The Sixties Movement: Middle Passage, 1964-1968

Let LBJ continue the reform programs of JFK. With passage of Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we have high hopes for the Great Society, for social justice in America, and equality for one and all. Education is high on the list with Headstart, special ed, aid to secondary school, Jobcorps, Upward Bound, Title VII for women, Pell grants for college, Peace Corps, Alliance for progress, and Vista. Help the cities, the aged, and the poor with Model Cities, aid to depressed regions, community action, maximum feasible participation, housing, vehicle safety, crime control, consumer product safety, community action programs, medicare, medicaid, increases in minimum wage and social security, truth in labeling and packaging, pollution control, beautification for Nature's sake, Baker v. Car for one man, one vote, National Foundation for the Arts and PBS, a fair immigration act, conservation, and the space program. The Great Society is FDR's New Deal completed. But like a big city mayor there's something for everyone. Included for the loonies on the right, a War in Vietnam begins with the bombing campaign called Rolling Thunder. Great Society idealism will be lost in the war over there. Protest of the war will expand to majority proportions. Violence will be stirred up as the war comes home. There are ghetto uprisings to protest a Great Society which is not so great. Violence will be evident in Richard Speck's killing of 8 nurses, Charles Whitman's killing spree from the U Texas Tower, and Truman's Capote's In Cold Blood. No Satisfaction, Paint it Black, turn to drugs and psychedelia, revolution's in the streets, and in 1968 it all comes apart with TET and assassinations of MLK and RFK. Nothing to stop the War in Vietnam but Nixon peddles his law and order ideas for here and over there. The middle passage of the Sixties Movement, from 1964-1968, takes us from hope to despair in five years flat.