Introduction

US History – Protest and Reaction in the United States, 1961-68

In this course, Dr Malcolm McLaughlin (University of East Anglia) explores the theme of protest and reaction in the United States during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy (1961-63) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69). In the first module, we provide an introduction to US politics in the 1960s and its three major presidents: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. In the five modules that follow, we try to answer the following five questions: (1) How successful was Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society?; (2) How did the idea of "civil rights" change after the Civil Rights Act of 1964?; (3) How did liberals respond to the demands of the Black Power movement?; (4) Which did more to change America: the political activism of the New Left or the freethinking Counterculture?; and (5) To what extent was 1968 a turning point in American history?

Introduction

In this module, we provide an introduction to US politics in the 1960s, focusing in particular on: (i) the traditional view of the 1960s as a decade of radical optimism followed by conservative realism, and the more nuanced view that pertains today; (ii) the general character of the three main presidencies that span the decade – John F. Kennedy (1961-63), Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69) and Richard Nixon (1969-74); (iii) Kennedy's ambitions for a new beginning in terms of civil rights, and the extent to which his ambitions were left unfulfilled by his assassination on 22 November 1963; (iv) the achievements of Lyndon Johnson, including his three landmark civil rights acts; (v) the "institutional momentum" that saw the implementation of civil rights policies under Nixon; (vi) the extent to which the shift in the meaning of 'liberalism' was encapsulated by the differing approaches to civil rights of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.