1960s: Domestic Affairs Remember! Continuous debate over how much the federal government should be involved directly in the lives of Americans (or states? Or individuals) - Hamilton – Jefferson - Jackson - Civil War - Progressive Era - WW I - 1920s - Great Depression – NEW DEAL - WW II

1960 Presidential Election

JFK’s “New Frontier” “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!” Extend unemployment Minimum wage Food Stamp program Mortgage loans Health care for elderly

FDR or TR? (or McKinley?) Economy is fragile: JFK negotiates a noninflationary wage agreement in the steel industry in early 1962. Companies raise prices! JFK blows up and forces retreat then Backs general tax cut to stimulate the economy… (where, oh where is Keynes?)

Aug 1963 Civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the oval office of the White House after the March on Washington D.C. Photograph shows (left to right): Willard Wirtz (Secretary of Labor), Floyd McKissick (CORE), Mathew Ahmann (National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice), Whitney Young (National Urban League), Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC), John Lewis (SNCC), Rabbi Joachim Prinz (American Jewish Congress), A. Philip Randolph, with Reverend Eugene Carson Blake partially visible behind him, President John F. Kennedy, Walter Reuther (AFL-CIO), with Vice President Lyndon Johnson partially visible behind him. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

JFK and Civil Rights On the one hand, JFK personally supported the Civil Rights program. - G-boro Sit-ins - Freedom Riders - Integration of universities (AL & MS) - March on Washington BUT, he needed white southern Democrats to support him. - Civil Rights bill of 1963 bottled up in House committee by Howard W. Smith (D-VA)

“Full Retaliatory Response”

DEFCON-2

American University Speech, 1963 “Today, should total war ever break out again -- no matter how -- our two countries will be the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war -- which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation's closest allies -- our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could better be devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease.” LTBT (Limited Test Ban Treaty) Hotline between Kremlin and White House

June 11 1963 "If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?"

November, 1963

From VP to President

The Liberal Promise

The Great Society Civil Rights War on Poverty Economic Opportunity Act (Appalachia) Food Stamps Heath Care (Medicare; Medicaid) Education Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Head Start

A War On Poverty

Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965

GUNS v. BUTTER Vietnam War (Cold War) Great Society

“I will neither seek nor accept the nomination…” March 31, 1968

Retirement