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THE ELECTION OF 1968 By 1968 the country was in tur- moil over both the Vietnam War and civil disorder, expressed in ur- ban riots that reflected African- American anger . On March 31, 1968, the president renounced any inten- tion of seeking another term . Just a week later, Martin Luther King Jr . […]

THE WAR IN VIETNAM Dissatisfaction with the Great So- ciety came to be more than matched by unhappiness with the situation in Vietnam . A series of South Viet- namese strong men proved little more successful than Diem in mobi- lizing their country . The Viet Cong, insurgents supplied and coordinated from North Vietnam, gained

DECADES OF CHANGE: 1960-1980 Johnson succeeded in the effort to provide more federal aid for el- ementary and secondary schooling, traditionally a state and local func- tion . The measure that was enacted gave money to the states based on the number of their children from low-income families . Funds could be used to assist

LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE GREAT SOCIETY Lyndon Johnson, a Texan who was majority leader in the Senate before becoming Kennedy’s vice president, was a masterful politician . He had been schooled in Congress, where he developed an extraordinary abil- ity to get things done . He excelled at pleading, cajoling, or threatening as necessary to

KENNEDY AND THE COLD WAR President Kennedy came into of- fice pledging to carry on the Cold War vigorously, but he also hoped for accommodation and was reluc- tant to commit American power . During his first year-and-a-half in office, he rejected American in- tervention after the CIA-guided Cuban exile invasion at the Bay of

KENNEDY AND THE RESURGENCE OF BIG GOVERNMENT LIBERALISM By 1960 government had become an increasingly powerful force in people’s lives . During the Great De- pression of the 1930s, new execu- tive agencies were created to deal with many aspects of American life . During World War II, the number of civilians employed by the

THE COUNTERCULTURE The agitation for equal opportuni- ty sparked other forms of upheaval . Young people in particular rejected the stable patterns of middle-class life their parents had created in the decades after World War II . Some plunged into radical political activ- ity; many more embraced new stan- dards of dress and sexual behavior

THE NATIVE-AMERICAN MOVEMENT In the 1950s, Native Americans struggled with the government’s pol- icy of moving them off reservations and into cities where they might as- similate into mainstream America . Many of the uprooted often had dif- ficulties adjusting to urban life . In 1961, when the policy was discontin- ued, the U .S

THE LATINO MOVEMENT In post-World War II America, Americans of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent had faced discrimina- tion . New immigrants, coming from Cuba, Mexico, and Central Ameri- ca — often unskilled and unable to speak English — suffered from dis- crimination as well . Some Hispanics worked as farm laborers and at times

THE WOMEN(S) MOVEMENT During the 1950s and 1960s, in- creasing numbers of married wom- en entered the labor force, but in 1963 the average working woman earned only 63 percent of what a man made . That year Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, an explosive critique of middle- class living patterns that articulated a