Civil Rights Movement Begins
The Civil Rights Movement was what ended up destroying American segregation during the cold war. It all started with the anti-communism thinking that Harry Truman had. He realized that claiming freedom and than segregating people was very hypocritical and outlawed segregation in the armed services. Jackie Robinson next became the first African American baseball player in the US and was one of the figureheads of the movement because of how he behaved. Robinson on the field took a lot of abuse from other players and the crowd but he was incredibly cordial and level headed about it, setting a precedent of the movement. Another famous person to insight the revolution was Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks is most famous for igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give up her seat for a white person. This lead to a common theme during the Civil Rights Movement which was hurting businesses to get the laws to relent. Most African Americans rode the bus due to a lack of them being able to get cars so after a year of boycotting, the bus companies came crawling back. The final spark of initiating the Civil Rights Movement was the Brown vs. Board of Education case. This case was due to the disparities in African American schools so the board of education was sued by the NAACP in violation of the separate but equal act. The case was led up by Thurgood Marshall, who ended up winning the case giving fuel to the fire for the Civil Rights movement.
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Little Rock 9 and the Sit-In's
The Little Rock 9 and the Sit-In movement were two of the most important events in the early Civil Rights Movement. The Little Rock 9 were the first steps taken after the Brown vs. Board of Education case. The event gets its name from the 9 students that went to Little Rock High school. Since the idea of integrated schools was still a very new one to the American society, some governments hadn't acknowledged the ruling. The governor of Arkansas decided to send the national guard to stop those kids from getting into the school. This was one of the few Civil Rights issues that Dwight D. Eisenhower did tackle. What Eisenhower did was ask the governor to step down but he didn't, so what did Eisenhower do? Well he sent in the U.S. military to come in and guard the students as they went into high school for the next year.. This was important as it overcame the wall and lead to diversified schools.
The Sit-In movement was similar to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in how it accomplished its goal by starving businesses to get the reform that was needed. In this case, it was integrated restaurants that were forced to serve all races but didn't follow that guideline. How the protesters would carry out their acts was by going into a restaurant and sitting down, waiting to be served. Eventually, they would be violently kicked out while being mocked and another protester would go in. This eventually starved the businesses because they weren't serving most of the seats. They also relented because this was a story that got national attention, giving the movement more support. |
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) and Malcolm X were the two leaders during the Civil Rights Movement but they both had some very different philosophies. MLK was a peaceful leader. He lead the marches on Selma and on D.C. for African American rights. He was also a preacher and used his firm christian stance to reach many more people as time went on. MLK was also an advocated of integration, which means a society where all the races are mixed and equal. This is most famous from his "I Have a Dream" Speech that he gave on the March on DC and was one of the most influential events and speeches in American History, right up with the Gettysburg Address and and Preamble of the constitution. MLK took a page out of Gandhi's book too by promoting nonviolent protest to rise above both the media and the oppressors.
MLK was a huge leader of the movement but not the only one, Malcolm X was another big person to fight for civil rights. Malcolm X had different Ideas than King about how the movement should go but the two were always respectful and friendly to each other. X preached complete separation under the same country so that black people and white people would have separate communities. This is because he believed that the Black man always got the shaft when it came to civilization and in neighborhoods like Harlem, where African-Americans were thriving, he got his idea. He also was a Muslim due to his rough upbringing and it gave him a sense of community. Malcolm X also was a bit looser when It came to violence. He said it was only acceptable in self defense because it was only than that he would be taken seriously. It was very much a fight fire with fire type method that he used. Both leaders were assassinated by the end of the movement for different reasons. MLK was assassinated because of his huge role in the movement. X on the other hand was shot by a rival Muslim Church at a rally in 1965. |
JFK and the Bay of Pigs
Taking a break from the social issues of the time, the Election of 1960 saw two very different candidates run for President. The first was the Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon was an older man, but had experience in politics through working with Eisenhower on a lot of the issues in the 1950's that came with that. Nixon was also a quaker which mattered a lot in this election for the Opposing Candidate, John F. Kennedy was catholic. The opposition to Nixon was a young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy (JFK). JFK was pretty much the opposite to Nixon in almost every way. Kennedy was young and better looking, as well as came from a rich background as compared to Nixon's rough small town upbringing. The election as a whole was ridiculously close and it all came down to one debate between the two candidates. This one was different from all the others as it was the first televised one which greatly gave Kennedy the win. Kennedy was well rested and tanned from a vacation to florida and seemingly ready for the camera while Nixon was recovering from a knee injury and was incredibly hot and sweaty. This overshadowed both of the arguments as it gave the people a supposed look as to how they would be addressing the nation.
Kennedy was a well known president even if he did just serve 3 years in office before getting assassinated. He was very big into the issue of Civil Rights and met with Martin Luther King a variety of times as well as giving a lot of support to the movement. He even had a bill written to fix the issues but died before he could pass it. One of his other things that he did during his presidency is funnel a lot of money to NASA to try and get us to the moon. This was driven primarily by the USSR launching their first Space Probe, Sputnik, into orbit. However, this was nothing compared to his foreign policy. Kennedy is mainly marked with how he dealt with the newly communist Cuba. His first encounter with them was not a good one as it started by him trying to stage a coup and invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 which resulted in failure and eventually, the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of his other most famous moments was when he visited West Berlin to address the people about the situation and how things will get better in due time by saying "Ich bin ein Berliner," which was supposed to mean "I am a Berliner" but ended up being "I am a Jelly Donut." Overall, Kennedy was a great president but it had to end too soon when Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy in Texas at the tail end of 1963. |
The Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was what defined JFK's presidency because it was the closest that we got to an armed conflict with the USSR. The other time during the Korean War would've been a chain reaction which lead to war between the US and the USSR but the Cuban Missile Crisis was directly involved with the soviet union as opposed to a proxy war. The whole Conflict started when a U2 spy plane captured photos of Missiles in Cuba with the potential to hit Washington DC and other cities. This prompted Kennedy to hold a meeting with his advisors who wanted to go to war. Kennedy however, held out for a peace offering. In order to stop more missiles from coming in, Kennedy set up a quarantine zone, which was a blockade of ships that would turn soviet vessels around. More spy planes were launched and saw longer range missiles that could get everywhere else except for Seattle. When this happened, Kennedy spoke with a USSR official who said that the missiles were strictly defensive but the US didn't but that because of the presence of the long range ICBM's. One day, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the USSR contacted Kennedy with an offering of peace saying that they will pull the missiles out of Cuba if they pull their missiles out of Turkey. Kennedy contacted Khrushchev back but said that he would only not invade Cuba. This letter was leaked to the press to make the president look heroic. However, a secret meeting between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin confirmed that the US would pull the Missiles out of Turkey in a few months because the public never knew about them. The Soviets also had to keep this secret. With this in place, the conflict was resolved and all out Nuclear War was avoided.
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LBJ's Great Society
On November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas at a motorcade before he was slated to speak to the American people. Kennedy was shot by a man by Lee Harvey Oswald, a professed communist who used a rifle and hit up in a school book depository. The tragedy shook the nation from head to toe but what made it worst was the lack of clarity in the situation. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested but when we was being transferred to a different holding center, a nightclub owner by the name of Jack Ruby shot Oswald and was arrested, but he knew nothing of the Assassination. With this tragedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was solemnly sword in the same day. Johnson had a lot on his shoulders with the Assassination of Kennedy but took to office and made more reforms since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He started by signing in the Civil Rights Bill which banned discrimination based on race along with the Voting Rights Act which banned literacy tests. He also built on JFK's Peace Corp, which was a volunteer system that primarily focussed on helping schools. His main goal of the administration was a war on poverty and challenged America to be a great society. He also started medicare and gave a lot of money to artists and galleries. He also banned immigration quotas which had been in place since the Spanish-American war and Americas Imperialist days. However, he wasn't perfect. LBJ started America's presence in Vietnam and got us into the Vietnam War which unfortunately tainted his presidency. Despite this thought, LBJ did a lot for America and closed out the very impressive reforms that happened in the 1960's.
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Thirteen Days
Not only in History is it important to focus on things that happened back than, but it is also important to focus on how things are represented now. Thirteen Days is a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis and everything surrounding it. The movie focuses primarily on JFK and the many struggles he had during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The movie does a very good job of conveying the tense nature of what was happening as seen by the scenes involving his interactions with multiple USSR Officials and especially his board room meetings with other members of the military. Overall, the Movie is fairly accurate to what actually happened except for one major issue. In the movie, there are public protests about the missiles in turkey which very few people knew about and was classified until years later. The movie does very well in terms of education about the past in an entertaining way by keeping enough politics involved in the movie without it being drowned in technical babble. They also make JFK very likable and relatable so you could feel his struggle against the military. However, this movie does do a few things wrong in terms of it having to be an entertainment product. First off, the movie does focus on the entire thirteen days so some moments that had huge impacts were skimmed over a bit. Mainly when they find out that there are long range ICBM's in Cuba. That moment didn't pack the impact that it did when the event actually happened but overall, Thirteen Days does a wonderful job of portraying the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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