Civil Rights Movement & Vietnam War Impact on 1960s America
**Civil Rights Movement and its Impact on 1960s America**
John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all assassinated in the 1960s. During this decade, there were plans for social change among some celebrities. In particular, Martin Luther King Jr. stood up for civil rights for minorities living in the US and struggled to bring the values of American society closer to what the founders of the nation had imagined: a nation of equality among every man.
Appealing to non-violence, Martin Luther King Jr. started his movement, which had his famous speech “I Have a Dream” as its headline. This became very unpopular among some groups of the white American population but gained the support of some political leaders, such as President John F. Kennedy (JFK). This movement led by them marked a new way of understanding American society. J. F. Kennedy stood for a more equal, color-blind society. The president’s message is synthesized in his famous sentence, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
This movement represented the power of change and, in particular, the power of people who tried to make a difference. It was a very faithful movement with successful results: some years later, public opinion demanded a stop to the Vietnam War and an end to racial segregation.
That was not a time to protest with anger, but to construct a new world together. However, during that decade, both leaders were shot and killed by attackers. The fast change in American societal values also resulted in fanaticism. The dream of Martin Luther King Jr. meant a threat to solid American values and hierarchies, and the answer was a fast growth of conservatism, in opposition to the race for equality. This confrontation resulted from a sense that love and order are always superior to the sense of change, equality, and freedom.
**The Vietnam War and its Effects on Domestic America**
**What did the Vietnam War and its effects tell us about domestic America during the late 1950s and 1960s?**
We have to understand the Vietnam War in the context of the Cold War, when the world was divided into two blocs: the Communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, and the Western bloc, led by the US. This conflict, in which American troops were sent to Vietnam to fight against the communist guerrillas from North Vietnam, who wanted to establish a communist regime in the whole country, was arranged following the containment policy and the doctrine proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman. According to this doctrine, the US had to stop the expansion of communism in the world.
The subsequent, bloody conflict speaks of the arrogance of power and a sense of omnipotence on the part of the Americans, who aimed to conquer the world, thinking, “If we fight now, we won’t need to do so again.” This poses a sense of self-reliance within American values and two perspectives on the same war. On the one hand, we see the Americans fighting against communism, and on the other hand, the Vietnamese were fighting to assert their right to exist. Therefore, this conflict is also about a notion of truth—a truth that was also discussed at home.
In America, the link between the people and their trust in their government was becoming distorted because of this unpopular war. It also questioned America’s interventions in other places, raising the ethical question of whether a country has the right to intervene in other people’s affairs and under what conditions.
Finally, the Vietnam War ended when American troops were withdrawn by a government pressured by popular voices calling for an end to the warfare. Although the war was fought abroad, Vietnam changed America at home forever, not only because this was the first defeat of the US but also because it questioned the moral basis of American actions and values—a criticism that came from within for the first time.