Lecture 17 the usa after 1950

17.1. The civil rights movement: 1950s — 1960s.

17.1.1. The Reconstruction failed to solve the problem of racial inequality. Blacks still had separate schools, transportation, restaurants, and parks, many of which were poorly funded and inferior to those of whites. Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs went up to separate the races in every possible place. The system of segregation also included the denial of voting rights. During World War I, black soldiers were segregated, denied the opportunity to be leaders, and were subjected to racism within the armed forces. The Great Depression increased black protests against discrimination, especially in Northern cities. Blacks organized school boycotts in Northern cities to protest discriminatory treatment of black children at schools.

17.1.2. More complicated was the educational situation in the South in the 1950s. White opposition had grown into massive resistance to the desegregation orders. Tactics included firing school employees who showed willingness to seek integration, closing public schools rather than desegregating, and boycotting all public education that was integrated. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, the Governor refused to admit nine black students to Central High School, and President Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation. The event was covered by the national media, and the fate of the Little Rock Nine, the students attempting to integrate the school, dramatized the seriousness of the school desegregation issue to many Americans. The same situation took place in 1963 at the University of Alabama.

17.1.3. Despite the threats and violence, the struggle quickly moved beyond school desegregation to challenge segregation in other areas. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black woman, was told to give up her seat on a city bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama. When Parks refused to move, she was arrested. Montgomery's black community organized a boycott of the buses. It lasted for more than a year and dramatized to the American public the determination of blacks in the South to end segregation. It ended in triumph.

17.1.4. A young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest made King a national figure. Later he led more than 200,000 women and men from all over the United States to Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, for a peaceful civil rights demonstration. The protesters gathered to show support for a broad civil rights bill. During the demonstration, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the giant sculpture of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, in which he expressed the ideals of the civil rights movement. King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was assassinated in April 1968.

17.2. The Kennedy Administration and the Vietnam War.

17.2.1. The early 1960s saw the election of the youngest person ever to be President of the USA. John F. Kennedy assumed the office in 1961, 35th president of the United States. As president, Kennedy directed his initial policies toward invigorating the country, attempting to release it from the grip of economic recession. He made direct appeals for public service and public commitment, paying particular attention to civil rights. The energy and possibility of his message was cut short when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

17.2.2. Kennedy was assassinated before he completed his third year as president. His achievements, both foreign and domestic, were therefore limited. Nevertheless, his influence was worldwide, and his handling of the Cuban missile crisis may have prevented war. Young people especially admired him, and perhaps no other president was so popular. He brought to the presidency an awareness of the cultural and historical traditions of the United States and an appreciation of intellectual excellence.

17.2.3. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson brought the country into the Vietnam War. By 1968 about 500,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam. The Soviet Union and China gave supplies to the North Vietnamese. In the end all sides agreed to stop fighting. The United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam. During the conflict, approximately 3.2 million Vietnamese were killed, in addition to another 1.5 million to 2 million Lao and Cambodians who were drawn into the war. Nearly 58,000 Americans lost their lives. The war caused great social upheavals in the country. By the way, the early stages of American involvement in Vietnam are graphically described in the novel by British author Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1954).

17.2.4. The Vietnam War further radicalized many American youth. The anti-war protest took place on a large scale. Demonstrations took place, in which youth chanted, "All we are saying is give peace a chance". The peace movement’s demonstrations soon merged with the student protest. In fact, at that time college campuses filled with young people who had the freedom to question the moral and spiritual health of the nation. That's why another facet of the youth movement was an apolitical counterculture, made up of people who were known as hippies. These young people refused materialism, mocked convention, joined communes, enjoyed rock music, and experimented with drugs and sex.

In August 1969 hippies gathered at the Woodstock Festival to celebrate love and peace. It drew more than 300,000 spectators to become one of largest mass-gatherings in the history of popular music. During the monumental three-day event some of the greatest musicians of the 1960s performed, including Janis Joplin and Joan Baez. Singer Joe Cocker and guitar player Carlos Santana became overnight stars. Jimi Hendrix, the final act of the festival, played a freeform solo guitar rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”