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Uni Notes

Lecture Notes

HSTAA 465

Table of contents
  1. Lecture 1: The 1960s – A Crisis of National Unity
  2. Lecture 2: Last Shots, First Shots – WWII and the New World Order
    1. Part 1: Communism: A New Existential Threat
    2. Part 2: Battlefields of the Cold War
  3. Lecture 3: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights
  4. Lecture 4: Prosperity, Consumerism, and Environment
  5. Lecture 5: Critique, Discontent, and Alternatives
  6. Lecture 6: Kennedy and the Cold War
  7. Lecture 7: Civil Rights – Policy and Activism During 1964 and 1965
  8. Lecture 8: The Great Society
  9. Lecture 9: The Vietnam War in Country (1964 - 1965)
  10. Lecture 10: The Rise of Black Power
  11. Lecture 11: New Left, New Right
  12. Lecture 12: Counterculture, Subculutre, and Dropping Out
  13. Lecture 13: Vietnam War – 1966 - 1967
  14. Sum Up
  15. Lecture 14: 1968, Part 1 – things Fall Apart
  16. Lecture 15: 1968, Part 2 – Global & National Changes
  17. Lecture 16: The Sexual Revolution
  18. Lecture 17: They’re Selling Hippie Wigs in Woolworth’s, Man
    1. Invasion of Cambodia
    2. Kent State, 1970
    3. Jackson State Shootings
    4. Pentagon Papers, 1971
    5. Vietnam Vets Against the War
    6. Operation Linebacker (1972)
  19. Lecture 18:A New Environmentalism
  20. Lecture 19: Out of the Quagmire
  21. Lecture 20: Pop Culture – Visual Art and Film
  22. Lecture 16: The Fallout from the 1960s

Lecture 1: The 1960s – A Crisis of National Unity

Unfortunately my notes previously were lost because my computer lost battery and GitHub was stalling :(

  • What is meant by consensus? Enough to provide definitiona nd form to the dominant culture
  • Consensus over what? What was broken? What happens to the stories which hold the US together?
  • American exceptionalism: the grand narrative of US history
  • The acceptnace of New Deal liberalism
  • WWII entirely changes the coordinates
  • High unemployment in the US
  • The US is built up by WWII – the world’s leading manufacturing econoy, an explosion of the middle class. WWII shapes everything. The monolith of WWII casts a shadow over everything we talk about. It is the children of WWII who are asked to go to Vietnam.
  • Post WWI, we have a hightened sense of the US at its zenith.
  • American exceptionalism: a grand narrative of US history after 1945. Defeat of totalitarianism, Nazi Germany, etc. Rebuilding of the ecnoy. A global reputation as a leader.
  • Changing the global currency from the British pound to the US dollar. The UN is founded and located in NYC.
  • Not simply – the US as the greatest country in the world, but more importantly, the US and its people are not bound to historical trends and patterns which all other nations adn peoples are bound towards. The central claim of American exceptionalism. You can have coups and militant conflict, but we are these people for whom the actions on the outside do not apply.
  • Jan 6th – this is not who we are, how could this happen here? We are this other group of people. This is now central to the story of American exceptionalism.
  • Four narratives which underwrite post-1945 grad narratives of American exceptionalism: state and society, materialism, social liberation, and just war
  • State and society
    • What is the relationship between civil society and the civilian?
    • Because of the origins in the US Constitution, our governmental system has design integrity against corrupt, incompetent individuals.
    • An incorruptability of the government
    • Assassinations, the Vietnam War, responses to civic protests, and media coverage destroyed the purity of the system. Thereafter Americans viewed the system as corrupted and elected officials as untrustworthy liars.
    • A nation so broken by the politics of the long 1960s.
    • Public trust in elected officials falls precipitously in the mid 60s.
    • Origin of the culture wars in Bill Clinton
    • high point in public trust after 9/11
    • All time low public trust currently.
    • Narrative of what happens between state and society? Our politics has been profoundly broken.
  • Materialism
    • Rivers catching on fire (Cuyahoga river fire, 1969)
    • Progressive nations, looking forward.
    • “the US has no history”
    • Fear of nuclear war, fallout, the world is falling – the environment is collapsing. What is going to happen going forward?
    • The future is not necessarily better, and we see in this generation that the future indeed will pose large problems.
  • Social liberation.
    • Civil rights – we see the unacknowledged dominance of white men in society accepted
    • Generally normal, understood, and accepted.
    • “Good white people” (Malcolm X)
    • My life is my life, I’m not directly involved in oppression of black people: that’s not my problem. An unchecked sense of superiority
    • Civil rights movements often conflict with each other: for instance there was a heavy dose of chauvanism running in the Black Panther Party.
  • War.
    • Previous idea: America fights just wars and always wins.
    • Always in defense, never an aggressor
    • All problematic ideas. Why don’t Ameircans know about the Phillipine war? Or much about the Korean war? Indigenous wars?
    • A source of shame emerged in the 1960s from Vietnam etc.: and a need to place blame. Who is to be blamed?
    • Americans aren’t exceptional – as demonstrated in Afghanistan.
    • The Civil War: different visions for the future; a radical abolitionist perspective, and also the ameleriorist vision which dominated and produced Jim Crow laws: America does not want to commit the Civil War to memory. Generations later, the Daughters of the Confederacy make the move to build the narrative of lost cause: the Confederates were still brave and noble men, just happening to be on the wrong side of the battle – states rights, etc.
    • What stories do we tell ourselves about what we are and where we came from?
    • The lost cause vision reinforces a white supremacist vision of America: rebirth of a nation.
    • Why were there so few executions after the Civil War? After the Dakota uprising, 38 Sioux leaders were hung. What kind of reconciliation did America settle with?
  • Project idea: Understanding the relationship between analytic philosophers, educational institutions, and radical student movements in the 1960: precisely how analytic philosophy reconciled this with its political neutral and castrated philosophical position.

Lecture 2: Last Shots, First Shots – WWII and the New World Order

  • Argument: WWII brought a sense that global order was needed to stave off another great conflagration in the future, but the emergence of the US and the Soviet Union as two great competing forces introduced a new destabilizing conflict.
    • Brings about a desire for order, not only in the US and its allies but the USSR and similarly devastated countries – a desire for order which conflicts between the US and the USSR, which attempt to impose a different form of order. This leads towards a contest for the mode of global order – a new mode of destabilization.
  • Key terms – don’t think of them in an isolated way, understand how they fit together in a story.

Part 1: Communism: A New Existential Threat

  • Everything changes with WWII: a globally altering event.
  • The US changes significantly: constantly imaging existential threats is something which starts in WWII – a war against totalitarianism, will democracy survive? Confrontation with communism: the new existential threat
    • Nuclear war, threat to American system (capitalism, democracy, etc.)
  • US war production
    • American working people help win the war: produced a lot of stuff used by Allies to win the war
    • American manufacturing sector grows significantly during WWII; US comes out not damaged but built up; Ford plants turned into making tanks.
    • American manufacturing system changes the economic mode of the country.
    • Wages go up 68%, but cost of living comes up 28%; we now have an explosion of the American middle class.
    • New Deal policies Roosevelt introduced help began a consolidation of power in the hands of large corporations, which cotinues throughout the war – consolidation of farming, factory work, etc.
  • Bretton Woods conference, 1944
    • World leaders get together and discuss econoics
    • Many trade barriers – global economics stymied; greater free market system post-war.
    • More agreements for better trade exports, imports, etc.
    • Creationo f the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to help build up countreis from the war
    • Walter Lippman: ‘father of Ameircan journalism’ – publishes The New Republic, 20th century as the American century
  • Yalta Conference: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin; Potsdam: Atlay, Truman, Stalin
    • Begin talking about what to do with the rest of the world
    • Colonial possessions
    • Hemispheres of repirations – USSR was heavily damaged, they want reparations. How to begin to recoop from the war.
    • What is the fate of Eastern Europe?
    • Truman becomes an interesting feature: weak foreign policy. Relies on many of his advisors, has many decisions to make. Deals with the situation developing in southeast Asia, etc.
  • US and Soviet troops meet at Elbe River in Germany (1945) – both sides did try to make friends – they had to. Tired from the war, no one wanted to keep on fighting. Everyone tried to make friends but theyw ere also fairly scared of each other at the same time.
  • Stalin is an interestging figure: may be the worst mass murderer in all history. But his decisions really are quite moderate. He could have made more dictatorial positions but in fact what Stalin is doing in Eastern Europe after the war is trying to be conciliatory with the US and with Britain + the Allies. Although this does not last very long (only a few years) before large change.
  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki – August 6 and 9, 1945. At least 145k civilians killed in 4 months
    • Signalling to the Russians that they were not going to get Japan
    • Usher in a new age of life: while it wants to control others’ nuclear weapons, the US is the only country which has actuallye ver used them against civilian populations.
    • Set off a new kind of international arms race: after some time many other countries have nuclear weapons
  • WWII deaths – Russia has had a major bloodletting in the Soviet Union; a large hand played in negotiations, they have suffered the most. Allies stopped in 1945 – coudl have run further into Germany but hold back because Stalin wants soem of what’s in Germany
    • 25m people in Soviet Union, China lost many civilians
    • United States: relatively small
  • Russia as the ‘sole great power on the Continent’ – area linking the black sea to the Mediterranean – America wanted to make sure the Darnell strait was not something the Soviet could set up in, + shipping interests; also east and southeast asia become important areas of conflict
  • US will back alkl of the colonial nations taking back their colonial possessions
    • Except Thailand, all of Asia was held by colonial powers
    • Occupation of Southern part of the korean peninsula and Japan
  • China was in the middle of a large civil war
  • Truman: really allowing the USSR to cast a big shadow. An unfortunate thing that there wasn’t more clarity between America and the USSR
  • US begcomes more interested in the Middle East: oil for security agreement with Saudi Arabia
    • Gets us interested in the middle east – a linkage to oil.
    • FDR & King Abdulaziz on the USS Quincy, 1945
    • First modern, heavily mechanized armies. They eat a lot of oil: they need a large quantity of oil. The American economy now produces consumer goods with a large number of goods
  • United Nations, 1945: New York, mission to collectively keep peace
    • Attempt to create a body which solves problems before they arise
    • To understand Germany with the eradication of Jews, there is an emerging term towards “human rights”, which in fact had not been tossed around in international circles much before. This presents interesting problems for the US. What is the US record on human rights? The USSR gets great mileage by pointing at the American South and Black people.
    • Truman: we are getting beat up at the UN over our civil rights record, we need to do something
    • Civil Rights: a push comes a lot from criticism during the Cold War who criticize us during the Cold War
  • New Lexicon to the world: first, second, and third worlds – a language which didn’t exist before, but we now have this during the UN (1945)
    • Second order (Communism) is sort of done away now…
    • First and third world still returns
    • The language for this New Lexicon is a first world conception: first world people who thing about taxonomizing the world – those who are like us and those who are not
    • This becomes a way to talk about people – how do people talk about the world? WB, IMF – targets, the 3rd world, to redirect consumer behavior towards American products
    • “development thesis” – first world countries, wealthy countries of the world make large amounts of money from loans from the IMF and WB to go to the third world and build roads and dams which pay off well to the contractors but rarely solve third world problems
    • Not asking people in the third world what are you doing to solve your issues? Made money…
  • Atomic energy commission (AEC)
    • Looking at places to test more nuclear weapons. This nwill now be the critical dimension of the US military.
    • Turn to the South Pacific: some islands.
    • Choose the Marshall Islands: these are not empty, but like the removal of indigenous people, the US army goes in and moves them away so that they can test nuclear weapons after 1945
    • Large numbers of naval ships stay in the South Pacific – chained animals to the deck to see what happens – all theoretical physics.
    • If you read abuot the atmospheric tests, you will see that they are trying to understand the bombs – the two bombs they tried in Japan were very different: culture of experimentation and testing, more efficient weapon building
    • These are fission bombs being tested; fusion happens in the Sun, but fission is going to be smaller. Hydrogen bombs are larger, use fusion
    • Operation Crossorads: Baker test at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands (1946)
    • Continues to fall into a hegemonic pattern of displacement
  • Spread of Communism
    • A few places where there is no debate: Poland will be occupied by USSR, Stalin insisted on this
    • Bulgaria and Romania had worked with Germany but to be occupied byt he USSR
    • Czechoslovaki and Hungary had Free elections for a few years until in 1948 and 1949.
    • Communist nationalist resistance movements in other countries.
    • What happens in Vietnam? Nationalists first, communists second
    • Cannot throw all countries (Albania, Yugoslavia, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) into just one communist movement – ‘international communism’
    • No distinction between nationalism, communism, socialism, etc. made by the US government
  • George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” (1946)
    • Kennan – diplomat working in the Soviet Union
    • A telegram sent to the state government on what happens in the Soviet Union – fears of capitalist encirclement leading to international manipulation, etc. Recommended the US identify the USSR as an enemy and begin strategic planning
    • Policy track: leads towards contingent steps in rising tensions, leads towards the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NSC-68: US policy of containment which gets the US into the Korean and Vietnam wars
  • 1946, claim of post-WWII territory: an iron curtain has descended across the European continent. Dropping of an iron curtain behind which was only Soviet influence, not open to the free world.
    • 1946, Republicans gain both houses of congress, first since 1932.
    • Truman looked in trouble, but later wrote that this in fact freed him up. He felt freer, he could take bold action which hew anted to take anyway. Bold action on Civil Rights and the Cold War
  • The Truman Doctrine (1947)
    • Lending of large amounts of money to places in the world such that they didn’t fall under the influence of the Soviet Union
    • Military aid given to Turkey and Greece
    • Truman – wanted to see Germany unified, currently divided across US, Britain, France, USSR
    • Marshall Plan: $13 billion given to European nations, again to resist Communist influence, staying within American realm
    • Policy of containment: putting in place new forms of aid and weaponry to push back the Soviets, to make sure Communism didn’t spread
    • Belief of two worlds emerging – one free, and one Moscovian
  • McCarthyism and the Red Square – late 1940s to mid 1950s
    • Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin made himself very well known by making accusations and suggestions that there were many communist subversives in the US political structure
    • Threw out this idea and it landed very well: people picked up on it and McCarthy really went after it – had lists of who was a Communist
    • Freaked out the whole country about Comunists in our mist
    • Second Red Scare (after 1920s), became really dangerous to be accused of being a communist – blacklisted from services, lose your job… agencies began working on it, FBI and CIA expanded massively (CIA relatively new) and begins to look into American behaviors, NSA emerges, AEC does secret tests on people in state-run facilities. Orphans with mental disabilities – feeding radioactive food, etc. Peeking into private lives. This is where we get the great fear-mongering around homosexuality, which hadn’t really been put down before.
    • Banning of homosexuals from military service (1949) – homosexuality would be so shameful that it would make someone easy to be blackmailed
    • Not easy to be critical of nuclear testing, could get you accused of being a communist
    • mid 50s, people stopped taking McCarthy so serious, drunk himself to death
    • Fear of communism begins to erode American values – people begin to register fear about what it means: what if Americans are spying on each other and giving away names, what does that mean for American values? What does our country stand for? Look at what Communism is doing for us as a nation?
  • Communist China
    • Communists in China win the Civil War in 1949, nationalists move to Taiwan and mainland China is taken over under Mao Zedong
    • US had never possessed China but registered this as the loss of China: the divide of the world into 2, a zero-sum game: if we don’t possess it, we’ve lost it
    • Fever pitch of American fears of communism – communism would not march around the world!
    • Soviet Union tested their first nuclear device: now not the only ones holding nuclear weapons
    • NATO (1949) – put Europe under the nuclear umbrella, to be guarded by American forces.
  • NSC-68 and the policy of containment (1950)
    • NSC-68: US policy statement that the Cold War was an epic struggle between freedom and the slavery and grim oligarchy of communism
    • Foreign policy as an epic struggle between these two forces
    • USSR animtated by a fanatic faith to take over the world, aniothetically
    • Need to contain the USSR and not let it spread any further.
    • This leads us to containment, which leads the US to become mired in these wars
    • Means: US needs more money for infrastructure, tanks, etc. – Americna taxpayers have a hefty bill to pay, people begin to worry about the taxes needed – what does this mean to the US?; and new concrete policy direction
  • By 1950, US is thinking about aid
    • Creation of Israel, military aid for Iran and Saudi Arabia, aid to all SE Asia nations, defense of Taiwan, etc. – all a fear of Communism
    • Worried about nuclear disaster – get under the desk and cover up, practicing for a nuclear war.
    • Paradox of preparing to conront a totalitarian enemy – what is the existential threat of communism doing to the country?
    • Might the US become a garrison state? – a state which raises taxes, has a global military presence, peers into American lives, reorient what we mean by freedom
  • A free nation as a world power: battling foreign influence without ruining the US – ho to become a garrison state.
  • At this point where the US commits to global military dominance, begins with this sort of Communist scare
    • Eisenhower: beware the military industrial complex
  • Hydrogen bomb, 1952. New interest in developing fusion bombs. First tested in 1952, another level of the Cold War and the arms race: begins metaphysical conversations about what is going on, what will happen int he world, etc. 10,400 vs 15 (atomic) kt of TNT.
    • What is man capable of? Doing what the sun has done?
    • The Atomic Cafe
    • People are very much kept in the dark – atomic malaise which sets in
    • Something significant about the hydrogen in hydrogen bomb – the smallest, most innocuous element
    • Oppenheimer, in charge of the WWII bombs, changes his tune, is later against hydrogen bombs. Should we build the hydrogen bomb? Create the fission explosino to make the fusion explosion. Oppenheimer: don’t do it, we shouldn’t open that door, leads you down this metaphysical existential pathway.
    • Caastle Bravo Test, Marshall Islands, 1954 – exceeded the projected power by 2505, 1000x larger than the Hiroshima bomb. They don’t really know what they are doing
  • Fallout
    • Even though staked out an area to protect people, explosion was bigger and cut some people, including Japanese Fisherman “The Lucky Dragon”, died of radioactive poisoning
    • Radioactive materials showed up in America’s ports: radioactive tea, radioactive tuna: unleashing a massive public health problem

Part 2: Battlefields of the Cold War

  • Decolonization and the third world
  • Major changes in WWII – beginning of decolonization. The US had in 46 given Philippine Independence. US pressured GB to give up its colonies as well. Belief in the self determination of nations
  • Philippines: Spanish then American then Japanese then American (1946)
  • British Empire at its height held 1/4 of the globe
  • India and Gandhi
    • Salt March to protest British salt monopoly
    • Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947
    • Realization by colonized people that thei rresources are being extracted unjustly
    • The attempt to nationalize resources
    • Gandhi was interested in nonviolent tactics and will influence many leaders in the Civil Rights movement.
    • Byard Ruston – not written in the history books because he was gay – education of non-violent tactics into American civil rights.
  • Korea: test of US containment policy
    • 1948 - 1950: became the focus point for an early cold war
    • Strategically unimportant; Americans know almost nothing about it and don’t want to be involved in it. But needs to be a place which the US must stand up in.
    • Korean War, 1950 - 1953: Kim Il Sung (communist-nationalist) and Syngman Rhee (anti-communist, authoritarian) – Rhee not a great ally but this is what we got with
  • Korean War: 1950, Communists attacked in the South and almost push UN forces out of the peninsula; then American forces come in and push Communist forces back into the South and almost go to the river; then 1951 Chinese come across the border and push the Americans back to the current obrder between north and south Korea. Fight over the DMZ.
  • French in indochina – want to come back. There is an anti-colonial revolution in Indochina. French in Indochina since 1858. Vietnamese communist resistance movement getting rid of the japanese, then the French – not saviors, and do not want to open up to French colonization. US supported France even though it was counter to the self-determination beliefs
    • National Liberation Front, Viet Minh – getting better at how to fight the French
    • Kennedy – stopping wars of ‘national liberation’
    • French and anti-communists in the South Vietnam: French-speaking Buddhists, didn’t really respect their own population – not uncommon in post-colonial societies.
    • The colonized leaders – colonizers leave but new people who take over are not necessarily great
  • French defeat by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, Indochina – beat the French, battle which goes on (French set them up in a poor spot), Viet Minh forces came from all over until the French gave up
  • What will the US do now? The French failure…
  • Iran (1953)
    • Battlefield of the Cold War
    • Place with lots of resources and oil
    • Anglo-Iranian oil company (becomes BP) – interested in connections with Iranian oilfields
    • Occupation of Iran? Soviet Union kept out of Iran by US
    • Iranians accept Mohammed Mossadegh ran on the premise of nationalizing Iranian oil – giving Iranian oil to Iranians vs foreign policies.
    • Nationalization fo resources smacks like communism to American ears: British and American secret organizations installed the Shah Mohammed Pahlavi (old religious leader) as the leader – got rid of Mossadegh, now had a Western-friendly nation to develop oil
  • Suez Crisis (1956)
    • Middle East continued to be important
    • Nationalization of resource – the Suez Canal in Egypt, Nasser (Egyption president) wanted to nationalize it for Egyptions
    • Israelis, British, and French invaded Egypt without informing the US
    • US settled the Suez crisis – interest in the Suez Canal
    • Eisenhower later sending 5000 Marines to Lebanon
  • Guatemala (1954)
    • US interested in this palce where we have countries largely owned by the United Fruit Company (American fruit company which did well in latin America) – held large amounts of land in almsot all land in central America.
    • A blight had hit the soil in the banana plantations and wiped out the bananas.
    • Land not being grown because of the soil blright, not being used – poor Guatemalans are getting pissed.
    • Arbenz runs on land redistribution – sounds pretty communist to Americans.
    • Jacobo Arbenz Guzman elected in 1951, nationalist, noncommunist
    • Installs a right-wing authoritarian dictator Carlos Castillos Armas who is friendly to the United States
  • Latin American communists
    • Che Guavara – living in Guatemala at the time. Ernesto “Che” Guevara
    • An important part of how communism gets to Cuba
    • Guevara & Castro
    • Go to a province in Cuba which had previously been dominated and find lots of angry Cuban peasants who don’t like ending of communal land fields, etc. – turning into exports, forced globalization
    • By 1959, US Americans controlled 75% of Cuba’s arable land, ended community alndholdings
    • Cuba not held as a colony – but still, Cuba could not trade with anyone other than the US – Cuba became a sugar plantation.
    • Milton Hershey – one of the pioneers of vertical integration – own all the mechanisms of the production process, and therefore you ca make enormous profits. Cuba did great for Herhsey’s profits
    • 1959, Cuban Revolution – communists win in Cuba. Defeat the miitary forces, Baptiste (old President) flees to the US, Cuban exiles end up in Miami (people who later come back in Bay of Pigs invasion)
    • US: now we have a communist nation in the Western hemisphere, not too far from the United Sttes.
    • CIA begin to think of how to get rid of the communist government
  • Space race and arms race
    • How to build on not only more nuclear weapons but other elements of the nuclear triad: land-based missiles, bombers, submarines
    • Burgenoning space race, 1957 – Soviets succeeded in getting Sputnik going around – about the size of a large basketball – Soviet-made object was circling over their heads
    • Soviets leading the world in rocketry – what is the SOviets develop better rockets?
    • Bomber gap, missile gap – possible development of a garrison state
    • Stalin – anyone who spent time around the West were dangerous – former Soviet soldiers, straight to the Gulag
  • Mutually assured destruction
    • Secretary of State Dulles, massive retaliation
    • Allan Dulles: head of the CIA, Dulles brothers cast a large shadow
      • Involved in many coups
    • American strategy: massive retaliation and mutually assured destruction
    • US would have such a large stockpile that they could deliver a massive retaliation if the Soviets attacked anywhere in the world.
    • Deterrence theory
    • As people began to point out, what does MAD really mean? We will blow each other up, what sense does this make? A free society which will build large stockpiles and take large taxes, but to use it is to lose – they will never be used. Their function is to sit there and wait; they serve as a deterrent. Nuclear madness – no one wants to fire one, and yet the investment into fiction – negative force.
  • Capitalism breeds mediocrity – they have to be largely palatable.
    • Our bananas are unflavorable lol

Lecture 3: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights

  • Argument: WWII changed the conversation over civil rights by placing the US in a struggle for human freedom. The war’s outcome and the meanings of the Cold War empowered new leaders, spurred new efforts, led to new tactics that advanced civil rights in America

Part I

  • What new role will the US play in race relations?
  • The great depression and the new deal (1930s)
    • Paul Robeson – someone who has a prevoius relationship to the Soviet Union – is blacklisted from Hollywood, cannot perform because he was seent o have Communist sympathies.
    • Changes from the 1930s to the 1950s: in the 1930s, the New Deal was an attempt to alleviate the problems of the stock market crash and the crisis of capitalism in the Great Depression – New Deal policies were heavily discriminatory
      • It’s easy to think that the federal government wrote discriminatory policies
      • Rarely deos the federal government at this time strictly discriminate
      • Instead, the way to sell these to Americans is that the federal policy money is locally administered – local people can put their own spin on the policy – hire people where you want or need them
      • The New Deal by this fashion ends up being discriminatory – excludes Black people.
    • Popular front: coalition of working class people who are trying to fix problems in America, and to bring in influences from the far left. What emerges is a coalition of laborers – a time to help out the little guy, the working man, the popular front. Turns into an acceptance of ethnic groups which previously haven’t been accepted (Italians, Jews, Catholics).
    • Communist party plays an important rule here because it’s the only group in America doing anything about race – specifically challenges the US on issueus of race.
    • Communist party says that race and gender are tools of capitalism. The CP is trying to take actions on race
    • Highly publicized cases
      • Scottsboro case 1931 – 9 young black men are accused of rape by two white women. Both of the women will recant it. But it has implications for the Supreme Case
      • Powell v Alabama (1932) – the young men never got any kind of good representation
      • Norris v Alabama (1935) – systemic exclusion of Black people from juries
      • Scottsboro case is one of the most important court cases which opens peoples’ eyes to systemic problems in the criminal justice system
    • CIO – labor union which comes in the model of the old IWW. IWW was important because they would organize everyone. Many other labor unions were historically very discriminatory (e.g. AFL). The CIO with the CP begin to challenge race lines, bring in more black people inot labor unions
    • Ongoing segregation in the South, lynching had not lessenned.
  • 1941 lend-lease act
    • WW2 is important for what happens to Civil Rights because the US begins to produce a lot of stuff
    • Many jobs are union jobs with good pay
    • America begins to send stuff to all manner of items
    • The US already produces a lot of stuff
  • “Arsenal of democracy”: US War Production 1940 - 45
    • The US creates huge amounts of stuff to win the war
    • Domestic stuff: cigarette manufacturers got declared as a necessary sector of the economy
    • Unified effort in WW2 to win – a lot of work, jobs, and production
  • FDR and selling the war
    • Four Freedoms speech (1941)
    • The US were before very isolationist – American First committee who did not want to go to war, America should stay out of Europe
    • FDR working on how to sell the ar to the United States
    • Four Freedoms speech visualized by Norman Rockwell
    • Freedom of speech, worship, from fear, from want.
    • Need for national stories: this is a national story, ths is who we are
    • Atlantic Charter: belief in making a pact with European Allies will help bring a world-safer democracy
  • A Philip Randolph
    • Black people still very much held apart from this national unity
    • As ‘interior others’ – still being othered, interior ro the nation (provide a lot of labor) but still held as seocnd-class citizens
    • 1941, Roosevelt is trying to get Americans to see they are on the same page
    • Black people know they are not unified
    • A Philip Randolph, head of union of black pullman car porters – threatened a massive Civil Rights demonstration in DC
    • Let Roosevelt knew in this moment of attempted unity that black workers would hold a massive demonstration to show just how ununited the country was – the last thing FDR wanted
    • From A Philip Randolph’s pressure, Roosevelt had to make important policy concessions
    • Creationo f the Fair Employment Practices Commission (1941 - 1946): investigate labor conditions in war industries
    • There remained ways to discriminate: unions, pay, conditions, etc. – Black people not allowed to be in ‘skilled’ positions – last hired, first fired
    • 1942, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) – important Black Civil Rights organization which will continue to play an important role throughout
    • Urban league in 1909, 1910 – growing rights organizations
  • Double V for Victory – Victory at home over racism and Victory abroad over totalitarianism
  • Second Great Migration – many white AMeicans begin to see it differently after many black people move out of the South in WW2 to take new jobs in western and northern manufacturing jobs. (First Great Migration happens in WWI).
    • Southernization of American culture – take and spread culture
  • Blacks during wartime
    • Northerns and Westererners don’t want then there either – a problem with the entire country
    • When black people move and try to get homes, they aren’t welcome there.
    • New situation that white Americans are encountering
  • 1943, racial unrest in 34 CS cities
    • Race riots between white and black
    • Affter the frist great migration, we got the rise of a new KKK (first comes after Civil Rights to fight against northerners coming into the South, but became defunt with new segregation laws – no need for a campaign of terror). Not a Southern entity at all – a KKK of the north and the west (biggest chapters in Oregon, Indiana, Iowa, etc.). Not entirely new but now on a new scale.
    • A new focus: united
  • Wartime industrial jobs
    • Changes going on in the workplace
    • Rosie and the Riveter is white, but black women also served in the same industrial defense jobs.
    • NAACP & American Jewish Congress push for post-war fair employment practices,w hcih are difficult to secure
  • Patriotic assimilation
    • Anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic stances begin to change in America – bringing people into the definition of what is counted as white – allowing Jews and Catholics and Italians post-war. Lines still get drawn at the color line
    • Black and white separate beaches, entrances
  • FDR: talking about pluralism in wartime, people in different lands can become a united person
    • Office of War Information hires novelist Pearl Buck to write novels
    • A glaring obvious contradiction going on
  • Cultural inclusion – to make films about the war, you need to go byt he Office of War Information (no films critical of the war)
    • Bataan (1943) – showing a nonexistent racial integration, a multi-racial society
    • WW2, Americann units were generally not integrated
    • Conversation on race begins to change
    • Ruth Benedict, begins to write knew tracks on race and sees it as a moral failing – begins to move race away from the concept of race and more in the way we talk about it now – as a cultural construction, away from the concept of biological distinction
    • Montagu – influential in UN’s new attention to race and racism post-war.
    • New conversations to be had about what constitutes race
  • An American Dilemma (1944), Gunnar Myrdal
    • Swedish social scientist
    • Came to America and studied the problem of race and segregation, the long published problems with lynching
    • Found that racism was deeply entrenched in law, politics, economics, and society
    • Problem of structural and institutional racism now began to be discussed by academics – how race and racism get institutionalized and put into structures
  • Blacks and military service
    • Until 1948, segregated units
    • Most Black people serve in segregated units with specific types of jobs – truck drivers, barbers, cooks
    • Limits to the GI Bill – the GI BIll is a major change to American life because of WW2 and FDR type policies
    • The GI Bill
    • Homeowner’s loan corporation – begins to remake the industry
    • Federal government is involved in giving out home loans, and changes the industry because it forces the private mortgage industry to come down on elements of the mortgage. The American middle class expands enormously and more people can buy homes.
    • In fact quite good for capitalism, because no the consumer class grows
    • part of a change over to a consumer economy
    • GI Bill – millions of Americans can get zero percent down loan with zero percent interest to build a farm, go to college, buy a house, etc. – many could not do so before, now can
    • Same kinds of racial restrictions are in place – local restriction
  • The Bracero Program (1942 - 1964)
    • Invitation to Mexican agricultural workers – many Americans going to war
    • Southern migration: Black folks going from rural to orban – moving from agricultural work to manufacturing work
    • Large changes happen in American agriculture, the need to hire more labor
    • Bracero – labor/worker in Spanish
    • Invitation for Mexcians to come into the US and work until 1964 (large change in immigration policy)
    • 22 million people or so moving across the border to work – generation of this sort of movement even helps explain today’s population
    • Employers get used to hiring certain kinds of workers and laborers
  • Zoot Suit Riots, LA (1943)
    • Zoot suit – long jacket flamboyant suit, sometimes with flashy colors – famous and well-liked along black and latino guys. Would go out and go dancing with white women in LA. Police, sailors, soldiers run throughout the nightclubs and beat up and harrass Latino and Filipino guys.
    • Different examples of racial conflict
  • Women in wartime
    • Some women are happy to go back to the home, other women have changed expectations
    • Promotion of working women in manufacturing and in the military.
    • Women end up composing a large quantity of the labor force (1/3) by 1944
    • Businesses and manufacturers now deal with a large female proportion of the workforce
  • Freedom at home
    • The “moking paradox” of racism in America
    • Becoming part of a national conversation
    • Republican W. Wilkie running against FDR, clearly making race an issue – Southern Democrats aren’t going to make changes on race

Part II

  • William Levitt
    • Expanse of suburban living and the single-family home, which radically changes American family life
    • Middle-class expectation of owning your own home – central to middle-class American identity
    • New focus on getting Americans into single-family homes (mortgage industry changes allow for this)
    • Levittowns (PA, NY, NJ, MD, Puerto Rico) – large massive suburbs, a new type of suburbs which hasn’t existed before – previous suburbs outside of large American towns had a lot of design features – working class people in mind, sidewalks, trolley cars, etc. Levittowns essentially have no design – efficiency, speed, selling towns – not a healthful or satisfying middle-class life. Build and sell houses.
    • 1 new house every 15 minutes in PA
  • Racial restrictions nad covenants
    • The way that people relate to each other begins to change
    • Levitts know that Americans who buy these houses don’t want to livewith black epople, and so restirct black people
    • Once these patterns start, hard to break
    • Racial covenants – a phrase put on a housing deed which says that the hosue cannot be sold to non-whites.
    • 1948, Shelly v Kramer – racial covenants are unenforceable, but restrictions continued.
  • Myers family in Levittown, PA
    • Were able to get into a house in a Levittown
    • Response by neighbors – many threats and taunts trying to get them out
  • Seattle’s racial covenants
    • Seattlelites can sometimes be smug – a lefty crunchy city
    • Pretty much the entire city all had racial covenants on pretty much every neighborhood
    • Inability for balck people to take part in the middle-class opportunity
  • Seattle’s red-lined map
    • Red lining – a security map which idetnfieis neighborhoods by the likelihood that mortgage loans would be safely lent and repaid.
    • North of the Ship Canal is a very white area of Seattle
    • Redlined area is near downtown – banks won’t grant loans in the area
    • Process of redlining and racial covenance – institutional/strucutral restrictions put on people of color
    • Other examples in insurance, real estate, banks, etc.
    • Net result is few Black people able to buy a home, and then unable to use that home as capital
  • Creation of ghettoes
    • Central district – highest proportion of black population – the only place they can live
    • Not allowed to live in other parts
    • Central District, Chinatown
  • Cold War and Civil Rights in the West
    • California and other states repeal Alien Land Laws in 1947
    • California did it first – passed Alien land laws which prohibited especially Japanese people from owning land
      • japanese farmers had acquired quite profitable farms andt here was deep antipathy against them
      • Japanese internment is primarily a land grab
    • Segregation in California among Asian immigrants
  • 1947, Jackie Robinson
    • Significant figure, was a lietenant in the army
    • Had been on a civilian bus and refused
    • Tried for insubordination
    • Goes on to become an important player in professional baseball
    • Important Civil Rights activists, new what to do – knew how to resist backlash
    • Important premise of Civil Rights – especially black men, don’t react
  • Political change
    • Truman in 1946 – assumes he’ll lose in 48 and begins doing things he thinks will be important without worrying about political repurcussions
    • Creates a new commission on Civil Rights
    • 1948, anti-lynching legislation, ending poll taxes (keeping blacks from voting), education and job access
    • “correct the remaining imperfections in the practice of democracy”
    • Dixiecrat Revolt and Strom Thurmond – died in 2003 at the age of 101 after serving in the US federal government for more than 60 years and was a steadfast segregationist
      • 1948, ranf or president as a segregationist candidate, won four states
  • To Secure These Rights, Truman administration, 1948
    • Said – there is a racial problem in America
    • Talked about how racism weakened the country because of the impact of the Communist party
    • Racism was an open wound which would bring down the country and which needed to be addressed
    • Structural and institutional racism in America
    • Different studies performed – don’t point the finger at anything, it is sort of actively happening, don’t want to make any accusations. Reads sort of complacently
  • Civil Rights and military integration
    • Truman integrates the armed forces
    • Another movement on Civil Rights
    • Sets up a new way for women to have permanent career paths in the military
    • Significant steps happening in Civil Rights, even though they seem small
  • Expressions of American freedom after WWII
    • Trying to tell a new national narrative
    • Freedom Train – one of the attempts post WWII to tell a national narrative
    • Freedom Train – a train which took documents out of the national archive and ride them around the country on rails so that Americans could come and see them.
    • Caveat – viewings are integrated. No longer allowing for segregation
    • Part of the country did not allow for inegrated viewing
    • The national story is one of division
  • Black internationalism
    • Linking global colonialism to black disfranchisement
    • Black internationalism or pan-Africanism – the plight of people of African descent no matter where they are
    • Franz Fanon – Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) – has a terminal illness and dies very young
    • Du Bois – wrote groundbreaking works and is part of the pan-Africanist movement
    • Robeson
    • Colonial relationships even within the US
  • Conservatism and communism
    • For post-war conservatives, there are changes coming too
    • Conservatives begin to see a different type of Ameirca
    • Attack on labor
    • Taft-Hartley Act (1947) restricted the power of unions, strikes, and other labor activism by introducing the “right to work”
      • “right to work” – if you are in a job and there is union activity, you do not have to join the union – you can opt out of it.
      • A job which has half the people in and out of the union has little power
      • Unions are undercut in right to work states
      • Michigan became the first state to drop the right to work status and embraces unionism (recently)
  • Anti-communist propaganda
    • Americans are bourght together under the sphere of a creeping socialism
  • The turn to human rights
    • Eleanor Roosevelt, Universal Declaration of Human Rights 91948) – equal in dignity, without distinction of any kind
    • The US won’t sign it…
    • John Foster Dulles – refusal to sign for fear that it would allow an international investigation of the “Negro question”
    • People are very aware of the racial problem
    • The US CIvil Rights record damaged the US’ ability to function int he UN
    • USSR, Cuba, etc. would hammer the US for its Civil Rights record.
    • Civil Rights was entering a new phase; Communist Party was dropping out of Civil Rights in the Cold War, and you have new kinds of tactics and attitudes
  • The Cold War and civil rights
    • Activism in urban spaces
    • New voter registrations – there are many places in the American South which are overwhelming black majorities with very few registered voters
    • Question about communism and racism – why is communism anti-American but racism isn’t?
    • “That’s just how people thought back then” – there are alwyas people asking questions and critiquing what’s going on
  • Civil Rights
    • New focus on Civil Rights which comes from some of the most prominent organizations: Thurgood Marshall, NAACP, Urban League, etc.
    • Governer Earl Warren of California – during the war, happy with Japanese incarceration. After the war, changed his tune – supported the Leage of United Latin American Citizens – a convert to the ideal that Civil Rights problems were hurting our global reputation – it’s patriotic to stop being racist
    • 1950s – NAACP works on specific issues; Marshall and Houstin on the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of ‘separate by equal’.
    • What is significant about the 14th amendment – establishment of citizenship and “equal under the law” – getting to a revision of the interpretation of the 14th amendmetn (passed during Reconstruction which should change things – but the courts define the 14th amendment narrower and narrower until you get separate but equal)
    • Reviewing different cases having to do with race – qual protection under the law so narrow, so it is never really fully realized
    • NAACP wanting to revisit the 14th amendment, go after equal protection under the law clause
  • 1954 Brown v. Board Topeka, Kansas ruling
    • HIghly calculated, not spontaneous
    • NAACP figuring out how to argue this the best, looking at different schools
    • Kansas is kind of a middle state
    • South – it’s easy to say “oh, it’s the South” – focus on Kansas might bring more national attention.
    • By forcing Black students to walk much farther to go to a segregated school, it is uneven
    • Overturning of separate but equal in education
  • Raising voices, taking notice
    • A number of events move things faster
    • Murder of Emmet Till – significant because of the resonance it had within Black communities in the NOrth, getting out of the American South. 14 year old boy from Chicago who had gone South to visit family in Mississippi – acted towards a white woman, and for doing so was tracked down and brutally tortured before he was murdered. Mother insisted on an open casket.
    • Chicago had a significant Black community
    • Rosa Parks – longtime member of the NAACP; practiced activist. Goes through the bus situation.
    • Montgomery Bus Boycott forces the Supreme Court to act in 1956
    • Accelerates the Civil Rights process
    • Supreme Court in 1956 calls for desegregation of buses “with all deliberate speed”
  • MLK Jr’s Leadership
    • Presence of MLK is significant
    • Comes from a family of ministers in the South
    • Considered being a doctor but ended up going to Boston ad sutdying for the seminary
    • In Montgomery, finishing writing his dissertation and seeing these kinds of events.
    • Historic importance of Christianity within the black communities of the South
    • King’s speeches have great presence
    • 1956, SCLC emerges and becomes one of the galvanizing institutions for the Civil Rights movement – maybe one to critque also, very top-heavy and focused on Christian values
    • SNCC is a very different institution – don’t really have leadership, almost intentionally, and in fact quite critical of the top-heavy nature of the SCLC
    • Civil Rights is often presented as monolithic but there are many different wings
    • Others are conencted with black internationalism: in contact with Kwame Nakruma (in contact with Ghana, independence in 1950s and becomes a stable democracy)
    • inspiration from decolonization
    • Bayard Rustin goes to India and inserts nonviolence into Civil Rights
  • Massive resistance to Civil Rights in the South
    • Comparison between post-Civil Rights and post-Nazi Germany: not forced to give up anything besides slaves vs. ideological salting of the Earth
    • State flags of Florida, Abama, etc. all have resonances with the Confederate Flag
    • Who are the real losers of the Civil War?
    • Race-mixing is communism
  • Many obstacles to Civil Rights
    • 1957 – token effort, US government passes the Civil Rights law which tries to put some enforcement into Civil Rights legislation; but without enforcement, there really isn’t anything.
    • If it’s not enfroced, what does it matter? It doesn’t really matter.
    • There really is no enforcement here, and nor ights.
    • Little Rock, 1957 – Eisenhower sends out the US military to enforce the integration law of the Supreme Court
  • The Sit-Ins
    • Greensboro, NC
    • Student-led movements like the sit-ins beginning at the Whoolworths’ where Black epople are not supposed to be, and sit at the counter nonviolently – not there to respond to beatings and threats to be effective – will be taken to jail and portrayed in the media as unruly ungovernable thugs who deserve what they get
    • Only by remaining non-violent even in the face of violence can they get their message across – they need to be taught and schooled in this
    • Segregated beaches throughout the South – “wade-ins” in Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi
    • A number of young Black people were killed as they attempted to do wade-ins
  • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
    • Ella Baker and the SNCC, 1960
    • Ella Baker - focuses on organizing young people and knew it would be young people who would be the vanguard of Civil Rights
    • Ella Baker was about getting away from focusing on leaders like MLK and putting the roles in the hands of the ‘every-people’ – a decentralized movement, you can’t blackmail or shame one leader because everyone is schooled int eh theory, tactics
    • Helps to form the Yougn Negroes Cooperative League which becomes SNCC
    • Robert Moses (passed away recently) – a Northerner who came down to the South and did the same kind of organizing work among young people.
  • Freedom Rides (1961)
    • CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) – begin taking long bus rides
    • At first, were doing it in the upper South and they didn’t care that much, also doing it in one state – going from Virginia to Virginia
    • Get the federal government involved by going between states (across states, federal government gets involved – creation of the martial service)
    • Taking busses from New York to Alabama – the response was intense and violent
    • John Lewis – suffered horrible beating snad threats; busses being firebombed; to get in the national media, to show what is going on and to promote nonviolent tactics.
  • To sum up
    • Talk about the importance of changing tactics, attitudes, strategies which come about because the Cold War context is dfiferent
    • Proliferation of young activists in particular – changes to the Civil Rights movement.

Lecture 4: Prosperity, Consumerism, and Environment

  • Argument: The modernist view of a consumer-driven economy, which began around 1920, seemed to reach its zenith by about 1960 only to encounter new challenges in health, environment, discrimination, and the emergence of economic citizenship
  • What starts off in the post-war period that America has reached this high standard of living begins to come undone – emerging difficulties in public health, nuclear fear, ecology, and the environment
  • How are consumer goods sold to the market?
  • Proliferation of consumer goods and a need to police and make consumer goods saf – just companies trying to sell products.
  • World War II produces many of the chemicals which will proliferate post-WWII. Companies make enormous chemicals for industrial applications and turn them into domestic products.
  • Critique of consumer society
    • Henry Carter Adams, 1879 – equitable division of property and produce, or despotism and decadence
  • The great depression and the new deal (1930s)
    • How to solve the problems of the great depression? CHanging production to be more efficient – producing more on less quantities of land
    • New Deal policies trying to produce more on less – origin of agricultural subsidies, take land out of production so it can recover
    • Focusing science and chemical expertise onto farmland to produce more on less.
    • Decline of the small American farmer and the rise of larrge farm firms – large agricultural companies – not some nefarious plan but rather the Roosevelt administration is trying to find the most solid farmers with capital; consolidation of land across agriculture companies
    • New housing policies begun to spur more consumption
  • Financing single-family home ownership
    • Changes in federal policies might be the most significant economic change to come out of WWII on housing
    • Federal Housing Act, 1934 and Home Owners Loan Corporation (1933)
    • Restructure the mortgage industry
    • With increasing wages after the war, more and more people are moving into suburban spaces
  • Consumers during WWII
    • During WWII, this is very intentional in ROosevelt’s circle: already a focus on Americans as consumers, a kind of patriotic consumption going on.
    • Americans are rationing – growing your own gardens (Victory garden) to not buy food which can go overseeds
    • Messages from the OWI (War Info) or OPA (Price Administration)
    • Consumers have a role to play as ptriots in rationing – consuming in a particular way.
    • Women are a target as the primary consumers for households in the 1960s.
    • New step in market segmentation (division of population into groups and selling to them)
  • Production during WWII
    • Production rates were incredibly high in WWII
    • Focus of the government is how to keep this high
    • OWI – releasing state propaganda
    • State-capital cooperation needed to not fall into price issues, etc. – OWI set prices so there wasn’t crazy competition
    • War Labor Board – made sure no stirkes during the war; CIO vowed no strikes during the war
    • Both 1942
    • Emergence of Keynesian economic theory – the government needs to help out in the boom and bust cycles to not end up in the great depression
  • From War to Peace
    • Post-war consensus around Keynesian economic theory
    • Economist Robert Nathan – if mobilization for war, then why not for peacetime consumption?
    • Don’t want to see a massive dip in consumption and production post-war
    • Beginning working on this post-war
  • Post-war consensus on economics
    • In general, even conservatives in politics to some degree or another believed in Keynesian economic theory – smoothed things out
    • Different emphases going on
    • 1945: proposed law that if people couldn’t find jobs, the state had to create jobs for them (rjeected by conservatives)
    • 1946: employment act trying to keep employment at a high level
    • Purchasing power – perhaps most visible phras in the post-war period: they want good jobs (great during the war – union jobs), allows you to buy many of the consumer goods which are being produced
    • Mass consumption only possible with ongoing mass production
    • Looking for good-paying manufacturing jobs as the keystone of the economy
    • Consumer and military Keynesianism exist
      • Consumer Keynesianism: work with industry and labor unions to try and maintain ability to buy consumer goods
      • MIlitary Keynesianism: keeping Raytheon, Boeing, etc. operating at a high level – especially aerospace industry getting enormous amount of money to continue doing what they’re doing.
    • Even after the dip in the 1960s, the Vietnam War will keep consumer spending high for a while – by early 70s the whole show is over and it begins to be laid bare there are problems with the American industrial sector
    • Mixture of public and private spending which keeps purchasing power very high
  • Economic changes
    • The nuclear family – images of the direct post-war period – gathered around the TV in a single-family home in the new suburbs being designed all around America from coast-to-coast
    • Increasingly, idea of American freedom is being connected to economic citizenship – to be an American citizen is to have a certain standard of living: at least a middle-class existence
    • Americans increasingly worry less about the political sphere and more about an economic sphere existence
    • By 1960, this swing has begun to happen
    • Poverty impacted greatly – fallen 8% from 1950 to 1960
    • Emergence of credit by 1955 - a revolution in consumer purchasing
    • With the growth of credit, much more capacity for purchasing power – just how much is being bought on credit?
    • Enjoy your consumer goods while you’re paying them off! Increasing debt
  • During this time, UC system is free or close to free if you’re in-state – monetization in the 70s
  • Capitalist society – if you don’t have capital, you have your labor. 19th century – huge land giveaways for many Europeans, or free education, etc.; ways to up the social status (although today neither of these are true – what are the options today?)
  • Origin point of ideological split in the middle 60s on Keynesianism – Lyndon Johnson’s huge spending budget, what to think about it?
  • The reason for this primarily is that the people in moments of crisis could get on board with big government programs in this time of crisis; but it is these people who look at the same behavior and say, “it’s a time of prosperity” – why is the government messing around int eh free market economy still? Break from the neoliberal tradition and become neoconservatives
  • HIgh point of American manufacturing is at 1955
  • The Baby Boomers
    • “the luckiest generation” – born during WWII with the fallout of the Great Depression
    • Generation which has good-paying jobs, availability of going to college
    • Baby boom generation which we compare other generations to – up very high in 1950 - 55 – families were very large, just more babies
    • When they get into college and become political active and consumers, these ptterns matter just simply because of numbers
    • As the baby boom generation ages, healthcare will become more important and this will effect the economy
    • Politically active generation
    • Part of this life is about ‘materialism’ – living in new suburban spaces with more consumer products than before – all these new things to put in people’s homes
    • Some of these spaces are highly toxic spaces – lead in a lot of the paint, asbestos, cosmetics, pesticides, insecticides, not necessarily safe and ti will take a while to figure it out.
    • People are also living very different kinds of lives in relaitonship to each other and the environment – complete re-organization of social and environmental space.
    • There are no sewer systems planned – each house has its own sceptic system; can also be very dangerous; etc. When building suburbs, this is so 100s of people can live in the houses. Not desigend for traffic – massive traffic problems.
    • Social isolation – particular kind of space.
  • In the New Deal period, you get a lot of ideology – WPA, CC, etc. – Roosevelt coming at you with ideology “promote confidence!” – TVA, “electricity for all”. Postwar period is different. Not a federal agency trying to provide you with a sense of values, bu tconsumerism – buy stuff to make you happy, to reach a level of status, to make you feel good. Trying to find cultural value.
  • Proliferation of plastics.
    • Plastics which had not really played much of a role in American life / economy before proliferate, largely remannts of war research
    • Bakelite – an early plastic, a brittle and hard plastic
    • Changes becuase of WWII
    • Pre-war reputation for being cheap and inferior (to woods and metals)
    • Post-war spin on efforts by GE and other indutries to really promote plastics – ligher weight, technologically innovative
    • Effort to naturalize plastics – now that we’ve got it, we can do so much with it
    • Brownie Wise – leaving advocate for Tupperware. Success story of post-war
    • Large-scale acceleration of packaging. Advertisements in the store.
    • 1920s with mass production and consumption, you have department stores and grocery stores, in which the consumer gets their own products – development of advertisements in these stores
    • A cereal box is a billboard – now they are advertising at you
    • Massive amount of consumer products are in packages which are one-use, then throw out
    • Packaging becomes 1/3 of the waste stream and has increased by about 70% since 1960
  • Landfills by 1960 and late 1970s – landfills begin to proliferate over America and aren’t regulated until they start causing problems. Issue – landfills leak nasty stuff into the water and show up in water
    • Staten Island, NY – largest landfill in the world by 1955
  • Planned obsolescence
    • Market thinking and advertisement thinking throughout the economy
    • Finns on the backs of cars – have no function, all about style.
    • Car fashion – designed to become obsolete
    • A way of manipulating consumer tastes by planning to keep things changing so consumers can keep up with what is the new thing now.
    • Creation of taste
    • Waste isbuilt into the system – proliferation of landfills
    • Waste as a byproduct of the capitalist system – increases standards of livign and produces commodities, sure; but much waste
    • What do people want to buy? Keeping up with the Joneses – having good jobs which pay wages (purchasing power) which people can spend; we keep wages high so we can be consuming, which is a problematic relationship
  • Highways
    • Cards are central to the economy and the suburban environment
    • Surbibanization is happening in many places in the world
    • Car culture is pretty unique to the US; the iea that your car becomes an expression about who you are as an individual; suburbs designed with cars and not busses in mind. Cars become central
    • Henry Ford was in many ways an idealist; a particular vision of an ideal American society – worker sshould be able to buy the products that they’re building – not egalitarian but a fair society in which people aren’t slaving away; they can buy waht they produce.
    • Fordlandia, Brazil
    • Cars have been central to the middle clas enviornment for a long timr – definitely not an accident.=
  • Oil – no groweth wihthou it -
  • The government goes through a lot of funding to produce new things
  • The new suburban house is now marketed heavily – to rid it of the intruder
  • Idea of being sold a chemically sterile, insect-free world. Being promoted as if the world is not right unless the insects are gone.
  • Organophosphate deaths in the 1940s – begin to see government regulation after deaths of factory and agricutlure workers are dying; indications that something is off.
  • FIFRA (1947): starts as an attempt to protect consumers, turns out as a snake oil law – no advertising if it doesn’t work
  • Murray Bookchin – even in 1952 there is still revolutionary thinking: principle motive for chemicals and demands on frmland are imposed by the needs of profit and competition.
  • Viscose Rayon & CO2
    • Fllammable fabrics – much more of this stuff than ever before
    • Flammables – 6.4k people being killed a year by flammable fabrics and other consumer goods
    • Little kids’ halloween costumes produced with Viscose Rayon
    • Clothing catches on fire so fast
    • Polyurethane foam – put on furniture, referred to as ‘solid gasoline’
    • Regulations on flammable fabrics – Flammable Fabrics Act (1953)
    • Part of an American story: what is our fix? Never social or environmental confrontations to social or environmental problems: not by producing less flammable stuff, but rather alternative technologies – tinkering with the technology so we cna continue to sell more
    • Chemical fire retardants
  • Worker’s health vs consumer satisfaction
    • Focused heavily on consumers – the one group in Americna history which we have always struggled to come to terms with is industrial works – this was never part of the American Dream; we don’t celebrate the American industrial worker.
    • These sorts of topics are often a focus on the consumer
    • Carbon Disulfide – as a consumer product, it’s not very dangerous. But it is the workers who are producing this; inhaling it , touching it, etc.
    • Vinylchloride Monomer makes PVC pipes, which don’t get regulation until the 1970s after OSHA is created
    • When they get regulated, it’s for consumers – not really for workers
  • 1950s – multiple-chemical sensitivity
    • Large gypsy moth problem in long island
    • Response – DDT
    • Marjorie Spock – lives with another woman who suffers from multiple-chemical sensitivity.
    • New York sprays DDT over their farm; Spock begins suing the state of New York because spraying their property. Begins as a property rights issue. What it becomes is more a sotry about public health.
    • Attracts Rachel Carson
  • Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)
    • Biologist from Johns Hopkins
    • Is interested in these stories about nature and environmentalism
    • Silent Spring, 1962 – investigations, meant to inspire women (targets of consumerism) and also pointing finger at the entymologists and other federal agents – sterile, insect-free environments
    • Rising fears of nuclear way – chemicals in consumers, health threats, etc.
    • Silent Spring makes a big splash; Kennedy reads it.
    • Criticizes post-war pesticides, USDA entomologists, the chemical industry, the intimacy between the state and the industry
    • Becomes influential in ecosystems ecology
    • Rachel Carson’s book gets Kennedy thinking about the consumer bill of rights
  • Reactions to Silent Spring
    • Smear campaign against Rachel Carson as a woman – she can’t be boht a scientist and a woman
    • Monsanto – the desolate year, overrunning with insects if we don’t use pesticides
    • Congress begins investigating
    • Kennedy creates an advisory committee
    • FIFRA act is improved a little bit to respond to these sorts of problems
  • Kennedy’s Consumer Bill of Rights in 1962 – “consumers, by definition, includes us all”
  • DDT Lawsuits: trucks sspraying DDT going down on people – the kind of optimism and comformity that Ameircans have, we have faith that these sorts of things are safe or they can be saved – not actuely toxic itself but not really questioned
    • No investigation about the interaction of multiple chemicals
  • Environmental Defense Fund comes out of the DDT fight
  • Nuclear science – changing Americna society
  • Strontium 90 – what nuclear tests are doing to people. Strontium 90 is a byproduct of nuclear fission. Strontium 90 is like calcium; it attaches to bone, teeth, skin; we get strontium 90 in our bodies.
  • 1956 – sound the alarm on this. Late 40s and early 50s, tos peak out against nuclear testing is a bit anti-American but mainstream politicians and people claiming that 10k people a day are dying from forms of radiation
  • *On the Beach, 1957 + 1959. The nuclear cloud is coming for us
  • Baby Teeth Experiment, 1959
    • Saint Louis – look into the problem of strontium-90. Asking them to send children’s baby teeth.
    • Collecting hundreds of thousands of baby teeth
    • Children born in St Louis in 1963 have 50x more Strontium 90 than in 1950
    • Results of nuclear testing are coming home
  • By 1962, when the results of the baby teeth experiment and such are coming out, what before was a radical notion is now a thing which mainstream middle-American people are doing – protesting against atmospheric testing
  • 1963, Kennedy signs the partial nucelar test bans – does not ban underground nuclear testing
  • Middle-America’s women are being targeted
  • Ernest Dichter – “One of the basic problems of prosperity, then, is to demonstrate that the hedonistic approach to life is a moral and not an immoral one.” – having a want and satisfying it is moral and not immoral. A change going on in the consumer economy. The single biggest cultural influence on Americna life is protestant Christian religion.
  • Greatest cultural influence today is consumerism – even edating is consumer based (is this good enough?; shopping for a date)
  • Values which used to be lodged into the consumer marketplace have moved into alternative places.
  • For the advertisers and marketers, hedonism is necessary. Bush – what can you do for your country? Go shopping.
  • This idea that consumerism is good is not ‘natural’ – it’s historical, and emerges from a particular economy. Nothing is inevitable; decisions get made, and somehow we end up where we are. This swing in American life…
  • 19th century, debt is something which Americans desperately try to stay away from (it makes you unfree); believed in moral values of hard work, etc. Dichter: turning to a hedonistic way of being, go satisfy all of your wants and desires.

Lecture 5: Critique, Discontent, and Alternatives

The influences of African-American art-forms and the impulse to non-comformity helped to further fragment the 1960s as especially young people searched for alternate forms of expr

  • God and reactions to Communism – God-given vs natural-given, self-evident
  • Turn towards unabashed consumerism challenges many previous morals
  • We in many ways are more consumers than we are citizens – who do very little to our political citizenship even though we consume daily.
  • Conservatism, genuine – technological conservatism, opposition to enamorment with consumerism
  • Comformity of post-war enforced Ameircan values with patriotism, consumerism, etc.
  • Critics of modern society – Packard, the Hidden Persuaders / Risman, the Lonely Crowd – cannot think for yourself.
  • Critique of consumerism
  • Galbraith – focus on market satisfaction of produced desires
  • Communism is set forth here – enforcement of the mainstream
  • Nuclear forces – Oppenheimer expresses doubt on the hydrogen bomb exactly – the philosophical metaphyisical conundrum, eventually accused of being a Communist
  • The idea of “the Counterculture” – the recent literature says that this is a horrible word to encompass much too many people. It is not a definition of a group. The ‘counterculture’ certainly directly challenges the mainstream, but there are many dimensions here. What about people out to have a good time, to smoke pot and listen to good music? This is not the same as movements with a political and philosophical edge.
  • Hippie movement lasts very short – 18 months, consumerism culture gobblesd up hippieism.
  • Expatriate writers
    • James Baldwin – 1948, lived outside of the US. Felt could be more authentically himself outside of the US
    • Richard Wright, Arthur Himes – novelists, critique from the outside of Ameircna society
  • Allen Ginsburg, Howl. 1955. A centerpiece of the counterculture, articulating what that something which is wrong is. Becomes an intellectual keystone
  • The Beats
    • Jack Keruoac – being used and raw, On the Road – non-comformity, no attachment, nomadic living
    • Keruac drank himself to death in 1969
    • Self indulgence and often a focus on male heroism – felt that they had discovered an unfiltered freedom
    • Breaking boundaries in American life
    • Not everyone can go on the road – women are often left behind. The solipsism of this poetry
    • William Bunourghe publishes a postmodern novel; nonlinear, meant to be opened anywhere.
  • 1950s to 1960s, Ameircnas are somewhat fine with drugs; many take drugs
  • Jazz works alongside the beats; an admiration for Miles Davis, Bud Powell, etc. (beaten by police)
  • Bebop – a new form of jazz which is fast and loud, experimental, and exploratory
  • Many of the Black jazz musicians faced greater freedom abroad than in America; Billy Holiday couldn’t walk through the front door at the venue that she was playing at
  • LSD captures the American imagination, particular in psychological circles – advocated as a sort of miracle drug
  • Public relations, marketing, advertising, and other kinds of political or social persuasion groups prop up
  • Proliferation of psychology and psychiatry explode post-WWiI; people get jobs in ad firms and job firms, work for politicians
  • Critique of the ways in which Americans are being persuaded to buy lots more stuff and what the effect of this is
  • Critiques of conformity in the 1950s and 1960s
    • The Lonely Crowd: Americans couldn’t think for themselves, too much falling into lockstep and doing what you’re told. Isn’t good for science, democracy, etc.
    • Not just about noncomformity but continuing to encouarage creative discovery
  • Timothy Leary, experiments with LSD; LSD comes from Europe (Switzerland), sent to the US hoping it can be marketed
    • Leary becomes interested in it after taking it; finds illuminating results
    • Aldous Huxley experiments with LSD and acid; it breaks through some barriers
    • Leary begins to promote the use of LSD in a therapeutic way
    • Is let go from Harvard given his LSD experiments
    • Becomes the face of using LSD, acid
    • CIA is exprimenting with drugs – how to keep people motivated and awaked; how to control human motivation and emotion – the elements in them which can be turned into good soldiers
  • Hipsters
    • The influence of African-American art forms – (re)emergence of individuals linked to the beats and aesthetically and behaviorally to black art forms – hipsters
    • Hipsters are dimensions of the market system – go to the fringes of what is socially acceptable / marketable – take from the fringes (Black art forms – jazz, hight of eexperimental music), find what is good, and bring it to the mainstream
    • Emeergence of a 1950s - 1960s hipster type which is tied in with the beats – Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire, James Dean, NOrman Mailer
    • An intentional working class affectation which is key to the hipster aesthetic – playing around with working class stereotypes – hipsters tend to come from middle to high class but take up these coded aesthetics
    • Love and theft – like what they see in Black performances and want to take it – this is the role of the hipster, to facilitate incorporaton
    • Norman Mailer writes “THe White Negro” about the emergence of the hipster searching for “an orgasm more apocalyptic than the one that preceded it”
    • Find the higher lifestyle from the fringes
    • Represent resistance to mainstream and modern society, but also feed modern society
    • Little Richard \(\to\) Pat Boon \(\to\) Elvis Presley: brings rock and roll to the mainstream, draws much from Black roots, plays with gender – a synthetic character
  • Hipters and beasts, adjacents
    • Sam Shepard, prolific playwright – mid-60s plays, continues to write 12, 13 plays a year being put in off-broadway shows
    • Ed Sanders
    • Hunter S. Thompson – ‘gonzo’ journalist – inserted himself into his stories and the lives he was writing about
    • Breaking free of the standard molds of playwriting, music, etc. All of these become somewhat cult figrues – not cult figures but are bringing in new audiences
  • Challenges to conformity
    • Humor and satire become very important
    • Mad Magazine and Cracked – 1952 and 1958, introduce satire to a sterile American society
    • Britain – Monty Python, making fun of the British empire. Satire of the Royal Family, of empire, etc.
    • Dr. Strangelov, Stanley Kubrick – paradoxes of the nuclear deterrent – that we develop weapons to never use them; you lose if you win
    • By the 1960s, satire is an established tradition
  • The folk movement
    • Founded in individuals like Pete Seeger, travels around and plays a lot of music
    • Concentration on ‘folk’ – supposed to be the music of the people
    • Peter Seeger reflecting on the IWW – unionism and togetherness, stirring up the people
    • Utah Phillips
    • Bob Dylan comes of age in the 20s; recalls the communist influence of the 1930s labor activism – particularly Woody Guthrie
    • Reflecting on the 1930s labor activism, critique of the government
    • Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan
    • Attract a large following along college students – articulating key dimensinos of their life; being led into a new expressive space
    • Bob Dylan, Newport Folk Festival 1965 – plugs into the guitar to the amp guitar and plays electrical guitar, people booed him; felt betrayed that this creative musician had gone ‘sellout’ – this moment is defining for how people say the folk movement and Bob Dylan
  • Conformity of the post-war decade alienated some Americans who turned to critique, alternative lifestyles, and art forms for a wide range of motivations, from self-satifaction to social and political commentary.
  • A search for authenticity

Lecture 6: Kennedy and the Cold War

Kennedy’s short tenure as Presdient showed him to be a Cold Warrior who was ready to fight the spread of communism, but his experiences in office altered his political rhetoric by 1963 to a focus on world peace.

  • Cuban missile crisis – changes the focus of American and Soviet foreign policy; brings the US and USSR in close nuclear conflict
  • A change of focus and the big ideals
  • Goes into the presidency in 1961 – has to play tough with communism – only way to politically stay afloat, way more military spending than Eisenhower, stares down the soviet
  • Near the end of his life, he changes his tune – the Cuban Missle Crisis
  • THe US in Latin America
    • Since the early 19th century, the Munro doctrine to the focus on growing fruit and bananas throughout latin America, it has remained very important
    • Part of what Kennedy proposes is the Peace Corps – alternative to military service, still counts as service but you go to a part of the world and build houses or schools
    • Alliacne for progress – looks like New Deal policies – farmers demonstrating new farming techniques – more technological sophistication than existed in Latin America otherwise, like the Truman doctrin e– people on the fence about Communism, bringing them into our sphere by doing something good.
    • The carrot – lure the poeple towards you
    • The stick – the School of the Americas (Western Hemisphere Instittue for Security Coopertion) – set up after WWII in the Panama Canal zone – US has a lease of the Panama Canal zone. Trains right wing militias to fight leftists throughout Latin America. Becomes the other part of the peace corps – the part which will beat you. People here will be responsible for Che Guevara
  • John F. Kennedy
    • An important part of his image as a new president in 1971 is to be a cold warrior, will not be weak on communism
    • “paya ny price, bear any burden” – the US will unconditionally stand up tot eh USSR
    • Gets massive budgets for military spending; Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative, much lower than Truman’s and certainly Kennedy’s.
    • Kennedy beefs up the military much for flexible response – not just relying on US nuclear deterrent, but conventional forces which can be built up in other ways
    • Eisenhower, New Look – fueling nuclear deterrent. For Kennedy and his advisors, too many small conflicts – things sorted out without nuclear weapons
    • Alternative fallout shelters and missile systems
    • Focus on stopping wars of ‘national liberation’ – stopping leftist and nationalist efforts funded by communist states like China and the USSR in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, the Congo – Kennedy sees a coming war of national liberation and wants to stop it
    • Creation of Navy SEALs and a large focus on expanding the Army Green Berets
    • Inspirational to young americans
  • Foreign policy
    • The arms race and the space race – not wanting to lose to the Soviets
    • soviets already put a satellite in space,so the US would rush to put a man on the moon
    • Flexible response military policy – much more spending (Helicopters in Vietnam – major mode of transportation)
    • Cuba – dealing with Castro – secretly, plotting out many different ways to get Castro out of power
  • “Best and Brightest” – the advisers and cabinets
    • Drawn from many places who were not necessarily traditional Washington fixtures
    • Considered many mainstay figures in teh Democratic Party
    • Kennedy goes with a lot of young guys – nontraditioalists
    • Robert McNamara – president of Ford motor company, now runs the defense department
      • Capital and the state – head of Ford to head of the defense departmetn to head of the international bank
    • Maxwell Taylor – WWII general, part of joint chiefs
    • McGeorge bundy and Walt Rostow – policy wonks, out of universities – writers, poly sci, put out of university jobs into government – presumably smart guys not tainted by Washington history – hopefully shape things up and be creative
    • Robert Kennedy is the Attorney General and one of John Kennedy’s closest advisors
    • Walt Rostow – architect and defender of the Vietnam War
  • Liberal domestic agenda
    • Got a lot of heat from the Democratic Party for not having much of a domestic agenda, large focus on foreign policy
    • Big area of domestic policy (Civil Rights) – Kennedy is not going near for political viability, trying to get elected again in 64; trying to keep conservatives happy
    • Not too much by civil rights
    • Style over substance – commission on the status of women, inspires a number of states to do the same – several other domestic agenda victories in Congress
    • Addressing economic changes
    • Manpower development and training act – retraining for workers being replaced by automation – deindustrialization, a lot of direct automation
    • Area Redevelopment Act – going into poor regions and trying to fix endemic economic problems. Wide swathes of the country remain without electricity, running water, illiteracy, etc. Also resisted by the people there to a certain extent, overall campaigns are not very scuccessful

Part I: Cuba

  • US maintains spy plane initiatives (U-2) to high at high altitudes and spy on many places – see if countries are stockpiling weapons
  • Eisenhower’s policy – Open Skies Policy, both being aware they are spying on each other to address tensions between the US and Soviet
  • Planes could be shot down – 1960, by the USSR, held the pilot and then released him to the US, became a bit embarrasing for the US and the UN
  • Castro and Cuba
    • Nationalists / Communists movement in 1959, Cuban Revolution, government under Castro
    • Try to embarrass the US a lot at the UN
    • Organization of American states (Western Hemispheric organization), trying to embarrass the US about civil rights and the US position in the world
    • For Kennedy this is a major policy focus in secret – CIA works on how to get rid of Castro
    • When Kennedy comes into office they’ve already got the Bay of Pigs plans drawn up by the Eisenhower administration, laying there for Kennedy to sign. Kennedy agrees to sign it.
    • Allen Dulles – head of the CIA.
    • Use Cuban exiles – train them up (about 1400) – send them in to start a grassroots movement and install a different leader
    • Will this be a slow groing grassroots insurgency or a straightforward invasion?
    • For Kennedy, a slow grassroots insurgency; limited US assistance; do not want US military getting involved; pledges air support
  • Bay of Pigs
    • 1961 – OKs Bay of Pigs invasion
    • Ends up a disaster
    • Castro and the Cubans knew it was coming and were ready for it
    • Kennedy had promised air spport on the second day and pulled it back – left the Cuban exiles stuck in there
    • Depended on a grassroots revolt in Cuba which did not materialize – the US is often incorrect in its belief that people who live in Communist countries hate their leadership and love to see the country overthrown. “the people want democracy”
    • Reality is somewhat different, perhaps for many different reasons – often no big grassroots movement against Castro
    • Those who were not killed were captured
    • Bay of Pigs becomes a major embarrassment for Kennedy – first foreign policy decision, and it is a failure
    • one black eye just coming in by a low margin
    • Cuban exiles continue to see Kennedy as a traitor (conspiracy theories about Cuban exile involvement in assassination)
    • Continue to work on how to oust Castro
  • Operation Mongoose
    • Covert plot to kill Castro
    • All sorts of crazy ways to get rid of Castro
    • Robert Kennedy and Allen Dulles working on this
    • Pushed Castro closer to the Soviets – knew he was being targeted and hew as facing off against the US, began to seek out more help from the USSR
    • Castro didn’t want to be a Soviet satellite (wanted to be independent) but become closer to the Soviets
  • 1961 – Berlin Wall erected overnight. Germany is still occupied – West (democratic) and East (USSR). Berlin, in East Germany, is divided. The wall goes up which will stay there until 1989, 1990.
    • Kennedy gets blamed for this – on his watch the Soviets have erected a wall through Berlin which is a barrier of anyone trying to go west. Becomes a major talking point in speeches – the ways in which the Soviets shoot people trying to get over the wall.
    • becomes the best symbolf ro anti-democratic forces
    • Puts the focus on Berlin squarely in the Cold War
    • If the US attacked Cuba, the Soviets would surely roll into West Berlin; the US would be pulled into a conflict
    • Berlin becomes a major focus – the city itself become sa symbol
  • 1962, Cuban missle crisis
    • U2 flights over Cuba demonstrate that in fact the Soviet Union is putting nuclear missiles in Cuba, 100 miles off the US coast
    • Believe they are medium-range ballistic missiles, but in fact they are intermediate-range
    • Missiles being constructed, programmed, erected by Soviet personnel – large numbers of Soviet soldiers in Cuba
    • Attacking Cuba a bad idea – leading to war
  • Soviet Missiles in Cuba (1962)
    • MRBM – medium range
    • IRBM – can reach virtually everywhere in the US (except Seattle!)
    • From the US side, how to use tactical nuclear weapons – smaller nuclear weapons, meant to blow up a hole so the army can roll through
    • Kennedy’s joint chief of staff – really want an invasion of Cuba during this time
    • Kennedy’s ears – one voice, we must invade Cuba (military does not want to not get rid of Castro)
  • This is the crisis for 13 days – people watched on the news, how are we going to get out of this
  • Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
    • People are fearful – building bomb shelters, raiding grocery stores, protesting
    • Fearful that this will come to a strong nuclear conflict
    • Consequentially, Kennedy and Khushev couldn’t really talk to each other – ambassador to ambassador, department to department. Getting communiques which are supported to be from Khushchev, but maybe not really Khushchev saying these things – communication breakdowns and problems
  • Kennedy’s solution: military quarantine of Cuba
    • Naval ringing of Cuba with ships
    • A blocakde is technically an act of war, so called a quarantine
    • Gave the Soviets a chance to step back – if they wanted to run the blockade we would have to figure out what to do next
    • Becomes a chess match (symbolic – US vs Soviet Union)
    • Most ships stopped going to Cuba – a deep breath, yes we haven’t shot down ships
  • Military decisions
    • A lot of stuff happened in these 13 days
    • Many decisions brought us closer to war
    • Major Robert Anderson’s U2 was shot down and was killed
    • Cubans shot at US recon planes
    • U2 flight accidentally flew over Soviet airspace in Siberia
    • General Power set DEFCON 2 from DEFCON 3 with no authorization (US military goes into all sorts of heightened preparation)
    • Atomic energy commission – totally not on the same page as the politics, in the south pacific doing new nuclear weapon
    • Pushing the pressure towards war
  • Resolution
    • Khushchev not trying to start WWIII
    • The US negotiates a settlement with the Soviets
    • US will secretly take its missiles out of Turkey (old Jupiter missiles)
      • Could not do this publicly
    • Soveits took their missiles out of Cuba
    • Hot line in the White House with USSR
    • Cold War cools; kennedy focuses on not gettin gin this situation again
  • Space Program: Geminini (1961)
    • Mercury program – testing different spacecraft, leads to the Gemini program
    • Test methods of space travel and mechanics
    • LEO – Low Earth Orbits
    • Kennedy has the Apollo program slated later

Part 2: Containment in Vietnam

  • Ho Chi Minh - major force in Vietnam, patriotic leader, works with the OSS – Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA)
  • Fighting the Japanese – the US and Vietnam
  • Trying to kick the Japanese out of Indochina
  • After the war, one of our closest allies (France) wanted to go back and get the Vietnamese colony back
  • The US supported this to avoid a taking back of communism
  • This begins the very long Vietnam Wars
  • From the Vietnamese perspective, at war for >30 years
  • French in Indochina: 1945 - 1954
    • Don’t want to be ruled by the French
    • Overthrow of colonial movements
    • Viet Minh – national Liberation Front (NLF)
    • In the South, you have many French influences and Anti-communists – this is who is fighting against Ho Chi Minh adn the nationalists / communists
  • US Policy – NSC-68, containment policy
    • Gets the US interested in Vietnam
    • Neutrality until 1950 – because of the Korean War etc., the US begins moving closer to supporting the French with money and weapons
    • Truman under presusre to push against the Vietnamese because of the ‘loss of China’ under his watch
    • Truman focuses more in Vietnam
    • Truman – “We are fighting in Korea for our own national security and survival”. Same argument will be made about Vietnam. This will not be received well by Americans
    • We get in Southeast Asia Truman’s multi-million dollar aid program
    • Adivers in the Vietnam War – personel going to Vietnam to train the Vietnamese
  • US Policy
    • Eisenhower: seeing Southeast Asia as many dominos in the domino theory
    • Dogmatic belief by the mid fifties in the domino theory
    • If you let one go, all will fall – (broken windows theory?)
  • 1954, French Defeat by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, Indochina
    • The french believed they had good allies and modern weaponry + good trainig,s hould be winning
    • They were fighting an entrenched and dedicated enemy
    • Vo Nguyen Giap
    • French defeat – the US must figure out what must happen next in Vietnam
  • Communsit leadership
    • Changesa re going on in Vietnam itself
    • Ho Chi Minh is getting older – becomes more of a symbolic figure (‘Uncle Ho’) – relates to the common man, becomes a symbolic father
    • Real power moving into Le Duan; not there durnig the jockeying of power, which leaves him clean. Well opsitioned to rise to the top.
    • Americans are totally focused on Ho Chi Minh – Americans know him and use him in propaganda – talk about him like Castro, the single figurehead in Vietnam. But Ho Chi Minh is moving out of the picture. Americans do not know who Le Duan is
    • The US does not know a lot about Vietnam – but maintains a large amount of arrogance that they know what i will be about
      • Arrogance + ignorance
    • Guys in the North are consolidating power, supporting more of the guirreula powers
  • Vietnam: Divison of Indochina (1954)
    • Division at the 17th parallel – temporary division of the coutnry until a new government can be put in there
    • Rival groups with totally different visions for what will happen in Vietnam – unified under a communist or anticommunist flag
    • Laos – 3-party Civil War. US backs one of them
  • War and peace under Eisenhower
    • US government begins supporting Ngo Dinh Diem, who rises to power in southern Vietnam
    • Geneva Summit in 1955, not much gets decided about Vietnam, but new conversations between Khushchev and Eisenhower about collective security – SEATo, Baghdad Pact (1954 and 1955)
  • SOuth Vietnam
    • Ngho Dinh Diem is an unfortunate ally – aligned with the french as many of the Vietnamese bureaucrats were; converted to Catholicism
    • Are authoritarian – many people who take over in post-colonial states are authoritarian
    • Diem’s authority is a rule by police squads and arrests
    • Ngo Dinh Nhu – brother – runs a lot of this stuff
    • Madame Nhu – sometimes compared with Jackie Kennedy, a colorful personality
    • Southern Vietnam in an authoritarian party, and this is now our ally – rule from a position of privilege rather than populism
  • Kennedy’s Policies
    • Kennedy gets in power, what does he do?
    • Getting involved further in Vietnam
    • Laos – Kennedy and Khushchev take part with 13 other nations in getting involved in Laos and settling a compromise government which doesn’t allow the government to devolve into further civil war
    • Seen by Kennedy’s opponents as a loss – couldn’t beat them in Laos
    • Vietnam, increases American advisors doing training and military advising
    • Beginning of special fofrces type operations – sabotoge, psychological warfare, recon, training SV forces in these tactics
    • Lots of US equipemnt is going into Vietnam
    • Disturbing discoveries in Vietnam – Ngo Diem Dinh’s rule is not good – McNamara and Taylor, almost impossible to win the war. It is grim starting 1962/3. The government from Truman to Kennedy to Johnson will tell the American people very different stories than the private discussion
    • 1963 – 16k advisors, are going into operations, are getting involved in combat operations – 500 casualities
    • Few voices in Kennedy’s administration. George Ball gives a prescient remark on getting too deep into it; Kennedy dismisses this
  • Special forces: counter-insurgency
    • The US put a lot of effort into training for war; got sunk more into Vietnam
    • Green Berets – important role in Vietnam, did a lot of going into the mountains and training tribal people to be armies for the South
    • By 1963, a large number of special forces – 950 Green Berets
  • 1963 – Vietnam: State and Society
    • American ignorance about Vietnamese society
    • State and soceity did not look like one another
    • Southern Vietnam is going through a chain of bad leaders after Diem – only worsening
    • Madame Ngu – jokes about the Buddhists protesting anti-Buddhist policies (‘barbeque in the street’)
    • Buddhists being pushed out of power and site sof worship closed; massive demonstrations of Buddhists and students against the Catholic rulers; universities etc. closed
    • Massive protests against the government the US is dedicated to backing – a losing proposition since 1963
  • World peace
    • Kennedy’s turn towards world peace, part of his legacy
    • After the Cuban Missile Crisis, a politician which undergoes change
    • Rousing speeches on world peace
  • Assassinations of November 1963
    • A US backed coup sings off on ousting Diem and his brother – now a long chain of worse leaders.
    • November 63, John Kennedy is assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson
    • New leader of South Vietnam: Khahn

Lecture 7: Civil Rights – Policy and Activism During 1964 and 1965

  • On the response paper – do not write body paragraph 1 (one document), body paragraph 2 (one document), etc. Least analytic, least interesting, least useful thing you can do – bring documents in combination wiht each other
  • Argument: The height of the Civil Rights movmeent brought policy changes and helped to alter American politics of both the left and right as well as creating a new pluralist America.
  • Organizations
    • There are number of organizations working together now
    • NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC, VEP
    • Albany, Georgia – they don’t get along well for integration methods, and this works against their overall mission
    • NAACP is a lot of lawyers – courts and courtcases; CORE is a more activist group (freedom rides); SNCC does a lot of student-centered stuff.
  • Protesting for Civil Rights
    • After the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling
    • Desegregation – local and interstate services, schools, busses, wade-ins
    • Massive resistance – White Southerners’ campaign of resistance to not integrate in the South
    • Voting rights – produces a lot of violence and why Mississippi comes to be known as ‘Mississippi burning’
    • 1957 Civil Rights Act – an act in Congress which really gets watered down through compromise and ends up as a suffrage act which tries to make it illegal to discriminate against ‘qualified’ Black voters.
    • Greatest violence in rural areas and counties in Mississippi, Alabama, etc.; almost nobody votes; anyone who votes, is usually in cities (might be small populations)
  • Voter Education Project – 1962 to 1964
    • Attempt to get more poeple registered to vote
    • Across the American South, trying to get people to register to vote, this is what produces a bunch of violence across the South
  • Voting Rights
    • By 1964, results in about 700k new Black voters – from 29% to 43% of adult Black voters nationally
    • Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama – face a lot of challenges to try and get people to vote
    • 1964 in Mississippi – less than 7% of adult Black people could vote
    • 1965 voting rights act
  • School Integration
    • Because of Brown v. Board, schools should be integrated – but there is massive resistance
    • James Meredith registers at Ole. Miss, Oxford Mississippi (Oxford Town, Bob Dylan) at 1962 – a riot ensues where two people are killed and 375 people are injured
    • Kennedy dispatched federal troops (30k) to keep this in hand
    • MLK: “To take a moderate approach, hoping to get whit ehelp, doesn’t help. They nail you to the cross and it saps the enthusiasiam of followers. You’ve got to have a crisis.”
    • Kennedy is trying to keep his hands off; MLK realizes that only by provoking a crisis can you get places – this is where you get non-violent protesters putting their bodies on the line (sacrifices?)
  • George Wallace
    • Governor of Alabama
    • Significant because of what he teaches Richard Nixon – on an anti-integration pattern / segregationist platform, he can get the ‘Solid South’ behind him
    • This changes the South being controlled by the Democrats to the Republicans
    • University of Alabama, 1963 – admitting Vivian Malone and James Hood – Gov. George Wallace stands in the door to prevent integration.
    • A highly staged and publicized event – the fact that it becomes a media circus works in many ways – galvanizes segregationists behind Wallace but also shows other Americans what is happening in the South.
    • Wallace is breaking federal law – he gets lots of political attention – a white leader breaking the law vs. black people breaking the law – they don’t even have to protest to go into jail.
    • Robert Kennedy as the AG: sherrifs say that if they think there will be a riot, they will first arrest the black people.
  • Birmingham, AL
    • After the Civil War, Birmingham is one of the few Southern cities where there is an effort to invest a lot of capital to create an industrial town by Northern industrialists
    • Effort to create Northern-style factory work, union jobs, etc. – Birmingham at the center of this investment
    • After 1900 – Birmingham stands out as a unique southern town
    • Even though it is industrial, white unions control a lot of the labor; black people remain the second class and remain on the outside
    • Birmingham becomes an important place to take a stand. A lot of Black folks who have a stake in civil rights – it becomes a focal point for Civil Rights
    • Held in check by Bull Connor – the sheriff who rules with an iron fist in Birmingham, does not mind sending out dogs and fire hoses to attack and subdue people
    • Through 1963, Birmingham became a very violent place, including bombings, such as one which killed four young girls
    • People start to see well-trained protesters standing up against physical attacks by police
    • Kennedy begins to change his tone in Civil Rights – May 1963
  • Medgar Evers
    • June 11: JFR finally pronounces Civil Rights as a moral issue
    • Medgar Evers assassinated in his home
    • JFK had made a speech about how civil rights was a moral issue as clear as the scriptures and the US Constitution – starting to be interested in standing up for Civil Rights
    • Evers worked on many issues, including wade-ins in Gulf Areas of Mississippi, investigating Emmett Till’s murder, works with the NAACP in Missisippi
    • Killed by a sniper in his home – one of the assassinations which will lead to the November 63 assassination of JFK
  • August 1963: march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
    • Almost 250k people – NAACP, SCLC< etc.
    • Come out to protest what is happening in America in terms of race
    • MLK gives the central galvanizing speech on race in America
  • A New President
    • Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas in November
    • Lyndon Johnson – brings his own focus on Civil Rights to bear in his presidency
    • Johnson is ambitious – a long-time lawmaker and policy-maker, has a lot of influence in Congress, quite political successful; from Texas
    • A colorful personality
    • Johnson comes out of the New Deal tradition – in the mold of FDR – believed it was the federal government which could be used to start to change American life in important ways – how to put a stamp on the country? At a pivotal time in American presidency where we can make change
    • Johnson is set up well to become one of the longest serving presidents (two terms changed after FDR) – Johnson can finish Kennedy’s term and can run for two more terms
    • Johnson has a moment to put a massive mark on the future of hte country
    • The Great Society – a continuation of New Deal ideas – using the power of the federal government to get into and change lives for the better
    • Centerpiece of the Great Society – the war on poverty
    • Post WWII, war becomes the American mode of combat for everything – war of poverty, war on drugs, etc.
    • Pricey government programs to fix black and white poverty
    • A democrat from Texas: has some cred here, is a southerner, has some credit here – gets some people to follow him on the idea of the Great Society
    • Not just that some groups will resist this (a centerpiece of conservatism – resisting government programs) but what destroys Johnson and these programs is the Vietnam War.
    • Johnson tries to fight two wars at once, does both of them badly, and loses boht of them
    • It is rare for a sitting president to not run for a second term – but he is so defeated by 1968 that he does not even run for president – when he doesn’t run for president, he smokes again, pus on 20 more pounds, and is dead by 1973. Johnson’s presidency with hope and promise will become completely derailed by the Vietnam War.
  • Wallace shows Nixon – the South can vote as a bloc, and this is politically significant for taking back the South for the Republicans
  • LBJ – a racist? The trends are already there that black voting can be key to political victories. Even Eisenhower had increased his proportion of black voters. Part of it is pure political animalism. But this is also the direction of the US. LBJ has no respect for the Vietnamese for instance.
  • LBJ sees Civil Rights as politically expedient
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 – passed in Congress
    • Questions about its longevity – is it still relevant?
    • Prohibits the kinds of discrimination we see in schools as well as privately onwed institutions.
    • The South got away with discrimination via public/private divide: the 14th amendment doesn’t apply to private institutions
    • Includes discrimination based on sex, which is an interesting development. Many employers continue to discriminate on the basis of sex. Made a big stink about the law saying that we should have male playboy bunnies, etc. – in their minds, work was divided by gender / sex anyway.
    • The ‘64 act did not mention voting – a major issue which Civil Rights folks wanted
  • Freedom Summer (1964)
    • Across the American South, a lot of people in the South begin registering to vote –going into rural areas and getting Black people registered to vote
    • Unleashed another wave of violence in the south.
    • Hundreds of volunteers in the North coming down – many were white, some were also black – the response is multiple bombings, beatings, shootings, and other forms of violence.
    • THree specific murders – the Mississippi bruning case – one black and two white volunteers going to register voters and were murdered by the KKK
    • The federal government tries to keep its hand out of local cases but there was here a massive hunt for the bodies and the killers
    • In rural places, volunteers are setting up freedom schools – being educated so they can read and start to vote, being more politically involved.
  • Democratic Convention – Atlantic City, New Jersey (1964)
    • Picking who is going to run for president
    • Delegation to Mississippi is dominated by whites
    • Delegations go to the convention and try to get the candidate they like elevated to the person running for president
    • Group of African-American activists form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party (MFDP) – trying to be seated at the 1964 convention – but they were turned away because thye were black. Gave them two seats in the convention. Refused these seats. Afterwards, the news media began to interview some of threse folks.
      • Fannie Lou Hamer – local activist in Mississippi, lost her job for being too much of an activist.
      • Began talking with the media about her experience in Mississippi
      • What she had to say was being viewed on national media
      • Fannie Lou Hamer becomes a voice of the struggle going on in Mississippi at the Democratic Convention
  • Republican Convention
    • Significant – Barry Goldwater from Arizona rises to the top of the American field of candidates
    • From Arizona is significant: a place of grassroots conservatism in the country, referred to as the ‘Sun Belt’ – Orange County and Arizona across the warm states of the South
    • Demonstrates George Wallace’s success, that he had brought together the southern states under a segregationist platform.
    • What might be possible if they had gotten involved?
    • How do use coded language which indicates segregation by talking about the fderal government’s overreach, etc. Bringing together the core of the deep south
    • Barry Goldwater fired up a lot of people, including young conservatives voting for the same time – excited about Barry Goldwater. A transitional figrue here getting to Nixon.
    • The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) – articulates these new conservative ideas.
    • Has cred with the south that he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights act; really targets Kennedy’s Great Society – targets the welfare state, social security, etc.
    • “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”
  • Selma march for voting rights
    • Now the Civil Rights movement is focused on voting
    • Selma, Alabama – famous march over the bridge
    • A small percentage of blacks could vote – becomes a centerpiece for new voting laws
    • TV cameras are rollinig with massive violence, thrust at these marchers who are nonviolent and unarmed
    • American s are watching protesters being beaten up
    • It is not uncommon in America for average Ameircans “the white moderate” to look at this and think “the black people have still done something wrong for this to have happened” – and this is a feeling which takes a long time to work out – the Kennedys had to change their position for this, etc.
    • Surely it cannot be as simple as beating up nonviolent protesters.
    • “Go slow” – Kennedy and the later white Americans – take it slow, American society isn’t ready yet – a lot of pushback against this from the white moderate
    • In 1965, Voting Rights Act
      • idea for black people to vote dates from reconstruction
      • If black people didn’t have voting rights, they would enver have equal citizenship – Douglas, effort since post Civil War
      • Selma is the final moment before the Voting Rights Act is passed in 1965
      • 24th amendment: ends the poll tax (pay to vote), literacy tests, etc.
      • 25 Black people are elected in the South in 1964; there are over 700 in 1970
  • Black power / Black militancy
    • Impact of the 1964 Democratic Convention
    • High point of the Black power movement isn’t quite there yet
    • Malcolm X is a fringe figure, a radical – belongs to a radical organization for most of his life (Nation of Islam)
    • Mainstream Americans are uncomfortable with Malcolm X
    • 1964 DC central to rise of black power: it is clear that African-Americans are still going to rmeain on the outside of political power
    • Malcolm X talk about Black indpeendence movements – not being connected to whites anymore; breaking free, enough is enough.
    • Jim Brown (football player) – becomes one of the many faces of the black pwoer movement
    • SNCC begins to turn towards more black inependence and black militancy – begins to purge white counterparts – wanted them out. =
    • Malcolm X becomes so central – very articulate and intelligent, is debating with people – Blacks will have to be more militant, stop just asking for table scraps, demand independence
    • 1965: dissaffected member of the Nation of Islam kills Malcolm X after he left that organization
    • Muhammad Ali – won the Olympics at a young age
      • One of the great characters of American history
      • Ali would say ‘outrageous’ things – much charisma and humor, became a face of the black power and black militancy movement
      • Joined the Nation of Islam, becmae a Muslim in 1961
      • Cassius Clay – a name which comes from slavery, gets rid of these names from legacies of slavery – changes to Muhammad Ali
      • Becomes to educate himself – black people have no knowledge of themselves – understand ‘roots’, ‘self’, etc.
      • 1966: supposed to report for the draft, absolutely refuses
      • Goes to jail for 3 years
  • Immigration Reform
    • Since 1924, the US had a quite draconian immigration law – 1924, the height of xenophobia and racism in America
    • 1924 cut off immigration from Asia and established a quota system – quota numbers are determined from census data from the 19th century – really priviliged Northern and Western Europe
    • Hart-Cellar Act of 1965, a championship for immigration reform
      • Looked bad for the US – main motviation
      • An aspect of the Great Society
    • Ends Asian exclusion, quotas, and other restrictions
    • Makes a general number from any place on Earth – what this means is that immigrant from Nigeria has just a good chance of getting in as someone from Norway
    • Limited Western hemisphere immigration to 120k; Mexico and Central America will send many immigrations over across the decades
      • Creates a new category of ‘illegal aliens’ which becomes very significant
      • People come for agricultural war
      • Brosero program has gone on for over 20 years – people come and go for agricultural work – will continue to be an issue
    • Effects
      • Allows more immigrants in than in previous periods
      • Many immigrants are refugees from communism
      • A lot more people in the Caribbean and Asia, as well as Latin America
      • Suggests that the laws being passed are favoring a more pluralist American society – one which is less overtly white
      • The ‘browning’ of America
  • Urban unrest on the horizon – 1964 and 1965, dark clouds on the horizon in terms of what is happening
    • 64 & 65 laws have been passed, significant and not to be understated – but they don’t change things from day to day
    • Harlem in 64, Watts in 65 – both places explode with extreme racial unrest in places caused by police who stopped young black men
    • Massive unrest, damage, violence, and so on – a signal of what is to come in the next few years
    • 67 – the long hot summer; over 100 American cities will look somewhat similar
  • Sum up
    • Activism has its triumphs and limitations
    • Fracturing of the movement was like the 1960s more broadly
    • JOhnson administration’s new policies establish a new liberalism and the backlash tot hose policies a new conservatism.

Lecture 8: The Great Society

Argument: The Great Society was a response to prosperity. it was a vision of a more generally prosperous America that would use the power of the federal government to solve economic and social problems.

  • End of LBJ’s term as presdiency, the White House puts more than 200 bills through Congress – big Democratic majority and gets a lot of legislation through; some of it lingers, such as medicaid / medicare
  • Great Society – response to prosperity – we’re doing well but a good portion of the country has been left behind – but this is also what irritates Reagan – when it was a response to depression, spending is fine; but not as a response to prosperity. The government should not be taking money from one group of people and giving it to others.
  • When Nixon gets elected in 68, Nixon actually keeps it going – it’s pretty popular. In the 80s a lot of it gets cleaved away.
  • The Great Society
    • Help for poor Americans, the elderly
    • Great Society – focused on both black and whites, supposed to be for everyone
    • New Deal lacked significantly in terms of race because Roosevelt needed the Southerners
    • Johnson thinks of himself as carrying on Kennedy’s legacy ; wants to use Kennedy’s name political as much as he can
    • Influenced significantly by The Affluent Society (Galbraith) and others
    • Galbraith became part of the administration (ambassador to India) and later an advisor to Johnson
    • The Affluent Society – all of this focus on private gain and wealth and jobs and income, etc., we are missing out on opportunities to do public projects which will help more people. Johnson is taking from this and saying we should do more publc
    • LBJ played heavily on drawing on Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • New deal inspired – take this overseas to Vietnam. Same thing US is doing elsewhere also – social uplift / infrastructure projects
    • 1964 in the fall elections; Johnson is elected but there is also a solid Dem majority in Congress, which allows Johnson to send bill after bill to Congress
  • The War on Poverty
    • A focus on absence of skills and needs for job training + education
    • LBJ didn’t want direct aid (welfare)
    • Food Stamps (1961) – one form of direct aid, but coupled with a tax cut for the middle and high class
      • Johnson sees the pitfalls here – programs focus on uplifting people and not just wealth distribution
    • A ‘hand up’, not a ‘hand out’
    • Begins / accelerates a national conversation about working hard, deserving, meritocracy, origins of poverty, lack of success
  • The Other America, Michael Harrington (1962)
    • Authoritative voice – Michael Harrington, University Professor and influential in the Kennedy administration – talking about ‘the other america’
    • 40 to 50 million Americans who are invisible to the rest of the country, living in deep poverty
    • Promoting the conscience constituency – fellow countrymen
    • Gets debated constantly; it’s well-done and researched, becomes a lightning rod for different sides of the issues
  • Connecting poverty to a lack of freedom
    • If not taking part in properity, if not accessing basic services, are you in fact free?
    • Comes up by people who are critical of hte system: you oare unde the humb of work that you don’t enjoy any of the prosperity in the country
    • The need for a soical safety net so Americans don’t fall below a certain value
    • Economic liberty – the way American freedom is getting defined is less about your political contributions / poliitcal citizenship and more about what you can enjoy and afford economically because of the money you make / the family you belong to. Economic liberty is a centerpiece of Johnson’s claim. People need to be able to make a living wage an achieve soical status
  • Experiencing poverty
    • LBJ talking about all sorts of groups of Americans, not letting race be unmentioned
    • “We seek not just equality as a right and a theroy, but equality as a fact and as a result”
    • Division on responsibility for lack of success
  • Economic opportunity
    • Wnat to put emphasis on the right topics – economic opportunity bcomes an important buzzphrase for the Johnson administration
    • 1964 Economic Opportunity Act – helpes to create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – see if people are being discriminated against in hiring
    • Supposed to be about both sex and race, but not being paid alot of attention
    • What are Americans able to talk about? It perhaps is sex and gender which maybe is the hardest for Americans to get their head around
    • Expectation that this will be taken seriously is not followed by many people
    • Many new laws which speak exactly to gender discrimination
    • Office of Economic Opportunity
    • Locally oriented Community Action Agencies (CC)
    • Helping people with job training, finding jobs, getting jobs, not being discriminated against when applying to jobs, etc. – have some success
    • Like the Peace Corps, the Job Corps is focused on economic opportunity – getting people jobs.
    • 1965 – Head Start, program for working poor people to get their kids started
  • Volunteering
    • Major part – programs to stimulate volunteering
    • VISTA: Volunteer in Service to America. People volunteering locally to helping people
    • Like a Peace Corps for the inner cities
    • Making people aware of government programs – many rural poor don’t know about new government programs – a lot of lack of awareness / information about programs people can take advantage of.
    • People worried about taking advantage of government services b/c they’ll be stigmatized as lazy, a taker, etc.
    • Johnson is careful to not use terms like ‘living on the dole’ / welfare
  • Health Programs
    • Medicaid and Medicare – health insurance for hte poor and the elderly
    • Universal Health coverage on the liberal agenda since 1938
    • Government creates the Homeowner’s association which redid the mortgage industry by being competitive – completely remade the mortgage industry and was great for American capitalism and the market system
    • Continued argument over healthcare – business or a right?
    • Some healthcare companies refer to the people they insure as customers, not necessarily as patients or people
    • Medicaid and Medicare both become part of the gov’m’t safety net
  • The Arts and Education
    • Programs like the Works Progress administration – hire artists, songwriters, poets, etc. who would celebrate and reinspire Americans
    • Sesame Street in 1969 and PBS (Public Broadcasting)
    • Public money being made available to promote arts
    • Remain constant targets by those who dont think that the govn’mt should be in the arts
  • Successes
    • End of first year of LBJ’s presidency, gets 84 / 87 bills submitted to Congress into law by end of 1965 (end of 200 by end of his presidency)
    • A legacy of the Greaet Soceity still remaining, but gets overshadowed by the Vietnam War, massive protests, etc.
    • Creation of Department of Transportation and Housing and Urban Developemnt – new offices in the cabinet, are also targets
  • War on Poverty
    • National poverty rate does decline because of these programs – 22 to 13 percent nationally over the 60s
    • Become targets for attack
    • Drawbacks
      • All this job training is nice, but manufacturing jobs are disappearing
      • By 65s, economists know that jobs are on their way out – dindustrialization which happens across the Rust Belt is beginning
      • Middle of 70s, we are deep into a recession, problem of de-industrialization
      • Jobs will not necessarily be there
      • Beginning of rust belt towns
      • Germany and Japan have been rebuilt; other economies which suffered in WWII are being rebuilt; Auto indsutry is being challenged by German and Japanese manufacturing. A lot of automation going on. A lot of jobs were automated out of existence. One hope is that Johnson’s tax cut – capitalists will reinvest in the economy and hire more people. But many of these industries and capitalists invent in automation and further drive the loss of jobs. Cascading effect of job loss.
      • Not a lot of support for unionization. The economics are changing and unions are losing their footing. Not a central piece of the Great Society.
      • Beginning of ascendancy of service jobs – people are going into service type jobs
  • US Indian Policy
    • Parts of American life which got left out – US Indian Policy
    • Policy of the US federal government swings wildly w.r.t. native people
    • US policy has gone through many different changes
    • 1950s and 60s – goes through another great upheaval / convulsion of new policy. The very fact that native people / tribes on reservations maintained a tribal status was keeping them down, it was said
    • Government should make native people economically viable and then revoke their special status – make them like ‘everyone else’
    • None of these worked
    • Relocation – native people were poor bc they were rural; some native people did this and relocated and got jobs, but of course had quite detrimental effects on kinship and tribal comunities.
    • Both policies as well as the boarding school policy are questioned as policy changes again under Nixon, where people can get free tom the country and create hteir own worlds.
  • Labor activism
    • We don’t see very much about the farmworkers, an ongoing issue
    • INvisible folks – many farm workers are quite invisible, come and work in America’s fruit fields, pretty much picking all of its fruits
    • Really remains very invisible, live in poor conditions and are paid very small amounts of money for their wages
    • Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta form UFA – United Farm Workers (1965), go through boycotts and strikes – reaches far into other states where people start boycotting table grapes because of farmworker conditions
    • Eventually we do see changes in farmworker working condtitions; but left out of consumer society
  • Criticisms of the Great Soceity
    • Growing conservative movement – Buckley’s Firing Line TV show
      • Buckley interviews many interesting people
      • w/ Noam Chompsky
      • position w/ James Baldwin (the ‘pen drop’ speech)
    • Conservative platofrm for drawing attention to the Great Scoeity
    • Goldwater – criticizes Great Society in 64 while running against LBJ
    • NEA, NEH, PBS remain heavily scrutinized by conservatives
    • Ongoing criticism of the poor
    • Ongoing reliance on the prosperity doctrine (belief system – if you’re successful, it’s because you deserve it – you did the right thing, you did it) and individualism – one’s success is tied to one’s goodness, one’s failure is tied to one’s failures. Dedication to bootstrap mentality

Lecture 9: The Vietnam War in Country (1964 - 1965)

  • The Vietnamese have already been fighting for 20 years, and then the US gets involved.
  • Argument: A commitment to stop the spread of communism anywhere in the world did not prepare Americans to win a war in this specific place in time
    • The US had devoted itself to a policy of containment
    • Made many many pledges and statements about following this policy and stopping the spread of communism in the world
    • This policy did not prepare the US to step into this particular place and time and be effective
  • Getting involved in 64/65
  • Kennedy administration begins the process of entry but LBJ definitely follows it up and pours more people into Vietnam, even as he does not want to do any of it. But he feels like he has no choice.
  • One hard truth about the US involvement in the Vietnam War
    • Vietnam itself did not matter to America or to Americans, but rather Vietnam was a symbol in the fight against the spread of communism, it mattered a lot
    • LBJ referred to Vietnam as a ‘piss-ant little country”
    • Mainly symbolic value – this simple formula is how the US ends up in a war Americans didn’t know, with people Americans didn’t understand, with unenviable allies in the Vietnamese south – nothing promising about getting involved in the war
  • Vietnam
    • About the land area of New Mexico – not very large
    • This amount of land will absorb triple amount of tonnage that was dropped by all countries in WWII – mostly the south is being bombed
    • 1960 – almost 32.7 million people; by the end of the war, 3m (8 - 9%) of people die in the portion of the war the US dies in
    • Civil War – killed about 2% of the American population
    • Hanoi – big capital, lots of French buildings and cathedrals from the imperial era. After 1954 when the French are defeated, many Catholic Vietnamese go back down to the South with the Communists taking over in the North.
    • End of the river – Haifong – large international shipping port. Johnson doesn’t want to blow up or mine the harbor and the military leaders want to – a major source of tension in the war
    • Ho Chi Minh trail – a road system which runs from the North, goes through Laos, and then goes into the South
    • THe US Navy stops all ships going in and out; naval bloackade
    • Ho Chi Minh trail willb e the target of enormous bombing campaigns – the bombs don’t do good – stuff continues to flow South
    • Laos in the Kennedy administration – agreement between 13-16 countries that Laos would have a neutral government and share power. Painted as if Kennedy gave up and lost it
    • Some people in Vietnam are pushing for Laotian neutrality but US feels like they have to stop them (also the Communists wouldn’t have allowed for a neutral government anyway)
    • Cambodia has three factions vying for power – but also many Communist bases
    • Saigon – major capital of the South, sits at the delta of the Maikong river delta
    • Da Nang and Hue – important cities
    • DMZ at the 17th parallel – not the establishment of different countries – was a temporary division until the country could come together nad have a vote as a unified nation. Often talked about as North vs. South – it’s more complicated
  • Northern Communist Nationalists
    • Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan
    • By 64/65, Ho Chi Minh is being phased out as the US gains interest. Ho Chi Minh is also the only one that the Americans know.
    • Le Duan becomes major policy maker in the North for the Northern communists
    • Two major backers: the USSR and China, play many roles
    • Different angles on what should be happening in Vietnam
    • Soviets – want to see peaceful coexistence, want to see Northern Vietnamese negotiate so there isn’t conflict
    • China – looking at global revolution, violent if needed, so continuing to stoke the Vietnamese in order to make the revolution possible.
    • Le Duan believes it is an uncompromising position – the war aims (political goals of war) are to unite Vietnam under a communist government. A fairly exclusive war aim, doesn’t allow for many possibilities
  • Vietnamese Communists / Nationalists
    • Northern regularly trained conventional forces – People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) – trained in the North
    • South: National Liberation Front (NLF) – trying to convince Southerners who may be on the fence or aligned with the Southern government to come over the Northern side – or torture / coerce them
    • NLF gets called the ‘Vietcong’ or VC derogitorially. You can’t tell which side they’re on – they blend in, work in the rice fields at day and subvert at night; these people make the war really hard for Americans, very hard to tell who is the real enemy out in the countryside
    • North – lots of militias (coastal, scoop out American pilots, etc.) and volunteer civilians – most of the North is galvanized behind this approach – a total war approach, all of society is helping to win this war
    • South si massively factionalized, don’t have the same kind of cohesion in the south
    • Lots of equipment given to the North by USSR and China
  • South Vietnam
    • 1965 – very tricky map. Many areas in South Vietnam have entrenched NLF sympathies.
    • US doesn’t really know what they’re getting into – the US doesn’t relaly know the full extent of the war
    • McNamara
    • With the assassination of Ngo Diem in 1963, there are multiple different coups – differnet generals kicking out and taking over; none of them really got popular support. The US gets behind general Khahn becuae he was young and would do waht the US wanted him to do. By this point the Southern government had no credibility – people in the South were allied only out of fear. There was very little popular support in the South.
    • Tried to do a new start with Buddhists and the students – under the Diem regime there is a major crackdown; Khahn tries to make common point. However the Buddhists and students continue to protest throughout this period.
    • Communists on the move – from 54 to 63, have had a long time to plan, work, infiltrate the South, really get set to try and topple the Southern government
    • Most people are farmers – people trying to live. both the Southern government and the Communists are trying to politicize people
  • The US and its Allies
    • Northern Army – Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)
    • Supplied and trained by the US, given a lot of equipment – much of Vietnam War is shipments of American stuff
    • Why is war good? The companies the produce war material is getting shipped into Vietnam
    • By the early seventies, a stream of military goods but also other American consumer products
    • Why is American spending so high? Vietnam War – what the govenrment is spending so much war on. Vietnam becomes a consumer for American products.
    • ARVN have some problems with corruption – corruption at the top, corruption on the line – officers exist who aren’t there or don’t know what’s going on. That being said maybe ARVN troops fought well and with distinction. Performances were far from uniform
    • Major allies in Vietnam – South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines
      • A lot of South Koreans fought
  • Who is the enemy
    • In Vietnam, who is the enemy? Who is being fought?
    • The guys in the unifroms, sure – but what most Ameircan soldiers were finding when they went into the countryside is that they are facing villages full of people and they can’t tell who is a communist and who isn’t one
    • The United States and ARVN end up finding a stash of guns or much more rice than one village can consume, make connections, and end up blowing up the village – dropping bombs, burning things down, etc. – this makes more enemies
    • Every time they arrest someone and burn a village (US and ARVN), create mor eneemis – push people further into the camp fo the NLF. Major strategies to get people on our side is something that we are undermining – gets to become a big problem
  • Strategic Hamlet Program – started by the French and carried over by the AMericans
    • identify Hamlets (little villages) which were targets of the communists and to physically fortify them – make sure they have enough to eat, brin gin electricity, help them with farming, etc. – New Deal type, Truman Doctrine – bring them to our side by helping them. But you can’t stand and guard every Hamlet every time – some of these did work, both for a nationwide program – all of the South is not viable after a certain time
    • Early on – a centerpiece to the hearts and minds campaign – we need to win the hearts and minds of the people
  • “Hearts and Minds”
    • Neew Deal, Great Soceity, CORDS – Civil operations and Rural Development Support
    • Buildin gin new equipment, pesticides, herbicides, more animals, etc. – as an effort to politicze the Southern people, get them supporting the Southern government. Similar to what the French did. Both sides are putting a lot of pressure – the US didn’t have the time and personnel to do waht the Communists did. The US has a hard time actually politicizing the rural population
  • CIA and the Military
    • Some success becuase it replicated what the NLF was going to do: the PHOENIX program (CIA, 1965 - 1972) engaged in the same kind of subserive work – assassinations, intimidation, identifying who in a village needs to die to get the influence out of that village. PHEONIX program is doing this the entire time – often there is a lynchpin leader who could drop the Communist influence in an area.
    • Trained ARVN folks to engage in the same kind sof tactics – investigations, killings, kidnappings, torture, etc.
  • War Aims
    • A war aim is a political outcome that you hope to see in the war – the goals you are fighting for
    • Unlimited and limited wars: your goal is to topple the other government (WWII) vs. anything other than that, respectively
    • Comes out of the Defense Department – long memorandum of purpose for going to Vietnam (March 10, 1965), Secretary of Defense
      • 70% – to maintain US reputation – we staked our reputation on containment
      • 20% – to check the Chinese, to make sure that they didn’t become another patron to a Communist state
      • 10% – to make life better for people in South Vietnam
      • Have to emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used (ironic)
    • Getting into it to maintain our reputation – lofty goals in the press about saving the South Vietnamese, etc. – not what is really going on behind the scenes.
    • A lot of confidence and arrogance going in – McNamara and Rusk, etc. know this is probably a losing proposition, and they go anyway – hidden from the American public
    • They’re not dummies; it’s not that they don’t know – what explains involvement?
  • The Beginning
    • 1964: begins iwth OPlan 34-A, a plan to start to selectively target certain part of the North and to help the ARVN in their ongoing conflict
    • Bombinrg raids on communist bases in Laos – communists putting bases in laos. Was Johnson going to go into another country and bomb it? (Yes, we will)
    • Commanod raids on bridges, railroads, etc.
    • Use of naval ships to support the South Navy on raids of North Vietnamese coastal isladns, doing surveillance , radio jamming, etc.
    • Johnson had his advisors draft up something if something happened for Congress
  • Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964)
    • Maddox and Turner Joy – ships out in the Gulf of Tonkin when North Vietnamese torpedo boats come and attack them – at first a volley of misses – the next day, there was a belief that the attacks would resume. The attack never comes, but there is communication between Maddox and Turner Joy that they might have seen a torpedo shot at them; report up the chain of command that they were “probably, but not certainly”, attacked
    • Becomes a very controversial issue because it really gets us into the Vietnam War
    • When Johnson is told the Maddox is probably attacked, sends the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to Congress, and it is almost uninanimously voted for – no one in the House votes against it, and only two senators vote against it. Time to use force in Vietnam War.
  • US Strategy
    • Strategy – general concept for how to wage war, how to fight a war
    • Tactics – how troops move around. But strategy is more general.
      1. Support the southern government and the ARVN
        • After 1963, Southern government is unlikely to get support of the people – the coups and such, and the Communists hammering the populations
      2. Heart and Minds – help the Southern government build support among rural populations
        • Too many refuges, Strategic Hamlet abandoned
        • Many people caught in the middle
      3. Bomb the North until they agree to negotiate – break morale
        • US sees that its tech superiority will just lay waste to whatever it wants; the North can’t sustain American bombing
        • Bombing created massive criticism of the US; they were globally condemened, entirely abandons the anti-war movement in the US, and it never broke the moral of the north
      4. Naval blockades, river patrols; attempts to render the terrain unusuable
        • The Ho Chi Minh Trail always stayed open despite the bombings
        • THe NLF build large systems of underground tunnels
      5. Destroy communist guerillas in the South through decisive action
        • Guerrillas ate away at American morale by inflicting massive physical and pyschological wounds – got very good at sniping, ambush, etc. which chipped away at American morale
    • All facing real challenges going into the war.
  • The US was engaging in a war knowing that it was going to be very difficult – throwing their weight behind a revolving door of generals. The South did not trust their government. ARVN, burning rice and villages – imprisoning suspected Communists. Both hearts and minds and punishing the countryside. (which works against the US). Bombing the North – main target is morale, bringing the North to the negotiating table. But it just doesn’t work. The bombing campaigns don’t break the morale. The Ho Chi Minh trail stays open; guerrillas in the South build underground tunnels.
  • PAVN and NLF strategy
    • Undercut the ‘puppet’ government in the South – in the North, strategy is to undermine this government and have pretty much done this by 1967, there is no real legitimacy to the government by then.
    • Persuade, intimidate, threaten, etc. southerners to join forces or at least to disavow the southern government. Undermining support for the government. This was largely successful already by 1965. The Vietnamese communists had been fighting since the mid-40s
    • Erode American morale. Americans helped with this – in essence both sides targeted the other side’s morale and both thought they would be capable of doing so.
    • Demonstrate resolve to maintain foreign support, especially from China (the most significant supporter)
  • Two different sets of strategies.
  • THe fear for Johnson mainly is China, which is the lynchpin for how they run the war how they do – if we hit them too hard, China may enter the war like in Korea and we’ve given ourselves a bigger enemy – Johnson is thinking about how to punish the north so far they are brought to the negotiating table without briging in China.
  • Operation Rolling Thunder
    • Beginning of the bombing, went on for quite a long time.
    • Not just big B-52 bombers unleashing thousands of tons of bombs, but also smaller aircraft and helicopters trying to declare the Ho Chi Minh Trail – bombed the fuck out of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
    • Dropped various munitions including napalm, 250 lb bombs (‘snake’)
    • Napalm, developed during WWII, mix of jelly and gasoline, when it explodes it throws sticky fire on everything and it burns. Napalm explosions are a common usage
    • Very controversial – throughout the war – done under the idea of graduated escalation. McNamara (sec of defense) on how to get the North to come to the negotiating table. Turn up the bounding to a high volume, then turn the volume down and hope they come down to negotiate. Very optimistic outlook on American technological capabilities. The US generals hated this – did we tie one hand behind our back, the politicians screwed up the war because they didn’t let the US military unleash its full power and beat the enemy in submission, doing the turn up and turn down screwing around. US generals are going apeshit over the McNamara policy.
    • This policy was followed by the DoD throughout the war. BY 1965 already 180 US aircraft are lost over Vietnam and Laos because they had good anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles.
    • 1964, first US pilot shot down, stayed a prisoner of war the entire war
    • Building up large numbers of American PoWs held in prison camps throughout the war
  • Ho Chi Minh Trail becomes a bombing target
    • In Laos because they hoped that being in Laos they would avoid some of the bombing, since Johnson promised not expanding the war; but the US drops it anyway. However the North had so many volunteers and civilians that theyw ould re-open the Ho Chi Minh trail overnight, massive numbers of people who worked just on the trail with basic equipment.
    • For the US, the question about the ‘boots on the ground’ – put actual soldiers into Vietnam?
  • Johnson’s “War of restraint”
    • How is Johnson going to keep the Vietnam War politically viable? Says in 1964 that he is aware he doesn’t have mothers on his side – many people not happy about boots on the ground. Many young American men will volunteer early on because they have the patriotic spirit, but Johnson feels that he is walking a very thin line w.r.t. the public. “One of the most restrained military actions in world history” – of course will drop insane numbers of bombs. Hardly a war on restraint.
    • Some off-limits targets: main harbor Haiphong Harbor, the US military generals cannot believe the US is not mining the harbor, want to shut off all trade. Also central Hanoi
  • Lesson of WWII in terms of air power: people come out of WWII believing that it worked bc it was so technological sophisticated and that it was so impressive – massive bombing runs. Analysis by most historians is that air power at best had mixed results. The Germans were bombed heavily, but the Germans are still pumping out a numbe rof important products which let them wage war. Loss of life on the ground, questionable at best. We however still rely on airpower to win the Vietnam War. Unclear why they thought that the air approach would work; it had not shown to be decisive.
  • 1965: Da Nang is a big city in the Northern part of the Southern part of Vietnam. This is where the US marines are mostly, in I Corps (4 major core operations)
    • WHen the marines land, they didn’t even tell the southern government that they wer coming — this is the sort of relationship that the US has with the southern government now.
    • Pretty clear that the US begins taking over major military operations as soon as it gets enough people.
    • Gen. Maxwell Taylor is the ambassador to South Vietnam, has very Hawkish policy.
    • New guy in charge of the war: Gen. Wm. Westmoreland. In WWII. Was an impressivec ommanding general. When the film Hearts and Minds is made, his comment in 1974 looking back is “the oriental does not value life as we do”, the guy in chargeof running the war. Westmoreland is responsible for misleading the AMericna public beginning from the beginning of the war until 1968, when the bottom falls out of the whole thing. A main agent of telling Americans repeatedly that we are going to win soon, ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ – a few more 100k troops and everything will be cleaned up. In 1968 when the Tet Offensive happens, people recoil: we thought the war was over, this is when American support totally bottoms out. Westmoreland set up a lot of this. These people know that what they are saying is not true – try to maintain morale but ultimately undermining it. Reports which are totally false about the amount of troops on the Northern side that the Americans are killing. Trying to enact a self-fulfilling prophecy. Turns a number of south Vietnamese people against the Americnas. Beginning to see the Americans as French 2.0 in the South, many in the South who begin to question US involvement.
    • First bombing runs in 1964 after the Gulf of Tonkin institution
    • Ground troops are being told lies; and they know that these are lies – people on the ground know that the war is being reported in a misleading way.
  • Boots on the ground
    • It would take decisive American power to force the North Vietnamese to give up
    • McNamara has to think about the political ramifications – 1k deaths a month, 600k troops – with the strategy of graduated escalation and Johnson’s war of restraint. Something which is very hard for the politicians to follow – a heavy debt to pay. Come up with this idea of body count. We need to be killing more of the enemy than they kill of us. Questions about misalignment between the political and the military leadership. Not fighting to win. Trying to support the Southern government and giving them legitimacy, although this idea is pretty out of the window.
  • 1965, politicians are telling one story behind the scenes and telling the Americna public a different story. Have intense doubts about what is to come, although tey express it in different ways, know that they aren’t going to get a lot of support in the South. Know that the Americans will object to the deaths. What they take advantage of in the beginning as that Americans are extremely patriotic and that the generation after WWII will be patriotic and stand behind the government, riding hard that Americans trust their government to do the right thing. It is a level of trust that, when broken, will not be easily put back together.
  • A lot of advisors with few exceptions are advising Kennedy that the only way to be politically viable (and Johnson) is to stay strong in the US.
  • Goldwater known for saying extreme things

Part 2, the War.

  • Early campaigns the US uses – (corresponds to post-war American consumerism): operation RANCH HAND, involves the spraying of large amounts of herbicides to kill the cover of the forest so they can see enemy movements; it is a triple canopy forest and very hard to see through. Idea is to defoliate as much of the forestry (IN THE SOUTH) as possible.
  • Aerila herbicides
    • Large areas of III-corps from 1961 to 1971, out there spraying and killing large amounts of tree cover in the southern part of Vietnam.
    • Go by the names of the colors painted on the outside of the drums, agent Orange, Blue, Pink, … made by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, etc… contains some of the most toxic stuff there is
    • Spraying these chemicals over everyone – US soldiers and Vietnamese civilians develop very serious health issues. Villagers become beginning refugees; farm areas are being sprayed with chemicals, makes the Hearts and Minds campaing even more difficult.
    • Vietnam goes from being a rice exporter to a rice importer
  • Helicopters and tactics
    • Major technolgoical innovation which starts in Korea becomes a major workhorse of the American campaign.
    • Helicopters became necessary for everything because of the terrain – they needed helicopter airlifts in many places.
    • Marines used the Sikorsky helicopter
    • “Huey” helicopters made by Bell Helicopter (did pretty well during the war)
    • Gave a lot to the ARVN and trained their pilots to use Huey helicopters
  • November 1965, Ia Drang campaign
    • Part of a 43-days campaign, really revolves around two significant battles
    • We Were Soldiers Once and Young
    • Small number of US troops involved, 1k, ferried in by helicopter, ferrying in a small number at a time and dropping them off in these landing zones
    • Idea is that they locate where a large number of enemy troops are (2500, 3000 troops by a massive mountain), draw out the enemy troops engaging the ground truths, then pound them with artillery and air support. Main thrust of what the US army is doing – search and destroy missions. First calvary division – engage in the battle.
    • 3-day battle of Ia Drang valley, only wayt o survive by constatly calling in air strikes and artillery
    • Americans are basicallys urrounded – suffer such surrounded casualities (including napalm accidentally falling on the US soldiers, burning to death) – calling in ‘broken arrow’ — a US outfit is being totally taken out, calls in every airplane to start bombing the enemy to rescue the American troops.
    • Seen as a tactical victory at X-ray
    • Are ambushed by another communist group on their way to LZ Albany, 50% casualties – LZ-Xray 44% casualty rate, extreme in terms of casualty rates
    • Devastating losses at the IA Drang valley.
    • Both sides learned lessons.
      • US: our tactics work. Artillery and air support are so devastating that it works. Find the enmy and beat them with your technological advantages. It’s the thing they will keep going.
      • North: when you fight Americans, you have to draw them by the belt buckle – you have to get close enough so that they can’t just bomb you – the tactics totally change, settle into tactics of sniping, hit and run missions, booby traps, etc.
      • After 1965, American soldiers report contact – engagements last maybe 2 minutes or 15 minutes at most – get hit, lose a few guys, and disappear – a major tactic for the Communist forces and a significant eroding of American morale.
  • US – 1965, a battle of attrition – body counts, a problematic objective. In most wars you don’t want to start with a war of attrition – both sides get beat up, just hope you beat the other side worse. Strategy froma ttrition is problematic to begin from the beginning; one can understand it when you consdier the US technological superiority, but it is not a winning strategy.
    • By 1965, over 200k troops in the counry
    • PAVN/PLAF strategy of guerilla warfare begins to show more sucess
  • American society at war
    • American society is gearing up towards war, the beginning of the teach-ins
    • Tech-ins begin at University of Michigan before spreading to more than 100 campuses, mainly faculty trying to talk about the war and students trying to understand it.
    • Begin in 1965, reflecting the sit-ins and wade-ins; students come in and listen to faculty speaking about the war
    • Teach-ins, generlly an anti-war feeling; also start generating counter-protests – when there is an anti-war protest, there is also a counter-protest
  • The Draft
    • Beginning of conscription
    • Conscription has been talked about as the most direct way that the state can coerce you into doing its bidding
    • The draft is a complicated issue; has been used initially to stimulate volunteering – if you choose where you go into the military you can choose; otherwise you go where they say. More people volunteer with the announcement of the draft to not end up in the infantry.
    • 1964, 112k
    • Handled by local draft boards working as part of the federal government’s draft; you would meet a veteran from WWII or Korea, they would evaluate you for service and you would come out with a designation. 1A – going into the military. 2S – student and can have a deferment. 4H – still in high school. 4F – mental, physical, or a moral disability which keeps you out of the military.
    • After 1969, because this is seen s an unfair system, it becomes a lottery ystem based on your birthdate. September 14th, first one drew – if your birthday was drawn, everyone with that birthday is put into the service.
    • 1/2 volunteers, 1/2 draftees – many of the drafted were placed into the infantry, made up of 80% of the casualties
    • Serious aracual components – the poor (always do the fighting), the rural, and the Black – a disrpoportionate number of the drafted and the wounded + infantry
    • Civil Rights leaders did complain about this and got it worked up, but 11% of the population and 17% of the draftees and 31% of the infantry in 1965.
    • Middle class puts up a lot of people into the service, about a third of draftees come out of the middle class
    • By 1967, 467k troops in Vietnam; 11.1k kileld in action
  • Sum up – getting into a war that leaders did not want introduced a new crisis into an already rapidly changing society. a democratic society already undergoing greater experientation with liberalism begins to question its own government about war.
  • Early on, many patriots volunteering – trust the government, many volunteering and even the drafted go – of course later we run into different problems post -68; the amount of drug use and disciplinary problems goes up hugely (fragging), illegal killings, etc. But the early years should not be tainted by how they end.

Lecture 10: The Rise of Black Power

Rough Draft

  • 4 to 6 pages developing some of the sources for how they are being used
  • Not supposed to be the entire project done

Lecture

  • Argument: Though not a well-defined or unified movement, Black Power gave voice to many Black Americans who promoted Black pride and connections to Africa, as well as demanded immediate institutional changes.
  • Mainstream Civil Rights movements accomplishes many civil rights legislation – the other part on changing attitudes and behaviors still needs to be done. Black and white students alike began to work towards those kinds of changes, but met with significant resistance
  • Black Power is not particularly well defined. Not particularly a singular unified movement though.
  • A new kind of pride that comes with the association with the continent of Africa as opposed to a previous sense of embarrassment.

Origins of Black Power

  • Origins of Black Power from changes towards integration and other attempt sto get voting, civil rights.
  • Malcolm X sees the nonviolent approach as a shameful one – one that played into the hands of white oppression
    • Blacks should forcefully resist
  • One origin: seeing the violence done to black folks in America by the police and vigilantes

Black Militancy

  • Early Black militant, forefather of the Black Power/Militancy movement: Robert F. Williams
  • Negroes with Guns (1962) – advocated Blacks arming themselves
  • Engaging with the question of black militancy and power
  • Exiled to Cuba, sets up a radio – Radio Free Dixie, 1961 to 1965. Is a platform for ideas about Blacks arming themselves, Black militancy, etc. Not just hearing the SNCC or SCLC line of non-violence

Black Militancy

  • Malcolm X – joins Nation of Islam, important connections to Africa, sees Islam as an important part of this
  • Christianity in America as a white religion; black people who have taken it are getting a white version of this religion and can never really get out from under white control
  • Islam is seen as having a stronger connection to black folks in Africa
  • Talks a lot about ideas of pride and self-discipline that Malcolm felt that many black people were missing
  • Becomes disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad on the idea of setting forwards a black capitol or black state; feels that Muhammad talked a lot about it but it didn’t materialize; however this vision for economic independence was a centerpiece
  • A strong critique of integration – how to integrate and be treated equally is a key concern of King but Malcolm X is strongly critical of it
  • Mainstream Civil Rights movement and Nation of Islam did not see eye to eye
    • Most people saw the NoI as a radical organization

James Meredith’s March Against Fear

  • Decides on his own without organizational support to do a march from Tennessee into Jackson, Mississippi – the march against fear. As a free man in America, should be able to walk through America
  • Was shot by a white supremacist
  • Leaders of SNCC, SCLC< CORE picked up the march into Jackson, Mississippi, demonstrating that James Meredith’s desire to operate as a free man in America would not be silenced
    • Stokley Carmichael, King, …
    • Many people put the origin of the term ‘black power’ here – Stokley Carmichael picks it up and uses it in speeches

Rejection of Interracialism

  • Changes going on are beginning to fracture the left, very broadly
  • Rejection of interracialism within the black power movement and organizations dedicated to Civil Rights
  • CORE and SNCC both had mixed whit eand black leadership in them, but organizations are beginning to change around 1967
  • John Lewis ran against Stokely Carmichael to lead one of the SNCC chapters; Lewis is mainstream Civil Rights whereas Carmichael is becomming someone who articulates Black Power. Carmichael wins and brings a new black power significance into SNCC etc.
  • Begin purging organizations of white leadership as Malcolm X etc. had that suggested that whites in organizations would begin to take over eventually, and that whites couldn’t truly understand the conditions that black people were talking about, and that therefore they had nor ole to play in the leadership of these organizations
  • Increasingly organizations became more black-led and less interracial

Black Power

  • Stokley Carmichael becomes one of the voices for the SNCC in 1966
  • lots of criticisms of violence against blacks in America and especially against civil rights demonstators who were attacked
  • Talked a lot about the failure of politicans to address many of the problems which plagued black people in america, including the condition of urban ghettos
  • Becomes the voice for these sorts of organizations
  • Another change – generational divide which is beginning to emerge.
  • Older folks (e.g. Fannie Lou Hamer, famous in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Party which treid to get seated at the 1964 Democratic convention) are fading whereas younger folks who are more willing to say radical things openly about oppression and not using more toned-down language become more popular
  • Generational divide emerges (generations of activism)
  • Stokley begins taking trips abroad and find a shock of how worse it is for black people in America as opposed to in Europe.
  • White liberals are retreating from SNCC

Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

  • 1966, Oakland, California – the Black Panther party
  • Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton
  • “Freedom by any means necessary”
  • Expression of Black power. Are thinking in terms of black independence movements, linking this with revolutionary struggles going on in the world, including anti-colonial struggles in southeast asia and africa. See Balck Americans as a kind of legacy of colonialism – still a group which has been colonized
  • Originaly name is Black Panther Party for Self-defense – see themselves as defending themselves from white drug dealers, white men coming to look for sex workers, cops coming into neighborhoods and harrassing them, etc.
  • Focus a lot on neighborhoods and programs in these neighborhoods
  • Seattle – focus on Central District. Once the Black Panther party formed in Seattle, formed a lot of neighborhood programs
  • Free Breakfast Program – helping people in their neighborhood who needed it
  • Oakland 1966 and Seattle becomes the next place where there is a Black Panther Party
  • A central part of this is guns and militancy – a lot of the people in the BPP come out of the military, some out of the Vietnam War – have no qualms holding guns. Houses in the Central District loaded with guns – were always armed to the teeth, ready for shootouts. Were regularly harrassed by the police
  • Leather jackets, black tams, militant look and stance – central to what they were about. Self-defense as a central part of what they are doing.
  • Viewed by most white Americans as a dangerous group
  • Seattle
    • Aaron, Elmer, and Michael Dixon
    • Aaron Dixon remains politically active and was a candidate for many third parties in Seattle
    • Many programs are specifically resisting white intrusions into the central district

Black is Beautiful

  • Embracing of blackness which had not been possible in the same way before
  • Angela Davis, Nina Simone, others
  • Begin to embrace Blackness
  • The Afro becomes a major symbol of this – growing hair long rather than conforming to an ideal of what it should be
  • Angela Davis – interesting figure, highly educated person who identifies as a c ommunist and does not apologize for political and social views. Becomes a sort of intellectual lightning rod during this time. Will continue to be this way throughout the 1970s and recent times
    • Brings up intersectionality
  • Nina Simone – wanted to be the first black woman to play piano at Carnegie Hall as a young woman, but discovered she has a great distinctive voice. late 50s, had to look like a typical vocalist – dolled up. Goes through a transformation and comes out with a novel persona
  • A lot of this has to do with connections to Africa and celebrations of Black heritage

Black is Marketable

  • True of hippieism and more – the way in which the capitalist marketplace is very flexible
  • The moment that advertisers begin to catch onto black is beautiful, move to embrace and envelop it to sell products
  • Middle of 1960s, especially after 66 – obvious sort of play into the black power movement.

Celebrating Blackness and Africanness

  • Certain centers become the most important – e.g. Harlem in New York, places in Chicago, etc.
  • Jimi Hendrix – a sort of ‘black hippie’ – hippies usually seen as middle class white kids, but Hendrix has this quality of embracing hipppie lifestyle and clothing but fused it with black pride aesthetic as well, moving between these different groups.
  • Dr. Maulana Karenga, started the celebration of Kwanza, a kind of African holiday being celebrated
  • Black Arts Movement (1965), celebrating art forms of Africa

Christianity and Black Power

  • Christianity had been central to black experience for a long time, comes out of a deep past in American evangelicalism and the South. Some continued to double down on this connection with christianity
  • Rev. James Hal Cone writes the 1967 Black Theology and Black Power
  • Focuses on the liberating elemenets of Christianity
  • “LIberation theology”
  • WHat is happening to the Catholic Church in the early part of the sixties? Catholic Church – Christianity should be used to help the marginaized and poor of the world, to uplift black folks
  • Throughout the sixties, more reliacne on aesthetics

Fred Hampton and the Intelligence State

  • Certain parts of the Black Power movement are extremely frightening to white america
  • You get a backlash, become targets of police organizations, FBI, and CIA, which is not even supposed to be doing stuff within American border
  • Infiltrate organizations and get people to say that they are communists or did drugs, etc. – building files so that the FBI could prosecute the
  • Classic counterintelligence stuff – publicze people in a negative light, try to get them ruined in the pulic eye
  • Fred Hampton becomes a central figure, singled out and important. Inspired by communist influences
  • Did a lot of work with youth.
  • FBI sprays the place with sozens of bullets and murder Fred Hampton and Mark …

In Sum

  • By 1970, Black Power has left its mark on activism, local politics, community action, aesthetics, film, movie, art, and wareness of police violence.
  • Ongoing attempts to achieve these goasl in the following decades.

Lecture 11: New Left, New Right

Argument: The dissatisfaction with post-war America had both left and right lening criticisms. Whereas the New Left’s dedication to liberation meant that it fractured by 1967, the new conservatives found greater coherence and longevity in its critique of the left, which comes to set the tone for what we see in the following decades.

  • This is part of the nature of being on the left
  • Being on the left means there are a number of voices, embraces of diversity of voices and issues and so on, and that the nature of liberation is to begin to break down boundaries
  • Being on the left can mean a sprawl of interests and ideas.
  • Liberation comes out of the black freedom struggle and inspires many other groups to also push for liberalism, which causes the New Left to become much more atomized than the right, which coheres
  • The Right is just beginning to articulate their main ideas. You see them really come together and put fine points on what makes post-WII conservatism what it is.
  • The New Left – anyone who wanted to see liberation for themselves as an individual added to the aspect of the New left coming apart – race, sex and gender, anti-war, class, etc.

The Old Left

  • Inspired by the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, other kinds of fringe leftist parties and movements on the far left
  • IWW, Industrial Workers of the World (1910s)
  • 1930s, Black Americans gravitated towards the Communist Party because it was the only group doing anything about race in the 1930s
  • Often articulated challenges to the capitalist system
  • Employing industrial workers in the early part of the 20th century
  • Compromise is New Deal liberalism – groups on the left inspire, like the New Deal liberals in the FDR admin who are definitely communist socialist inspired

Folk Movement

  • Often articulated in the folk movement of the 1960sd
  • Woody Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land” – coming from this sort of socialist inspiration

Decline of the Old left

  • The Cold War and anti-communism after WWII kills off emphasis from the fringe left
  • After groups like HUAC (House on Unamerican Activities Committee) and McCarthyite witch trials forces the left in America to begin to purge connections with communists and socialists
  • Bad examples – Stalin’s repressive regime until 1953 death, 15m to 50m killed; Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the worst famine, 20m people killed. Examines of far-left regimes, don’t look great. The left begins dumping these connections.
  • Castro in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs invasion
  • Comes from the rise inc ollege students. By 1968, over 7 million students in US – largest number of college students in the sixties in american history, and it is these students who begins articulating the New Left

The New Left

  • Comments on the problems of the American capitalist society
  • Draw a lot of inspiration, maybe even the most, from SNCC, CORE, etc. Students demand participatory democracy – not really willing to wait for politicans to do something, want to go out and do it themselves
  • Another target is militarism; becomes a big part of the anti-war movement.
  • Brings in a variety of different left-leaning politics into the US – government programs, volunteer programs, etc. Leave behind a lot of the fringe communist conenctions.
  • New Left makes up a lot of different people: mainstream Democratcs, but also real radicals, liberals, activists, scholars, students, people who want to see change
  • Spontaneous and decentralized
  • Activism, not waiting for bureaucratic processes
  • SDS not in control of everything – anti-racism, anti-war protests often pop up spontaneously

The Origins of the New Left

  • Inspired mainly by what young, Black activists are doing in the South.
  • A lot of activism comes from this origin point.
  • Pointing out how American values do not match American realities. Talk about the long history of abolition and the way in which Americans talk about freedom but stil have a connection to history
  • Drawing upon previous academic work to critique consumer culture and business culture – does not speak to goals and ideals, want something different
  • Black freedom movement and inter-racialism is an important part of this: people in the New left join into groups like CORE and SNCC, believe in interracial leadership
  • Inspired by the Frankfurt School of social theory, critical theory: discourse on modernism, post-modernism, capitalism, etc.

University of California, Berkeley

  • Free Speech Movement in UCB 1964-1965
  • The University had shut ddown any sort of political activism and talk around the student body relating to the Vietnam War just as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had just been passed
  • Students were told they were part of the ‘knowledge industry’ – many took offense to this, students in college to figrue out what they wanted to do and be and administrations making them sound like cogs in a machine.
  • Students at Berkeley turn against this idea that the university is in a way not on their side
  • Free Speech Movement in Berkeley – “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” but also receive help from the faculty who end up breaking the stalemate, teach-ins

Essence of the Sixties

  • A lot of middle class white folks mixed with the most disempowered in American society wh o make the argument that only structural change and direct involvement can improve society
  • Less waiting for Kennedy to announce let’s try to change things and more of grassroots movements, political involvement, become ungovernable, people will listen because we have to

Civil Rights and the New Left

  • CR becomes jumping off point for the New Left, which begins to embrace Civil Rights tactics and issues

Being on the Left

  • Sit-in at the U of Michigan, one of the first places
  • Many of these things are happenin gin Michigan due to connection with the UAW – important inspiration for student activism, important labor-student relation
  • A lto of protests – workers and students protesting similar problems
  • Connections to the Civil Rights movement, offering critique nad satire of American society and communism
  • Characteristics and behaviors begin to be more common in this group in the new left
  • More libertine, less attached to older notions of sexual propriety, less worry about tradition and clothing and body regulation (biopolitics), part of bieng young and on the old left in certain areas on the coasts and in college towns. Not too widespread.
  • Based in academics, interested in reading sociological, critical, political theory
  • Common declarations of isolation and alienation – American society does not speak to them
  • A lot of middle class youth are an important element here, as well as in hippies
  • Psychologist Kenneth Keniston: sixties youth rebellion “characteritistically consisted in using against the parents the parents’ own principles” – borrowing from and resisting the previous generation. Coming out of liberal families, go out in the streets and raise their voices, a enw activist generation

March on Washington, 1965

  • There had been protests against Dow CHemical which drew very few people
  • 1965 March on Washington drew over 20k people to protest the Vietnam War.
  • This is stil when most Americans would not have turned towards resistance
  • SDS and Robert Moses, SNCC
  • Repeated concern – why spending so much time and money in Vietnam given the domestic issues – a recurring refrain

Changes to the New Left

  • After 65, 66 and 67 are the ‘high points’ of the sixties
  • 68, the whole world begins coming apart
  • 66 and 67 are high water marks of awareness and activism, hopefulness for change, awareness that we can live different lives
  • SDS begins to change becuase it moves out of the main college campuses and also into other small places
  • Less dedicated to the intellectual foundations they came from and just more radical and interested in disruption, the basis for intellectual foundations isn’t as much there
  • Begins going after colleges because colleges provide draft boards with rankings – if you fall below a certain ranking, you get drafted. SDS started going after the colleges and making a big stink about how the colleges were putting themselves in the middle of the Vietnam War.
  • Leaving behind the universities because of its ties to the interests of corporate and military elite
    • Universities are complicit in training students to work for corporations, increasingly making this connection to anti-war protests
  • Women in SDS and other parts of the New Left are identifying that what began with Black liberation and now general social liberation still treats women as if they are secondary. Women will move out of SDS and increasingly infuse the Women’s Liberation Movement

Anti-war, Anti-imperialism

  • The New Left had begin to change, a growing sense of desperation
  • As early as 65 there are people demanding an immediate end to the war or at least the bombing, and it wasn’t happening
  • What began as an anti-war protest became anti-imperialism – you will see anti-war protests holding signs attributing American war to imperialism
  • Shocking to middle America – a jarring sort of experience, but here we can see how frustration is growing

Ramparts Magazine

  • A radical publication out of California
  • More calls for overthrowing capitalism
  • Protesters begin to carry Viet Cong flags at anti-war protests, which absolutely enrages middle-Americans, who think of their children being murdered by the Viet Cong
  • Becoming intensely critical; protests are trying to garner attention

The emergence of an Alternate Right

  • More coherent and consistent – cohering around specific ideas
  • Two basic pillars of what the right coheres around
    1. The government has no role to play in the market system
      • The free market syste only works when it is unregulated and when capitalists and corporations are able to function withotu the impositions of government
      • A direct shot at the New Deal, the Great Soceity, the welfare state, etc.
    2. Need for a central morality based in traditional religion
      • Religious ecunemelcualism – many Jewish intellectuals are part of the formation of the new right – the fundamentals don’t matter; what matters is a breakdown in American morality and a need to return to old-time religious traditions

Post-1945 Conservatism: Economics

  • Milton Friedman – famous face of the conservative school of thought – great advances never come from centralized government (1962).
  • Suggesting that the government needs to be pulled out of regulation
  • Friedrich von Hayek
  • Only a free market allows for a free soceity to exist
  • A sort of linkage being made here which is far-fetched but the beginning of thinking about the left as not that far from what the Nazis did in Europe or what Stalin did in the Soviet Union
  • Sociologist Robert Nisbet – the state gets in the way of natural divisions between people, which are argued on the other side as social constructions
  • If you can make it natural, then you can begin to entice people on what youa re talking about

Post-1945 Conservatism: Culture

  • Protestant Catholic Jew – a need for a strict moral code in American life
  • 1953, The Conservative Mind – convention are checks on anarchic impulse, lust for power
  • Trying to introduce morality into American life
  • Point to 62-63 when the SC rules that states cannot require prayer in school as part of separation of church and state
  • A sense of embracing fundamentals because they are being lost; liberals are taking down conventional morality

John Birch Society (1958)

  • Intensely anticommunist
  • Important fringe on the right starting in the late 50s
  • Won’t grow to have that many members, 100k at its height in 1963, a lot in the south and through the sun belt
  • Far-right-wing group which as at its core intensely anticommunist and deeply evangelical-Christian
  • Promoted some really wild conspiracy theories about America and liberals in particular
  • JBS said that Eisenhower had seriously been a communist and other sorts of far-right ideas
  • Some conservatives worried that JBS was too nutty, but many embraced what JBS was able to do
  • Do a good job nevertheless pushing the tenor of the conversation further to the right by making spurious associations
  • Segregationist, anti-liberal, anti-communist platform
  • Orange County, California – ~40 chapters of the John Birch society
  • Heavy presence in the sun belt – California, Arizona, etc.

Popular Conservatives

  • Conservatives feel an anxiety about poor representation in media
  • Jojhn Wayne, The Alamo (1960) – conservatism behind the Alama fighting the liberals (the Mexican Army) – stand your ground against onslaught
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Pat Roberson, the 700 Club

William F. Buckley Jr.

  • The National Review – publishing religious ecumenicalism, anticommunism – articulating a new right position
  • The Firing Line
  • Has many folks on, fairly entertaining and interesting – a time in which civility was respected
  • Earlier in carrier, sticked to a strong segregationist and racist stance, although steps sideways in the late sixties
    • Blacks should not vote b/c not ‘as far up the civilization as whites’
  • Universal suffrage is a liberal trick
  • Naturalizing ideas about race – God, nature, etc.

Young Americans for Freedom

  • Support Goldwater in 1964
  • Supporters of William Buckley and Ronald Reagan
  • Believe in the idea of the free market and its connections to persaonl freedom, limited government
  • Become a kind of insurgency in the Republican Party, moving it in the way that they want it to go – departing from the Eisenhower tradition. Getting more politically active.
  • By 1962, 175 chapters and 20k members, enough to shape policies in some places

Origins of the current conservative/liberal divide

  • Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell (important), Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  • All guys who were part of the left but now in the 1960s in the time of prosperity, feel that the government should recede into the background and become the neocon intellectuals.
  • The real cold war has begun – Irving Kristol
  • “Cultural wars”
  • Liberals identified as a main threat to the world
  • A number of gains in 1966 – won many seats in conference after Johnson had done pretty well in 64 and 65 in Great Society Legislation, but is very difficult later on
  • Reagan is governor of California and moves UC system from taxes towards tuition based college system
  • The right saw the left as much more unified than it was
  • Formation of a coagulating coherent whole
  • Many future influential conservatives get their start in this cohering conservative ideology.

Sum Up

The New Left and the emergent right helped to redefine politics for the coming decades though as the New Left fractured into many liberation movements, the Right cohered around key issues and tactics.

Lecture 12: Counterculture, Subculutre, and Dropping Out

The counterculture: if it can be talked about in the singular, had shifted from critique of the mass society to expressions of personal liberation. By breaking through the limits of American society, young people especially explored alternative lifestyles and limits of their own personal freedom.

  • Very atomized, many differences in what was considered the counterculture
  • Counterculture vs subculture
  • Less of an emphasis on political change aside from the war and more about personal liberation in addition to group liberation

Youth in the 1960s

  • Importance of youth culture, young people making themselves visible and belonging to groups shaping society and the marketplace in different ways
  • Movement of breaking down different barriers
  • 1960s – a lot more of youth engagement due to the different types of liberation
  • What does liberation really mean?
  • Many social borders being broken, yet seldom does anyone think about what new boundaries will be erected later. Just about knocking down boundaries. The notion of what happens after or later becomes really important – the sixties can’t go on forever.
  • There is no society of people with no social boundaries; there are always social boundaries. If these boundaries get broken, what will the new boundaries be?
  • “The revolution is about our lives”
  • Hippie-ism: could be political (anti-war and other social and political movements) or hanging out and smoking pot, enjoying free love, then having enough of it and going home afterwards.
  • Lots of overlap with gender and race activism, as well as a sort of Hedonism and having a good time

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

  • Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Really wanted to wake people up and challenge traditionalism and conformity in American life
  • The Merry Pranksters – ride around in a psychedelic schoolbus and shake people up
  • Joan Didion – a guerilla theater episode where the performers are being performatively evocative
  • Acid tests – spiking kool-aid with LSD
  • Experiencing new things in their minds that they wouldn’t have otherwise
  • Intentional shocking into a new way of seeing the world

Drugs

  • Drugs are a centerpiece of this behavior
  • LSD and Marijuana
  • Young people often looked at JFK as the ‘altered statesman’
    • Max Jacobsen “Dr. Feelgood” would give shots laced with methamphetamines
  • Timothy Leary, seeing what LSD does to people’s behavior.

1966, LSD Outlawed

  • Leary is pushing the envelope and LSD is outlawed
  • Drugs caused panic and temporary insanity, hyper-panic around acid and LSD and what it was going to do to Young people
  • Timothy Leary sees drugs as the right of people to control their own consciousness
  • LSD moving from a research-religious focus of finding new consciousness and spirituality towards self-discovery and party time

Marijuana

  • Allen Gisnburg, “Pot is fun”
  • Campaign to legalize marijuana and the broader use of it
  • Not something which was regulated until 1930s
  • Reefer Madness, 1936
  • Federally criminalized, 1937
  • Pot-smoking for fun and realaxation in the sixties – Marijuana becomes central to youth culture – music, film, art, etc.
  • 1970s: appearance of medical marijuana (New Mexico first state)

Haight Ashbury

  • Neighborhood in San Francisco – Haight Ashbury, becomes the center of ‘hippie’ culture, 1965
  • People will be reading about it for a long time – a new youth culture and people called hippies
  • Described mainly by what they look like – the aesthetics stand out a lot. Long-haired men, flowers in hair, bellbottom jeans, certain types of clothing, smoking pot, music, etc.

Guerrilla Theater, 1965 - 1969 avant-garde non-traditional theater

  • Non-traditional theater in non-traditional places
  • Often political or social
  • Included mime troupes
  • Massive puppets acting out certain scenes on the streeet
  • The Diggers – “the Death of Money, Birth of the Haight”
    • In the Haight, people work on exchange, give things away, no capitalist economy, capitalism keeps you down
    • Diggers do a lot of sleep theater

The Diggers

  • Group in San Francisco trying to live differently
  • Live outside the capitalist economy in a communal style with free exchange of goods and services
  • When people come to SF, there is some detritous on the road – people can’t buy food or are hooked on drugs, etc.
  • Diggers involved trying to get people on their feet and fed
  • A lot of protests against authority
  • A lot of guerilla theater is against authorities
  • Ideas about race, etc.
  • Don’t have connections to direct protest, not like SNCC or CORE – much more decentralized and localized

Human Be-In, 1967

  • Golden Gate Park, the Human Be-In
  • “Sit-in” or “Wade-in” or “Teach-in” – you’re just going to go and be
  • Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Santana, etc.
  • “a new nation had grown inside the robot flesh of the old”
  • Love, peace, compassion, unity of mankind
  • Massive festivals – smoke pot, peace love and understanding, etc.
  • Crowning time for hippieism

Grateful Dead

  • One of the centerpieces of music are the Grateful Dead
  • Start a new tradition in American music
  • In SF, from SF, played a lot of free concerts – the soul of a lot of this
  • Grateful Dead lived a hippie ethos about being good to one another
  • Another concert comes up later which puts a stamp on the end of the 60s – Altamont Raceway, a bookend to the decade; things go off-the-rails bad, Grateful Dead leaves

Hippies and the Summer of Love

  • 1967 summer of love
  • Promoting all of these ideas about hippieism; taking care of each other; peace love and understanding
  • People go just to have meaningless fun, in addition to meaningful critique
  • Some hippies come out of this period and carry these values together
  • Others will come out of this period as conservatives for the rest of their lives

Hair, the Musical, 1967

  • By 1967, the period of the hippie is coming to an end; it is being commercialized
  • 1964, writing starts; 1967, on Broadway – a musical which celebrates hippieness
  • Celebrating hippie life and the draft, interracial relationships, scenes performed in the nude, etc. – many elements of hippie life
  • The moment in which hippieism was getting commercialized – buyable in the marketplace

Death of Hippie, Son of Mass Media

  • Diggers have a mock funeral for the hippie – by October 1967, the Hippie is done.
  • Anyone afterwards becomes a refugee, leftover of the moment of 18 months

Dark Side of Hippie LIfe

  • People who can’t or don’t escape hippie life – not just fun all the time
  • Haight-Ashbury neighborhood – “capital of forever”, becomes a major tourist center, lots of tourists come
  • Don’t like tourists
  • Harder drugs begin to appear – LSD and marijuana are lighter, meth and heroin are harder
  • “Lost kids” – left their parents behind
  • These effects coming down as part of a libertine society – you knock down the boundaries, where are the new boundaries
  • Sexual predation – men reading about hippie girls who will have sex with everyone, liberation – guys go to SF to hook up with hippie women
  • Not caring so much about the consequences – pregnancies, STDs, STIs
  • Charles Manson
    • Manson family
    • Makes it ripe for Manson to emerge and the Manson family murders
  • Not just a comfortable ride of everyone

1967 Protests and Pranks

  • New York diggers, become the Yippies (Youth International Party)
  • Hoffman, Rubin – begin a group focused on pranks – want a lot of media attention – not completely disinterested in politics, but the main goal is not necessarily to change any specific law but just to prank people – show people how square they are and how dedicated they are to the capitalist system
  • Throwing money on the NY stock exchange
  • Anti-war movement
  • 75k people outside the Pentagon in 1967, going to levitate the Pentagon
  • Part of the anti-war movement, engaging in various prankery
  • Going to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention

Leaving the Politics Behind

  • Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin
  • How to live like a digger
  • What ends up happening is a giant 1968 DNC battle with the police in Chicago
  • “TUne in, turn on, and drop out”
  • Sometimes political action is useless, people are not willing tom ove off their stance, so you turn your backs on it and say Fuck it.
  • CHeck out, disassociate from society
  • Herbert Marcuse – capitalism absorbs all forms of rebellions, the best thing is just to drop out
  • Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It (1968)
  • A different kind of commentary than actively trying to change the war
  • Development across America of thousands of communes – maybe roughly 2k. Sometimes they are so small that we don’t know about them
  • Communes are wildly diverse but have a common shared pushback on individual society. A commentary on consumerism

Communes and Communitarian Idealism

  • Many communes had some kind of religious foundation – Christian or some other religious foundation
  • Many communes are social experimentations – in America being part of a commune at all is a form of social experimentation.
  • Getting away from the technocratic society that we’ve developed – Galbraith’s American on the hamster wheel
  • Focus on the space race, nuclear war, etc.
  • Have a lot of experimentation
  • Greater gender equality
  • Experiments in collectivism
  • Intentional communities
  • Could be urban places like Greenwich Village or Haight-Ashbury, but many places were rural
  • Drop City, 1965 – Trinidad, Colorado
    • Openness, no one wanted this area of Colorado – not the easiest place to live
    • Build domes based on architecture designs
    • Are part of artistic styling, communal living
    • Droppers engage in ideas about anarchism, pacifism, sexual freedom, voluntary poverty, drugs, art, etc.
    • Don’t work, consider themselves to be free from employment and live out there
    • Not in a mental state of poverty
    • What is poverty, really?
    • Are out there experimenting
    • What happened at Drop City – Californians show up, people can come in and join Drop City. But too many people come in and it can’t be supported
    • Festival of Joy – lots of hippies come (66-67) and they don’t want to leave, but this puts too much pressure on the community. It falls apart in 1970.
    • Not an uncommon ending to communes. A fascinating social experiment

The Jesus People

  • Lots of experimental religious stuff going on in the sixties
  • The Jesus People / movement – “Jesus freaks”
  • Founded in evangelical protestant CHristianity
  • Very widespread across America, many people formed the Jesus movement
  • Thought of themselves as preaching the words of Christ, foucsin gon the figure of Jesus
  • Were trying to find a sort of personal authenticity – didn’t want to get lost in an impersonal church, wanted to find what was true about evangelical Christianity to them
  • Created their own Bible – not called the Holy Bible, but The Way
  • Not uncommon on college campuses and in inner cities
  • Have a lot of influences on communes
  • Created a number of businesses that attempt to promote ideas about evangelical Christainity
  • A lot of people who go into the hippie thing will see themselves as lost in the world and find their way through the Jesus movement
  • Try to focus on aspects of the Bible emphasized by Jesus: love, compassion, clean living, etc.
  • People on the outside have greater criticism – generally lack of sex and gender equality
  • The love family in Seattle
    • Love Israel
    • Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle, 1968 - 1986
    • Attracted many people to his movement
    • Some of the children’s names: Logic Israel, Serious Israel, Meekness Israel, etc.
    • Bought many houses in the Queen Anne Neighborhood
    • Moved into Snohomish County
    • At one point over 300 members

Oriigns of Liberation Theology

  • Important changes in the Catholic churh
  • Emphasis of liberation theology in the 1960s in the Catholic church
  • Second Vatican Council called by the Pope at the time: 1962 - 1965, making the Catholic Church more applicable to the kind of increasingly secular lives being lived in the post-WWII period
  • HOw could the Catholic Church continue to be appealing and keep members?
  • The Catholic church is one of the most powerful organizations throughout the history of the world.
  • Trying to reorder some parts of the church to appeal to people
  • Priests, nuns, and lay-Catholics brought social justice movements in the Catholic church – stopping the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, etc.
  • Latin America, the Catholic Church refocused attention on rural peasants and economic inequality
  • The Catholic Church was trying to appreciate the cold-war problems of communism and capitalism and peasants being caught in the middle
  • Retraining priests to think about the problems of the people in South Americans
  • Mass had been delivered in latin but was being refocused in English and Spanish
  • There is of course a conservative reaction / traditional reaction to liberation theology

Explorations of Alternate Theologies

  • Exploring alternatives and different life styles, breaking free from social expectations
  • George Harrison of the Beatles goes to India and gets interested in Hinduism and Indian music
  • Hare Krishnas – Hinduist religious sect believing in karma and reincarnation
  • Zen Buddhism – looking towards the East for alternative spirtiualities
  • Sufism – mystical religion steeped in passion for God and celebration of love
  • Taoism
  • Scientology
  • EST – Erhard Seminars Training, less religion, more self-help – how to live one’s life?

To Sum Up

  • Personal liberation as compared to specifically political causes or group liberation
  • Finding the limits of power and freedom

Additional

  • The hippie comes to the end as a unique social phenomenon – the identification of the hippie begins to disappear, but what comes after are all the ways in which hippies have blown apart social expectations
  • It’s not that the hippie had really died itself
  • How do alternative behaviors become normalized?
  • Aesthetics and other behaviors just become part of the culture
  • The hippie ends as an identifiable weird fringe element which then affects society
  • Breaking open historical boxes

Lecture 13: Vietnam War – 1966 - 1967

as the criticism of the war expanded across US society and government, the political and military leaders misled the American people and deepened US involvement in the war. However the militarya nd government were superficially dedicated to the war, the ways that they prosecuted the war undercut soldiers’ morale and civilian support

  • The way that they are talking about the end of the war undercuts how they manage the war – Americans aren’t seeing the results
  • Antiwar protests go up
  • By 1967 there are massive anti-war protests instead of the smaller ones which came earlier

The Jungle

  • The idea of a jungle is so central to the narrative dimension of the Vietnam War
  • “Fighting in a Jungle”
  • Environmental history
  • A jungle is not a real palce – there is no biophysical characteristic in which a ‘jungle’ exists
  • A jungle is in your mind – it’s an idea which was created about certain types of forests
  • A forest is a biophysical place – dominated by trees
  • Idea comes from the moment where UEropeans come to the tropical places of the world – Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas
  • Alexander von Humboldt – popularizes what’s going on in the tropics to Europeans
  • Europeans are fascinated by plants from other places –
  • Considerations on the agriculture of the ‘torrid zone’ (tropics) – land cleared \(\to\) the progress of society
  • Fertility of the natural world allows for ‘lack of civility’ – connection between fertile places int he world with lots of heat and rain that grow lots of stuff produce backwards, lazy civilizations
  • The jungle is where these places are at – a way of racializing space – the ‘torrid zone’, hot and humid
    • Full of difficulties – tribulation, dangerous animals, insects, diseases, etc.
    • This place is the jungle
    • What is ‘overgrown’? The idea of an overgrown place is the contstruct of the European fantasy – a forest which confuses and frightens Europeans – not an ‘actual’ space
    • An ‘urban jungle’, ‘jungle fever’, ‘jungle story’
    • The Vietnam War was fought in jungles
  • Tropicality
    • Dual vision of the tropics that supports imperialism and racism
    • Lush, overgrown, productive environments produce lazy, unproductive peoples

Fighting the Ground War

  • Enemy contact in point-blank range – emphasizes the danger of the place, can’t see very hard – a difficult environment to fight in
  • Nguyen Cao Ky – US ally in 1966, but also a man who said that what Vietnam needed was five Hitlers. Had strong opinions about what Vietnam should look like.
  • General Nguyen Van Thieu – trying to fight with Ky. US got right in the middle of it – tired of the rotating wheel of generals – Ky becoms the vice president and Thieu the president
  • Ongoing problems in South Vietnam – many student protests, Budhists not achieving civil rights they had hoped for
  • protests against the US presence (1965 boots on the ground arrival)
  • South Vietnamese, many not happy about these – US taking over ground operations on their own and leaving the ARVN behind
  • Many protests in SV against the US presence
  • In Saigon, air attacks would be unleashed on their own people
  • American soldiers are thinking about what they are doing in Vietnam

MACV-USAID – Pacification

  • Strateigc hamlet program was not working in general
  • Pacification – trying to get rural people on their side is not generally working, too many communists in the south
  • Too many abuses by the SV government – southern peasants and farmers are neutral or say yes to whoever shows up, stuck in a middle situation
  • Villagers are caught in the middle – emergence of ‘free fire zones’, places where you can legally kill anyone
  • Villages or a certain area of mountains or the forests have been designated so dangerous that anyone out there must be the enemy
  • A lot of tactics are undermining the government’s attempt to prosecute the war

Rolling Thunder

  • Bombing continues – B-52 bombing
  • Time to time Johnson will call it off and try to negotiate or the criticism reaches a pitch, but bombing resumes
  • McNumara is getting more information that this is not helping
  • Many countries are criticizing the US, although the US says publicly that they are winning the war
  • New attacks on oil fields; the NV build underground tanks and get new oil shipments from China, USSR
  • Generals are saying let’s mine the harbor and LBJ does not allow mining of the harbor

Arc Light Attacks

  • Central feature of the war
  • Arc light strike – big B-52 bombers (can fly 6 to 7 miles above the earth – no one on the earth can see or hear them) get called in when there is a military unit in trouble
  • Dropped 4x as many bombs in the south as in the north
  • Not much data on what the effects are but after the war we know that NV soldiers would report that for them the Arc light attacks were the most terrifying part of the war – see nothing, and then the ground would just open up

Prisoners of War

  • There are many prisoners of war; many are airmen – aircrew in planes
  • There might be a 10-person crew; when they are shotdown, they become prisoners of war
  • Famous PoW camp in hanoi, where PoWs and political prisoners were being held
  • known as the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ – sprawling PoW camp
  • Many PoW camps
  • Show up on TV from time to time
  • Exhibitions where PoWs are taken out of the camps and paraded through the streets, images would be put onf ilm and distributed globally
  • Sometimes forced under torture to make claims against the US
  • A high-ranking official makes a statement against the war – blinks eyes such that it spells out ‘torture’
  • North Vietnamese using PoW as propaganda tools to shame the US
  • John McCain, Senator from Arizona – shot down and in a PoW camp, was filmed as well

US Troops

  • 450k troops in Vietnam by 1967
  • A small portion are in combat – 20%
  • The rest are support troops – air crew, mechanics, embassy, etc.
  • The army functioned with a well-established racial hierarchy which became very clear in the Vietnam War
  • Many jobs in the ‘rear’ – often went to white folks. Black folks ended up in the infantry or in a forward position.
  • When rear jobs opened up, people would put in for it – but those jobs often went to white folks and became another part of the war that people at home were criticizing
  • By 1967, 800 deaths per month, increasing from what it had been. Greater focus on the DMZ – 17th parallel between North and South
  • More artillery attacks coming from the DMZ – shelling American marines
  • Gave Gen. Westmoreland the idea that there would be attacks and that the NV might overrun the marine posts, became Westmoreland’s focus in 1967
  • Up to WWI in every war more people die from disease than combat

Tactics

  • US is still dedicated to search and destroy – still trying to find the enemy
  • Vietnamese are using hit and run tactics, not holding up to territory – not a traditional war in the way that the US is used to it
  • Over and over, marine patrols go into the DMZ, fight for some place, and then abandon it, then come fight for it again
  • Hills – the US spends a lot of time taking a hill, and then just abandon it
  • From a military strategist perspective this might make sense, but this does not make sense for the soldiers – increasing dissatisfaction
  • As the war goes on, there is less and less support in the South for a long war

What kind of a war?

  • By 1967 – what is the US really doing?
  • VC tactics are pretty successful – eroding American morale
  • Hit-and run tactics, very short battles lastling less than a few minutes
  • Really starts to damage morale in the military
  • 1966, Army artillery are doing bizarre things
    • H&I: harrassment and interdiction, throwing out artillery fire at places where the enemy might be
    • 1967 estimates: 350k H&I shells killed about 100 enemy soldiers
    • The average soldier is questioning the authority of their leadership
  • The Vietnamese guerillas – not all bombs explode, some are duds (2-3%); they take unexploded ammunitions and rewire them as booby traps and put them in the place where tanks are being used
  • Jan-July 1967, 539 Americans KIA, 5.5k wounded, many by booby traps

Tunnel Systems

  • Very elaborate tunnel systems, including underneath some of the US military bases
    • 25th Infantry Division base camp had an elaborate tunnel system underneath it
  • Snipers disappearing down through the tunnels
  • Hill 1338 – one of the worst defeats for American defeats – lost many people and killed a few enemies, could not figure out how it could be
  • The Vietnamese had a great intelligence network, very useful intelligence systems
  • Tet Offensive – a code system set up on the radio. Know when certain things are supposed to happen

PBR – River/Coast Patrol Boat

  • Brownwater navy, patrol boats patrolling the Meikong delta, moving through the delta nad the rivers and dstopping anyone moving guns or large amounts of food
  • navy maintained a blockade on the ocean

The War of Restraint

  • Idea of a ‘war of restraint’ that the US had certain lines it was not going to cross
  • LBj continued to push this idea, but the military continued to fight LBJ and McNumara on this point
  • Westmoreland begins talking about the ‘crossover point’ – the point where Westmoreland says we are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel; war of attrition is beginning to favor us, we are killing more of us then they can put back into the field
    • However all of this is incorrect – either willfully or not

Fulbright hearings, 1966-1971

  • Very early in the war, there are questions being asked in the government about the conduct of the war, how we got into it, whether we should be there
  • Started by a long-time ally of LBJ, William Fulbright
  • A senator who becmae very concerned about the war and organized the Fulbright Hearings
  • Hearings put on network TV – experts and diplomats testifying on the Vietnam War
  • The Presdient is furious at Fulbright and the news stations – that the Vietnam War was being questioned
  • Johnson would go on TV and say we’re doing well, they’re on the run, etc.

A History of Anti-War Sentiment

  • Understanding a history of anti-war sentiment in the country
  • You can look throughout history – in America there is always some faction which is against the war
    • Loyalists in the revolution
    • Whigs in the war of 1812
    • The Seminole Wars
    • Anti-imperialist league in the Spanish American War (Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain)
    • Isolationists in WWI & II
  • What does it mean for a democratic nation to go to war?
  • Espionage and Sedition acts in WWI, II – wartime national governance
  • “Better dead than red”
  • “My country, right or wrong”
  • Confronting what it means for a democratic nation to go to war – it is significant that these are the WWII children, a time where the US is relatively unified in terms of the war; this fracturing does not look positive; protestors are trouble-causers and disrespecting the military and service-people, not follwoing the government; this looks chaotic and self-indulgent. A lot of criticism of the anti-war protests at the time. When we get to ‘68 and hear Wallace and Nixon using law and order language, they are referring to this sort of behavior
  • From the poitn of view of the protestors, it is exactly patriotic to voice against a war which is unjust and violen.
  • What is the role of “the people” in a democracy?

Urban, Racial Unrest

  • Summer of 1867, growing unrest and dissatisfaction with the falling off of the war on poverty, the way in which things post-65 in urban ghettos aren’t getting better, a lot of discrimination in housing and jobs, rampant poverty
  • The “Long Hot Summer” – very large number of riots which often start with a motorist being pulled over by the police and other police confrontations
  • Detroit, MI: Massive police presence – Michigan National Guard, US Army – putting down unrest, 43 dead and 1.1k wounded
  • Newark, NJ: Black man stopped and shot by the police, 26 people dead
  • Americans are seeing this on TV – on one hand, anti-war protestors and on the other, urban unrest – beginning to equate urban unrest with the anti-war protestors and seeing both as enemies of the country and people who are out of hand, stirring up trouble

Battles of 1967

  • Beginning by the communists of a large offensive
  • DMZ – the communists cross the DMZ all the time
  • Khe Sanh – the furthest west military marine corps instillation
  • Fear around American military leaders that the communists were setting the US for a repeat of Dien Bien Phu, where the French were defeated in a far-Western place
  • Johnson famously said “I don’t want no Dien Bien Phu” – a massive American defeat preoccupied American military thinkers
  • Came up with the belief that Khe Sanh could not be lost, needed to be protected at all cost
  • All the amrine bases were shelled with artilery, hit by mortars – marines are getting pounded
  • Patrols go into the DMZ to find artillery and people shooting and they lose a lot of Americans – 100 a week, 200 a week, etc. in terms of death
  • Hill 1338 – one of the worst defeats for the US in the entire Vietnam War, several soldiers just get ambushed on a ridgeline and are almost wiped out – 76 ot 133 US KIA. US response is to inflate number of enemies killed from 10 to 475 soldiers. This is how the war is being fought – body count is everything for the administration, the single metric of progress. Need to hit this metric
  • Many examples of civilians being shot – being less than discriminatory about what you are firing at
  • From the perspective of the policy people, there is not an accurate story being told here
  • MacNumara ran the war like a business (was president of Ford motor company) – the DoD calculated and quantified everything – bombs, bullets, gallons of gas, etc. They produced so much data that they put out thousands of pages of data. Ran as if numbers were going to run the war
    • (False) Story: 1968, fed all of the data into the DoD computers and ask it when will we win in Vietnam; the computers crank away and there is one card in the output tray and it says we won in 1965.
    • The enemy gets a vote; it has its own plan and program
  • Battle of Dak To and the “border battles” near the DMZ – tended to indicate to US military leaders that the communists were leading an offensive. Wnated to soften up the military area, a focus on the border.
    • Dak To goes up for 20 days, 360+ killed, 1.4k wounded, dozens of helicopters shot down
    • Hill 875 – canisters of napalm hitting large numbers of US troops
    • A large amount of negative press coming home
  • Moral is everything here – bombing campaigns are meant to destroy Vietnamese morale; guerrilla attacks meant to destroy American morale

MLK Against the Vietnam War

  • MLK contributres his voice to the anti-war movement
  • Dr. Benjamin Spock – leading US pediatrician who wrote a famous book on raising children
  • Spock who wrote for Ramparts, MLK, etc. begin to add new voices to the anti-war movement
  • NYC, 500k people march
  • CIA CHAOS and FBI COINTELPRO are infiltrating the movement
  • Some people believe anti-war is a communist plot or promoted by the communists; trying to figure out how to destroy the movement
  • Another side – there are counterprotests. 67 and later, whenever you have protests, you also have counterprotests
  • A question of resolve – do we have enough resolve to stick it out in Vietnam and win
  • From the view of the anti-war perspective, we’ve already lost, let’s get out
  • Different ideas about what is going on – ‘better dead than red’, ‘our country right or wrong’

Private Doubts, Public LIes

  • As we get deep into 1967, McNamara begins to change on his position in the war
  • A limit beyond which the US should not go
  • McNamara resigns – his approach isn’t working, he will resign
  • “A tiny backward nation”
  • Continuing promotion of this idea that the US is winning, we will win the war in Vietnam

By End of 1967

  • Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu secures a hold on the SV government; he and Ky are dictatorial figures
  • Westmoreland continues to promote optimism – wants to be fed more troops. But increasing calls from the media to be more pessimistic – the line you’re hearing isn’t treu.
  • By 67, US forces are basically in total command of the ARVN
  • Anti-war protests reach a mainstream; once colleges opened up the amount of people who were in coolllege began to join the atni-war movement just out of self-interest.

Marines at Khe Sanh

  • The siege of Khe Sanh
  • Are shelled daily – people mostly hunker down and hope not to get hit by an artillery shell – the TVs are runing this
  • The siege just becomes a televised event – journalists would report on what washappening. Americans from their dinnertables are watching this seemingly unending war

Anti-War Sentiment in 1967

  • Greater US deaths in Veitnam
  • No clear metrics for vectory: McNamara estimating we spent $10 to deestroy $1 in the NV
  • Americans don’t really care too mcuha bout Vietnam; eroding support for the war
  • Beginning of the global economics slowdown, people ar einteresting against future commitment to the war
  • Vietnam malaise – “no more Vietnmas”
  • New set of metrics fror going to war in late 60s
  • A omovmenet of moving out
  • By 1967, the US was in a war that it did not want and could not win.
  • LBJs political career was in jeopardy
  • American militwry employed many successes and practiced some effective techqnues, but failed to understand respect their army.

Sum Up

Lecture 14: 1968, Part 1 – things Fall Apart

Argument: the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam War most genearally as well as the assassinations of 1968 made in the nation’s path forward appear fraught with fear, danger, and chaos.

  • Robert Kennedy quotes this “flalling apart”

Aisgnificant part of what happens globally – tehe importance of yougn people.

Gen. William Westmoreland

  • Ongoing otpimism, over 530k troosp in the US by the middle of 1968
  • Speeches tot he press - peopeele in VS wer eprotected, etc.
  • Ecnrouage US troosp, victory is in hand if you reach ir
  • Breaking the will fo the enemy

Moral as the Central Objective of the War

  • Reporting different stories than the official line. Would see what is going on and would talk about it, put it on the newd
  • Not as much censorship as in other wars
  • Americans are seeingm ore of the war
  • Civil protest is spreading through 67

Marines at Khe Sanh, 77 day siege 1967 to 1968

  • January of 1968, LBJ and Westmoreland feel convinced that there is an offensive which is trying to overwhelm Khe Sanh and are foucused on rptoecting it
  • From the perspective of the communists, have been planning for months but Khe Sanh is a distraction, planning simultaneous attacks throughout SV, beyond anything they had attempted before, would take advantage of the Tet holiday ceasefire, hitting over 200 targets at the same time, about 80k troops to this operation

Tet Offensive – January 31, 1968 3AM

  • Smuggling lots of guerrilla forces into the south
  • Taking a lot of civilian clothing and blending in, taking jobs, working with farmers, etc.
  • Belnding into cities, bases, airbases, etc.
  • Targets – cities, towns, military bases
  • About 80k people were part of the attack
  • General offensive or uprising
  • Well-carried suprise attacks; but in general the US and ARVN forces held; none of the attacks were successful, they were all failures
  • The north vietnamese weren’t too in touch either: the Communists had told themself the story that if they had attacked, the Southern peasantry population would support them and that the ARVN would defect or put down their weapons. None of thesea re true
    • Peasantry tried to stay out of it
    • ARVN did not defect
  • NV government dreams did not come true
  • Tet Offensive is a set of massive tacitcal defeats for the communists

Marines in Hue City, 1968

  • Marines in Hue are re-taking the city after it was almost entirely captured by communist forces
  • Hue is one of the most attractive cities in the southern part of the country, had a lot of French architecture and local architecture, etc. – a medium-size attractive city
  • The city is nearly levelled by the end of the fighting – the Communists don’t want to leave but get themselve trapped when Americans take the city back – marines go house-by-house, rooting out all of the communists
  • Intense house-by-house fighting, many marines are getting killed and wounded
  • Heavy destruction of the city; of 135k residents, 110k end up homeless
  • Communsits spent months infiltrating Hue and getting operators in the city. These are secretive forces in different conditions, getting ready to attack Hue.
  • From the Communist perspective, they needed to kill off people who knew – executed 2.8k civilians on the way out and burying them in a shallow grave

Fighting in Saigon

  • Main city in the South, fighting goes on for a long time
  • A shock to many people – a lot of people felt that Saigon was a safe place, but now there was fighitng in the streets and bombs going off, attacks on the US embassy, attacking the airports, etc.

TV Coverage of Tet

  • Really covered all of the shock
  • Photo: Viet Cong guerrilla is brought before an ARVN officer and the officer shoots the guerrilla right in the street.
  • One of these scenes which is so disturbing that they can’t help but feel engatively about what is going on in the war.
  • After years of the optimism and light at the end of the tunnell, Americans have to think about what is really happening – this is where the last peice of the American morale is going to die, with the Tet offensive.
  • A terminal effect on US morale
  • The media don’t focus on the enormous communist losses, but the media focus on the surprise and the how could this happen narrative

Tet Offensive and American Morale

  • A democratic country at wartime: public opinion matters. Different in a centralized government.
  • Media has a profound legacy in the war – a lot of blame to go around after the war.
  • The media has a strong piece of complicity int he war – they tell certain stories and narratives.
  • Walter Cronkite’s news broadcast – gives an assessment of the Tet Offensive and what it means – we are in a stalemate and probably can’t win the war. A surprising thing to see from CBS news, to hear that the war probably cannot be won

Outcomes of TET

  • PAVN/PLAF lost approx 58k troops. A massive defeat yet when it’s over they plan 3 more offensives in the next 12-14 months in 1968 and early 69. Not defeated by this, will continue to pushes
  • American morale is beginning to feel the pressure.
  • 1000 a month for American losses by the middle by the Tet offensive
  • Westmoreland reads this as the last gasp, requests additional 200k troops
  • MOre negotiations die down, more US deaths
  • 1968 – over 2k deaths just in that month
  • 1968, 25k US dead, hundreds of thousands of Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese
  • For the Communists, a series of tactical defeats lead to major strategic victory
  • American morale is about to be finished off.
  • Johnson grants Westmoreland 13k troops and fires Westmoreland

No faith at the Top

  • No sense of what to do at the top – can’t just win and pull out, not sure waht to do
  • McNamara is so defeated that he resigns in Feb. 1968
  • Replaced by Clark Clifford as Sec. of Defense
  • Comes in as a war hawk; takes him a few months until he realizes it’s not meant to be and turns against staying in the war also
  • By the end of spring, Clifford is urging johnson to end the war

1968 Presidential Election

  • LBJ, the public is framing LBJ as a pro-war candidate, right or wrong
  • Eugene Mccarthy gets in the rac efirst as an anti-war candidate
  • Robert kennedy said he wouldn’t run but gets in latrer, which irritates mccarthy because he is also the anti-war cnadidate but the one with more public support, fires up people of color, young people, becomes by summer of 68 a leading candidate. Beats McCarthy i mamny of the primaries

The Kerner Report

  • A striking report – from inside the government, leader is the governor of Ohio.
  • Not a very radical document, but it really doesn’t hold back – To Secure These Rights doesn’t point fingers, the Kerner Report points fingers
  • “White soceity is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and whit esoceity condones it.”
  • A lot of the conflict is caused by poorly trained police and national guard units who are harsh with black people
  • Belief that the riots showed ungoverned anger by Black people, but the report suggests that instead it is fear of police burtality and the national guard
  • Recommends ghetto enrichment and integration outside of the ghetto – more Great Society, more War on Poverty – the type of stuff which is being slashed to pay for the war in Vietnam
  • This report comes too late, at the wrong time – the report is ignored by Johnson. It is an election year, what the report said is not something which is political viable.

Johnson in 1968

  • Tries to use Tet as another sense that the US would win the war
  • behind the scenes, reading between the lines, we see what’s happening: Johnson gives the military 13.5k more troops, brings Westmoreland home and replaces with Gen. Creighton Abrams. Westmoreland becomes Chief of Staff
  • Bombing gets reduced in faovr of negotiation
  • Johnson goes on March 31 to declare he will not run for president again, which surprised everyone – this is very rare for a US president
    • Said that should focus on Vietnam War and not on campaigning

MLK in Memphis

  • MLK is in Memphis, where MLK goes in support of the sanitation workers who are going to strike
  • Memphis is a place where the sanitation workers are basically segregated; goes to support the strike
  • Famous “I am a man” posters came after the mayor of Memphis declared that he would never recognize a union among sanitation workers
  • MLK preached non-violence; while this was happening, there were also others turning out to riot; a clash in Memphis between nonviolent and nonviolent protest
  • “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech – continues to talk about unity and nonviolence, but was confessing privately that he doubted the future of nonviolence – that the countryw ould have to go through a spasm of violence – this is what king was saying
  • Memphis, TN in April 4th – assassination
  • Set off protests, property destruction, and violence in over 100 US cities
  • Carmichael: “Now that they’ve taken Dr. King off, it’s time to end this non-violence bullshit”
  • Robert Kennedy showed up and simply announced to the crowd that King had been killed instead of giving his speech; a shock to many Americans
  • 1968: unrest following King’s assassination in many American cities – fires, lootings, etc. – similar to summer of 67
  • Urbsan unrest – came very close to the White House
  • 1k buildings burned in Washington DC, 27 million in damages
  • Baltimore: $13.5 million in damages
  • Chicago: anyone doing rioting should be shot on sight, had a no-tolerance policy against urban unrest
  • Lots of arrests and presence of national guard, army being called out
  • After MLK is killed, students begin sit-ins at Columbia University
    • Columbia is not far from Harlem, a famous Black area of NYC
    • Columbia as an Ivy League school is full of white middle/upper-class students, begin occupying the university, shut down many buildings, not allowing the normal work of the school go – occupy for 8 buildings, not allowing other administration or faculty to come and go
    • In general, upset about the Vietnam War and the assassination of MLK
    • The school had been planning to build a gym over a park near Harlem which none of the residents could not use
    • Other specific requests
    • Finally after 8 days the police forcefully evicted the students
    • The police pulled people out, fights ensued not jsut with the police but also class-based fights on the street also
    • You get counter-protestors: many working-class police facing off against “spoiled” Ivy Leaguers who didn’t respect the country and the police, and needed to have thier asses kicekd – evolving in a sort of class-based way

Civil Rights Act of 68

  • A brewing need for invigorating the Civil Rights act
  • Assassination of MLK helped push this trhough
  • Hate Crimes Law – federal felony if you are injuring on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin
  • Fair Housing Act – prevents discrimination in housing, renting, maintaining. Finished off an older law which didn’t fill in issues on discrimination in housing.
  • Anti-riot act (H. Rap Brown law), illegal to travel state lines to ‘begin a riot’ – this is what the Chicago 8 are prosecuted with, crossing state lines to start a riot
  • Finishes off some of the old loopholes in the law

Robert F. Kennedy

  • Becomes very popular
  • many people are not completely sold, remember his unsavory elements, e.g. getting rid of Castro, union-busting etc.
  • People of color especially became one of his main bases of support, as well as college students – moved by ideas on finishing off the war on poverty
  • Got all the support and was doing well, had won most of the primaries except in Oregon to Eugene McCarthy
  • Of course he is assassinated in June 1968 at a hotel where he had won the California primary and was giving a speech
  • Very crowded, security nightmare, had finished talking and was in the kitchen area; 4 people were shot and he was shot in the head, did not survive. Died.
  • Another mysterious se t of circumstances; many people reported seeing people running; witnessed people come out and say “we killed Kennedy”, reports on more shots than could come from one revolver, lots of conflicting witness information. A Palestinian immigrant was convicted who seemed to be deranged and had no real interest in Kennedy?

Sum Up 1968 – from January to June

  • The consequences of the Tet Offensive, underfunding of the War on poverty and Urban Unrest
  • Assassinations showed a world out of control
  • A time of crisis for the nation

Lecture 15: 1968, Part 2 – Global & National Changes

A year of global protest became a commentary on personal liberation, imperialism, racism, and authoritarianism. Little was resolved, but new social… [fill in later]

Global protests

  • A very global year in many respects
  • Europe has a series of movements for greater liberation and Freedom – Paris, Prague (Czechoslovakia), Mexico City
  • Anti-war protests in Tokyo, Munich, London, and Rome
  • ireland
  • The same convulsion going on – turnout of young people, workers, too many authoritarian people in power

Paris, France

  • May 1968 – students and workers in solidarity
  • Talking about French occupation of Algeria
  • Workers go on a general strike and make common cause with the students – basically shut down the city
  • De Gaulle’s government flees
  • Occupation of buldings, protests, general strike
  • After increased attention to social rights and improved workers pay
  • Reflects what is happening in other places

Prague Spring, Soviet Invasion – Jan to Aug, 1968

  • Reflecting movements for Slovakian nationalism and independence; reaction by the Communist government which was lax and allowed this movement to build
  • More and more students turn out to protest, using tactics which come from the US – marching in the streets,e tc. Really beginning to raise their voices.
  • Not a place with free speech – Soviet Union enforced area, but people are demanding reforms in the government if not a new government
  • Many of these new voices are coming out of Prague
  • The Soviets step in and send tanks rolling through the streets, put down and crush this democratic movement among students and workers
  • Some changes – created in peoples’ minds the possibility of the future, what they would like to see in the future
  • When the Soviets are drained after the war in Afghanistan, in Poland there is a democratic movement and the Soviets do nothing; then other places have movements for independence, waiting for their moment to seize power
  • Defining moment – the self-immolation of Jan Palach, takes up the mode of the Buddhists and sets himself on fire
  • Shapes Johnson’s appraoch to the Soviet Union – they look a little weak now, Khushchev is gone
  • Johnson even considered re-entering the race, could help push this collapse later

DNC in Chicago, August 1968

  • Conventions pick the candidates who will run for president, in different cities each time
  • Large numbers of young protestors who are yippies, hippies, SDS, etc. turn out and protest against the war. Want a candidate which reflects their interests.
  • Do not want Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s vice president. See Humphrey as a pro-war status quo candidate. Want to see McCarthy (as Kennedy is dead); George McGovern also added.
  • What they meet when they get to Chicago is a massive resistance from mayor Richard Daley who told the media that looters should be summarily shot in the Long Hot Summer
  • Prepares more than 10k police, calls in the Illinois national guard and gets the US army to police the Black nieghborhoods lest it turn into another moment of urban unrest
  • The protestors had registered for permits many times (freedom of petition in America), the mayor refused to grant them permits
  • Protestors show up with now legal space. Sets up a violent showdown between these two groups
  • Main figures at DNC
    • Eugene McCarthy, anti-war and further left
    • Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s heir
    • Edmund Muskie from Maine, promotres environmentalism
    • George McGovern, a stand-in for Kennedy
  • Anti-war protest by the National Mobilization Committee (Mobe)
  • Yippies led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubeman, made ridiculous threats, talked about releasing greased pigs, nominating a porcupine for the nomination, putting LSD in the water supply, etc.
  • Daley lacks any sense of sumor and prepares for a fight
  • Inside the convention, a fuck ton of disorder – anti-war folks would take over the proceedings, wave stop the war signs, sing protest songs, and shut down the proceedings several times as they went through the proceedings
  • Daley organized police, national guard, garbage workers, and mnuicipal workers to corralle the protestors. Publicly promised absolute control of the inside and outside of the DNC
  • Chicago Police Riot at the DNC, 1968
    • Turned into an orgiastic violent demonstration
    • Many shots of police openly beating people with clubs
    • People bleeding, complete mayhem of violence
    • Arrest hundreds of people and put them into police wagons, people begin chanting “the whole world is watching”
  • Sen. Ribicoff talks about what is happening in the streets as “Gestapo tactics” – constant reference to the Nazis; Daley shouts a racial epithet at him to get off the stage. This type of thing hadn’t happened before. Inside and outside, coming apart.
  • Outcomes
    • Americans, 59m saw this on TV
    • Response was divided
    • Many Americans at this point have a very poor view of the anti-war protestors
    • Many other people see it the opposite way – unnecessary violence
    • Ultimately deemed to be a police riot by the courts – the police used more force than was necessary
    • CBS news received thousands of letters; 90% criticized the coverage as favoring the demonstrators and being too critical of the police
    • A large fracturing of the democratic party
    • Can see huge divisions forming in American society
    • George Wallace introduces all the good ideas and Nixon takes them; gets lots of mileage from criticizing the Democratic Party
    • CBS journalist Dan Rather is on the floor of the convention getting beat up – people trying to throw him out of the convention
  • What was going on was completely changing the party
  • The Democrats become deeply fractured; Republicans shift away from the center and move right, and won’t go back to moderatism ever again
  • 68 election – a moment where things are beginning to harden for the future.

Protest at the Olympics

  • Athletes in the spotlight taking part in the protest on a globla stage. A significant moment for black protest in specific – Tommie Smith and John Carlos – protesting ongoing civil rights problems in the world
  • Olympic Projects for Human Rights – Smith and Carlos bring a pair of gloves and bring other items which symbolize more specific protest
  • Roundly criticized by mainstream media for using the mainstream stage to protest – people doing things they shouldn’t be doing – run your race and win your medal

Tlatelolko Massacre

  • Protests of 68 in Mexico City which had gone on by workers the poor and students – changes to economic policies, authroitarianism, etc.
  • using the olympic games to get some international coverage
  • Government got out planes, snipers, and military squads – arrested hundreds of protestors (many of whom remain missing), several were killed in the square; about 40 people have been killed, but recent estimations suggest 400 were killed

The Beginning of the Troubles

  • Conflict between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority in NOrthern Island
  • Catholics demanding greater rights
  • Goes back a long ways in the colonization of Ireland by England – comes from protest into violence which erupts in Ireland and lasts throughout the 1970s well into the 1980s, and not until the early 90s when there are the Good Friday accords which quell this violence

The Resurgence of Richard Nixon

  • Nixon had lost the race running for governor of California in 1962 to Pat Brown
  • Comes back at the Republican Convention in Miami. Nelson Rockefeller is the leader in most of the country – fairly well liked even by the Democratic Party. Had finally turned to the perspective that the war should end. Found a way to cultivate a broad following
  • Odd things happened
    • Rockefeller made a few gaffs in the media – said he wasn’t running for president in an interview
    • Only other person in the convention is Reagan, who became the butt of jokes for his age and his ‘mental weakness’ – asked questions on Meet the Press and would forget his policis, taking the perspective off of Nixon
    • Rockefeller fell out of favor, Reagan wasn’t going to get it; Nixon got the more fa-rright folks
  • Running on law and order campaign (from Wallace) and the silent majority
  • The Forgotten American, the Silent Majority – in a few years the same group will elect Donald Trump –

Presidential Election

  • Nixon, Humphrey and Wallace (third party candidate) – law and order idea comes into focus
  • Law and order is very coded – a crackdown especially on black people who are breaking the law
  • Vietnam War is important
    • Humphrey – little deviation from the status quo
    • Nixon – “I have a secret plan”. Cult of personality
    • Wallace: demadning supporting the troops but no mention of foreign policy
  • TV plays an important role
  • Beginning of major decline in voter turnout. Won’t see as much of a percentage voter trunout as in previous decades
  • Nixon wins with 43.2% of the vote

Nixon Undermining the Election

  • Nixon’s dirty tricks, dirty-trick Nixon – stuff which will become wiretapping, etc.
  • Secret plan: undermine the election by sending HR Haldeman and Anna Chennault to talk to the president of South Vietnam and convince him to walk away from the Paris Peace talks – get a much better deal from Nixon when LBJ pulls out.
  • Nixon thought it OK to undermine the possibility of war so that he could get elected
  • It looked terrible for Humphrey when Thieu walke daway from the negotiating table

Sum Up: 1968

  • A year of turmoi, change, protest, violence, and breakage
  • A year where many people engage in large-scale demonstrations and protests for liberation, but how much of it really materailized?
  • So much more fracturing of American society
  • With so much breaking apart, the reformation of society was hard for anyone to imagine.

Lecture 16: The Sexual Revolution

Argument: Drawing on the broader counterculture of liberation and protest, women’s rights as well as gay and lesiban rights activists took sexuality from the status of private and repressive to public and liberated.

  • People who are experiencing oppression or marginalization privately/domestically. Intimate relationships which were now being brought into the public sphere
  • Borrowing a lot of tactics and terms from the counterculture, form groups that use these sorts of tactics to completely shift how they live and how American society expects others to behave in American society.

Part I: Women’s Liberation

Women and Infractions in Law and Custom

  • State or local / corporate laws, not federal
  • Fired for wearing slacks
  • Turned away from restaurants, clubs without a male escort
  • Graduate schools not admitting women based on future family concerns – drop out when they get married and have kids
  • The ‘casting couch’ in Hollywood and other industries
  • Perform domestic services and maintain sexual relations on demand in marriage (state law) – womenn do what their husbands tell them to do
    • No rape within marriage
  • Anti-abortion laws
  • 1968 – the Pope bars Catholics from using any type of contraception

Sexual Liberation

  • Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (1962)
    • About not taking the boundary on sex after marriage so much
    • About enjoying yourself
    • “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere”
    • Financial independen
  • Brown claimed to be a devout feminist, but she was criticized for enforcing more traditional ideas about being attractive and using sexual power to be a successful woman
  • Not really putting a critical light on what roles women were supposed to do – Brown would say that this is still empowering women.

Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique

  • Second-wave feminism
    • First-wave feminism: about some forms of inclusion, mainly focusing on suffrage
    • This is different: has some Marxism to critique the society, has some critical theory, has other forms of objections
  • Middle-class discontent – goals are not good enough for women. Women have voluntarily enslaved themselves
  • Women’s pay, working conditions

New Laws

  • Early in the sixties, there are new laws which change, but these are easily filable under basic tokenism
  • Equal Pay Act, 1963 – didn’t expand to many industries, mainly about the federal government
    • Gets beefed up later
  • Civil Rights Act of 64
    • EEOC – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
    • Focused on the racial aspect, did not really think about the sex and gender part. Takes more laws and legislation to close some of these loopholes

National Organization for Women

  • New political organization begins to work on these issues, examining some of these major issues which made women into second-class citizens
  • Not just an organization for women – included men
  • Not just full inclusion, but full equality, setting forward what felt like a lot of radical demands – culturally, ideologically, politically
  • Might clash with someon elike Helen Gurley Brown

Kathrine Switzer at the 1967 Boston Marathon

  • 20 year old Kathrine Switzer from Germany, German immigrant
  • Going to college
  • Wanted to run the 1967 Boston marathon
  • Nothing in the rules saying women could not run it, so she did
  • The race manager is trying to rip her tag numbers off so she could no longer be an official participant in the marathon
  • Had already knocked down her trainer and it wasn’t until other runners came to her help
  • Manager attacked her many times

Gender Roles

  • Looking at popular print literature at the time
  • Playboy (founded 1953) and Cosmopolitan
  • Playboy: celebration of a particular single male bachelor lifestyle. Lots of drinking, smoking, and sex
  • Cosmopolitan – started as a family magazinee way early, claimed feminism but reinfroced older ideas of gender norms – similar Helen Gurley Brown type stuff
  • Major challenges to sex and gender are coming from the fringe and not really appearing in these sorts of mainstream publications, are coming from radicals

New York Radical Women

  • Leaders for developing new techniques and thinking outside hte box of any kind of past feminism and developing new ways of pushing their agendas forward, creating new ideas in society
  • Weekly “rap” sessions – women hanging out and talking about expeirences – important because these experiences are being had between closed doors, in private. From their perspectives, they are not really aware that there are many patterns between these experiences.
  • Rap sessions become a centerpiece of radical activism – just the act of sitting in a room telling your story of abortion, abuse, rape, etc. ;; become central to understanding that any one person’s experience is really part of a collective
  • No More Miss America (1968)
    • Atlanta City, New Jersey 1968
    • Became the objective for these kinds of demonstrations to show how women were being objectified
    • Brought out the Freedom Trash Can, throwing away repressive commodities and instruments
    • Miss Black America
      • Black activists took this a different direction
      • Created their own pageant at the same time
  • Community building – turns into a particular technique which becomes a centerpiece of radical and then central activism: consciousness raising
    • Borrowed directly from people like Timothy Leary and LSD + consciousness expansion
    • Consciousness expansion – just thinking of more things. Consciousness raising – about eelvating your thinking, a more open, moral, and ethical form of thinking
    • Included women coming together in ways they couldn’t otherwise, talking about their experiences
    • Beginning to find a kind of collective experience, creating social groups out of experiences they all had but couldn’t really say
    • Moving from the individual to the social, a kind of group awareness that is central to any kind of future activism
  • “The personal is political” – a dramatic experience for many women
    • Becomes a motto or slogan of consciousness-raising
    • Goes back to the idea of what counts as political behavior
  • Consciousness raising – influenced by Civil Rights, the Chinese Revolution, the New Left, the Anti-War movement
  • “Speaking pains to recall pains” – comes straight out of Maoist Communist literature, an embrace of Marxism, Communism, other ideas coming out of the Chinese revolution
    • Focused not so much on policy, but more about changign peoples’ minds
    • Many women write literature and begin to affect other peoples’ minds – change the thinking before you change policy

Second Wave Feminism

  • Strong critiques of society in general
  • Robin Morgan, Susan Brownmiller, Gloria Steinem
  • Getting at root causes – the thing which bothers radical folks is that the mainstream does not address the root problems in favor of suppressing symptoms
  • Idea of the patriarchy – not tokenism, about saying – the whole system is set in patriarchy, if we need to change anything we need to change the system.
  • A fundamental oppression from which all other oppressions come from
  • Robin Morgan – “Sexism is the root oppression, the one which, until and unless we uproot it, will continue to put forth the branches of racism, class hatred, ageism, competition, ecological disaster, and economic exploitation” – Robin Morgan
  • Many people don’t want to be assocaited with the critique of capital, of America as itself, etc.

Further Fracturing

  • Criticisms of CR as ‘group therapy’ or ‘bitch sessions’ – men on the New Left looking at CR as not activism but people sitting around talking, “hen party”
  • Divides within the radical women
    • Redstockings: keeping the consciousness raising and printing manuals
    • WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) – Robin Morgan and Yippie like tactics, guerrilla theater. Dressing up as witches on the steps of the NYSE. Robin Morgan walks away from this later.

Rape and Abortion Laws

  • Redstockings began to protest rape and abortion laws
  • Nelson Rockefeller in favor of overturning these items
  • Invited 14 men and 1 Catholic nun to be witnesses
  • Redstocking faction of New York radical women held their own hearing of about 300, pushed their way into the building

The Impact of CR

  • Women began to come out of the woodwork and egnage in CR type techniques
  • As the women’s movement became more mainstream, the radicalness of CR became more diluted
  • New York Radical Women advertised successfuly in Ladies Home Journal, very mainstream
  • Adopted by NOW in 1972, turns into something which devolves into ‘bitch sessions’ – talking and talking and talking
  • Robin Morgan: CR tends to lead to more CR

Contraception

  • One of the hot topics for women at the time
  • Margaret Sanger, early 20th century: leading advocates fro women having control of their own reproduction.
  • Katherine McCormack works with physicians (Gregory Pincus and John Rock) to develop hormonal birth control pills
  • John Rock: a devout Catholic and also a physician who sees the dangers of reproduction for whom having children is physically dangerous
  • Are successful in producing a pill, introduced in 1960, by 1962, there are 1.2 million users, by 164 there are 6.5 million
  • Leftover effect of the Comstock Laws – you can’t send pornographic mateirals over federal mail. State-level laws: can be stretched more to contraceptives.
  • Estelle Griswold and Cronelia Dickerman Johncke
  • Beginn working on a case which went to the Supreme Court: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), law went against the 14th Amednemtn, went against the “right of marital privacy” – federal government should not be stepping in when a married couple wants to plan their reproduction
  • Only for married couples, now we need more court cases…
  • Opens up the path towards future contraceptives

Ms.

  • More mainstream forms of feminism
  • Ms. Magazine: mainstream magazine run by, written by, for women
  • By the early seventies, second-wave feminism is making its way into mainstream American culture.
  • continues to have difficult problems for lesbians, women of color, rural women
  • Tended to be for the mainstream middle America women in the sixties-seventies

Ongoing Sexual Revolution

  • Title IX, 1972 – laws on the books which said that schools and colleges needed to have equality in higher education, athletics and such
  • Laws are often very specific to sections of American life
  • Equal Credit Opportunity Act – married women can apply for loans in their own names

Part 2: Gay and Lesbian Liberation

Origins of Gay and Lesbian Rights

  • Cold War – being gay or lesbian becomes criminalized, easy to be sent out of employment and out of the military
  • Association of homosexuality with communism – look more into this
  • Homophile Movement
  • Calfironia – a number of ;’secret societies’ which gave voice to gay and lesbian people, especially in the form of literature
    • Mattachine Society in 1950, LA, drew on Communist origins and began publishing the *Mattachine Review in 1955 - 1967, believed that thisw as the nly wayt o get people out
    • One, Inc. 1953 - 1967: created an institute for developing homophile studies
    • Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 in San Francisco, published The Ladder 56-72 nationally.
  • A lot of this has to do with support – for poeple, getting ideas out there, not too dissimilar from the consciousness raising idea. What kinds of ideas and opportunities are out there?

Stonewall Uprising

  • Defining event for gay and lesbian activism in the 1960s
  • Something which went on commonly in American societies – police using gay and lesbian hangouts as places to harrass people
  • A history of police brutality behind what kicked off Stonwall
  • The Stonewall Inn had been raided many times in Greenwich Village
  • In particular, 1969, people began to fight the police for 4-5 days, fighting against police harrassment and brutality
  • Kicks off what was referred to as the Gay Liberation Front – using this with full reference to the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the NV
  • moving from the private into the public, moving this more public

Coming Out Of, To

  • Idea of the closet – an aspect of the individualistic and competitive culture – out of the closet means community for gays and lesbians
  • Recognizing a community, building a community
  • A number of communal living methods
  • People that they knew – idea of community which becomes very central to people at that time.
  • Public demonstrations, hip expressions, drawing on broader counterculture
  • Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, 1972, edited essays

Gay Pride, Into the 1970s

  • Whereever you get a lot of repression, you tend to get a lot of activism
  • Seventies, more activism
  • Activism was grassroots and homegrown and won the argument in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle

Sum Up

  • Some foundational notions in American life during the early Cold War [finish this…]

Lecture 17: They’re Selling Hippie Wigs in Woolworth’s, Man

Argument – The inability to find consensus on the Vietnam War pervaded American life, and increasingly there was no consensus to be found on the topics of morality, decency, loyalty, and much else. The promises of liberation and also the turmoil of rebellion highlighted the end of the decade.

  • 69 and moving into the seventies
  • Vietnam plays an outsized role
  • Nixon comes in here – a Rpeublican adminsitration with all new people leading the military cmapaingn
  • McNamara had an outsized influence on the war, now it is Kissinger and Nixon
  • Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon
  • Sixties come to a massive flaming halt – this sense of promise and grabbing the future – this exuberance comes mostly to an end at the end of the decade
  • 1969: Apollo 11. Michael Collins – seeing the planet from a distance. The Earth surrounding by nothingness, by a void.
    • Seeing war at the height of nuclear war
    • A tenuous little home surrounded by nothing
    • A great thought about the end of the decade and what will happen

Woodstock

  • Upstate New York
  • Attracts as many as 500k people to these farms in New York
  • Young peoplpe come to listen and play to bands and musicians
  • Stands out as a crowning moment when all of these elements come together - pot, free love, hippies, etc.; youtfhul liberation comes to be embodied by the 500k people are Woodstock
  • Revolution preaches a moral set of values: surprising ease and sense of autrhoity.
  • “the children of plety have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted. the pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work”
  • Three days of peace and music – Jimi Hendrix, Santana
  • A music festival – people are having fun. Part of being young and being a hippie is having fun.
  • On the other hand there is also anti-war protest, an element of peace protest
  • Jimi hendrix, plays a deconstructed star spangled banner which is very mucuh poliitcally motivated
  • Abbie Hoffman tries to get on stage and musician bumps him off – don’t want to get co-opted into protest song singers. Others are singing explicitly about the Vietnam War

Nixon and Kissinger Go to War

  • Political administration is changing
  • Nixon is looking to end the war with honor – runs on a platform of ending the war
  • Get out of the Vietnam War honorably, we don’t fail in our pledge to help the people in south Vietnam
  • Nixon’s strategy – ‘Vietnamization’, rely on the same idea that the French had tried
  • Training up the ARVN, supporting the govrnment, etc. – not a new plan. It doesn’t work.
  • Kissinger and nixon don’t really care – want to get American trips out, have an election to think about in 72
  • Withdraw troosp and increase bombing campaigns
  • Real Politik – “politics of the real world”, ideas about morality and ethics have no place in politics, it’s only about power, unconcerned with moral implications.
  • Kissinger does not believe that NV has no breaking point, fully intends to find the breaking point
  • Relies heavily ont eh madman theory of Nixon – you don’t want to mess with Nixon, he had so much anit-communist zeal
  • This is how Nixon pulls off going to China – by his anti-communist fervor, he is sort of untouchable.
  • Operation DUCK HOOK – merciless bombing of Hanoi, mining and bombing of Haifong Harbor, proposed use of nucelar weapons. See how other government leaders would react. Leaked it to a few senators. But most people in congress would not go along with it. Never took hold.
  • Kissinger wanted to find NV’s brekaing point – little “backward nation” could not stand up to anything

Hamburger Hill

  • A ‘place of no strategic value’
  • Americans battle and battle to take a hill under enormous frie and death and then give it up
  • This doesn’t make any sense for guys on the ground
  • After the Tet Offensive morale steadily declines

My Lai Massacre, 1969

  • 1968, Was covered up and didn’t hit the press until 1969
  • American units, under their pressure and circumstances, deeply discontent, loose any sense of discipline, and massacre hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, frustrated about the difficulty of finding out who the enemy really is.
  • Many American soldiers didn’t take part in this – other units watching it happen from helicopters
  • Lots of rape and killing of children and babies
  • In 1969 after everything which has happened, this hits the press
  • One officer is held responsible – Lieutenant William Calley Jr., Nixon is pretty much on his side though and there is basically no accountability for what happened in My Lai
  • My Lai was spontaneous, not from the high command down, although it does involve some lieutenants
  • Frustration and lack of discipline among American troops
  • Was My Lai isoated or a pattern? This is still intensely debated – some people say that this thing happened somewhat frequently.
    • some people say every troop had its own My Lai
  • Communists did this too – burying people alive, shooting people after exiting Hui – a great argument against war

Free Fire Zones outside Saigon

  • Anyone who runs is a VC and anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined VC
  • US and ARVN having a difficult time figuring out how to get this to happen

Operation Menu, 1969

  • Nixon promised to end the war and pull out Ameircan troops
  • Totally secret operation – actually expanding the war by unleashing massive bombing campaigns on Cambodia
  • Were able to do this because the leader of Cambodai was out of the country when deposed with a coup led by an anti-communist leader, the US saw an opportunity to start bombing anti-Communist camps
  • Army troops will also be sent in in favor of ARVN troops

The Weathermen – Crisis Within SDS

  • Crisis in the war and at home are totally linked
  • SDS might have had over 100k members but are facing a massive crisis on what they are going to do moving froward.
  • Weathermen – most unified and usbstantiail portion of SDS to break away
  • In favor of violent revolt – wearing helmets and goggles to protests, ready to engage in active violent resistance
  • Rest of SDS begins to splinter into other groups
  • Weathermen attract many peoples’ attention
  • Mark Rudd and Bernadine Dohrn
  • Belief in armed, violent revolution – complete overthrow of the system
  • What Marx wrote about in late-stage capitalism: a worldwide revolt realizing the real enemy are the capitalists
  • Begin bomb-building – didn’t kill anyone. The only people to die from the Weathermen were three Weathermen who deid from building their bomss
  • Fizzle out by 1975.

Morale in the Service

  • Morale is suffering badly after the Tet Offensive
  • No one wants to be the last person to die in a war – we are going to pull out bubt it hasn’t happened yet – soldiers want to go home, are fairly aware the US isn’t planning to win the war
  • Racism becomes a real problem int he barracks – not just systemic, but physcial – blakc power has made its way into the barracks
  • Drug use – using heroin
  • Illegal killings in My Lai massacre
  • ‘Fragging’ – intentionally shoot your lieutenant who is all gung-ho and wants to win a medal
  • Soldiers began writing UUUU – Unwilling led by the Unqualifeid to do the Unnecessary for the Ungrateful
  • At least 900 recorded incidents of fragging
  • 69-71, a real uptick in the army and the marines, instances of fragging
  • In 69, people are still being sent in with an idea of doing their duty – but the soldiers they are commanding are often bitter and done, not much time left before going home
  • Illegal killings, hundreds of these cases – at least 300 verified and 500 more not verified
  • By autumn 1970, 2 deaths per day from heroin overdose
    • Substantial drug trade going on

Moratorium Campaign, 1969

  • The Moratorium Committee, a restatement of ending the war, saying no to the war, bringing as many voices to bear as possible
  • About 1m people tkaing part int he moratorium campaigns nationally
  • 500k people show up at the moratorium march on Washington
  • The largest show of dissent in US history – largest show of dissent in US wartime history
  • Starts as a small movement on the left in the left, built slowly on college campuses, and ends up being embraced by more and more people seeing the war brought to an end
  • Vietnam Vets against the war – famous moment, they go to the capital building and throwing their medals over the wall
  • Trying to somehow purgue this experience
  • A comparison to WWII – significant because of the generations.
  • Most of these guys that by 69 have turned against the war were patriots, proud to serve, did not join necessarily with trepidation – that is the tragedy when they speak publicly at these marches, the tragedy that happened to them.
  • Feel utterly betrayed at what they were sent into
  • By 69, 70 – startign to get some pushback from the American people. Increasingly many Americans turn against veterans and say viscious things to them – exemplifeis the many fractures in American life

The Silent Majority

  • Nixon siezes on this opportunity to capture the ‘silent majority’
  • If the TV is filled with racial and antiwar protest, trying to speak to all the people out there who are not involved in this
  • The ‘good Americans’
  • The minority is loud and raising a huge ruckus, trying to get the silent majority on his side.
  • A good political tactic – puts the protesters in the light of troublemakers
  • Helps rally the ‘silent majority’
  • Resounding support for Nixon, gets wide public support against the protests.
  • There is no consensus on the war

August 1969 Tate-LaBianca Murders

  • Nightly news becomes very important, other events which capture the American imagination
  • Murders from the Manson family
  • 68, Manson founds a home among hippie groups in San Francisco
  • Inserted himself into the music business and Hollywood
  • Began to recruit young women from these hippie groups in California and put together the Manson family
  • Convinced them that there was an end of the world coming, what was happening in California was to be criticzed and torn down
  • August of 1969, went tot he home of Sharon Tate, married to the filmmaker Roman Polanski; was 8 months pregnant
  • Manson family murdered five people present
  • Randomly killed the LaBiancas

The Manson Family

  • Tex Watson – thought to do most of the killings
  • Went to prison for the rest of his life
  • Liberation of the hippies and all of this freedom to the cultivation of weird ideas and cultism
  • Manson still remains an iconic figure
  • Media representation vs more mass murders – seems to kick off serial killers, mass murderers, etc. – other figures

Zodiac Killings

  • San Francisco Bay area, 1968-1969 and the 1970s
  • Killings seemed random
  • Taunting police and newspapers, sending coding messages and leaving clues
  • Absolutely terrified the San Francisco Bay Area
  • Couldn’t catch the Zodiac killer
  • Galvanize Americans’ attention

Easy Rider (1969)

  • The film which brings the 1960s to a close
  • Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper
  • peter Fonda as Captain America
  • They’re between beats and hippies, free lives nad living the beat lifestyle
  • Reflecting back on the

American Indian Movement

  • Shows the collective needs of American Indians
  • Occupy and take over places
  • Alcatraz in 1969 – old federal prison, turning back into Indian land, taking back pieces of native land
  • 1973, occupation of Wounded Knee
  • Different movements in Washington also, reclaiming fishing rights which had been taken away
  • Seattle, occupation of discovery park
  • Occupation of Bureau of Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972: Trail of Broken Treaties, all the treaties which had not been fulfilled, almost uniformly included anuity payments to tribes
  • Begins pressure on Nixon to change, and it will change under Nixon – self-determination policy under Nixon, puts sovereignty back in the hands of Native people.
  • Native people could fom tribal governments, instiuttions, etc.

Altamont: Free Concert in California

  • December 6, 1969 – “west coast woodstock”
  • Many top listers
  • Problem with Altamont was the planning
  • Switched venue very suddenly – rushed to get the planning done in a couple of weeks
  • 300k people attended
  • Rolling Stones hired Hell’s Angel Bike Gang as security, paid in beer
  • Got more and more drunk
  • 4 people died – 1 stabbing, 3 accidents
  • People kept on coming on stage, Hell’s Angels would knock them off stage
  • Some people knocked over some bikes, then begin pulling out pool cues and using chains as weapons

Invasion of Cambodia

  • 1970, as US troops begin to come home
  • April to July, 1970: Nixon anounces a public campaign to bomb Cambodia
  • ARVN and US troops cross the Cambodia and also Laos later
  • Massive bombing campaigns
  • Were not told that we were bombing Cambodia and that there were massive campaigns
  • For Americans, still very shocking – how is it that the war is getting bigger as the war is ending?

Kent State, 1970

  • Ohio national guard turned out to quell student protest
  • Given live ammunition to police unarmed peace protesters
  • National guard and students squared off, backed off, etc.
  • Something happened, someone fired, etc. – national guard shoots into the crowd and kills four protesters at Kent State, including some who were not protesting
  • Increased number of protests, ROTC buildings burned
  • Flying apart

Jackson State Shootings

  • Students also turned out to protest the war
  • Mississippi police opened up on Black protesters
  • 2 killed, 12 wounded
  • 400 rounds fired at unarmed students
  • Nixon’s message to middle America was still effective: protesters are troublemakers and we have to keep things under wraps
  • Less covered as a mainly Black area
  • Beginning of law and order campaign

Pentagon Papers, 1971

  • To further open up the dissolution of society, Daniel Ellsberg came upon the reports that McNamara had commissioned to be done in 67 when he was becoming disillusioned with the Vietnam War
  • Looking through papers and DoD papers and compile an understanding of how the US got involved in the Vietnam War
  • 7k page document detailing Kennedy, Johnson, how they got involvedin the Vietnam War
  • Daniel Ellsberg came across this in the Pentagon and released it, known as the Pentagon Papers
  • Showed that multiple presidents going back to Truman had misled the American public about policy on Vietnam – each is complicit in what had happened to US
  • Cambodia bombings
  • Nixon’s “dirty tricks” campaign – send the pulmbers (burglers) into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to blackmail Daniel
  • Nixon ordered chief of staff to break into the Brookings institution and to raid their safe (wasn’t done though)
  • More and more suspicion of dirty tricks

Vietnam Vets Against the War

  • John Kerry, naval officer in Vietnam
  • Leads Vietnam Vets Against the War
  • 1971
  • What Kerry says about feeling betrayed, about the terrible things being done in Vietnam
  • A variety of responses to Kerry and VVAW – who is to blame for what happened?
  • POWs being celebrated by Nixon for being brave patriots
  • POWs will often make speeches of patriotism and loyalty – really different takes

Operation Linebacker (1972)

  • Nixon expanding the war more
  • Linebacker: massive expansion of the war and bombing campaign
  • Released massive bombing campaigns on the North – trying to find the breaking point of the North
  • Tet Offensive is a massive build-up which failed
  • NV launched 3 more offensives from 68 to 72, all failures
  • Didn’t seem to be any resolve breaking on the part of the Northern Commies

1972 Election

  • Nixon was popular – supporting a lot of great society type legislation being passed, like his campaign against the protestors
  • Is bringing troops home, the war does seem to be winding down
  • George McGovern is totally defeated – endorsed by the Yippies and makes him look like a fringe lefty weirdo
  • Electoral map: Nixon tkes all tates except one
  • A kind of symbolic feat of the countercultural rebellion
  • By 71 72, protests fall off – economy is plummeting. The war is coming to an end, not as much protest
  • Some of these ideas and behaviors are overshadowed by the reality of the times coming to a close – symbolically, nightime is coming.

Sum Up

  • As the decade came to an end and the seventies began, the Vietnam War highlighted a divided nation
  • The promises of countercultural ideas, attitudes, and behaviors were overshadowed by the reality that not everyone understood counterculture in the same way.
  • Kissinger is a very divisive figure in American life
    • Possibly should be held for war crimes
    • Chile
    • War crimes

Lecture 18:A New Environmentalism

Arugment: What began in 1970 as a grassroots effort involved in local issues evolved into a government-focused issuew here lobbyists dominate and environmental stewardship is always disadvantaged.

  • What do people experience as an environmental issue? ALways localized.
  • Environmentalism as a grassroots effort which becomes a very DC-centered policy debate. So by the middle of the seventies it becomes lawyers fighting against lawyers and moves outside of this setting
  • The environment is not out there, it is in you; you are in it.
  • Relations between people are often of power, but I have material relations
  • We always interact witht he material world through certain cultural practices

Earlier Concerns, late 50s and early 60s

  • Man and Nature – farmland being destroyed
  • Post-war technological developments are so enormous
  • Proliferation of consumer products - through the same technological lends of elimination and productivity
  • Scale – the essential category for change.
  • Very out of hand scale of pollution
  • It is possible to live away from pollution in the US, pollution is being understood in a different way.

Land Ethics

  • Aldo Leopold
  • Not new in the sixties, people have been talking about the right relationship with the natural world
  • Right and wrong ways of interacting with the world.

A New Environemntalism

  • “We have met the enemy and he is us”
  • Land use isues begin to form
  • We might lose all of our natural patrimony
  • Ongoing critiques
  • Argument: What has made Amerida, prese
  • In the middleo f the sixthn massive etinction event

Environmental Disasters: Pollution

  • People are seeing these events more and more – similar events everywhere
  • Lake Erie fish kills, Santa Barbara oil spill, 1969
  • Santa Barbara spill – 4.2m gallons of crude oil
  • “Get Oil Out” campaign
  • Great Lakes took on a massively new significant – it was becoming clear that future global conflicts might have to do with freshwater conflicts
  • Space photos allow us to see some of these pattr

The 1968 Lake Erie Sudsing

  • Detergents, oil, new consumer products pushed on homeowners
  • Detergents – don’t break down very well, come out with suds. Erie coastline ‘mobbed’ with sudslines.
  • Lake Erie – no regulation, slaughterhouses dumping blood rivers into the lake, sewage, etc. Basically used as a giant wastestream
  • Lake Erie – having massive environmental events.

Lake Erie Algal Bloom

  • Synthetic dergents are going in
  • Agricultural run-off; phosphates are good for algal blooms
  • Algal blooms such oxygen out of the water and killed fish – hypothesized might become dead sea

Cuyahoga River Fire

  • Fifties did way more damage
  • 69 fire stil attracted more national attention
  • Rivers on fire due to population

Population Growth and Suburban Spaces

  • Puget Sound being overwhelmed
  • Lake Washington and other waterways getting really disgusting
  • West Point Water Treatment Plant, and Treatment Plants in general attempt to deal with single family homes, more people, etc.
  • A lot of suburban houses use septic tanks, which can leak out and pose problems

Industrial Growth and Pollution

  • Intalco (aluminum) and Boeing – manifestations of ‘Pugetopolis’.
  • Concerns over industrialization
  • A sense of time running out, the fall

1969 Oil Pipeline

  • Proposed to run under puget sound from Alaska and Canada
  • Fought by Sen. Warren Magnuson and native tribes
  • Did not pass

Urban Landfills

  • Open landfills
  • Americans tend not to know with what to do with water and land mixed together – seen as unuseable, dumping of things right next to waterways
  • Waterways often seen as sewers – put it in, it flows somewhere else
  • People begin to clean up these areas

Willamette River Pollution

  • Lots of boat building, gnarly waste
  • Tom McCall, Oregon Governor – became a national leader on environmentalism
  • Referred to the Willamette River as an open sewer
  • McCall passed a bunch of laws – amended Oregon constitution to “thou shalt not pollute”
  • A lot of environemntal regulations
  • Department of Environmental Quality, 1969
  • Precedent for the federal advisory on environemntal affairs
  • First state to outlaw pull-tab cans and non-returnable bottles

1970s Recycling

  • Landfills get so expensive to license that people don’t want to open them and turn to recycling centers
  • Recycling is a problematic activity – takes a lot of responsibility away from the producers
  • Recycling takes away from the producers and puts on us to recycle
  • A lot of material doesn’t end up being recycled
  • Recycling requires a market for recyclables
  • Addressing a problem through consumption and behavior – but we’re not really alleviating it

RCRA

  • Resource Conservation and Control Act (1976)
  • Solid and hazardous waste leaks into groundwater
  • Makes landfills much more expensive
  • Landfills get moved into very rural areas

Back to the Land Movement

  • Part of this reaction is an interest in returning ot th eland
  • Connected to hippieism and connections to the land
  • Wendell Berry. One of the founding academics on returning to the world. Moving away from rampant commercialism
  • Some people find this to be a more satisfying way to live
  • A somewhat-criticism of capitalism
  • The Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalog, etc.

Fear of Losing Wild Places

  • McDonalds on Mountaintops
  • 1964 National Wilderness Preservation Act
    • Senator Frank Church from Idaho, 57-81
    • Written into law an area “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain”
    • A specific idea of protecting these areas to not be in an urban setting
  • 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
  • 1968 National Trails Act
    • Establishes Appalachian Trail as a national trail
    • Policies for protecting a wilderness experience – we don’t want a society where you have nothing other than humans and human artifacts.
  • “The Problem of Wilderness”
  • Suggesting a natural division between human and non-human
  • Possibly a colonial epistemic framework

Stewart Udall

  • Secretary of the Interior 61-69
  • Goes back a while – giving out of public land
  • Udall helped push through ideas under Kennedy adn then Johnson about expanding trail systems, national monuments, national park system, etc.
  • Last major one will be under Carter in which much of Alaska gets pushed into national park and protected space

Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell

  • Large amounts o fpressure to expand dam building in the American West
  • Dam-building begins in the 30s
  • Colorado river has 16 different dams built into it, turning it into resevoirs
  • Came about because of a different damn that was supported to be built, the echo dam
  • Dave Foreman – helped protest the dam, but the Glen Canyon Dam instead was built
  • Dammed up a Canyon that was thought to be almost as beautiful as the Grand Canyon
  • Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey: a polemic against the dam and other manipulations. A lyricist of the desrt, writing polemically about dam building, etc.
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975. Destroy earth moving equipment. Find bulldozers and fill transmissions with sand and rocks; spike trees; etc. Main goal is to go to the Glen Canyon Dam and breach it
  • Some labeled Abbey an environmentalist, but then also was bizarre - danced between libertarianism and environmentalism
    • advised Americans to shoot their televisions
  • Gets some sort of cult following – defending environmentalism against capitalism

Eco-Protest

  • Earth First, GreenPeace, etc. – more active societies, see themselves as defenders, actively engage in vairous activities.
  • Earth First! chaining themselves to trees, burning down saw mills, etc.
  • Dave Foreman, 1980 – in the news a lot
  • Comes from the idea of ‘deep ecology’ – belief that humans are not special, that we are one creature among many and we have no special rights or privileges. We share the Earth
  • Coming out of a tradition of radicalism, anti-war protest, etc.
  • A lot of these people are straight out of SDS

Media and the Sea

  • The “Flipper” TV show – focused on a family’s relationship with a dolphin
  • Beginning of the career of Jacques Cousteau, a French oceanographer – would show people what happens in the sea
  • People’s interest in the ocean begins to accelerate

Mcrioplastics

  • Noticed in long island sound in the seventies
  • A problem of a much larger scale
  • Big problem with micro-plastics: hover in the top 8-10 feet where not a lot of light penetrates and doesn’t break down – are eaten up
  • Table salt probably has plastic in it; you have plastic in your body

Earth Day, 1970

  • Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin – 1969
  • Talk about a national day for the environment
  • Firing up the youth
  • A grassroots effort to clean up local places – picking up trash to dealing with more serious problems
  • Starts in college campuses with teach-ins
  • Millions of people are involved with Earth Day
  • Doesn’t look like much but it also raises people’s awareness about more serious issues

Nixon’s Legislation

  • 1970
  • Overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress, work with Nixon to pass shit
  • Nixon is politically savvy and part of getting new offices was also Nixon’s way of keeping it in house –
  • National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) – if a new thing is being built, decisions are made behind closed doors
  • Public gets a say
  • NEPA (1970)
    • Livable environment is an entitlement
    • President’s Council for Environmental Quality
    • EIS – Environmental Impact Statement
      • Assessing environmental impact and having forums where people voice their opinion on the proposed project
      • Elwha river
      • A lot of people wanted to see the dam breached so the salmon runs could come back
      • Two dams are very old
      • Other peoplel have grown up fishing on the lakes behind the dam – local people
      • Unforseen effects – activists figured out that you can use the EIS almost infinitely to put off a project if you do it right
    • Consider externalities and alternatives to federal actions-
    • Proliferation of experts – more need for engineers to be the experts to weigh in on these issues

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

  • Helps with things like the proliferation of chemicals
  • Is too mcuh at the beginning – EPA had to study ~60k individual chemical compounds
  • The EPA doesn’t go out and study things – an industry comes to it to study compounds
  • Burden of proof is all on the EPA – to prove something is dangerous. This is difficult to do though
  • Competing science – it’s very hard to prove that certain chemical compounds can be dangeorus
  • US band on DDT, 1972

Regulatory laws 1970s

  • Large numbers of environmental regulatory laws passed during the Nixon years
  • Eagle as the mascot of the DDT ban campaign
  • Clean Air Act, 1970
  • Clean Water Act, 1972
  • endangered Species Act, 1973

Ameiricans joining environmental organizations

  • About 500k American members to 2.5m by 1985
  • Becomes part of a movement of local concern to national politics
  • Hire lobbyists which try to get legislative accomplishments

Federal Authority: Regulatory Powers

  • Focus on environmental organizations moves the conversation into Washington, DC – we sort of expect this now – someone else is loooking out for public safety, etc.
  • Federal focused system
  • Principle of acceptable risk vs precautionary principle – system works around the former. Below a certain threshold, we tend to be OK with it

Pollution: Identifying Problems and Solutions

  • Identification of problems
  • The way a person or institution goes about evaluating problems, it matters a lot how you end up with solutions. The way you approach problems influences how you come up with solutions
  • We often see pollution as a technical problem and not so much a social cultural one
  • Mechanical, technological, scientific solutions – rather than critiques of consumerism or capitalism
  • Clean Air Act (1970) – tried to combat acid rain by installing air quality standards and monitoring devices in different places around polluters and try to create standards based on on our understandings of risk.
    • Grandfather clauses often used to protest old polluters.
    • Censoring sensors
  • Clean Water Act (1972); no grandfather clauses
    • No regulation of hog farms

Murray Bookchin and Alternative Ideas

  • Ecology and Revolutionary Thought, 1968
  • Pollution as a social problem – social ecology

Reemergence of the Environmental Justice Movement, 1970s

  • Focused in Love Canal, where Lois Gibbs lives
  • Environmental justice:
    1. People of color and the poor are more likely to live in polluted areas and suffer effects of enviornmental degradation
    2. Some environmental policies worsten social injustices, e.g. by moving polluters overseas
  • Love Canal, in New York State
    • Central part is the school
    • A chemical plant and a plastics plant existed and dumped all of its hazardous waste in Love Canal
    • When the industry closed, it covered the area with dirt and sold it to the state
    • Housing development and as chool were built around it
    • By the seventies, it was clear that people in Love Canal were living with increasing illnesses, especially autoimmune issues
    • 43m lb hazardous waste remained in the spot
  • Outcry against New York
  • People who live in Love Canal – high proportion of not wealthy and single mothers
  • State keeps putting them off, finally gets the media’s attention
  • Sending EPA officers to investigate what is going on
  • Toxic sludge everywhere
  • Lois Gibbs becomes the media face – not an activist or journalist, a working woman. Becomes the face of the protests.
    • Very critical of mainstream environemntal organizations funneling money into Washington
    • This is instead a moral issue – is it national or local / moral?
  • Started a series of mothers groups on the issues of reproductive health and of children
  • Particularly damaging effects on hormones
  • Use tactics of civil rights protests
  • Holding EPA agents ‘hostage’ for a while to get media attention
  • Warren County, North Carolina
    • Rural county, mainly Black people
    • New landfill put out in Warren County
    • Dumping of PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls
    • Were being targeted because of political unempowerment
    • Used tactics like protesting and laying down in the roads before the state chose a different set of tactics - People calling attention
  • CERCLA (1980)
    • Superfund act: areas which are so toxic that they are covered by the law
    • Polluters have to pay some of the liability to help clean up some of these areas
    • Lots of heavily toxic superfund areas

Lecture 19: Out of the Quagmire

Argument: In some ways the 11960s continued into the 1970s, but the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the economic outlook marked an end to the hopefulness of a decade prior.

  • Much of this decade is about young people – the importance of youth is not to be underestimated

Nixon and the Expansion fo Government

  • Nixon is a sort of interim Republicna/conservative president between Eisenhower and Reagan
  • Politically savvy, is continuing on a number of Great Society policies because they were popular.
  • Under Reagan, clear shrinking of the government
  • Office of Minority Business Enterprise (1969) – trying to attract non-white voters
  • OSHA (1971) –govern workplaces and weigh in
  • National Transportation Safety Board (1971)

Welfare

  • Expansion of welfare and the use of welfare
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan – an old New Dealer, liberal Democrat who is going to slowly move his way into the conservative side of politics.
  • Recommends policies like the family assistance plan and the negative income tax
  • If you are poor enough, you should not be paying taxes but getting some sort of benefit
  • Minimum income for all Americans, a basic universal income for all Americans. Unpopular across the board
  • Increaes in welfare enrollment during the 1960s – strong conservative response, laziness, indiviudal responsibility, etc.

Nixon and Politics First

  • Second term, not running after anyway
  • Trying to toy with the idea of affirmative action
  • In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, picking up on Johnson
  • Johnson had included in hiring policies the principle of affirmative action – there needs to be color-blind hiring. If a candidate could prove they had been discriminated upon by race, there was a legalized section for sueing
  • Nixon – a certian number of jobs need to be set aside and put for people of color
  • An experiment to see what the experiments will be
  • Pitted Black workers against the trade unions (mostly white) to fight inflation
  • Nixon wanted to undermine the trade unions so that he could fight inflation as the pay went dowon. Pits these groups againsdt each other to see the political outcome
  • 1970, NYC Hard Hat riots – trade unionists turn out against antiwar protests, gets violent
  • Ends up siding with the trade unions over anything having to do with Affirmative Action, goes out of the iwndow to side with blue-color folks

1973 Rehabilitation Act

  • Direct outcome of the Civil Rights act
  • Eventually leads to the 1990 ADA
  • Forgotten Americans – certainly the disabled.
  • Civil Rights – think in terms of class, race, gender, but also one privilege we live with all the time are being able-bodied
  • Stage protests of their own, getting politicians to pay attention to them

The Burger Court

  • Supreme Court goes through a significnat change when Earl Warren retires in 1969
  • Warren Earl Burger – arch-conservative appellate judge – gets in as Chief Justice
  • Leadership is quite interesting, goes left and right sometimes
  • You have a 7-2 conservative majority
  • Solve school integration problem using busses – American neighborhoods ar e segregated, so we should bus kids fro mone place to another
  • Caused a great deal of anger and resentment, massive protestsan d resnemtentrs over this idea
  • Court case – can we take the property taxes from one place in the city and proposing less well-funded areas? SC
  • Supreme Court – cnaonot force the suburbs to take federald
  • Rove v. Wade

Busing, Segregation, and a Divided Nation

  • Italians against lack kids being bussed in
  • Fights over governance overreach, this isn’vern
  • What is trhe nature of the probl
  • All of these problems who ha

Roe v. Wade (1973)

  • Whole language is premised on rights; this is whatbot-==
  • My irght to …
  • Right comes ou o= sx’
  • Overturning O;

Nixon and Detente

  • Madman theory of Nixon
  • Nixon sees an opportunity with the passing of Khushchev to have a differetn relationship with the Soviet Union
  • Brezhnev and Nixon are both leaders of nations coming into the seventies
  • Economic times are changing in the US, an endless arms race is not finacnailly viable
  • Get together and agree on a few policies, like the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), saying we will have this much of that kind of missile. Both sides agreeing on a balance sheet for the nuclear arms they are going to have so they don’t break the bank outrunning each other
  • Both nations looking at anti-ballistic missiles to shoot down missiles, and it undermines the threats of massive retaliation; if one side has effective anti-ballistic systems, they can shoot down the other person’s missiles, not developing these anti-ballistic missile systems to develop a peaceful coexistence.
  • Nixon’s 1972 trip to China, only Nixon can go to China – the US and China began a lot more vigorous trade than was possible before
  • Americans were often pretty poor at understanding different kinds of communism throughout the world, China is differetn from USSR

End of the Draft (1973)

  • MOvement to end the draft
  • All volunteer army or military
  • Many reasons; a draft army has many disciplinary problems, massively unpopular
  • Nixon is doing well with his policies, has popular domestic policies, bringing the troops home, support is looking quite good
  • One issue was the economic downturn, but ending the draft helped distract from changes to the overall economy.
  • For the US military, the US military now as an all-volunteer force invited both women and people of color, had more opportunities to join because of lower enlistments

Congress Taking Control

  • After the Pentagon Papers had come out and what the Presidents had happened, Congress becomes very involved in the Vientam War in ways it hadn’t before
  • Ending the draft (1973) and the War Powers Act (1973) – Congress has to give approval of troop deployments
  • Budget and impoundment act (1974), weakens the president’s control of federal spending – at the end of the Vietnam War, one of the contingent things tht happens, Nixon promises president of SV that Americans will withdraw but will come back if the NV launch a major offensive again. This is not possible for Nixon to do that. Nixon resigns, Ford comes in, and when the Communists do attack and overwhelm SV, Ford’s hands are totally tied. Americans simply pull out.

Threats Outside of Vietnam

  • A war like Vietnam or Afghanistan – totally ties up diplomatic resources, if you’re bogged down in a war, it becomes impossible to address things in other places
  • Cubans sending guerillas over the Angola, the US had limited ability to do anything about that
  • The Soviets influenced revolutions in Africa and Middle East, dumping millions fo dollars worth of arms into East Africa
  • Afghanistan – the “Soviets’ Vietnam”
  • Vietnam cost the US other oppoprtunities it might have engaged with

CIA and Covert Operations

  • Nixon administration doing all kinds of shady stuff
  • These are now part of the Nixon legacy
  • School of the Americas – long been used to train right-wing militaries to fight against leftists in latin America, training assassins and such
  • Henry Kissinger and the state deparmtent, 1973 in Chile: help overthrwo the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende (who wanted to nationalize resources and kick out the US-linked company ITT in charge of telecommunications) and replaced with Augusto Pinochet
  • Pinochet kills thousands of his own people for being leftists
  • Under Nixon and Kissinger, the US is completely upending democratic societies around the world

Economic Stagnation, 1973 - 1975

  • Economic downturn of the time, stagflation (no economic growth, yet prices going up), i.e. income is not rising at the same rate that prices are rising
  • Oil embargo going on, energy crisis
  • Gas is hard to come by; America becomes built around the car and gas-to-heat homes
  • Long lines of cars at gas stations, no gas
  • Large changes in the economic sector; Americans import 1/3 of oil

Global Economic Recovery Post-WWII

  • Car industry is fundamental to Ameircan manufacturing; essential to cars going into different parts of the world
  • Other countries rebuilding after WWII are competing – more efficient with Gas
  • Americans are still building massive gas-guzzling cars, and these smaller cars are emerging from Japan and Germany
  • Moving manufacturing overseas – South Korea and Taiwan/ROC begint o do a lot more manufacturing
  • Global economic changesa re really affeting the US
  • 1971, US is in a trade deficit: exporting less than importing, status as a global leader is changing
  • Nixon put the US no longeer on the gold standard; the US dollar is now floating against other currencies in the world, which introduces more instability into the world

OPEC – Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, 1973

  • The need for oil to run the massive American economy – all need oil. Americna consumer system gobbles up oil
  • 1973, as a response fror the US supporting Israel as a stand against Arabic nations, OPEC forms
  • OPEC now sets the price of oil. OPEC says we will not sell oil to certain people altogether. Held the United States really in their hadns

Oil Embargo

  • The United States enters in an oil embargo
  • Resources in Alaska become important
  • Alaska seen as a great American reserve for places tog et oil and alleviate problems
  • Big open spaces like Wyoming and such, lots of carbon-based extraction
  • Begins to cripple poeple’s ability to move around

The Rust Belt (“Making Ameirca Great”)

  • Jobs are being automated and moving away
  • Area which becomes important for the election of Donald Trump
  • Many people who see themselves as the Forgotten American here
  • A lot of old unionists and good manufacturing jobs

Stafglation in the 1970s

  • Early 1970s, stagflation – for Ford and Carter in 1975, this will be difficult
  • Unenviable positions of dealing with this problem of stagflation

Resignations and Abuses of Power

  • Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s vice president, had a shady background. Agnew had been the face of the fight against the anti-war protesters, putting own protestsa s communist sympathizers.
  • Agnew had been accepting bribesa s the Governor of Maryland and has to resign as president
  • COINTELPRO and FBI spying programs come to light
  • Activities of the CIA in places like Chile and Angola
  • A lot of news coming out on top of issues like the Viernam War

US Politics in Crisis

  • VP Agnew resigns for tax evasion and accepting bribes
  • Washington Post reporters working ont he Watergate scandal
  • All the President’s Men
  • Just one episode in a long laundry list of Nixon’s dirty tricks
  • White House chief of staff had hired plumbers (burglers) to break into Democratic National Headquarters and to install listening devices so they could spy on the Democratic party and win
  • Nixon saw the writing on the wall and resigned
  • Ford took over in 1974 and in an unenviable position
  • Part of a political administration with dirt all over it, would not be very politically successful ever
  • Circumstances are getting worse; the Communists are on the move, the North Vietnamese Communists on the move, believing they can take over the country byt he end of 1976. Keep on testing if the Americans will come back. The SV are screaming to Ford that Nixon would promise aid; Ford came before Congress; Congress says no. This finishes off the American withdrawal
  • Ford was a representative in Congress (speaker) before he was president

Fall of Saigon (1975)

  • Fall of SV into the Communists
  • Good documentrary: Last Days in Vietam
    • Graham Martin, Cold Warrior, lost only kid to combat in Vietnam, ambassador to Vietnam at the time
    • Martin believed that any discussion of an evacuation would cause panic
    • The US would not provide aid
    • The military, sapce department, all of the Americans left in South Vietnam could do nothing without Graham Martin saying it’s time to do something.
    • People could see the writing on the wall. Army personnel, CIA people, etc. could all see what was happening but Martin refused to do anything about it
  • US had four options for evacuation
    • Take big commercial ships up the river and load people on it; US had at least 200k-500k people who worked with the US and would likely be killed when the Communists took over
    • Lift people from the airport using fixed-wing aircraft – airliens would fly people out
    • Use military fixed wing aircraft
    • Helicopter airlift
  • Communists were not advancing so quickly by April of 1975 that Americans were pulling out and the Communists began shelling the airport
  • Fixed-wing aircraft is impossible
  • Martin gave the go-ahead to evacuate
  • Some Americnas had already been secretly evacuating
  • Came back down to the helicopter airlift – throng of people trying to get out of South Vietnam; ships in the ocean, people getting in boats trying to meet up
  • Some ARVN pilots loaded people in helicopters and flew out

Getting Out

  • The US has its people pulled out, a lot of these guys stay in Vietnam for years, guys left there in the end have families with Vietnamese women and such.
  • Some increased bombing campaigns to cover the Americna retreat
  • Cambodia falls into the Khmer Rouge, which culminates in the killing fields where they kill millions of anti-Communists

In Total

  • US drops 7 million tons of bombs, 3x as many bombs as all nations dropped in WWI
  • More than 28k US troops killed, 315k wounded, 1.6k missing
  • $800 billion (adjusted) dollars spent on the war
  • 3m Vietnamese killed, 500k civilians – 33 million people at the beginning of the war, so substantial population is dead
  • Vietnam War begets a very problematic legacy – the Vietnam Syndrome, a general malaise with the economic problems of the seventies, lingering sense of hsames and trying to find the guilty parties, Veterans coming home and feeling as if they had been spat on even if they weren’t
  • Veterans would begin to not talk about the war, not keep their war memorabilia out, hide their experiences
  • 26m men cam eof draft age during the Vietnam War
  • 2.15m went to Vietnam, 1.6m in combat
  • Disproportionately a poor, uneducated, Black mens’ war
  • A high school dropout had a 70% chance of going to Vietnam – high proportion of dishonorable discharges and such, uneducated
  • 60% who died in Vietnam were young, between 17-21 years old
  • A young man’s war: average service age is 19

Legacy of the Vietnam War

  • Very long lasting legacy of the Vietnam War
  • A damaged US credibility – we need to be sure our methods don’t damage our credibility, but it did…
  • Increase in suspicion of government, politicians, and institutions; decisions made by Johnson, Nixon, etc.
  • Vietnam Veterans – remain in the shadows, hid, didn’t want to be known as Vietnam Veterans, wanted to forget and get away from it
  • Some psychological, neurological effects – some are wounded and deal with the VA (spotty institution)
  • Lots of Vietnamese refugees leaving their homeland and finding a new home somewhere else
  • 1970s, a lot of general malaise.
  • Difficulty in finding good jobs which had existed before

Sum Up

  • By the mid-1970s, the promise of the sixties was over and a new period marked by economic recession, Cold War negotiations,a dn a divided society was beginning.
  • Yougn people going through this period of liberation and youth, yet this promise of the sixties in terms of the fallout of the Vietnam War had come to an end by this point.

Then…

  • 1980s, Top Gun is made, and everyone loves the military again
  • Film was a strong way in which the country reconciled with itself in the Vietnam War
  • Immigrants begin to fill up the US military in new ways.

Lecture 20: Pop Culture – Visual Art and Film

  • Modernism is being challenged in significnant ways
  • Modernity – a condition of society which comes about when certain milestones are met – you see that modernity emerges
  • Modernism – usually a movement of some kind, but there is a modrn program beginning in the 18th century, part of a much larger modern movement – like from empires to nations, from previous forms of economies to capitalism and communism, etc. – development of a political society or entity
  • Develop of a new kind of order, an entirely new worldivew about how politics, society, etc. should be ordered so they work in the most efficient way, produce the most liberty, justice, capital, etc.
  • A process of creating the modern, always a process of replacing things that are old, replacing the premodern.
  • Fordism: economic movement within capitalism when Henry Ford begins a new style of production that is not just about making money but also about designing a new type of society. Henry Ford was very much a modern thinker.
    • Teaching people how to live in US-centric ways
    • Henry Ford goes down to Brazil and makes Fordlandia, tries to make a perfect working town.
  • At the core of modernism is universality
  • Whole schools of academics begin to introduce postmodernism as a response, the modern has introduced as many problems as it has solved
  • The modern conundrum – identified a problem, so create a solution; but you’re created another problem in your solution
  • Postmodernism is not a new worldview, but a critique of modernism, not a replacement. We see the way in which postmodernism is coming out in film and visual culture. A lot of it is experimental and pushing back against the film of an earlier period.
  • Narrative – modernism suggests an orderly story, a narrative arc. Postmodernism throws this out of the window. Pushing out of linear thinking
  • Seventies, emergence of the big filmmakers, commercially successful and acclaimed by critics as smart, good films. Many of such films in the seventies

Pop Art

  • Pop art movement is a critique of art itself, because art has operated in a modernist framework for so long
  • Andy Warhol – critiquing what counts as art
  • Movement to take very common everyday objects and turn them into art pieces
  • Making objects into art – if a big gallery wown’t take it, show it somewhere else
  • Roy Lichtenstein –Drowning Girl, 1963
  • Abusrdist, surrealist, whimsical, poking fun at art
  • When the artist tells you that you’re looking at something
  • Advertisers often no longer try to separate the advertiser and the person looking at the advertisement – self-awareness of the material bieng produced and the material given

Andy Warhol

  • Absurdist art projects and everything
  • Campbell soup cans
  • Screen printings of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley
  • Cow wallpaper
  • Making a critiqu eof visual art

Stan Brakhage

  • Midwestern
  • Begins doing experimental film in the middle of the 1950s; later Warhol does experimental film too
  • Setting limits, looking for the limits of what people can dow ith film, trying to find what these limits are
  • Maybe you’re getting it the wrong way if you’re irritated
  • Not meant to be rewatchable
  • Influences other filmmakers who become interested in
  • Calling back to silent film
  • Sleep, 1963 – watching someone sleep
  • Blow-Job, 1963
  • Empire, 1964

John Cassavetes

  • Trying to do experimental new things, moving towards what an altered Hollywood film looks like
  • Trying new techniques and stuff
  • Breaking down the artifice of consumerism in a post-consumierist economy
  • Gritty people, street-level film
  • Becomes Cassavetes’ signature
  • Jarring stories – fifties and sixties, beginning to stretch
  • Alfred Hitchock, Psycho – not only a shocking story
  • The Twighlight Zone, actually very er=arly;Movv
  • The French new Wave
  • Watching Cassavetres,
  • HOw can glas s alls be problematic? Uter transparency
  • Playtime
  • Fishbowl living
  • Playing with humanity and space
  • Why do we sit down and turn on the TV

Once Upon a Time in the West

  • Spaghetti westerns – westerns very popular in the United States
  • A ltot of them are shot in Italy and had the same director, Sergio Leone, and an Italian to do the music
  • A true Western epic – what experience is hte reader supposed to have?

The Wild Bunch

  • Significance – infleunce on Quentin Tarentino
  • What is being done with slow-motion adn speeding-up, as well as very brutal violence which hasn’t shown up until here
  • Newly released level of gratuitous violence
  • Influenced so much in terms of war films

The Youth Insurgency

  • Youth culture was also beginning to make an insurgency into Hollywood film as well
  • The Graduate – not a very radical story, but very instructive. The young folks have made up their mind and run away; use a crucifix to lock in the people in the church. Commentary on youth culutre, breaking away – when you liberate yourself, what comes next?
  • Bonny & Clyde – a much more radical and electrifying and divisive film. Like the Wild Bunch, a lot of violence and sex. Final scene – get absolutely gunned down and filled with dozens of holes. Effectiveness of Bonny and Clyde – really identified with them, telling older people we don’t care what you think. But Bonny and Clyde were murderers and bank robbers, anyways celebrated as libertines. Resurgence of Bonnie twenties type clothing
  • Easy Rider – “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere…” – spurred movies to have gratuitous drug scenes, hard to watch – really capture the essence of an unpleasant drug trip. Almost an excruiciating scene – the actors doing weird things, but the camera too
  • Midnight Cowboy – a naive young guy goes to the big city because he thinks he’s going to make a splash in New York, assumes that life is gonna go his way; can’t find anything in NYC, ends up becoming a hustler in the Broadway district. A very dark look at the problems of modern society and of young people and so on.

Race and Film

  • Race in film – a period in which Americna pop culture is only just coming out of blackface performances
  • Blackface ends in the 40s and 50s
  • Mickey Rooney, well-known actor: for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Sex and the Single Girl type actor). One of the few female lead characters in any film of the sixties. Rooney gets cast at Mr. Yonioshi.
  • Natalie Wood in West Side Story
  • Not too much ressistanc eto cross-racial portrayal
  • Black auteurs and authors – written work is just being produced
  • Lorraine Hansberry – dies very young of cancer, a raisin int he sun
    • Black woman breaking into art but also a lesbian
    • Inspired Nina Simone to write “to be young, gifted, and black”
  • Sidney Portier – the black face of American film – No Way Out and The Defiant Ones
  • No Way Out, 1950 – figuring out the racist puzzle
  • The Defiant Ones, 1958 – two handcuffed convicts try to live with each other

In the Heat of the Night, 1967

Lecture 16: The Fallout from the 1960s

Argument: The end of consensus that many sholars have noted came from the Civil Rights Period, the Vietnam War, and a newfound distrust of elected officials. Ultimately, this has exposed the limits of American exceptionalism

The Breakdown of Consensus

  • Four narratives: it is American exceptionalism which gets broken
    • The Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, Watergate – destroy of trust
    • Fear of nuclear war, fallout, pollution, critique of mainstream culture – destroy of progressivism
    • Civil Rights movement ended general consensus of white racial superiority and male dominance
    • Vietnam War: America acts justly and wins
  • American exceptionalism: America is bound on a different trajectory,t hat is what gets broken int he 1960s: imperialism does change, America can be seen as having a history of empire and imperialism which wasn’t part of popular culture or academia.
  • Redefining of liberalism
  • Materialist argument of environment and economy
  • Not only are we undercutting our own economic base, but this permanent high of an economic golden age is still died to the same booms and busts as the American economy has always been.
  • Promises of the 1960s – breaking down

American Politics

  • 1970s, presidents are in unenviable positions.
  • Ford has no support because of Spiro Agney and Nixon; this party has been soiled that Ford struggles to get anything done; couldn’t get any additional money to get Vietnam, and wasn’t going to get re-elected.
  • Republican Party was tarnished
  • Congress remained dominated by the Democratic Party
  • Late 1970s, Republicans in Congress were saying we may never hold the majority again
  • Vision had been restructured after Watergte
  • This is the mileau in which Newt Gingrich steps in; advances the culture wars
  • When Gingrich comes into Congress in the late 1970s and sees this opportunity; the Republican Party believes they’re down and are facing defeat for the foreseeable future; Gingricnh see sthis as an opportuity
  • Carter comes in 1976, Democratic presidency: a great deal of idealism, looked out at the word and hoped to encounter the coldw ar to economics to world peace with idealism: restructure our relationships with USSR and the military to get us out of the problems of Vietnam, USSR, etc.
  • 1975, bottom of the barrel economically: a time of extreme economic malaise, big inflation issues
  • Carter’s position was pretty untenable, couldn’t use the military in flexible ways to solve problems in other parts of the world which ended up being a problem
  • A fresh political perspective, he didn’t really have the time to put this through
  • By 1980, Carter loses in a substantial margin to Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan (1980s)

  • Comes in at a time in which the US is struggling economically
  • Very high unemployment
  • Reagan is successfuly in giving the country a greater sense of optimism and American pride
  • Getting over Vietnam Syndrome which went through the seventies
  • Using the US military to prop up American patriotism
  • Swelling the military budgets for better pay, etc.
  • Domestic confidence buoys American spirit among many people.
  • Stuck to very intense anticommunism abroad
  • Nicaragua – lefts fighting for freedom against right-wing revolutions – Sandanistas – Carter said that he wanted to invite the Sandanistas into the White House
  • Reagan says he’s going to send the Sandanistas to hell: very different views on communism
  • A lot of money to build up the military and try to defend all theaters simultaneously
  • Will be a major budget issue; social programs will be done
  • School lunches, ketchup should count as a vegetable – trying to underfund social programs

Military Assistance

  • Iran Contra scandal at the end of his presidency
  • Dick Cheney, etc. wanted to find right-wing contras fighting the sandainistas in Nicaragua, but couldn’t – because Congress had put a stop to this, so it was illegal
  • Instead, engaged in illegal arms sales to Iran using Israel as a conflict while Israel and Iraq were in conflict so we could take the money from the arms sales and funnel it to the Contras in Nicaragua
  • When people found out, this was one of the major stories
  • 1980: Carter trying to get US hostages from Iran (1979 revolution) – Reagan, do the deal with me
  • Funding of the weapons with the Mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan
  • Fighting communism in Reagan’s administration

Economics / Reagonomics / Supply-side Economics / Trickle-down economics

  • Cutting taxes on the wealthy allows them to reinvest in the economy
  • To mvoe the US away from keynesian economic theory, a lot of deregulation, the US should get out of regulating Wall Street, corporations, etc. Govvernment regulation holds the economy down
  • Really promots a belief in individualism and that the government should hav ea limtied role in the economy

Defense Spending

  • B1 bomber program is very expensive; Carter cut this from the federal budget, Reagan brought it back. Speaks to jobs and patriotism through military, massive peacetime investments in the military
  • Eisenhower and before: the idea is that peacetime is not the time to be sepnding massive amounts of money in the military. This matches most of what American history has been like; in crisis, there can be a massive buildup; but in peacetime, the military should be scaled back

Military Profiteering

  • Eisenhower, the Military-Industrial Complex
  • War is a profitable industry
  • Contractors have large federal government contracts to build new facilities
  • Large companies wouldn’t be the same without government contracts; have major violations but have so much money that they keep on paying the fines and continue
  • The MIC is cemented in American life; nothing will curb is anytime soon
  • Contractors who build bases, supply food to bases, etc.
  • One of the biggest contractors provides health insurance to all people in the US military
  • Government buoying a lot of these companies
  • Overcharging, waste, fraud, abuse, etc.
  • A variety of publications on how much waste and fraud was part of the MIC – DOD accounting systems, paying $430 for a hammer, overcharges and poor accounting practices, billions of dollars of waste

Fight over budgets

  • Major budget cuts to Great Society anti-povetty programs
  • Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security remain, however
  • Militarization of the US culture
  • 1980s, Reagan administration was putting forth SDI, Strategic Defense INitiative, “Star Wars” – using satellites and land-based infrared to shoot down missiles in space; great profit for high-tech companies that build this stuff but they do nothing; didn’t really add anything to the defense capabilities

Iran-Contra Affair (1987)

  • End of Reagan’s administration
  • Lt. Col. Oliver North, took the fall for all of this in order to protect the higher-ups
  • This is the period in which Americans no longer trust their government
  • Truman: the buck stops here, I’m always to blame for eveyrthing
  • Reagan: he couldn’t remember

Sagebrush Rebellion

  • Part of a broader conservative pushback
  • Sagebrush rebellion, still going on today if you pay attention to the news
  • Idaho: movement to create greater Idaho to have an ideological state for conservatives
  • The claim that the federal government has too big of a presence in the American West
  • Conservative movement to free up these spaces so they can be owned by individuals
  • One of the targets here is the end of tribes special status
  • Rebellion in the American West

The Culture Wars, 1990s – the origins of division

  • Articulation of culture wars is at its height
  • New Gingrich is very good at putting an organization to these culture wars, articualting what is going on
  • Gingrich dentified very early on in 1959 in which he identified this growing divide in America and that he had a role to play, to be on the conservative side, growing conservative movement
  • 1970s, gets involved in Georgia (not from Georgia) and entered the House of Representatives
  • Decided that defeatism in the Republican Party was not the way to go
  • End of civility: our job is to be the nastiest kinds of policymakers that we can be
  • American politics begins entering into a space where agreement is not tolerated, bipartisanship not tolerated; job is to stick fingers in the Democrats’ eyes; we get Mitch McConnell et al.; don’t make friends with the other side, this makes you weak
  • Gingrich came out sand said openly, this is what is going to give gridlock a good name; slow government down, this is the new conservative playbook going on
  • Beginnning of a new day in politics where we’ve moved a full generation
  • Gingrich’s ideas of turning politics nasty totally anticipates Donald Trump
  • Democratic Party didn’t help anything: introduced noeliberalism to America, more deregulation, more power to the wealthy
  • NAFTA: great for big companies and crap for little companies in Latin America
  • Options aren’t great here
  • Economic policy of the Clintons looked somewhat like Reagan’s
  • Let the economy run itself; this is where the greatest opportunity will exist

Faith in Elected Officials

  • Seeds have already been sown; Americans don’t trust th eprocess; ‘government doesn’t work’
  • American people overall have less faith in officials
  • Money in politics: tribalism in America, we can’t even talk to each other about certain topics
  • Different problems leading up to tribalism, hard to have much interaction

Identity Politics and Trialism

  • Part of our politics
  • By the 2000 presidential eelction, the politicla divide really solidifies
  • The political positions are actually quite hard to see: neoliberalism vs Reaganism
  • If you were watching the debates, they would often say, if you want to know the different between our plans, it’s this [small difference].
  • Options for Americans ground down to a very limited range
  • A general American idistinterest
  • More people watched Nixon and Kennedy debate than watched Bush debatee Gore

Gore v. Bush, 2000

  • Really poor turnout – 60 or less percent turnout of potential voters
  • Ended up in the US Supreme Court, gave George Bush the presidency
  • Americans have started to find that their sense of satisfaction and happiness has sort of slipped underneath themselves
  • Why are Ameircan populations so unhappy? Drug use, gun violence, social media
  • Misery index – it hasn’t mattered too much if it’s Republican or Democratic – Americans’ sense of happiness has been slipping, getting ufcked
  • Americnas have this sense now of dissatisfaction in life because things aren’t working out as epxected.
  • All of these issues in American life

The Breakdown of Consensus

  • We break down in this breakdown of consensus with no recourse to understand what’s good for the nation
  • Chess metaphor: if the left and right are playing a game, the left is still figruing out how do I win the game, the right has upended the board
  • If a global pandemic can’t bring American consensus together but becomes a wedge to drive us further apart, we have serious problems
  • A very broken nation
  • Social media further divides society – media steps awayf rom its moral position as an informative body towards corporations doing really well with rating and such by driving more emotion

Materialism: A Consumer’s Republic

  • Linkage between being a free independne tcizien and buying products
  • A Consumer’s Republic: the cizen has become the consumr
  • The global north consumes most of the world’s resources, Americans understanding of a good life is based heavily in consumerism

A hostile takeover of our moral centeer

  • We allow a sort of takeover of our moral center
  • Consumerism since WWII has been replacing older modes of behaivor and ethics with beahviors of the consumer marketplace that pervade soceity and are normalized
  • Prior to WWII, the cultural influence of Christianity pervaded many things – the ideas and idioms coming out of the Bible and Christianity
  • 20th century: consumerism especially after WWII, replaced by science and technology, growth of the mass market
  • Consumerism is now the greatest American value in culture, and has overtaken national unity and patriotism too
  • Influences all of us in our lives inways we’re probably not awar of – we’ve allowed the lexicon of the marketplace to infiltrate non-market behavior, like personal relations, and have allowed the morality of the marketplace to serve as a common morality of America
  • The morality of the markeptlace is self-satisfaction, which is almost certainly anti-social
  • Language and behaviors:
    • Customs and consumers for patients and students in health care and education
    • ‘incentivize’, ‘rebrand’, ‘shopping’ – economization of the world
    • “I buy that argument”
    • Shopping for the right therapist
    • Online dating and swiping – commodification of people, the same behavior. A kind of consumerist framework to enter into our personal relations
    • “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”, liking comments – am I satisfied or not satisfied
    • Not can I analyze it, can I understnad it; but did I like it or not like it; and this ia limited way of looking at much of the world
    • Reviewing products online, reviewing experiences, reviewing service s– what stands in as a form of civic responsibility
    • Very consumerist: the customer is always right, your opinion matters. We need to invest into things, we need to do our part.
    • Sixties journalism had a greater sense of journalistic objectivity
  • Keep track of where consumerism enters your life and how you reflect/refract this into your life
  • Take some time to put a break on consumer society

Globalization and its Discontents

  • Seattle 1999, showdown between WTO (symbol of globalism and global capitalism) decided to meet in Seattle
  • Protests shut it down for several days, kept many delegates from meeting in certain buildings, battled with the SPD on the streets of Seattle, put out a mjoar feeling that globalization was putting out major discontent
  • Many people see globalization as the enemy for the environment
  • Becomes the one example of how Marx’s theorization of late-stage capitalism, as discontent and alienation, similar domination of the wealthiest capitalism, enlightnement of the Proletariat

Expectations of Perosnal Liberation – Expressions of personal liberty

  • out of the 1960s we definitely get new disucussions about what liberation in our society looks like, what counts as liberation. But when you break down boundaries, where do the new boundaries come from?
  • Ameircans see personal liberation as really kindo f a right – what begins as marginalized groups saying we demand greater liberation has become a really individualized experience – but these are different
  • No society in which there are no boundaries, we should ask ourselves where should these boundaries in society be

Americans and Personal Liberty

  • We have really different guns about our personal responsibility with guns
  • For some people, nor estirctions because of the second amendment; for others, one of the greatest theats to our society
  • What are you personally responsible to do, and what is the government’s responsibility?
  • We don’t know what to do
  • We argue what counts as offensive, what is dangerous or hateful, what is free expression?

Is the individual bound to any social expectations, standards? Do these ideas about persona lliberation overlap with Ameircan expectations ofr material success? Whose fault is it? Where does the responsibility lie for that? What is my responsibility as a person? What is the government’s responsibility?

  • Are we bound to any social expectations?: manners, common courtesy? Is there anything tha seems reasonable binding you to social expectations, or are these all forms of oppression for certain groups?
  • Not easy to answer, but we see a lot of disagreement on these issues.
  • Should any individual be without restrictions? What is liberation?
  • The tensions of conservatism: we need a state and a society, but also I am an individual
  • AIDS pandemic: gay men shouldn’t have a lot of free sex, emerging from sexual liberation in the sixties

Law and Order

  • Ideas about liberation around what groups liberation can apply to is changing
  • Law and order campaing from the late 1960s – so important for blacks, latinos, and others in American society who get caught up in law and order campaign
  • Nixon administration turned anti-war protests into anti-Americans
  • Used this as a cudgel: certain groups become targeted by these campaigns
  • Selective crackdown on certain types of drugs, changes to enforcement and the court systems

The War on Crime

  • Post WWII, war is the metaphor for eveyrthing, Ameircans like war as a metaphor
  • Very much about targeting psecific books, sepcifically in terms of television and film, portraying people of color as very dangerous and caught up in drugs in a very tricky way, especially blackness as a danger
  • COPS TV – late 80s, early 90s; they are just showing young blakck men being chased over repeatedly by white cops and police dogs, associations of blackness and criminality
  • Mass media really picks up on this – really great for TV – until you realie your particiaption
  • Crack cocaine vs powdered cocaine in the 1980s: crack cocaine is in the inner cities, zero tolerance; powdered cocaine is used among the middle and upper class, but much less enforcement
  • selective enforcement around diffferent drugs
  • We look at Nixon and such, war ond rugs presdients: but a lot of the Clinton administration took te war on drus to another level, especially with the 3 strikes laws and mandatory minimums – Congress would state what the mandatory minimum sentence would beif someone was cauhgt wiht a few ounces of cocaine
  • The judge has the authority to reduce sentneces; but now the states and Congress put on minimum sentences – you go in, it is 3 years
  • Incarceration rates skyrocket

Legacy of the War on Drugs

  • Late 80s, early 90s laws: turn America’s jail systems into a jail-industrial complex
  • Contractors making enormous amounts of money to build new prison facilities
  • We’re supposed to be the freest country on earth but we incarcerate more people per capita than any other country in the world – including many more repressive regimes
  • 13th amendment bans slavery except for punishment as a crime
  • Prisons changed over the private: someone is makigng profit.

Fighting for the ERA

  • A lot of thigns chage out of the 1960s that people would suggest are good changes
  • ERA, equal rights amendment
  • 1972, put on the legislative docket and wiaiting to be ratified, never ratified
  • Abortion issue – always being discussed in terms of rights (language which comes out of the sixties) – right to life, right to choose, etc. What is the superior right?
  • Fight over access to clinics; post Roe v. Wade, lots of pushback by the right, becomes a centerpiece of the Republican platform, control the courts and overcome Roe v. Wade

Second-Wave Feminism

  • Now, a third wave
  • Exposing the flaws in both liberalism and radicalism
  • Both radicalism and liberalism were totally set in a male world; liberation
  • A male public world, ‘the worker’, ‘the citizen’, ‘the people’
  • Important: ‘the personal is political’, totally reshaped the Left; blending of private and public

Feminism

  • Intersectionality
  • A lot more academic work int he 1980s, more public writing about intersectionality, multifaceted elements of identity
  • Criticism from third-wave feminists:
    • younger women in the 1990s looking back at second-wave feminism, too rigid on their ideas
    • White-dominated
    • Male-female binaries being restatred, whereas in fact there is a greater spectrum
    • Belief that makeup and perfume are inherently bad, questionable
    • Creation of opening up the home to showing the problem of domestic violence,