Festival was a seminal hippie event.

·         One of the highlights was Jimi Hendrix, the top-rated rock guitarist of all time, who was post-racial before the term was even invented. During his four years as a star he seemed to live in a virtually all-white world. His two bandmates in the Jimi Hendrix Experience were white, and his audience was virtually all-white. Hendrix even talked and dressed like a hippie, with his spacey verbal references, crushed velvet pants, and bandannas.

·         Scott McKenzie's rendition of John Phillips' song, "San Francisco," became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children."

·         The “San Francisco Sound,” bands such as the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), and Jefferson Airplane continued to live in the Haight Ashbury district, but by the end of the summer, the incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to the late poet Stormi Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle to demonstrate the end of his/her reign.

·         The “San Francisco Sound” indicated how popular the anti-war movement had grown since the mid-1960s.

·         Read Source #15. John Fogarty’s lyrics in the consistently prevalent hit records of his band Creedence Clearwater Revival are revealing. Five songs are suggestive of anti-war sentiment: “Bad Moon Rising,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” “Run Through the Jungle,” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” What in “Fortunate Son” does the everyman protagonist state that makes it the archetypical anti-war song of the late 1960s? (Some folks are red, white, and blue but they [The Establishment, the authorities] point the cannon at you. The typical American young man is not a senator’s son or fortunate since they are being drafted. With star spangled eyes the ordinary American son is sent to war and is only expected to give more. The average American son is not a military person.)

·         Read Source #16. In your own words, what is the hippie philosophy? (Various, but students should realize that it is the antithesis of the Challenger philosopher and it is irresponsible and narcissistic).

§  Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967, TIME magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."

·         It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse and lenient morality, fueled the moral panic of the late 1960s.

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·         How were African-Americans negatively affected by the Great Society programs?

·         How did the largely white student protests on college campuses emerge?

·         How did popular music illustrate what young people were feeling during this contentious era?

·         What were the accomplishments, if any, of the hippie movement?

Prompt Question for Next Lesson:

·         In the latter 1960s, what separation took place between the American civil rights movement and black power?

Day 5

Objectives:

·         SWBAT explain the split between the civil rights movement of the early 1960s and the radical black activist faction of the late 1960s. 

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         Source #17 (“Black Power,” Stokely Carmichael, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]),

·         Source #18 (“Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” James Brown)

·         Source #19 (Excerpted from "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing [Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself], James Brown)"; “America Is My Home,” James Brown)"

Review/Key Question (s):

·         What had happened to the African-American community according to David Burner (Source #12)?

·         Why did the “New Left” radicals of the late 1960s adopt new slogans, new thinking, and split from the traditional American civil rights movement of the early 1960s?

·         How can social progress best be made: by government planning or the free-market system?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         Why was 1968 such a critical year?

o   Emergence of the Black Power movement

o   Martin Luther King was assassinated

o   Robert Kennedy was assassinated

o   Attempted assassination of George Wallace, a presidential contender

o   The Democratic Party Convention in Chicago

o   Youth riots, demonstrations in urban areas resulting in the “Long Hot Summers”

o   Student protests against the war in Vietnam

o   Election of Richard Nixon as President

·         The 1960s were characterized by two contrasting viewpoints on civil rights as represented by Malcom X and Stokely Carmichael as opposed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Brown.

o   Integrationist (King) Brown = Freedom Now   Black Power separatists = Black Power

·         How did the Northern Black Nationalist movement differ from the Integrationist Civil Rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King? (As the civil rights movement fought its major battles in the South during the early 1960s, a new Black Nationalist movement was rising in the North).

·         Who led the Black Nationalist movement and what did he say? (The Nation of Islam and its charismatic spokesman, Malcolm X, attained prominence for criticizing the timidity of mainstream civil rights protesters.)

·         What did the Nation of Islam call for? (The Nation of Islam’s leaders rejected the integrationist perspective of these leaders, calling instead for an independent and separate black nation-state).

·         What racist policies did they initiate? (They demanded that black Americans patronize only black-owned stores.)

·         What did the Nation of Islam think about Dr. King’s movement? (They declared that nonviolence was fruitless.)

·         Why did the Nation of Islam appeal to some blacks? (The Nation of Islam seemed for many black people to be a more realistic solution than nonviolent resistance.)

·         Why didn’t Malcolm X and Dr. King see eye to eye?

·         "You don't integrate with a sinking ship." This was Malcolm X's curt explanation of why he did not favor integration of blacks with whites in the United States.

·         What did Malcolm X argue?

o   Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. The solution proposed by the Nation of Islam was a separate nation for blacks to develop themselves apart from what they considered to be a corrupt white nation destined for divine destruction.

·         How did Dr. King’s movement differ from black separatism?

o   In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. He rejected what he called "the hatred and despair of the black nationalist."

o   How American was Dr. King?

§  Dr. King believed that the fate of black Americans was "tied up with America's destiny" despite the enslavement and segregation of blacks throughout American history.

·         What was the American religious impulse of Dr. King’s message?

o   King had faith that "the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God" could reform white America through the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.

o   A point to consider is to contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate the possibilities for black American progress in the 1960s.

o   Despite the political gains of the 1960s, Black Nationalist militancy continued to gather strength, mainly because social and economic discrimination persisted. Beginning in the summer of 1965, following riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles, urban unrest became endemic to many northern black communities. The Watts riot exploded when a seemingly routine traffic stop erupted into violence. The riot lasted six days and left thirty-four dead and more than one thousand injured. Persistent racism was certainly one cause of the riots, but so was the civil rights movement’s strategic decision not to address urban poverty. The “long hot summers” continued throughout the late 1960s after Dr. King’s assassination.

·         The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or, SNCC—pronounced “snick”) hoped to tap into the urban rage by establishing chapters in the North and developing programs to channel energy into constructive activities. Yet the increasing anger soon changed SNCC itself.

·         What significant event for black power happened in 1966?

·         In 1966, after being attacked by police during a peaceful march in Mississippi, SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael rallied a crowd by calling for “black power,” and the crowd began chanting the phrase.

·         What happened to white people who supported SNCC after black power emerged?

o   White people were purged from SNCC.

·         How did American civil rights leaders react?

o   This development alarmed many: Roy Wilkins, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (or the NAACP), called it “a reverse Ku Klux Klan.”

·         Read Source #17. What is Carmichael’s goal of Black Power?

o   The first popular use of the term "Black Power" as a political and racial slogan was by Carmichael and Willie Ricks (later known as Mukasa Dada), both organizers and spokespersons for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, after the shooting of James Meredith during the March Against Fear.

·         What is Carmichael’s goal of Black Power?

o   Carmichael said: “This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!” (Carmichael saw the concept of "Black Power" as a means of group solidarity, take over, society is at fault with institutional racism. Instead of individual achievement Black Power meant taking control based on racial differences).

o   With his use of the term, Carmichael felt this movement was not just a movement for racial desegregation, but rather a movement to help end how American racism had weakened blacks.

o   He said, "'Black Power' means black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak their needs."

·         By the late 1960s, Black Power emerged as a movement bridging the gap between Black Nationalism and the civil rights struggle. Leaders in the Black Power movement argued that black people should have control over the social, educational, and religious institutions in their communities. Black Power advocated black pride at a time when blackness was stigmatized.

·         Perhaps no Black Power organization captured the attention of America more than the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966 in Oakland, California. The Black Panthers believed that providing goods and services to the most downtrodden people of the black community would be essential to a black revolution, and they developed free clothing and medical programs, as well as a free breakfast program that fed thousands of poor children each week. They began patrolling the streets in armed groups in an attempt to end police brutality. The Black Panthers were also frequently associated with the urban unrest that swept through many black communities in the late 1960s, particularly the riots in more than one hundred cities following the shocking assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968.

o   What was the essential difference between Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King? (Stokely Carmichael argued that the “white power structure” was the ultimate cause of such spontaneous upheavals. There was a division between those aligned with Martin Luther King, Jr. and those aligned with Stokely Carmichael, marked by their respective slogans, "Freedom Now" and "Black Power.")

§  Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), later known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of 11, he graduated from Howard University. He rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and finally as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

·         1968 was contentious as the separate impulses of the civil rights movement bifurcated between the non-violent integrationist wing of Martin Luther King and the black power separatist factions of the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael, and the Nation of Islam.

·         The liberals of 1968 were conflicted as anti-war movements had grown stronger and liberalism was split between the New Left radicals and mainstream liberals.

‘60s civil rights movement

 Integrationist (King)                                                                Black Power separatists

   James Brown                                                                                       The New Left Radicals

Liberalism

                        New Left Radicals                   Mainstream Liberals (JFK, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey)

·         The integrationist wing of civil rights is to be distinguished against the black power separatists. A good example of individual achievement, hard work, and pursuing the American Dream is illustrated in a song by James Brown, “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” It is a song which is easy to misinterpret as a simple, Black Power song but an examination of the lyrics is revealing.

·         Read Source #18. How is the song in contrast to Stokely Carmichael’s understanding of Black Power? The song addresses the Black Power movement of 1968: but how it addresses black power is the interesting aspect of the song. (Brown is distancing himself from the radical Black Power movement emerging in 1968).

·         What individualist gospel song does Brown sample? (Mahalia Jackson’s spiritual, “Buked and Scorned,” in the lyrics: “We’ve been buked and we’ve been scorned).

·         How does Brown suggest blacks get their share? Does he expect anything to be given to him? Does he want to work for others or himself? (We have been treated poorly but we can’t quit until we get our share working for ourselves. We demand a chance to do things for ourselves. We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees. Brown is black and proud which means to work hard for yourself rather than be dependent on others).

·         Read Source #19. Several other Brown singles from the same era as "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud", notably "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself)", explored similar themes of black empowerment and self-reliance. And, coupled with his "America Is My Home" tune we can see that just as individual American Jews and Christians in the early 1960s are relying on their talent, hard work, and education to bring about social change so was Brown. At the same time that the liberal Great Society programs were being implemented there was a negative impact on black culture and families.

·         What individualist themes are to be found in these additional two songs? (Brown states clearly that he does not want anyone to give him anything but he will get it himself. He does not want self-pity but equal opportunity and not a guaranteed outcome by the government. He wants education and books so that he can develop himself. He wants to be self-reliant, use his talents, and without help from others. He loves America as his home. Races should unite against the enemies of America. We enjoy freedom of speech and although there are many nice places to visit you should get an education here. America is the best country without a doubt. Opportunity is here for the lowest person including a shoeshine boy. There are no royals or an aristocracy here. Work hard and you can make it in America.)

·         Both the Federal government with the Great Society programs and Black Power organizations were pitted against the individualist, hard-working America that inspired James Brown and early 1960s singers during the March on Washington in 1963.

·         The war in Vietnam pitted civil rights leaders against one another. Popular entertainer James Brown believed as a religious leader Dr. King should not have spoken out about the Vietnam War. Those were difficult days for King because he was being pulled apart by two movements: the Civil Rights movement and the war in Vietnam. When Dr. King spoke out against the Vietnam War, Mr. Brown thought he was wrong because Brown thought that he is a religious leader. He is not a politician. He is getting out of his bag, as we would say, he is getting out of what he stands for and he can create a problem for himself. Because the powers that be are not going to stand for this.

·         After Martin Luther King was killed, despite their disagreement on Vietnam, Brown continued his non-violent, hard-working American message.

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·                     During this contentious time, do you think things will calm down or escalate?

·                     Do you understand the differences between of radicalism and traditional, American civil rights and why they appealed to diverse people?

·                     Why do you think James Brown didn’t believe in Black Power?

·                     What was Brown’s alternative?

Prompt Question for the Next Lesson:

·         How did the theme of revolution play out and end the late 1960s?

Day 6

Objectives:

·         SWBAT understand how revolution was in the air in the late 1960s and what impact it had on American popular music, politics, and Constitution.

Sources/Handouts that will be used for discussion/evaluation for this lesson:

·         Source #20 (“Revolution,” the Beatles)

·         Source #21 (“Chicago,” Crosby, Stills, & Nash)

·         Source #22 (Various historic sources on the issue of a standing army)

·         Source #23 (“Ohio,” Neil Young, as performed by Mott The Hoople)

Review—Key Question (s)

·         How had American politics changed significantly from the early to the late 1960s?

·         Had American politics become more heated or calmer throughout the decade?

Suggested Key Discussion Points/Questions:

·         Read Source #20. By 1968 revolution was in the air and with increasing anti-war protests, the Vietnam Tet offensive, and student riots in France, the Beatles decided to issue an overtly political song, “Revolution.”

·         What do you think the Beatles meant in this song? (They discounted destruction, acts of violence, the radical left (i.e., Chairman Mao) and hate stating):

·         “You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead.”

·         The 1960s and into the 1970s was a period of social protest and discontent. For example, consider Gil Scott Heron’s, incendiary, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

o   “You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.”

o   “There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay.”

o   “The revolution will not be televised; the revolution will be live.”

o   When did the revolution occur?

o   Consider that since the song was released:
FACT 1. Over 1,400 more black Americans murdered other blacks in two years than were lynched from 1882 to 1968.

FACT 2. Black People (mostly men) commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime.

FACT 3. Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks committed half of homicides in the United States for nearly 30 years.

FACT 4. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined.

FACT 5. It would take cops 40 years to kill as many black men as have died at the hands of others black men in 2012 alone.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devastating-facts-black-black-crime/

·         Military involvement in Vietnam was part of America’s containment policy during the Cold War.

·         Should presidents invoke executive power to expand war-making privileges and deploy military troops?

·         Why did Indochina become a flash point of executive power? (Beginning with the presidency of Harry S. Truman, the Indochina wars became a matter of inheritance for the President of the United States. Particularly for Truman and then Dwight Eisenhower, the presidential office seemed to come with an obligation to provide substantial economic and military assistance to aid the French in Indochina).

·         Upon inheriting the presidency itself with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, what did Lyndon B. Johnson do about Indochina? (His inheritance became fully-known and felt across the country with the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It was there that this matter of inheritance became the Vietnam War).

·         What did Nixon do? (In turn, with the subsequent public reaction to Nixon’s bombing operations in Cambodia and Laos, soon the escalation of the Vietnam War became a matter for Congress with the 1973 War Powers Resolution. With Johnson’s executive mandate for war and Nixon’s justification of executive authority, the Vietnam War set a dangerous precedent for presidential war powers, as it placed constitutional misinterpretations to the forefront, and exemplified the limitations of modern congressional war powers.)

·         Should we adhere to the original, written Constitution or the living Constitution of the Progressives? (The concept of presidential war powers in Vietnam is one that remains an active scholarly and constitutional debate. It is a concept that is based on a living Constitution, and has enabled presidents to expand their executive powers to deploy troops without a declaration of war in foreign affairs. Such a living interpretation of the Constitution has substituted alleged necessity and circumstances to be in forefront in the decision to go war. In the end, Johnson’s executive mandate for war and Nixon’s constitutional arguments for a stronger Commander-in-Chief set dangerous precedents, as an unaccountable president remains the principal concern for the future of presidential prerogative. The expansion of the Vietnam War and knowledge of the futility of the conflict at the highest levels of the American government was not known by the American public until the publication of the Pentagon Papers.)

·         The Vietnam War provoked strident freedom of the press issues.

·         Recall one of the earlier freedom of the press cases: Rex v. Zenger (1735)

·         What was the issue in the Zenger case?

·         The colony of New York tried publisher John Peter Zenger for seditious libel against the governor. At that time, truth was not a defense in a libel case. Zenger’s attorney told the jury of their power and duty to judge the law as well as the facts, and the jury acquitted Zenger. Though not a Supreme Court case, this is a landmark freedom of the press case.

·         In the New York Times v. United States (1971) a claimed threat to national security was no justification for prior restraint on publication of classified documents (the Pentagon Papers) about the Vietnam War.

o   Facts of the case: in what became known as the "Pentagon Papers Case," the Nixon Administration attempted to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing materials belonging to a classified Defense Department study regarding the history of United States activities in Vietnam. The President argued that prior restraint was necessary to protect national security. This case was decided together with United States v. Washington Post Co.

§  Question: did the Nixon administration's efforts to prevent the publication of what it termed "classified information" violate the First Amendment?

§  (Yes. In the per curiam opinion the Court held that the government did not overcome the "heavy presumption against" prior restraint of the press in this case. Justices Black and Douglas argued that the vague word "security" should not be used "to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment." Justice Brennan reasoned that since publication would not cause an inevitable, direct, and immediate event imperiling the safety of American forces, prior restraint was unjustified.)

·         Opposition to the Vietnam War came from those who did not believe containment in Vietnam was necessary, those who did not want to fight a foreign war, and those who sympathized with communist principles.

·         Read Source #21 for understanding the impact that Vietnam had on young people. What happened at the Democratic Convention in Chicago during 1968?

·         Youth, riots, anti-war protest, and politics all seemed to come to a head at the Democratic Party Convention in August of 1968.

§  Tens of thousands of protesters swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo. By the time Vice President Herbert Humphrey received the presidential nomination, the strife within the Democratic Party was laid bare and the streets of Chicago had seen riots and bloodshed involving protesters, police and bystanders alike, radically changing America’s political and social landscape.

§  Chaos preceded the Convention. The months leading up to the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention were turbulent.

·         What significant event had happened just a few months before the Convention? (The brutal assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April had left the country reeling).

·         The Vietnam War was in its 13th year and the recent Tet Offensive had proved the conflict was far from over, as the draft sent more young men into the fray. It was only a matter of time before a showdown would take place between the government of President Lyndon B. Johnson and America’s war-weary citizens.

§  By the time delegates arrived for the convention in Chicago, protests had been set in motion by members of the Youth International Party (yippies) and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), whose organizers included Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden.

§  But Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley had no intention of letting his city or the convention be overrun by protestors. The stage was set for an explosive face-off.

§  The Democratic Party was in crisis. President Johnson—despite being elected with a huge majority in 1964—was soon loathed by many of his peers and constituents due to his pro-Vietnam War policies.

·         President Johnson saw the writing on the wall and, on March 31, told a stunned nation during a televised address that he would not seek reelection.

o   The announcement came at the end of this TV speech concerning the situation in Vietnam where increasing numbers of young American soldiers were being killed amid the recent escalation of the war by the North Vietnamese.

o   In January 1968, the Tet Offensive had occurred in which North Vietnamese troops staged a surprise attack on 36 provincial capitals and five major cities in South Vietnam including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the presidential palace.

o   Filmed footage of the attacks and the resulting carnage appeared on nightly news programs watched by the American public. Unlike previous wars, news personnel in Vietnam were not censored and thus often took graphic frontline combat footage.

o   Year after year of TV news reports showing bloodied Americans and dead Vietnamese civilians led many Americans to question the necessity of the ordeal. By 1968, demonstrations and unrest had erupted on college campuses with demands for an immediate end to the war.

§  Amid the mounting death toll and continuing erosion of popular and political support for the war, President Johnson was faced with having to decide America's future course in the conflict.

·         What should President Johnson do about Vietnam? (Various: his choices included possible escalation in an effort to win the war, or the pursuit of peace with an enemy who now seemed determined to fight and win no matter what the cost.)

o   Tragically, the race was turned upside down again when Robert Kennedy was assassinated after giving his victory speech following the California primary on June 4.

o   Pigasus was a nominee. Fed up with Democratic leadership’s penchant for war, yippies protesting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention conceived their own solution: nominate a pig for president. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman came up with the idea, named their candidate “Pigasus the Immortal” and pledged, “They nominate a president and he eats the people. We nominate a president and the people eat him.” Rubin and other members of his campaign staff were arrested at his first press conference in front of the Chicago Convention Center.

o   Protestors took over Lincoln Park. About a week before the convention, despite not having permission, thousands of protestors—many of them from out of state and from middle-class families—set up camp at Lincoln Park.

o   In the meantime, Democratic Party delegates began arriving in a Chicago that was rapidly approaching a state of siege: National Guardsmen and policemen met their planes. Their hotels were under heavy guard and the convention Amphitheatre was a virtual fortress. Violence began at Lincoln Park.

o   Around 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 25, a couple thousand police officers wearing riot gear, helmets and gas masks lined up at Lincoln Park. Some threw tear gas into the crowd. Protestors scattered every which way and rushed out of the park, blindly falling over each other as the tear gas assaulted their eyes. The police attacked them with clubs and often didn’t stop when someone was subdued on the ground. Eyewitnesses report it was a scene of unrestrained bloodshed and chaos. Later, the police defended their actions by claiming the protestors shouldn’t have broken curfew or resisted arrest.

o   On Tuesday night, when a promised televised prime-time debate on Vietnam was postponed until after midnight when most viewers would be asleep, the anti-war delegates made their fury known to the point that Mayor Daley had the convention adjourned for the night.

o   Around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, a teenage boy climbed a flagpole near the band shell and lowered the American flag. The police moved in swiftly to arrest him as protestors rallied to his aid, assaulting the officers with rocks and food or whatever else they had on hand. The police beat protestors at will with clubs and fists.

o   If you were a delegate at the Convention would you have voted for peace or escalation? (Various answers should be explored but prospects for peace or escalation are the two basic alternatives).

o   The peace plank was defeated, a huge blow to the peace delegates and millions of Americans who wanted the Vietnam War to end, and the delegates erupted into chaos. By nightfall, a standoff had ensued in front of the Hilton between thousands of angry protestors and thousands of police officers. No one knows who or what triggered the first blow, but soon police began clearing out the crowd, pummeling protestors (and innocent bystanders) with billy clubs and using so much tear gas that it reportedly reached Humphrey some 25 floors up as he watched the bedlam unfold from his hotel room window.

o   At home in their living rooms, horrified Americans alternated between watching images of police brutally beating young, blood-splattered demonstrators and Humphrey’s nomination. During the nomination process, some delegates spoke to the violence. One pro-McGovern delegate went so far as to refer to the police violence as “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.”

o   Late that evening, Humphrey won the presidential nomination with Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine as his running mate. But the win was nothing to celebrate. Any illusion of unity within the Democratic Party was shattered—after Humphrey’s nomination, many anti-war delegates joined protesters in solidarity and held a candlelight vigil. The next day, the remaining protesters and hundreds of anti-war delegates attempted to reach the Amphitheatre again but were deterred with tear gas. At midnight on August 29, the bloody and contentious 1968 Democratic Convention officially ended.

o   Over 650 protesters were arrested during the convention. The total number of injured protesters is unknown but over 100 were treated at area hospitals. It was reported that 192 police officers were injured and 49 required medical treatment.

o   Black Panther activist Bobby Seale and four other protest organizers, known as the Chicago Eight, were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot and brought to trial. After Seale complained about being denied his right to choose his own lawyer, the judge ordered him to appear before the jury each day bound, gagged and chained to a chair.

o   Seale was removed from the Chicago Eight case and ordered to stand trial separately, making the defendants into the Chicago Seven. Seale was sentenced to four years for contempt of court, but the charges were later overturned.

o   After a lengthy, often circus-like trial, the jury found the Chicago Seven not guilty of conspiracy. Five defendants, however, were found guilty of inciting a riot. All convictions were eventually overturned on appeal.

·         The pandemonium at the 1968 Democratic National Convention did little to stop the Vietnam War or win the 1968 presidential election. By the end of the year, Republican Richard M. Nixon was President-elect of the United States and 16,592 American soldiers had been killed in Vietnam, the most of any year since the war began.

o   (Cf. 1968 Democratic Convention [Documentary.] YouTube; 1968: Hippies, Yippies and the First Mayor Daley. The Chicago Tribune; Chicago ’68: A Chronology. Chicago 68; An Excerpt From: Rights in Conflict: The violent confrontation of demonstrators and police in the parks and streets of Chicago during the week of the Democratic National Convention of 1968. Chicago 68; A Look Back at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. MSNBC; Brief History of 1968’s Democratic National Convention. CNN All Politics; ‘Police Riot’ at the Democratic National Convention. World History Project; Riots Erupt at the Democratic National Convention. World History Project.

·         During the 1968 presidential campaign, James Brown endorsed mainstream liberal Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey and appeared with Humphrey at political rallies.

·         Brown began supporting Republican president Richard Nixon after being invited to perform at Nixon's inaugural ball in January 1969. Brown's endorsement of Nixon during the 1972 presidential election negatively impacted his career during that period with several national Black organizations boycotting his records and protesting at his concert shows. Brown stated he was neither Democratic nor Republican despite his support of Republican presidents such as Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Following the death of Reagan, Brown stated to CNN, "I'm kind of in an uproar. I love the country and I got – you know I've been around a long time, through many presidents and everything.”

·         With the election of Nixon in 1968 he inherited LBJ’s problems of Vietnam, student protests, and racial equality.

·         If you were President Nixon what would your policies about Vietnam, student protests, and racial equality be? (Various but you want the students to understand that it was a contentious period in American history. Vietnam had escalated and many more people now grasped that it was an unwinnable war. Students had never been that active and riotous on college campuses before and it was a unique problem. Racial equality as an issue seemed mired in government programs and yet the “long hot summers” of riots and demonstrations in urban areas continued).

·         The movement against the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War began in the U.S. with demonstrations in 1964 and grew in strength in later years. The U.S. became polarized between those who advocated continued involvement in Vietnam and those who wanted peace.

·         Many in the peace movement were students, mothers, or anti-establishment hippies. Opposition grew with participation by the African-American civil rights, women's liberation, and Chicano movements, and sectors of organized labor. Additional involvement came from many other groups, including educators, clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians (such as Benjamin Spock), Civil Rights Movement leaders and military veterans. Opposition consisted mainly of peaceful, nonviolent events; few events were deliberately provocative and violent. In some cases, police used violent tactics against demonstrators.

o   By 1967, according to Gallup Polls, an increasing majority of Americans considered US military involvement in Vietnam to be a mistake, echoed decades later by the then head of American war planning, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

·         The high and the low points of the hippie youth movement came in 1969. From the height of the hippie era, Woodstock, we hit the lows with Altamont and Charlie Manson.

·         The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock—was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.

o   During the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors before an audience of 400,000 young people. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.

o   The festival is also widely considered to be the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation.

o   The event was captured in the 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

o   Woodstock was the high point of the hippie movement.

·         On the other hand, a subsequent festival was the low point. The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture-era rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore. The event is best known for considerable violence, including the death of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two caused by a hit-and-run car accident and one by drowning in an irrigation canal. Four births were reported during the event. Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage.

o   The concert featured, in order of appearance: Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with the Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled appearance due to the increasing violence at the venue. "That's the way things went at Altamont—so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play," staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event, terming it in an additional follow-up piece "rock and roll's all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong."

o   Approximately 300,000 people attended the concert, and some anticipated that it would be a "Woodstock West." Filmmakers Albert and David Maysles shot footage of the event and incorporated it into a documentary film titled Gimme Shelter (1970).

·         Another hippie, Charlie Manson, epitomized the failure of the hippie lifestyle. Charles Manson was a lifelong criminal who had been released from prison just in time for San Francisco's Summer of Love. With his long hair, charisma and the ability to charm a crowd with his guitar playing, his singing and rhetoric, Manson exhibited many of the outward manifestations of hippie identity. Yet he hardly exemplified the hippie ideals of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship; through twisted logic, hallucinogenic drugs, and psychological manipulation, he inspired his followers to commit murder. Manson's highly publicized 1970 trial and subsequent conviction in January 1971 irrevocably tarnished the hippie image in the eyes of many Americans.

o   Charles Milles Manson (né Maddox, November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal and cult leader. In the late 1960s, he formed what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune in California. Manson's followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971 he was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, all of which were carried out at his instruction by members of the group. Manson was also convicted of first-degree murder for two other deaths.

o   At the time the Manson Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict who had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. Before the murders, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson, drummer and founding member of the Beach Boys. Manson believed in what he called "Helter Skelter", a term he took from the Beatles' song of the same name to describe an impending apocalyptic race war. He believed the murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence and the macabre. After Manson was charged with the crimes of which he was later convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially, starting with Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (1970). Various musicians have covered some of his songs.

o   On March 6, 1970 (the day the court vacated Manson's status as his own attorney), LIE, an album of Manson music, was released. This included "Cease to Exist", a Manson composition the Beach Boys had recorded with modified lyrics and the title "Never Learn Not to Love". Over the next couple of months, only about 300 of the album's 2,000 copies sold.

·         Several contentious issues—the frustration of youth searching for a more authentic status quo, the rise of Black Power, women seeking to change American society’s perceptions of gender roles—fused together with protests against the war in Vietnam to create a swirling, acrimonious time filled with change, hope, and frustration.

o   From 1965 to 1970, opposition to the war increased in proportion to the American military commitment, and by 1968 there were more than half a million American troops in Vietnam. Opposition grew from a small-scale protest movement in the middle 1960s to a mainstream force by 1967 and 1968. By the early 1970s, it had had a major impact on American society.

o   A considerable number of Americans were shocked by the antiwar protests and by the rise of the counterculture. Although one poll in 1967 showed that 46 percent of the public thought the war was a “mistake,” most Americans believed that the United States should attempt to win now that it was involved. As the antiwar movement spread, it provoked anger from conservatives, who saw it as treasonous. In 1970, construction workers (known as “hard hats”) violently attacked antiwar demonstrators in New York City. The hard hats viewed their attacks as their patriotic duty against treasonous kids. It was true, however, that many of the war’s protesters were students who had deferrals from the military, while most of the soldiers were from working-class families who did not have the money to go to college and thus had no way to avoid the draft.

·         In 1970, in response to Nixon's widening of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, students throughout the US protested. Nixon sent the National Guard to restore order to the Kent State campus. The resulting consequences changed the course of the war.

·         Recall the Constitutional debates about a standing army in Article 1, Section 8. Are there any dangers in maintaining a standing military force? Read Source #22 on the various historic sources on the issue of a standing army.

·         Should the National Guard be deployed against civilians? (Various, but after reading the historic sources students should grasp the difference between the policing of civilians and trained military troops who are ordinarily deployed against foreign enemies).

·         Read Source #23: the song, “Ohio” (Cf. “Ohio,” Mott The Hoople, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SNgkosO7SE).

·         The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) occurred at Kent State University in the US city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

o   Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the “excursion” into neighboring Cambodia from Vietnam which was perceived as an escalation of the Vietnam War. The Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30, had just been revealed. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

o   There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected public opinion—at an already socially contentious time—over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.

Follow-up/Assessment Questions:

·         How were early efforts towards effective civil rights gains successful?

·         How were social programs centered on equality of outcomes ineffective?

Prompt Question for Next Lesson:

History, Grade 8

Student Sources Supplement __

The Death of Liberalism

1. “Long Telegram,” George F. Kennan, 1946

In his “long telegram,” Kennan suggested that communism was on a collision course with capitalism and that the Soviets would do four things in order to win: (1) perpetually seek to expand their territory unless checked by economic, political, and military pressure; (2) undermine Western colonial development in Africa and the Middle East; (3) develop their own economic bloc closed off to the rest of the world; and (4) attempt to penetrate Western civil society to promote Soviet interests.

861.00/2 - 2246: Telegram

The Charge in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State

SECRET

Moscow, February 22, 1946--9 p.m. [Received February 22--3: 52 p.m.]

511. Answer to Dept's 284, Feb 3 [13] involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of over-simplification. I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts, subjects of which will be roughly as follows:

(1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.

(2) Background of this outlook

(3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.

(4) Its projection on unofficial level.

(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.

I apologize in advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once. There follows

Part 1: Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine

Are as Follows:

(a) USSR still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence. As stated by Stalin in 1927 to a delegation of American workers:

"In course of further development of international revolution there will emerge two centers of world significance: a socialist center, drawing to itself the countries which tend toward socialism, and a capitalist center, drawing to itself the countries that incline toward capitalism. Battle between these two centers for command of world economy will decide fate of capitalism and of communism in entire world."

(b) Capitalist world is beset with internal conflicts, inherent in nature of capitalist society. These conflicts are insoluble by means of peaceful compromise. Greatest of them is that between England and US.

(c) Internal conflicts of capitalism inevitably generate wars. Wars thus generated may be of two kinds: intra-capitalist wars between two capitalist states, and wars of intervention against socialist world. Smart capitalists, vainly seeking escape from inner conflicts of capitalism, incline toward latter.

(d) Intervention against USSR, while it would be disastrous to those who undertook it, would cause renewed delay in progress of Soviet socialism and must therefore be forestalled at all costs.

(e) Conflicts between capitalist states, though likewise fraught with danger for USSR, nevertheless hold out great possibilities for advancement of socialist cause, particularly if USSR remains militarily powerful, ideologically monolithic and faithful to its present brilliant leadership.

(f) It must be borne in mind that capitalist world is not all bad. In addition to hopelessly reactionary and bourgeois elements, it includes (1) certain wholly enlightened and positive elements united in acceptable communistic parties and (2) certain other elements (now described for tactical reasons as progressive or democratic) whose reactions, aspirations and activities happen to be "objectively" favorable to interests of USSR These last must be encouraged and utilized for Soviet purposes.

(g) Among negative elements of bourgeois-capitalist society, most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to seine interests of reactionary capital.

So much for premises. To what deductions do they lead from standpoint of Soviet policy? To following:

(a) Everything must be done to advance relative strength of USSR as factor in international society. Conversely, no opportunity most be missed to reduce strength and influence, collectively as well as individually, of capitalist powers.

(b) Soviet efforts, and those of Russia's friends abroad, must be directed toward deepening and exploiting of differences and conflicts between capitalist powers. If these eventually deepen into an "imperialist" war, this war must be turned into revolutionary upheavals within the various capitalist countries.

(c) "Democratic-progressive" elements abroad are to be utilized to maximum to bring pressure to bear on capitalist governments along lines agreeable to Soviet interests.

(d) Relentless battle must be waged against socialist and social-democratic leaders abroad.

Part 2: Background of Outlook

Before examining ramifications of this party line in practice there are certain aspects of it to which I wish to draw attention.

First, it does not represent natural outlook of Russian people. Latter are, by and large, friendly to outside world, eager for experience of it, eager to measure against it talents they are conscious of possessing, eager above all to live in peace and enjoy fruits of their own labor. Party line only represents thesis which official propaganda machine puts forward with great skill and persistence to a public often remarkably resistant in the stronghold of its innermost thoughts. But party line is binding for outlook and conduct of people who make up apparatus of power--party, secret police and Government--and it is exclusively with these that we have to deal.

Second, please note that premises on which this party line is based are for most part simply not true. Experience has shown that peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible. Basic internal conflicts in advanced countries are no longer primarily those arising out of capitalist ownership of means of production, but are ones arising from advanced urbanism and industrialism as such, which Russia has thus far been spared not by socialism but only by her own backwardness. Internal rivalries of capitalism do not always generate wars; and not all wars are attributable to this cause. To speak of possibility of intervention against USSR today, after elimination of Germany and Japan and after example of recent war, is sheerest nonsense. If not provoked by forces of intolerance and subversion "capitalist" world of today is quite capable of living at peace with itself and with Russia. Finally, no sane person has reason to doubt sincerity of moderate socialist leaders in Western countries. Nor is it fair to deny success of their efforts to improve conditions for working population whenever, as in Scandinavia, they have been given chance to show what they could do.

Falseness of those premises, every one of which predates recent war, was amply demonstrated by that conflict itself Anglo-American differences did not turn out to be major differences of Western World. Capitalist countries, other than those of Axis, showed no disposition to solve their differences by joining in crusade against USSR. Instead of imperialist war turning into civil wars and revolution, USSR found itself obliged to fight side by side with capitalist powers for an avowed community of aim.

Nevertheless, all these theses, however baseless and disproven, are being boldly put forward again today. What does this indicate? It indicates that Soviet party line is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond Russia's borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of Russia; that it arises mainly from basic inner-Russian necessities which existed before recent war and exist today.

At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.

It was no coincidence that Marxism, which had smoldered ineffectively for half a century in Western Europe, caught hold and blazed for first time in Russia. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means. After establishment of Bolshevist regime, Marxist dogma, rendered even more truculent and intolerant by Lenin's interpretation, became a perfect vehicle for sense of insecurity with which Bolsheviks, even more than previous Russian rulers, were afflicted. In this dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifice they felt bound to demand. In the name of Marxism they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability. Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regimes. This is why Soviet purposes most always be solemnly clothed in trappings of Marxism, and why no one should underrate importance of dogma in Soviet affairs. Thus Soviet leaders are driven [by?] necessities of their own past and present position to put forward which [apparent omission] outside world as evil, hostile and menacing, but as bearing within itself germs of creeping disease and destined to be wracked with growing internal convulsions until it is given final Coup de grace by rising power of socialism and yields to new and better world. This thesis provides justification for that increase of military and police power of Russian state, for that isolation of Russian population from outside world, and for that fluid and constant pressure to extend limits of Russian police power which are together the natural and instinctive urges of Russian rulers. Basically this is only the steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries old movement in which conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused. But in new guise of international Marxism, with its honeyed promises to a desperate and war torn outside world, it is more dangerous and insidious than ever before.

It should not be thought from above that Soviet party line is necessarily disingenuous and insincere on part of all those who put it forward. Many of them are too ignorant of outside world and mentally too dependent to question [apparent omission] self-hypnotism, and who have no difficulty making themselves believe what they find it comforting and convenient to believe. Finally we have the unsolved mystery as to who, if anyone, in this great land actually receives accurate and unbiased information about outside world. In atmosphere of oriental secretiveness and conspiracy which pervades this Government, possibilities for distorting or poisoning sources and currents of information are infinite. The very disrespect of Russians for objective truth--indeed, their disbelief in its existence--leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another. There is good reason to suspect that this Government is actually a conspiracy within a conspiracy; and I for one am reluctant to believe that Stalin himself receives anything like an objective picture of outside world. Here there is ample scope for the type of subtle intrigue at which Russians are past masters. Inability of foreign governments to place their case squarely before Russian policy makers--extent to which they are delivered up in their relations with Russia to good graces of obscure and unknown advisors whom they never see and cannot influence--this to my mind is most disquieting feature of diplomacy in Moscow, and one which Western statesmen would do well to keep in mind if they would understand nature of difficulties encountered here.

Part 3: Projection of Soviet Outlook in Practical Policy on Official Level

We have now seen nature and background of Soviet program. What may we expect by way of its practical implementation?

Soviet policy, as Department implies in its query under reference, is conducted on two planes: (1) official plane represented by actions undertaken officially in name of Soviet Government; and (2) subterranean plane of actions undertaken by agencies for which Soviet Government does not admit responsibility.

Policy promulgated on both planes will be calculated to serve basic policies (a) to (d) outlined in part 1. Actions taken on different planes will differ considerably, but will dovetail into each other in purpose, timing and effect.

On official plane we must look for following:

(a) Internal policy devoted to increasing in every way strength and prestige of Soviet state: intensive military-industrialization; maximum development of armed forces; great displays to impress outsiders; continued secretiveness about internal matters, designed to conceal weaknesses and to keep opponents in dark.

(b) Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power. For the moment, these efforts are restricted to certain neighboring points conceived of here as being of immediate strategic necessity, such as Northern Iran, Turkey, possibly Bornholm However, other points may at any time come into question, if and as concealed Soviet political power is extended to new areas. Thus a "friendly Persian Government might be asked to grant Russia a port on Persian Gulf. Should Spain fall under Communist control, question of Soviet base at Gibraltar Strait might be activated. But such claims will appear on official level only when unofficial preparation is complete.

(c) Russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending Soviet power or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. Moscow sees in UNO not the mechanism for a permanent and stable world society founded on mutual interest and aims of all nations, but an arena in which aims just mentioned can be favorably pursued. As long as UNO is considered here to serve this purpose, Soviets will remain with it. But if at any time they come to conclusion that it is serving to embarrass or frustrate their aims for power expansion and if they see better prospects for pursuit of these aims along other lines, they will not hesitate to abandon UNO. This would imply, however, that they felt themselves strong enough to split unity of other nations by their withdrawal to render UNO ineffective as a threat to their aims or security, replace it with an international weapon more effective from their viewpoint. Thus Soviet attitude toward UNO will depend largely on loyalty of other nations to it, and on degree of vigor, decisiveness and cohesion with which those nations defend in UNO the peaceful and hopeful concept of international life, which that organization represents to our way of thinking. I reiterate, Moscow has no abstract devotion to UNO ideals. Its attitude to that organization will remain essentially pragmatic and tactical.

(d) Toward colonial areas and backward or dependent peoples, Soviet policy, even on official plane, will be directed toward weakening of power and influence and contacts of advanced Western nations, on theory that in so far as this policy is successful, there will be created a vacuum which will favor Communist-Soviet penetration. Soviet pressure for participation in trusteeship arrangements thus represents, in my opinion, a desire to be in a position to complicate and inhibit exertion of Western influence at such points rather than to provide major channel for exerting of Soviet power. Latter motive is not lacking, but for this Soviets prefer to rely on other channels than official trusteeship arrangements. Thus we may expect to find Soviets asking for admission everywhere to trusteeship or similar arrangements and using levers thus acquired to weaken Western influence among such peoples.

(e) Russians will strive energetically to develop Soviet representation in, and official ties with, countries in which they sense Strong possibilities of opposition to Western centers of power. This applies to such widely separated points as Germany, Argentina, Middle Eastern countries, etc.

(f) In international economic matters, Soviet policy will really be dominated by pursuit of autarchy for Soviet Union and Soviet-dominated adjacent areas taken together. That, however, will be underlying policy. As far as official line is concerned, position is not yet clear. Soviet Government has shown strange reticence since termination hostilities on subject foreign trade. If large scale long term credits should be forthcoming, I believe Soviet Government may eventually again do lip service, as it did in 1930's to desirability of building up international economic exchanges in general. Otherwise I think it possible Soviet foreign trade may be restricted largely to Soviet's own security sphere, including occupied areas in Germany, and that a cold official shoulder may be turned to principle of general economic collaboration among nations.

(g) With respect to cultural collaboration, lip service will likewise be rendered to desirability of deepening cultural contacts between peoples, but this will not in practice be interpreted in any way which could weaken security position of Soviet peoples. Actual manifestations of Soviet policy in this respect will be restricted to arid channels of closely shepherded official visits and functions, with superabundance of vodka and speeches and dearth of permanent effects.

(h) Beyond this, Soviet official relations will take what might be called "correct" course with individual foreign governments, with great stress being laid on prestige of Soviet Union and its representatives and with punctilious attention to protocol as distinct from good manners.

Part 4: Following May Be Said as to What We May Expect by Way of Implementation of Basic Soviet Policies on Unofficial, or Subterranean Plane, i.e. on Plane for Which Soviet Government Accepts no Responsibility

Agencies utilized for promulgation of policies on this plane are following:

1. Inner central core of Communist Parties in other countries. While many of persons who compose this category may also appear and act in unrelated public capacities, they are in reality working closely together as an underground operating directorate of world communism, a concealed Comintern tightly coordinated and directed by Moscow. It is important to remember that this inner core is actually working on underground lines, despite legality of parties with which it is associated.

2. Rank and file of Communist Parties. Note distinction is drawn between those and persons defined in paragraph 1. This distinction has become much sharper in recent years. Whereas formerly foreign Communist Parties represented a curious (and from Moscow's standpoint often inconvenient) mixture of conspiracy and legitimate activity, now the conspiratorial element has been neatly concentrated in inner circle and ordered underground, while rank and file--no longer even taken into confidence about realities of movement--are thrust forward as bona fide internal partisans of certain political tendencies within their respective countries, genuinely innocent of conspiratorial connection with foreign states. Only in certain countries where communists are numerically strong do they now regularly appear and act as a body. As a rule they are used to penetrate, and to influence or dominate, as case may be, other organizations less likely to be suspected of being tools of Soviet Government, with a view to accomplishing their purposes through [apparent omission] organizations, rather than by direct action as a separate political party.

3. A wide variety of national associations or bodies which can be dominated or influenced by such penetration. These include: labor unions, youth leagues, women's organizations, racial societies, religious societies, social organizations, cultural groups, liberal magazines, publishing houses, etc.

4. International organizations which can be similarly penetrated through influence over various national components. Labor, youth and women's organizations are prominent among them. Particular, almost vital importance is attached in this connection to international labor movement. In this, Moscow sees possibility of sidetracking western governments in world affairs and building up international lobby capable of compelling governments to take actions favorable to Soviet interests in various countries and of paralyzing actions disagreeable to USSR

5. Russian Orthodox Church, with its foreign branches, and through it the Eastern Orthodox Church in general.

6. Pan-Slav movement and other movements (Azerbaijan, Armenian, Turcoman, etc.) based on racial groups within Soviet Union.

7. Governments or governing groups willing to lend themselves to Soviet purposes in one degree or another, such as present Bulgarian and Yugoslav Governments, North Persian regime, Chinese Communists, etc. Not only propaganda machines but actual policies of these regimes can be placed extensively at disposal of USSR

It may be expected that component parts of this far-flung apparatus will be utilized in accordance with their individual suitability, as follows:

(a) To undermine general political and strategic potential of major western powers. Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to spelt redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society. Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc.

(b) On unofficial plane particularly violent efforts will be made to weaken power and influence of Western Powers of [on] colonial backward, or dependent peoples. On this level, no holds will be barred. Mistakes and weaknesses of western colonial administration will be mercilessly exposed and exploited. Liberal opinion in Western countries will be mobilized to weaken colonial policies. Resentment among dependent peoples will be stimulated. And while latter are being encouraged to seek independence of Western Powers, Soviet dominated puppet political machines will be undergoing preparation to take over domestic power in respective colonial areas when independence is achieved.

(c) Where individual governments stand in path of Soviet purposes pressure will be brought for their removal from office. This can happen where governments directly oppose Soviet foreign policy aims (Turkey, Iran), where they seal their territories off against Communist penetration (Switzerland, Portugal), or where they compete too strongly, like Labor Government in England, for moral domination among elements which it is important for Communists to dominate. (Sometimes, two of these elements are present in a single case. Then Communist opposition becomes particularly shrill and savage. [)]

(d) In foreign countries Communists will, as a rule, work toward destruction of all forms of personal independence, economic, political or moral. Their system can handle only individuals who have been brought into complete dependence on higher power. Thus, persons who are financially independent--such as individual businessmen, estate owners, successful farmers, artisans and all those who exercise local leadership or have local prestige, such as popular local clergymen or political figures, are anathema. It is not by chance that even in USSR local officials are kept constantly on move from one job to another, to prevent their taking root.

(e) Everything possible will be done to set major Western Powers against each other. Anti-British talk will be plugged among Americans, anti-American talk among British. Continentals, including Germans, will be taught to abhor both Anglo-Saxon powers. Where suspicions exist, they will be fanned; where not, ignited. No effort will be spared to discredit and combat all efforts which threaten to lead to any sort of unity or cohesion among other [apparent omission] from which Russia might be excluded. Thus, all forms of international organization not amenable to Communist penetration and control, whether it be the Catholic [apparent omission] international economic concerns, or the international fraternity of royalty and aristocracy, must expect to find themselves under fire from many, and often [apparent omission].

(f) In general, all Soviet efforts on unofficial international plane will be negative and destructive in character, designed to tear down sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet control. This is only in line with basic Soviet instinct that there can be no compromise with rival power and that constructive work can start only when Communist power is doming But behind all this will be applied insistent, unceasing pressure for penetration and command of key positions in administration and especially in police apparatus of foreign countries. The Soviet regime is a police regime par excellence, reared in the dim half world of Tsarist police intrigue, accustomed to think primarily in terms of police power. This should never be lost sight of in ganging Soviet motives.

Part 5: [Practical Deductions From Standpoint of US Policy]

In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world's greatest peoples and resources of world's richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism. In addition, it has an elaborate and far flung apparatus for exertion of its influence in other countries, an apparatus of amazing flexibility and versatility, managed by people whose experience and skill in underground methods are presumably without parallel in history. Finally, it is seemingly inaccessible to considerations of reality in its basic reactions. For it, the vast fund of objective fact about human society is not, as with us, the measure against which outlook is constantly being tested and re-formed, but a grab bag from which individual items are selected arbitrarily and tendenciously to bolster an outlook already preconceived. This is admittedly not a pleasant picture. Problem of how to cope with this force in [is] undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face. It should be point of departure from which our political general staff work at present juncture should proceed. It should be approached with same thoroughness and care as solution of major strategic problem in war, and if necessary, with no smaller outlay in planning effort. I cannot attempt to suggest all answers here. But I would like to record my conviction that problem is within our power to solve--and that without recourse to any general military conflict.. And in support of this conviction there are certain observations of a more encouraging nature I should like to make:

(1) Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventunstic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw--and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.

(2) Gauged against Western World as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which Western World can muster. And this is factor which it is within our power to influence.

(3) Success of Soviet system, as form of internal power, is not yet finally proven. It has yet to be demonstrated that it can survive supreme test of successive transfer of power from one individual or group to another. Lenin's death was first such transfer, and its effects wracked Soviet state for 15 years. After Stalin's death or retirement will be second. But even this will not be final test. Soviet internal system will now be subjected, by virtue of recent territorial expansions, to series of additional strains which once proved severe tax on Tsardom. We here are convinced that never since termination of civil war have mass of Russian people been emotionally farther removed from doctrines of Communist Party than they are today. In Russia, party has now become a great and--for the moment--highly successful apparatus of dictatorial administration, but it has ceased to be a source of emotional inspiration. Thus, internal soundness and permanence of movement need not yet be regarded as assured.

(4) All Soviet propaganda beyond Soviet security sphere is basically negative and destructive. It should therefore be relatively easy to combat it by any intelligent and really constructive program.

For those reasons I think we may approach calmly and with good heart problem of how to deal with Russia. As to how this approach should be made, I only wish to advance, by way of conclusion, following comments:

(1) Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual.

(2) We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize importance of this. Press cannot do this alone. It must be done mainly by Government, which is necessarily more experienced and better informed on practical problems involved. In this we need not be deterred by [ugliness?] of picture. I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown. It may also be argued that to reveal more information on our difficulties with Russia would reflect unfavorably on Russian-American relations. I feel that if there is any real risk here involved, it is one which we should have courage to face, and sooner the better. But I cannot see what we would be risking. Our stake in this country, even coming on heels of tremendous demonstrations of our friendship for Russian people, is remarkably small. We have here no investments to guard, no actual trade to lose, virtually no citizens to protect, few cultural contacts to preserve. Our only stake lies in what we hope rather than what we have; and I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis.

(3) Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meets Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit--Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.

(4) We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past. It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by experiences of past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, Russians certainly will.

(5) Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After Al, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

KENNAN

800.00B International Red Day/2 - 2546: Airgram

2. “Truman Doctrine,” President Harry S. Truman, 1947

“I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. . . . The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this own nation.”

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Congress of the United States:

The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress. The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved.

One aspect of the present situation, which I wish to present to you at this time for your consideration and decision, concerns Greece and Turkey.

The United States has received from the Greek Government an urgent appeal for financial and economic assistance. Preliminary reports from the American Economic Mission now in Greece and reports from the American Ambassador in Greece corroborate the statement of the Greek Government that assistance is imperative if Greece is to survive as a free nation.

I do not believe that the American people and the Congress wish to turn a deaf ear to the appeal of the Greek Government.

Greece is not a rich country. Lack of sufficient natural resources has always forced the Greek people to work hard to make both ends meet. Since 1940, this industrious and peace loving country has suffered invasion, four years of cruel enemy occupation, and bitter internal strife.

When forces of liberation entered Greece they found that the retreating Germans had destroyed virtually all the railways, roads, port facilities, communications, and merchant marine. More than a thousand villages had been burned. Eighty-five per cent of the children were tubercular. Livestock, poultry, and draft animals had almost disappeared. Inflation had wiped out practically all savings.

As a result of these tragic conditions, a militant minority, exploiting human want and misery, was able to create political chaos which, until now, has made economic recovery impossible.

Greece is today without funds to finance the importation of those goods which are essential to bare subsistence. Under these circumstances the people of Greece cannot make progress in solving their problems of reconstruction. Greece is in desperate need of financial and economic assistance to enable it to resume purchases of food, clothing, fuel and seeds. These are indispensable for the subsistence of its people and are obtainable only from abroad. Greece must have help to import the goods necessary to restore internal order and security, so essential for economic and political recovery.

The Greek Government has also asked for the assistance of experienced American administrators, economists and technicians to insure that the financial and other aid given to Greece shall be used effectively in creating a stable and self-sustaining economy and in improving its public administration.

The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the government's authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A Commission appointed by the United Nations security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia on the other.

Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the government throughout Greek territory. Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.

The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate.

There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.

No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek government.

The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further financial or economic aid after March 31. Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.

We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required.

It is important to note that the Greek Government has asked for our aid in utilizing effectively the financial and other assistance we may give to Greece, and in improving its public administration. It is of the utmost importance that we supervise the use of any funds made available to Greece; in such a manner that each dollar spent will count toward making Greece self-supporting, and will help to build an economy in which a healthy democracy can flourish.

No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. The Government of Greece is not perfect. Nevertheless it represents eighty-five per cent of the members of the Greek Parliament who were chosen in an election last year. Foreign observers, including 692 Americans, considered this election to be a fair expression of the views of the Greek people.

The Greek Government has been operating in an atmosphere of chaos and extremism. It has made mistakes. The extension of aid by this country does not mean that the United States condones everything that the Greek Government has done or will do. We have condemned in the past, and we condemn now, extremist measures of the right or the left. We have in the past advised tolerance, and we advise tolerance now.

Greece's neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.

The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound state is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid.

Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.

Since the war Turkey has sought financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.

That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.

The British government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey.

As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.

I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.

One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.

Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war.

It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world. Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.

Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.

We must take immediate and resolute action.

I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, I have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.

In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such financial and material assistance as may be furnished. I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel.

Finally, I ask that the Congress provide authority which will permit the speediest and most effective use, in terms of needed commodities, supplies, and equipment, of such funds as may be authorized.

If further funds, or further authority, should be needed for purposes indicated in this message, I shall not hesitate to bring the situation before the Congress. On this subject the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government must work together.

This is a serious course upon which we embark.

I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace.

The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than 1 tenth of 1 per cent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.

The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.

If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.

Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.

I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.

3. Summary of the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957

Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.”

4. Mahalia Jackson - How I Got Over Lyrics

1963 March on Washington:  Mahalia Jackson sings her "How I Got Over": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TALcOreZi0A 

"How I Got Over" - Mahalia Jackson

How I got over
How did I make it over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over
How I made it over
Going on over all these years
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

Tell me how we got over Lord
Had a mighty hard time coming on over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did we make it over
Tell me how we got over Lord
I've been falling and rising all these years
But you know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

But, soon as I can see Jesus
The man that died for me
Man that bled and suffered
And he hung on Calvary

And I want to thank him for how he brought me
And I want to thank God for how he taught me
Oh thank my God how he kept me
I'm gonna thank him 'cause he never left me
Then I'm gonna thank God for 'ole time religion
And I'm gonna thank God for giving me a vision
One day, I'm gonna join the heavenly choir
I'm gonna sing and never get tired

And then I'm gonna sing somewhere 'round God alter
And I'm gonna shout all my trouble over
You know I've gotta thank God and thank him for being
So good to me, Lord yeah
How I made it over Lord
I had to cry in the midnight hour coming on over
But you know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

5. Lyrics to Buked And Scorned, “Buked and Scorned” is a traditional African-American spiritual. The first version is the Tuskegee Singers recording “I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned” on Victor Records on Feb. 14, 1916 (released 1918). It was in the repertoire of Mahalia Jackson and was used in the 1960’s Civil Right movement as an anthem. The song appeared in print in the 1888 book, “In Old Alabama: Being the Chronicles of Miss Mouse, the Little Black Merchant” By Anne Hobson, Carol McPherson, Doubleday, Page & Company.

I've been buked and I've been scorned,

I've been buked and I've been scorned,

Children, I've been buked and I've been scorned,

Tryin' to make this journey all alone

You may talk about me sure as you please

Talk about me sure as you please

Children, talk about me sure as you please

Your talk will never drive me down to my knees

Jesus died to set me free

Jesus died to set me free

Children, Jesus died to set me free

Nailed to that cross on Calvary

I've been buked and I've been scorned

I've been buked and I've been scorned

Children, I've been buked and I've been scorned

Tryin' to make this journey all alone

6. If I Had a Hammer (Pete Seeger), sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary at the March on Washington

1963 March on Washington, Peter, Paul & Mary – “If I Had A Hammer” https://youtu.be/AKgm9ARmOMM

Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene.” Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of civil rights.

A prolific songwriter, his best-known songs include the co-written “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” "Flowers" was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German, and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963) while the Byrds had a number one hit with "Turn! Turn! Turn!" in 1965.

Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.

Joan Baez performs "We Shall Overcome" at the March on Washington, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7akuOFp-ET8

Peter, Paul and Mary was an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961, during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio was composed of tenor Peter Yarrow, baritone Noel Paul Stookey, and alto Mary Travers. The group's repertoire included songs written by Bob Dylan. Mary Travers said she was influenced by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers. In the documentary Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On — A Musical Legacy members of the Weavers discuss how Peter, Paul and Mary took over the torch of the social commentary of folk music in the 1960s.

 If I had a hammer,

 I'd hammer in the morning

 I'd hammer in the evening,

 All over this land

 I'd hammer out danger,

 I'd hammer out a warning,

 I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,

 All over this land.

 If I had a bell,

 I'd ring it in the morning,

 I'd ring it in the evening,

 All over this land

 I'd ring out danger,

 I'd ring out a warning

 I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters,

 All over this land.

 If I had a song,

 I'd sing it in the morning,

 I'd sing it in the evening,

 All over this land

 I'd sing out danger,

 I'd sing out a warning

 I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters,

 All over this land.

 Well I got a hammer,

 And I got a bell,

 And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

 It's the hammer of Justice,

 It's the bell of Freedom,

 It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,

 All over this land.

 It's the hammer of Justice,

 It's the bell of Freedom,

 It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,

 All over this land.

7. “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan

Only a Pawn in Their Game. Bob Dylan wrote this about the assassination of activist Medgar Evers and sang it at the podium months before it was released on The Times They are a-Changin'. It stirred controversy for suggesting that Evers' killer shared responsibility for the crime with the wealthy elite who pitted poor whites against blacks. Evers' murder was a catalyst for the 1963 march.

Bob Dylan performs "Only A Pawn In Their Game" at March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963

https://youtu.be/KY2lQV3ADfc

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoofbeats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ’neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game

8. Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez 1963 March on Washington, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcchEekaP1o

Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, and artist who has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind, and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” which became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

9. JFK on the “Negro Question,” dispensation, job quotas by government intervention, News Conference 60, August 20, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, State Department Auditorium, Washington, D.C., August 20, 1963

QUESTION: Mr. President, some Negro leaders are saying that, like the Jews persecuted by the Nazis, the Negro is entitled to some kind of special dispensation for the pain of second-class citizenship over these many decades and generations. What is your view of that in general, and what is your view in particular on the specific point that they are recommending of job quotas by race?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't think-- I don't think that is the generally held view, at least as I understand it, of the Negro community, that there is some compensation due for the lost years, particularly in the field of education.

What I think they would like is to see their children well educated so that they could hold jobs and have their children accepted and have themselves accepted as equal members of the community. So I don't think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now. That is what we are trying to do. I don't think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race or color, or nationality.

I think we get into a good deal of trouble. Our whole view of ourselves is a sort of one society. That has not been true. At least that is where we are trying to go. I think that we ought not to begin the quota system. On the other hand, I do think that we ought to make an effort to give a fair chance to everyone who is qualified, not through a quota, but just look over our employment rolls, look over our areas where we are hiring people, and at least make sure we are giving everyone a fair chance, but not hard and fast quotas. We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.

10. U.S. Constitution

·         Source #6 (U.S. Constitution, Article One [section 8], Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment)

Ø  “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

·         Fourteenth Amendment

Ø  "nor shall any State [...] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

·         Fifteenth Amendment

o   “Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

o   Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

11. As Nicholas Eberstadt points out in the American Enterprise Institute’s publication “The Great Society at Fifty: The Triumph and the Tragedy”: “So deeply impressed is the Great Society into our consciousness that, as a practical matter, it is scarcely possible for most citizens now alive even to imagine the American way of life in the days before our huge, activist, modern welfare state came into existence.”
12. Making Peace With the ‘60s, David Burner, Princeton University Press (1996)

“The rights movement sought, in effect, to bring black Americans under the Declaration of Independence. It stood for one of the truest beliefs of the American experiment: that it should be an aim of a good society to eliminate, as far as possible, the arbitrary and vicious barriers that background and surroundings erect against the full achievement of personal identity. That principal will never, can never, become fully realized, but it is an imperative toward American politics should strive. Nonviolence was fitting for a movement demanding liberation from arbitrary constraints, for that conduct fosters self-discovery and self-making. But another aspirant to the liberation of black Americans had been long present, and in the middle and late 1960s this alternative vision gained prominence once again. This was the concept of race as the nearly exclusive foundation of the identity of African-Americans. As beguiling as nationalism, that corrupter of recent Western and world history, as seductive to American blacks as white racism has been to whites, that embrace of blackness came close to negating the civil rights movement" (p. 49).”

"As to the more aggressive assertiveness that accompanied black power: some of this found its rationale in a selective reading of a subtle and insightful book, The Wretched of the Earth, by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, born in Martinique and a resident of Algeria at the time of his death in 1961. Though he wrote not of the United States but of the Third World, Fanon had wide renown, and black power leaders, among them Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, were drawn to his work. Fanon's thesis is that only through active resistance to their oppressors can oppressed people achieve inner as well as outer freedom, and an authentic collective identity" (p. 52).

[The radical black power movement excluded those not black enough for its liking.] "In 1967, the year that SNCC officially excluded whites from membership, CORE did the same" (p. 68).”

“Though the civil rights movement won formal and in many ways informal equality and brought sizable numbers of blacks into the middle class, it failed to cut the Gordian knots, the most enduring social problems that came out of the country's racial past. Since the great days of the rights demonstrations, black Americans have been prey, more than the rest of the country, to forces corrosive of social order. Especially visible is a black underclass, trapped in a world of drugs, crime, illiteracy, and shattered families. The instabilities of black families, a growing number of them headed by women and mired in welfare dependency, were at the core of black social malaise. So argued the sociologist and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a controversial position paper published in the mid-sixties. Today far more blacks die annually, victims of other blacks, than were killed in all the lynchings in American history. Others are living victims not of the Ku Klux Klan but of street drugs supplied by their black brothers. Drugs, disintegrating families, street violence--these are the ills that threaten black communities, and no vocabulary of black rage will begin effectively to address them" (p. 82)." 

13. “Bodies Upon the Gears,” or “Operation of the Machine,” Mario Savio

Also known as "Operation of the Machine", this speech is possibly Savio's most known work. Speaking on the steps of Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964:

We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received, from a well-meaning liberal, was the following: He said, 'Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?' That's the answer!

Well, I ask you to consider: If this is a firm, and if the board of regents are the board of directors; and if President Kerr in fact is the manager; then I'll tell you something. The faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be—have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product. Don't mean ... Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

14. “For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield

There's something happening here

what it is ain't exactly clear

there's a man with a gun over there

telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children,

what's that sound everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn

nobody's right if everybody's wrong

young people speaking their minds

getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey,

what's that sound everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat

a thousand people in the street

singing songs and carrying signs

mostly say, hooray for our side

it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound

everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep

into your life it will creep it

starts when you're always afraid

you step out of line, the man come and take you away we

better stop, hey, what's that sound everybody

look what's going down stop, hey, what's that

sound everybody look what's going down stop, now,

what's that sound everybody look what's going down stop,

children, what's that sound everybody look what's going down

https://youtu.be/gp5JCrSXkJY

15. Fortunate Son

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when…

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer "More! More! More!" yoh

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, one

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no

Songwriter: John C Fogerty

Fortunate Son lyrics © The Bicycle Music Company

16. “The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture,” TIME

Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967, TIME magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."

17. “Black Power,” Stokely Carmichael, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, after the shooting of James Meredith during the March Against Fear, Carmichael said:

§  “This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!”

18. “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” James Brown

Uh! Your bad self!
Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it louder! I'm black and I'm proud
Look a-here!

Some people say we got a lot of malice, some say it's a lotta nerve
But I say we won't quit movin' until we get what we deserve
We've been buked and we've been scourned
We've been treated bad, talked about as sure as you're born
But just as sure as it take two eyes to make a pair, huh!
Brother we can't quit until we get our share

Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud
Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud
One more time, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, huh!

I've worked on jobs with my feet and my hands
But all the work I did was for the other man
And now we demands a chance to do things for ourselves
We tired of beatin' our head against the wall
An' workin' for someone else

Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud, oh!

Ooh-wee, you're killin' me
Alright, uh, you're out of sight!
Alright, so tough you're tough enough!
Ooh-wee uh! you're killin' me! oow!

Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it louder! I'm black and I'm proud

Now we demand a chance to do things for ourselves
We tired of beatin' our heads against the wall
And workin' for someone else look a-here
There's one thing more I got to say right here
Now, now we're people, we're like the birds and the bees
We rather die on our feet than keep livin' on our knees

Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud huh!
Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud huh!
Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud Lord-a, Lord-a, Lord-a
Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, ooh!

Uh! alright now, good God
You know we can do the boogaloo

Songwriters: James Brown / Alfred James Ellis

Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud [Live In Dallas] lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

19. Excerpts: "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself)", and, "America Is My Home"

"I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself)"

I don't want nobody
To give me nothing
Open up the door
I'll get it myself

Don't give me sorrow
I want equal opportunity
To live tomorrow

Give me schools
And give me better books
So I can read about myself
And gain my truly looks

Some of us try
As hard as we can
We don't want no sympathy
We just wanna be a man

We got talents we can use
On our side of town
Let's get our heads together
And get it up from the ground

Got to get myself together
So many things I got to do
So many things I got to do
I don't need no help from you

Tell everybody, everybody else
All of these things, baby
I got to do it myself

Kids, get that education
And don't you take no more
'Cause if we gonna get
This thing together
Then you got to carry the ball

Songwriters: James Brown

I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

“America Is My Home”

Talking 'bout me leaving America
You gotta be crazy, man, I like
All the nice thing, Jack
Colonial suits and things, look at here

Now I am sorry for the man
Who don't love this land
Now black and white, they may fight
But when up the enemy come
We'll get together and run about all side

I love it

The sun don't come out in rainy weather
But when you ball it down they are still together
Now let's not overlook the fact that we are, we are still in reach
You got to chance to make it and you got a freedom of speech

Say what you wanna, tell 'em how you feel
There may be a lot of places, a lot of places that you like to go
But believe me if you get an education you can blow
You can all it blow, dig this

Now you tell me if I'm wrong
America is still the best country
And that's without a doubt
America is still the best country
Without a doubt

And if anybody says it ain't, you can try to put him out
They ain't going nowhere, you got a good fight
When I tell you one time that I was a shoeshine boy
Every word I said, I meant

But name me any other country
You can start out as a shoeshine boy
And shake hand with the president
It ain't gonna help you gotta had that royal blood to make it
And I ain't got nothing royal but me
So I can take the chances, I'm gonna stay home

And look at here I got a brand new jet
When I need to move
I saw a brother made it
Now it ain't that a rule

So look at here
Brothers and sisters and friends, dig this
So quit your dreaming all night
Stop beatin' yourself and get up and fight

Don't give up, you might give up, but just don't give out
I know if you give out don't give up
There's no quick going, I mean like keep it moving you know
Cause if you stop like a ball quit rolling

Now we got two of the [Incomprehensible] from Florida to Rome
Which we know there's one thing we'll never forget
America's still our home, hit it bad
God bless America, I'm talking about me too
You know I'm American myself, I like that kind of thing, look at here

Songwriters: Hayward Epps Moore / James Brown

America Is My Home lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

20. “Revolution,” the Beatles

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead.

21. “Chicago,” Crosby, Stills, & Nash

So your brother's bound and gagged
And they've chained him to a chair
Won't you please come to Chicago just to sing
In a land that's known as freedom how can such a thing be fair

Won't you please come to Chicago for the help that we can bring
We can change the world rearrange the world
It's dying - to get better
Politicians sit yourselves down, there's nothing for you here

Won't you please come to Chicago for a ride
Don't ask jack to help you `cause he'll turn the other ear
Won't you please come to Chicago or else join the other side
We can change the world rearrange the world

It's dying - if you believe in justice
Dying - and if you believe in freedom
Dying - let a man live his own life
Dying - rules and regulations, who needs them open up the door

Somehow people must be free I hope the day comes soon
Won't you please come to Chicago show your face
From the bottom of the ocean to the mountains of the moon
Won't you please come to Chicago no one else can take your place

We can change the world rearrange the world
It's dying - if you believe in justice
Dying - and if you believe in freedom
Dying - let a man live his own life
Dying - rules and regulations, who needs them open up the door

Songwriters: Donald Clint Goodman / Jack S. Conrad

Chicago lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group

22. Various historic sources on the issue of a standing army

James Madison: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

Patrick Henry: “A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?”

Henry St. George Tucker in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England: “Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”

Commonwealth of Virginia in 1788: “… that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.”

Pennsylvania Convention: “… as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.”

U.S. State Department website: “Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.”

23. “Ohio,” Neil Young, as performed by Mott The Hoople (Cf. https://youtu.be/zmYLC4fVcHI)

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

We're finally on our own

This summer I hear the drumming

Four dead in Ohio

Gotta’ get down to it

Soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been done long ago

What if you knew her?

And found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

Gotta’ get down to it

Soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been done long ago

What if you knew her?

And found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

We're finally on our own

This summer I hear the drumming

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio

Name __________________________________________                                Date _____________________                                            

History Test #__--The Death of Liberalism

___________/100

Define: (         /10)

1.      executive power

2.      segregation

Short Answer:

3.      What was the Cold War which began after World War II and what was American policy?

(      /20)

4.                  Why was revolution in the air during 1968 and what critical events occurred as a result of anti-war protests?

(       /25)

Geography: (       /10)

5.      Find and identify Chicago, Ohio, Memphis, March on Washington, Cuba

Essay Question

Directions: Read the following questions carefully. Answer only one of the following questions in paragraph form on a separate piece of paper. Include in your answer a thesis statement and relevant supporting details. (        /35)

6.      Why was music such a powerful force in the 1960s and how does it reveal what happened during the period?

-or-

       Six

Evaluate the social movements of the 1960s and the success or failure of the Civil Rights Movement, Great Society programs, and black power.

Name __________________________________________                                Date _____________________                                             

History Test #__--The Death of Liberalism

___________/100

Define: (         /10)

7.      executive power

expand war-making privileges and deploy military troops

8.      segregation

color barriers between whites and blacks

Short Answer:

9.      What was the Cold War which began after World War II and what was American policy?

(      /20)

The Cold War began when the United States, without question the most powerful country in the world following World War II, tried to use its power to proclaim a new global order based on democracy and capitalism. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, which undeniably bore the brunt of the fighting during the war, with an astounding 23 million dead, rejected the American world order, favoring instead communism and a world revolution in the name of the worker. The “long telegram” was drafted in 1946 by George F. Kennan, the senior American diplomat stationed in Moscow. Kennan’s response to communist expansion came to be called containment. As the policy of containment went into effect, it was clear the United States was not only in an ideological war with communism and the Soviet Union, but was also willing to back it up with military might and economic support. The Domino Theory, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the Eisenhower Doctrine was American policy developed throughout the Cold War.

10.              Why was revolution in the air during 1968 and what critical events occurred as a result of anti-war protests?

(       /25)

o   Emergence of the Black Power movement

o   Martin Luther King was assassinated

o   Robert Kennedy was assassinated

o   Attempted assassination of George Wallace, a presidential contender

o   The Democratic Party Convention in Chicago

o   Youth riots, demonstrations in urban areas resulting in the “Long Hot Summers”

o   Student protests against the war in Vietnam

o   Election of Richard Nixon as President

By 1968 revolution was in the air and with increasing anti-war protests, the Vietnam Tet offensive, and student riots in France, the Beatles and Gil Scott Heron described the incendiary period as revolutionary. Youth, riots, anti-war protest, and politics all seemed to come to a head at the Democratic Party Convention in August of 1968. Tens of thousands of protesters swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo. By the time Vice President Herbert Humphrey received the presidential nomination, the strife within the Democratic Party was laid bare and the streets of Chicago had seen riots and bloodshed involving protesters, police and bystanders alike, radically changing America’s political and social landscape. Chaos preceded the Convention. The months leading up to the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention were turbulent. The pandemonium at the 1968 Democratic National Convention did little to stop the Vietnam War or win the 1968 presidential election. By the end of the year, Republican Richard M. Nixon was President-elect of the United States and 16,592 American soldiers had been killed in Vietnam, the most of any year since the war began.

The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) occurred at Kent State University in the US city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the “excursion” into neighboring Cambodia from Vietnam which was perceived as an escalation of the Vietnam War. The Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30, had just been revealed. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

Geography: (       /10)

11.  Find and identify Chicago, Ohio, Memphis, March on Washington, Cuba

Essay Question

Directions: Read the following questions carefully. Answer only one of the following questions in paragraph form on a separate piece of paper. Include in your answer a thesis statement and relevant supporting details. (        /35)

12.  Why was music such a powerful force in the 1960s and how does it reveal what happened during the period?

·         Rock ‘n’ roll developed in the mid-1950s synthesizing African-American music and pop music.

·         Entrepreneurs took advantage of the privileges of citizenship and flourished during the early 1960s America.

·         Students should grasp that individuals from traditional religious and moral backgrounds, i.e., Christian gospel singers, social justice folk-singers, and Bob Dylan (who is Jewish), are in the forefront of liberal social change in the civil rights movement and early anti-war efforts.

·         "For What It's Worth" was written because of the "Sunset Strip riots" in November 1966.

·         Eastern religion and spirituality entered through the Beatles influence.

·         The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16 to June 18 in 1967 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love."

·         The “San Francisco Sound” indicated how popular the anti-war movement had grown since the mid-1960s.

·         The integrationist wing of civil rights, represented by James Brown, is to be distinguished against the black power separatists.

·         By 1968 revolution was in the air and with increasing anti-war protests, the Vietnam Tet offensive, and student riots in France, the Beatles decided to issue an overtly political song, “Revolution.”

·         The 1960s and into the 1970s was a period of social protest and discontent. For example, consider Gil Scott Heron’s, incendiary, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

·         The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock—was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music".

·         On the other hand, a subsequent festival was the low point. The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture-era rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore.

·         The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) occurred at Kent State University in the US city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970.

-or-

       Six

Evaluate the social movements of the 1960s and the success or failure of the Civil Rights Movement, Great Society programs, and black power.

·         African-Americans were making financial strides and the individualistic civil rights movement was gaining strength in the early 1960s.

·         The government intervened through legislation.

·         Social programs that focused on equality of result were ineffective.

·         One of liberalism’s 1960s icon, JFK, was one of America’s most popular presidents and he firmly opposed racial quotas.

·         The Republican Party favored civil rights in 1964.

·         The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65.

·         Five decades, nearly $22 trillion and roughly 80 welfare programs later, the Great Society is largely a failure.

·         Blackness, as a concept, came close to negating the Civil Rights movement.

·         The “New Left” was inspired by the civil rights movement and radical student activism began to spread across America’s college campuses in the early 1960s but failed to make progress in civil rights.

·         The 1960s were characterized by two contrasting viewpoints on civil rights as represented by Malcom X and Stokely Carmichael as opposed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Brown.

·         Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks.

·         King had faith that "the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God" could reform white America through the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.

·         Carmichael saw the concept of "Black Power" as a means of group solidarity, take over, society is at fault with institutional racism. Instead of individual achievement Black Power meant taking control based on racial differences.

World War II Lecture 4 Victor Davis Hanson Hillsdale

/worldwarii/lecture-04/world-war-2---lecture-4

Overview:

While World War II gave rise to significant advancements in air and naval power, ground operations remained the key to success. The war’s belligerents employed a variety of means and tactics, based on geography, history, military command, and politics. However, they all pursued a common goal—the destruction of the enemy’s industrial capacity and the occupation of his capital.

Nietzsche Life Is Not Meaningless

https://medium.com/@harrystead17/fighting-nihilism-why-life-is-not-meaningless