Zinn 17-21

Fighting Back

Some blacks fought the system by joining the Communist party. Communists helped defend the "Scottsboro Boys"

militancy- a willingness to fight

Toward Civil Rights

Harry Truman knew he had to do something about race for two reasons: to calm the frustrated black people of the United States and the other had to do with America's image in the world.

Truman created a Committee on Civil Rights in 1946: Recommended laws against lynching and against racial discrimination in jobs and voting.

The nation's public schools remained segregated until courageous southern blacks took on the Supreme Court in a series of lawsuit.

Brown V. Board of Education: ordered the nation's public schools to stop the "separate but equal" treatment of children separated by race.

Claudette Colvin was a 15 year old who asserted her constitutional right to her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery and was charged with violating the segregation law.

By the late 1960's there were wild uprisings in a hundred northern cities.

Rosa Parks

Black's boycotted the city buses, refusing to ride.

White segregationists turned to violence.

Martin Luther King Preaches Nonviolence

King Called on African Americans to practice nonviolence.

Sit-ins inspired people to join demonstrations in a hundred cities.

Freedom Riders and the Mississippi River

Freedom riders got on a bus in Washington D.C. bound for New Orleans. The riders were beaten in South Carolina. A bus was set on fire in Alabama. Segregationalists attacked the Riders with fists and iron bars.

SNCC organized another group of Freedom Riders

Black Power

The national government had refused to defend blacks against violence, but the uproar made congress pass some civil rights laws that promised much but were ignored.

Malcom X was Black Power's chief spokesman and was assassinated in 1965.

The new "civil rights" laws weren't changing the basic conditions of life for black people.

Huey Newton was part of the Black Panthers. This organization had guns and said that blacks should defend themselves.

The FBI tapped Kings private phone conversations, blackmailed him. amd threatened him.

The government thought that if some blacks were invited into the power system, they might turn away from class conflict.

Women's Liberation

More than a third of all women age sixteen and older were working.

Society saw women as wives, mothers, housekeepers. And men viewed women as emotional and impractical.

The national organization for women formed in 1966. The following year, women's groups convinced president johnson to ban discrimination against women in jobs related to the federal government.

An Indian Uprising

At the beginning of the twentieth century only three hundred thousand were left, by 1960, there were eight hundred thousand.

Indians started approaching the US government on an embarrassing topic: treaties.

Seventy-eight Indians landed on Alcatraz and took it over. Their plan was to turn the island into a center for Native American environmental studies. The gov't cut off telephone, electric, and water service to the island and federal forced invaded the island and removed the indians.

Indians were doing something about the demonstration of their culture.

Evan Haney found books and started learning his own culture. As more books about Indian history came into being, teachers avoided old stereotypes and looked for new sources of information for their students.

In 1973, Indians made a powerful statement on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Hundreds of American Indian Movement members occupies wounded knee village at the site of the 1890 massacre. It was a symbol of their demand for indian rights and indian land. within hours, federal agents, marshals, and police surrounded the town.

the 1960's and early 1970's brought many changes to American society.

Gays and Lesbians felt less need to hide the truth about themselves and men and women dressed less formally.

students, parents, and teachers questioned traditional education.

disabled people became a frorce.

People became more conscious of what was happening to the environment

Congress passed a number of laws: the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air act, and the endangered species act. they also created the environmental protection agency. Enforcement was not a priority of the national government.

A little bit to the left

Jimmy Carter, a democrat, was president from 1977 to 1980 and he moved America towards liberalism.

Carter named Andrew Young the U.S. ambassador to the united nations.

The black fight against apartheid had plunged south africa into disorder. If that disorder turned into all-out civil war, american interests could be threatened.

The price of food and other necessary goods was rising faster than people's wages.

Carter continued US support for oppressive governments in Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and indonesia.The governments allowed the use of harsh and undemocratic methods. Still, they recieved American aid, including miitary aid.

Wealth and Poverty in America

The Reagan and Bush administrations cut benefits to poor people, and lowered taxes for the rich. They also raised the military budget and filled the federal court system with conservative judges.

During Reagan's first four years as president, the US military was given more than a trillion dollars.

Blacks, hispanics, women, and the young suffered especially sever economic hurts.

Desert Storm

In 1989, protests against dictatorship broke out in the soviet union and the eastern european nations controlled by the soviet union. the old communist governments fell apart and new communist ones came into being. The wall that had divided democratic west germany from communist east germany was torn down

Several trillion dollars had been taken from American taxpayers to defend the US from the "soviet threat".

The Bush administration started two wars in four years. The first was in Panama when we wanted Manuel Noriega captured. Many neighborhoods were bombed.

The second was in Iraq to give the US a greater voice in the conrol of middle east oil and to boost Bush's chances of reelection by showing that he could win a war on foreign soil.

The government lectured the public about the danger from Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator of Iraq.

In January 1991, congress gave bush the authority to make war and air attacks began. It barely lasted six weeks.

Hussein remained in power but the US had showed the rest of the world what it could do.

Communism and Combat

A revolutionary movement arose among the Vietnamese people, led by a communist named Ho Chi Minh. Revolutionaries celebrated that they were free of foreign control.

England and the United States saw to it that France regained control of Vietnam. But revolutionaries in the north resisted and the French started bombing them. This was the beginning of the Vietminh.

The US gave a billion dollars in military aid to stop the rise of communism in Asia. If a gov't that was hostile to the US came into power in Vietnam, it might get in the way of the United State's influence and interests.

The French withdrew from northern vietnam and the vietminh agreeg to remain in the north. The north and the south were supposed to be unified after two years and the people would be allowed to elect their own government.

The US moved quickly to keep the north and south from uniting. We placed the government in charge of an official named Ngo Dinh Diem. The Vietnamese disliked him.

Diem did not hold the scheduled elections and guerilla attacks on his government began in south vietnam. The guerrillas, Viet Cong, were aided by the communist government of the North.

The US could only send 685 military advisors, but sent thousands. The US had enetered a secret and illegal war.

The CIA secretly encouraged some Vietnamese generals to overthrow Diem, but they executed him and his brother.

3 weeks later, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became president

Johnson told Americans that the North Vietnamese attacked a navy ship but it was a lie to give the US a reason to declare war.

Congress gave the president power to take military actions in southeast asia and American war planes began bombarding North Vietnam and also bombed villages in the south where they thought the Viet Cong were hiding.

American Soldiers went into a village called My Lai and rounded up villagers into a ditch and shot them.

The US started bombing Laos to keep Viet Cong from operating bases there and to destroy supply routes. This was kept from the American public.

"This Madness Must Cease"

The US public was turning against the war, horrified by its cruelty and others simpy felt that it was a failure.

The Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) said that the US was breaking international law in Vietnam.

Thousands of young American men fled to Canada or Europe, avoiding the draft.

Daniel Ellsberg helped write a top-secret history of the war and decided to make it public. They leaked the "pentagon papers" to the New York Times.

Richard Nixon replaced Johnson as president.

By fall of 1973, the US signed a peace agreement and withdrew its forces.

The south still received American aid but it could not hold off an invasion from North Vietnam. The country was united under the communist rule of Ho Chi Minh.

Watergate

Richard Nixon was President

To help him win a second term, his supporters formed the committee to re-elect the president (CREEP).

Five burglars were caught breaking into an office in the Watergate Apartment and they had equipment for taking photographs and wire-tapping telephones. They also had ties to the CIA.

The Watergate burglary wasn't the Nixon administrations only crime. Attorney general mitchell had controlled a secret fund of hundred of thousands of dollars to use against the democratic party. Gulf Oil Coorporation had given millions of dollars in illegal contributions to nixon's campaign. Henry Kissinger had broken the law by having telephone calls of journalists and government officials recorded. Nixon had taken an illegal tax deduction of more than half a millioin dollars.

Vice President, Spiro Agnew got into trouble and was accused of taking bribes in return for political favors. He Resigned and nixon chose Gerald Ford to replace him.

Nixon did not want to be impeached so he rsigned voluntarily.

America Overseas

The bombing of Cambodia was concealed from the American public and even from congress. When it was revealed it fed people's doubts about the government's foreign policy.

An american cargo ship called the Mayaquez was sailing near Tang Island. Cambodians stopped the ship and took its crew to the mainland and treated them with courtesy. Ford sent a message to release the crew and then started bombing cambodian ships, even the boat that was carrying american sailors.

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act that said the president must consult with congress before taking millitary action.

When Congress set up committees to study the CIA and the FBI after watergate, it found even more secrets.

The CIA had been plotted to assassinate the leaders of foreign nations, such as Fidel Castro. It smuggled a livestock disease into Cuba. They worked to upset the government of Chile.

As for the FBI, it sent forged letters, opened mail illegally, performed more than ninety burglaries in just six years alone.