JFK
Marin Hulme
Election of 1960
Democrats: John F. Kennedy
-won the election against "experienced" Nixon
-set out to create new frontier
-Kennedy won 303 electoral votes to 219
-also won by an extremely close margin of only 118, 574 votes out of over 68 million
Cold War
- Flexible Response- developing a variety of military options that be matched to the gravity of the crisis at hand
-barbed wire and concrete barrier was created to plug the heavy population drain from East Germany to West Germany through the Berlin funnel
-the Berlin Wall looked like an enclosure to a concentration camp and remained for three decades symbolizing the post–World War II division of Europe into two hostile camps.
- Kennedy deployed more than fifteen thousand American men to the "far-off Asian slaughter pen" when they were originally supposed to foster political stability and protect Diem from communism long enough to allow for social reforms favored by Americans
- twelve hundred exiles arrived at Cuba's Bay of Pigs; Kennedy went against direct intervention
- Krushchev began dropping nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba to protect Castro and blackmail the United States to back down in Berlin
Stalin
Churchill
FDR
Civil Rights
-needed Congress's approval of civil rights' movement
-joined hands with the civil rights movement with MLK
-lots of opposition to desegregation
-delivered a memorable speech to the nation of June 11th, 1963 after many vicious confrontations regarding civil rights
- March on Washington: August 1963, led by Martin Luther King Jr., 200,000 peaceful protestors, blacks and whites, supporting new civil rights legislation
-James Meredith was one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement; in 1962 he became the first black student to successfully enroll at the University of Mississippi
-had major problems at the University of Mississippi with desegregation and it took 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to enroll marshall in his first class; he ultimately graduated after the loss of two lives, many injuries and some 4 million taxpayer dollars
Kennedy Assassination
- Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald
- Oswald shot out of old abandoned warehouse
- brought millions to his funeral
-a nation grieved as the tragedy became even more unbelievable
- Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president
-2/3 of the nation said they felt physical or emotional pain in the days after Kennedy's assassination