The Nineteen-Sixties, 1960–1968

This is Unit Fourteen, part two, on Vietnam's escalation and the civil rights movement at its height. Part one closed with the Immigration Act abolishing the quotas of nineteen twenty-four, and pointed to the Gulf of Tonkin. Carry one correction through this part. The movement of popular memory is a few famous leaders. Watch instead the students at a lunch counter, the organisers in Mississippi, and a veteran labour leader who directed the most famous march of all. And in Vietnam, watch an offensive repulsed in the field and lost at home. By the end you will be able to explain how the Gulf of Tonkin and Tet shaped the war. To describe how students spread direct action. To trace the campaigns from Birmingham to Selma and the laws they won. To explain who directed the March on Washington. And to compare King and Malcolm X.

Three entries on Vietnam's escalation: a resolution, a ground war, and the offensive that turned opinion.

The Gulf of Tonkin.

USH2 1971 The Gulf of Tonkin

On August second, nineteen sixty-four, the USS Maddox reported fire from North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, details the Yawp calls controversial, and on August seventh Congress authorised the president to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack, the National Archives records. It passed with only two dissenting votes, the anchor says.

The ground war.

USH2 1972 The Ground War

American Marines landed in Vietnam in March nineteen sixty-five, and the ground war began, the Yawp records, judging that the Johnson administration used the Tonkin incident as a pretext for escalation. The anchor records that critics called for the resolution's repeal as early as nineteen sixty-seven.

The Tet Offensive.

USH2 1973 Tet

In January nineteen sixty-eight North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launched the Tet Offensive, close to eighty-five thousand troops attacking nearly one hundred cities in the South, including Saigon, the anchor says; the Yawp counts more than one hundred sites, among them the American embassy. American and South Vietnamese forces recaptured every point taken. The misreading calls Tet a communist victory on the battlefield. The Yawp says American forces repulsed the attack and inflicted heavy casualties, yet Tet showed that the enemy could still strike anywhere in the country, after years of official claims that it was weakening, and the stories and images that followed eroded public trust. Won in the field, it was lost at home.

Four entries on students taking the lead: a lunch counter, a movement, a new committee, and the Freedom Rides.

Greensboro.

USH2 1974 Greensboro

On February first, nineteen sixty, four Black students from North Carolina A and T, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Junior and David Richmond, sat at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro and refused to leave, in a sit-in that lasted six months. Ella Baker said the students wanted more than a hamburger; the movement they began was about empowerment.

The sit-in movement.

USH2 1975 The Sit-In Movement

Within two months the sit-ins had reached fifty-four cities across nine states, the anchor records, with wade-ins at segregated beaches that summer and lunch counters in San Antonio integrated by March, as Digital History notes. By the end of nineteen sixty, it counts, seventy thousand people had taken part in sit-ins in over one hundred cities.

Ella Baker and SNCC.

USH2 1976 Ella Baker and SNCC

In April nineteen sixty the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded, shaped by Ella Baker, who had left King's SCLC disenchanted with its distant, professional leadership, the Yawp says, and who built on participatory democracy, active citizens rather than educated elites. The movement of popular memory is a few famous leaders; Baker's idea was the opposite.

The Freedom Rides.

USH2 1977 The Freedom Rides

In May nineteen sixty-one CORE, founded in unit twelve, sent interracial Freedom Riders south by bus to test a Supreme Court ruling against segregated interstate travel; John Lewis was beaten by a mob at Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a bus was firebombed outside Anniston, Alabama. In November nineteen sixty-one, the Yawp records, the Interstate Commerce Commission enforced integrated interstate buses and trains.

Four entries on nineteen sixty-three: a governor's vow, Birmingham, a letter from jail, and a murder in Mississippi.

Alabama's governor.

USH2 1978 Segregation Forever

At his inauguration in January nineteen sixty-three, Alabama governor George Wallace declared segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, drawing, in his own words, a line in the dust, Digital History records. Wallace would carry five southern states as a presidential candidate in nineteen sixty-eight, the anchor records.

Birmingham.

USH2 1979 Birmingham

In the spring of nineteen sixty-three King and the SCLC led demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, for fair hiring and desegregation, and police turned fire hoses and dogs on peaceful demonstrators, children among them, the anchor records. Watching on television, millions of Americans were shocked by the face of segregation, Digital History says.

The letter King wrote in jail.

USH2 1980 Letter from Birmingham Jail

King was arrested in Birmingham on April twelfth, nineteen sixty-three, Digital History records; the anchor says Easter Sunday. Writing on toilet paper and in newspaper margins, King answered White clergymen who urged patience: African Americans had waited more than three hundred years for their rights, and the time for waiting was over, the anchor says.

Medgar Evers.

USH2 1981 Medgar Evers

In nineteen sixty-three Medgar Evers, a Second World War veteran and Mississippi's first NAACP field secretary, was assassinated at his home in Jackson, the Yawp records, at thirty-seven. The anchor does not carry Evers; the Yawp places his death in the summer the March on Washington was organised.

Two entries: the March on Washington, and the law that followed it.

The March on Washington.

USH2 1982 The March on Washington

On August twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-three, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was held on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, to press Kennedy to act on civil rights; its demands, the Yawp records, included civil rights legislation, school integration, an end to job discrimination, job training and a higher minimum wage. At the Lincoln Memorial King spoke of his dream of an integrated society. The crowd is given two ways: over two hundred thousand in Digital History, more than two hundred fifty thousand in the National Archives. The Archives also answers unit twelve's open question: A. Philip Randolph, whose threat of a march in nineteen forty-one had won Executive Order eighty-eight oh two, proposed and directed this one, with Bayard Rustin handling the organisation.

The Civil Rights Act.

USH2 1983 The Civil Rights Act of 1964

On July second, nineteen sixty-four, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, barring discrimination in public accommodations and in employment, the National Archives records, and southern restaurants and hotels opened to Black patrons within weeks, Digital History records. The anchor calls it the most sweeping civil rights law Congress had yet passed. Its employment title returns in this unit's women's movement, in part three.

Four entries on Mississippi and Selma, and the law they won.

Freedom Summer.

USH2 1984 Freedom Summer

In nineteen sixty-four SNCC and CORE ran Freedom Summer in Mississippi, registering African American voters and setting up freedom schools, with hundreds of White college students joining at SNCC's invitation, the anchor says. Three of its workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were murdered by Klansmen aided by police, the anchor records.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

USH2 1985 The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

That summer Ella Baker, Robert Parris Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer organised the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as an alternative to the all-White state Democratic Party, and sent delegates to the Democratic National Convention of nineteen sixty-four. The convention's organisers seated only two of them, as nonvoting observers, the anchor records.

Selma.

USH2 1986 Selma

On March seventh, nineteen sixty-five, marchers heading from Selma to Montgomery were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state police with batons and tear gas: Bloody Sunday. Selma's voting rolls, Digital History records, were ninety-nine percent White in a city where Black residents slightly outnumbered White. The anchor says Bloody Sunday helped build support for the movement among northern White people.

The Voting Rights Act.

USH2 1987 The Voting Rights Act

On August sixth, nineteen sixty-five, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed literacy tests and sent federal examiners to register voters in covered jurisdictions, the National Archives records, with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior present, as the anchor notes. The Yawp calls the Acts of nineteen sixty-four and nineteen sixty-five indispensable legal preconditions for equality. Unit one's Fifteenth Amendment had left literacy tests open; this law closed them.

Three entries on two styles of leadership, and the watchword that followed.

Malcolm X.

USH2 1988 Malcolm X

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was the Nation of Islam's best-known member in the nineteen sixties, and in nineteen sixty-four, after a trip to Africa, he left the Nation to found the Organization of Afro-American Unity, seeking freedom by any means necessary. On February twenty-first, nineteen sixty-five, members of the Nation of Islam killed him, the anchor records.

King and Malcolm X together.

USH2 1989 King and Malcolm X

King and Malcolm X are often taught as opposites, and their methods did diverge. King led a racially integrated, largely Protestant movement committed to nonviolence; Malcolm X, as a Nation of Islam minister, advocated armed resistance in self-defence and freedom by any means necessary, and the Yawp calls him the radical alternative to King's approach. The misreading makes them enemies with opposite goals. The Yawp states the goal they shared: like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois before them, the two represented two styles of racial uplift with the same general aim of ending racial discrimination. Malcolm X's views, the anchor notes, changed somewhat after he left the Nation.

Black Power.

USH2 1990 Black Power

Stokely Carmichael, SNCC's chairman, made Black Power a watchword: African Americans uniting as a political force and building institutions of their own, the anchor says, an idea it traces to Marcus Garvey in the nineteen twenties, from unit nine. The Yawp says activists became less conciliatory as frustration grew with the slow pace of change.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain how the Gulf of Tonkin resolution opened the ground war, and why Tet, repulsed in the field, eroded trust at home. You can describe how students spread direct action: Greensboro, seventy thousand in the sit-ins by year's end, Ella Baker's SNCC, and the Freedom Rides. You can trace the campaigns from Birmingham's hoses and dogs to Bloody Sunday at Selma, and the laws they won: the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. You can explain who directed the March on Washington: A. Philip Randolph, whose threat of nineteen forty-one had won eighty-eight oh two, with Bayard Rustin as organiser. And you can compare King and Malcolm X: different methods, and the same general aim.