The Great American Story: A Time of Turbulence

A

Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. I am Jeremiah Regan and I am pleased to talk to you today about lectures 20 and 20 one of the great American story, Land of Hope. These lectures are called A Time of Turbulence, Parts 1 and 2. In these lectures, Dr. Maclay takes us through the post World War II era where America had to reconcile and with its new status as the world's preeminent superpower. And of course, as we saw in previous lectures in which Dr. Maclay explained the New Deal and American foreign policy changing from the original vision and intention of the founders, these had worked out in a certain type of way. Domestically, production was very strong, the economy was doing well, partially in the absence of competition. In terms of foreign policy, America was the sole hegemon in the world and had both the opportunity and the responsibility to shape the trajectory of international affairs. But of course, there wasn't a template for this type of behavior. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not prepare America to be a world power that sets the agenda for the rest of the world. It provided instructions for a government that protects the rights of its own citizens. This new era required presidents such as Eisenhower and Kennedy to use prudence and to employ some innovation to keep America strong, free and put itself in the best possible position. If you're enjoying these lectures and like to learn more, I encourage you go to Hillsdale. Edu course click on the Books tab and on the online courses books and you can pick up Land of hope and read Dr. Maclay's very fine history of the United States. You can also find other books associated with online courses, such as our companion books for Colonial America and American Paintings, which feature images from the courses as well as write ups that aren't included in the videos to give you extra content and help you enhance your experience. Now let's turn to Dr. Maclay for lectures 20 and 21 of the great American story, A Land of Hope, A Time of Turbulence, Parts one and two.

B

Hello and welcome back. This lecture is entitled A Time of Turbulence. There wasn't much time after the victory

C

over Germany and Japan for popping champagne corks and celebrating, just as the 50

B

nations that had joined in defeating the

C

Axis powers were drafting a charter for the United nations in San Francisco to be the hope of a new international order.

B

The victorious alliance between the United States

C

and the Soviet Union was falling apart

B

and with such high levels of suspicion and distrust and open hostility, opening the

C

possibility of a new war on top of the one that had just concluded. At any rate, a sustained confrontation between the Two remaining superpowers in the world that would come to be called the cold war War.

B

And the cold war was all the more frightening because of the existence of nuclear weapons.

C

First the United States alone possessing them, and then the Soviet Union acquiring them. That made the prospect of war all the more fearsome and all the more destructive to contemplate.

B

The presidency now is occupied by Harry

C

Truman, who had succeeded Roosevelt in the concluding months of the second world war and had taken care of the task of concluding that war with admirable dispatch and decisiveness.

B

But now he was faced with a

C

whole different situation, unprecedented situation that even FDR had not had to face himself.

B

He said in a press conference, boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.

C

That's what he said. The time of Roosevelt's death, Truman was

B

a small, bespectacled man.

C

A country boy from Missouri.

B

He'd been raised on a family farm, had gone to high school, and never

C

gone to or never completed college.

B

Went off to join the Santa fe

C

railroad after graduating from high school, worked

B

at clerical jobs in banks, got into

C

politics after being a failure in business,

B

and was a success as an artillery

C

officer in the first world war, where he discovered he had a talent for leadership.

B

He was incredibly hard working, feisty, decisive, and thoroughly honest. Not a smooth operator, not a slick guy. If Roosevelt represented the patrician tradition in

C

American politics that Jefferson and Wilson, let's say, exemplify the pedigreed tradition, then Truman was an example of the unpedigreed tradition

B

of Jackson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. People who were common men, but uncommon

C

common men who came up through the ranks of society through unpromising decisions, beginnings to exercise their ambitions and talents and sheer grit at the top of the

B

heap, but never forgetting the roots that they came from. Truman was a very ambitious new dealer

C

in his domestic policy, but he didn't enjoy a lot of success there. And those things are not really what he's known for. What he's known for is his work in foreign policy.

B

It was Truman's job to restore the

C

shattered order of the world and restore decent diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during a tense and complicated time.

B

War alliance between the United States and

C

Britain and the Soviet Union was tactical exclusively.

B

There was no other ideological or sentimental

C

attachment between the nations.

B

As the war appeared to be won in Europe, spring of 1945, the Red army began occupying more and more portions of eastern Europe with the clear intention

C

of establishing a Soviet empire.

B

This is exactly what Churchill was worried

C

about and why he urged Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower to get to Berlin ahead of the Russians.

B

In March of 1946, this is ten months after the conclusion of the war

C

in Europe, Winston Churchill gave a speech in America at Westminster college in Fulton, Missouri, in which he uttered a phrase that would live on for a long time. He said that from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. The iron curtain consisting of entities, formerly independent political entities that were now part of a de facto Soviet empire and cut off from the west, cut off from the influence of the United States.

B

Why were the Soviets doing this?

C

There's a lot of interesting scholarship about this. Certainly they did have their reasons to

B

want to have a protective buffer on

C

their west to protect against invasion. They just had an invasion. They'd been invaded by Napoleon. This was an experience that they didn't necessarily want to repeat.

B

At the same time, clearly the Soviets

C

had an expansion minded outlook.

B

Their Marxist Leninist ideology lent some support to that. So, so did the undercurrents of Russian

C

nationalism that were part of the Soviet outlook.

B

Clearly the Soviets were interested in expanding into the eastern Mediterranean, the middle east, and maybe Europe, even western Europe itself.

C

So what to do about this expansionist

B

tendency short of fighting a war? Well, what Truman arrived at was a

C

conclusion heavily influenced by the writings of George Kennan, an American diplomat in Russia,

B

who believed that he had particular insight into the Soviet leadership outlook. He felt that Soviet expansionism was actually a result of the insecure, unstable nature

C

of the regime itself, and that the

B

process of expansion was actually a way

C

of holding that regime together, and that

B

if expansion was prevented, if it was contained, then the regime in due course

C

would turn in on itself and collapse.

B

This doctrine came to be known as

C

containment because it was a way of fighting the Soviet regime by containing it rather than by defeating it outright.

B

That became the basis of American doctrine. Truman enunciated in the form of what was called the Truman doctrine, a version

C

of this in response to the crisis in Greece, where Soviets appeared to have designs on that unstable country.

B

He said, I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who were resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. A lot of this was brought on

C

by the economic devastation of the post war and by the vulnerability that a great many nations that had been affected by the war felt in its wake,

B

and the vulnerability they had to subversion

C

by pro communist, pro Soviet or otherwise radical regimes.

B

It was a clear commitment to an open ended policy of intervening where necessary, not in the manner of conquest, but

C

in the manner of preservation of free institutions in non communist countries.

B

Foreign policy dominated Truman's attention both in

C

the remainder of his term, where he was completing Roosevelt's fourth term, and then in a term in his own right.

B

I'm not going to summarize everything, but

C

I'll mention several points. First, and maybe foremost, is the China situation.

B

China had been in a state of civil war since the 1920s.

C

Nationalist forces versus communist forces under Mao Zedong.

B

That conflict was interrupted by the war with Japan, but then resumed immediately afterward. The communists had had an advantage in

C

being seen as patriots and being seen

B

as a group that had consistently supported

C

Chinese interests over the interests of occupying forces, whether Japanese or other external forces.

B

So containment really didn't work as well in Asia as it did in Europe

C

because of this fact, because the force,

B

the communist forces were aligned with patriotic or nationalistic forces, unlike Europe, where the

C

opposition to communism tended to draw on patriotic and nationalistic forces.

B

But the end result was that the

C

Chinese communist revolution succeeded and a communist

B

regime was installed in the most populous nation on earth, a nation with which America had formerly had relatively warm and

C

friendly relations, but that now was a

B

communist country, and eventually signed a treaty

C

of cooperation and military aid with the Soviet Union.

B

The United States was faced with an enormous communist bloc that they had no reason to to see as anything other

C

than unremittently hostile to it.

B

As a result, military and foreign policy changed.

C

The NSC 68 document produced by the national security Council was one indication of that.

B

It emphasized a much higher degree of military spending and a change in the willingness to form alliances with non communist

C

countries, even ones that were somewhat disreputable in terms of their human rights record.

B

These were both changes in American military

C

policy from the time of the nation's beginning.

B

Once again, the cold war is bringing

C

about, for better or worse, adaptations to long standing traditions.

B

The cold war turned hot in 1950

C

on the Korean peninsula, which had been divided since the end of the war between communist forces in the north that were aligned with the Soviet Union and

B

democratic forces in the south that were

C

aligned with the United States.

B

There'd never been any plan for a formal division, and the desire for reunification was strong, particularly in the north. This led to an invasion on June

C

25, 1950, of some 80,000 North Korean

B

troops that swept into the south, very nearly conquering it.

C

And Truman invoked the United nations, and the American response was funneled through the United Nations. So it was called a police action rather than a war. There was no declaration of war.

B

The war went very badly until General Douglas MacArthur got involved, performed a brilliant

C

amphibious invasion at Incheon, which cut off the North Korean troops and led him quickly to be able to round them

B

up, defeat them, and then head north. And he kept going north and finally

C

approached the Chinese border. And at that point, a quarter of a million Chinese troops swept into, in

B

on MacArthur and drove him back into

C

South Korea, with the battle line finally stabilizing around the 38th parallel.

B

At this point, MacArthur and Truman got

C

deadlocked in a conflict because MacArthur thought

B

that the time was right.

C

The justification was there for what he

B

called a whole new war, a war

C

against China, against Communist China that would

B

succeed in overthrowing this unfriendly, hostile, noxious

C

communist regime that had just taken power and thus avert the prospect of a Sino, Soviet, Chinese and Soviet alliance that could come to dominate the world.

B

The time was right to take that on.

C

Truman, on the other hand, thought this

B

was absolutely the wrong thing that it would be. He called it a booby trap to

C

go into a war in China and rejected the idea.

B

They battled a little bit about it.

C

Some of it was private, some of it filtered into the press.

B

Finally, MacArthur criticized Truman publicly in an

C

official letter to the House Minority Leader,

B

said there is no substitute for victory.

C

In other words, a rejection of the containment doctrine.

B

Truman felt he had no choice but

C

to fire him as the Allied commander in Korea, which he did.

B

But MacArthur was a hero. He was a great hero of the Second World War, he was a hero of the Korean War. And he came back to America and was given one of the largest ticker tape parades in the history of New York City. After having been fired by the President

C

of the United States.

B

Truman's approval ratings dropped to 22%, which are.

C

This is in the Gallup Poll, which are still the lowest that any president has ever sunk to. Even Richard Dixon and others never got that far down.

B

Yet he arguably did the right thing.

C

And no president has gained in prestige more in subsequent years than Truman.

B

It was an act of statesmanship.

C

And as we've said before in this course, statesmanship is not always rewarded by the applause of the many and smiles and panning cameras in Hollywood movies.

B

There is no prettifying the fact, though,

C

that the Korean War was at best a stalemate.

B

It remains a people divided to this day.

C

There is no settlement of the war. The war is simply suspended. So in some ways, it illustrates some of the unsatisfactory aspects of the containment doctrine. And that situation is yet to be resolved.

B

At any rate, by the time this

C

ceasefire came, the Americans had a new president. The president was Dwight Eisenhower, who was

B

the great hero of the second World

C

War effort and a man who was, like most distinguished military men, was not

B

identified with either political party. He ran a brilliant campaign, had one

C

of the best campaign button slogans ever. I like Ike. I like Ike.

B

And even if it was a somewhat empty phrase, it was an indication of

C

the fact that there was a visceral willingness to cross partisan lines. For this great man whom everybody liked,

B

he was a stabilizing influence.

C

He brought in business executives for many of his cabinet posts. He was fiscally conservative, but he did

B

not try to roll back the New

C

Deal or roll back domestic programs that Truman had sought.

B

He was a consolidator. And I mean that not in the

C

the sense that the framers used that word, but just in the sense of

B

bringing elements of change into a disposition

C

of normalization to settle things down, which

B

meant neither changing forward or changing backwards,

C

but trying to go ahead in a steady way, which was hard to do

B

because the foreign policy portfolio of his

C

administration, of the United States and his administration became ever more capacious due to the growing number of responsibilities and brush fires and other incidents in the world to which the United States had to attend and with which it was involved.

B

I'll just talk about a few of

C

them here

B

in French Indochina. The French had lost their Southeast Asian

C

colony during the second World War and really were unable to restore it. So the United States found itself, by the 1950s, in a situation in which it might be required to exercise some of the stabilizing influence in that part of the world that the French had or run the risk of a communist takeover.

B

This was the beginnings of the situation

C

that would come to further fruition in later administrations, particularly in Vietnam.

B

In the Middle east, the challenge to the nation of Israel, which Truman had so strongly endorsed the creation of in

C

his administration, became a concern that Eisenhower had to address himself to imbalance the needs of the United States over the prestige of American allies, particularly the British, in that region of the world.

B

When the Nasser regime in Egypt seized the Suez Canal, the British and French responded with military force.

C

We took the canal.

B

But Eisenhower, who was sensitive to American

C

standing in the Arab world, turned on them in anger and forced them to withdraw.

B

This was a clear indication of who

C

was in charge in the Western world. The United States now was the big power that called the shots.

B

And finally, there was a situation in

C

Cuba which came near the end of Eisenhower's second term.

B

Cuba had been a good ally of

C

the United States more or less since the time of the Spanish American War. Some friction over the Platt Amendment and so on.

B

But in 1959, the Fulgencio Batista regime,

C

which was a fairly dictatorial and corrupt regime with ties to organized crime in the United States, but nevertheless friendly to

B

the United States, was overthrown by a

C

communist revolutionary named Fidel Castro.

B

At first the United States embraced Castro, extended diplomatic recognition. But as very quickly it became apparent that Castro was going to align himself

C

with the Soviet Union and enact radical communist reforms in land tenure and other features of the Cuban economy. The United States withdrew that support and became concerned about Castro and Castro's potential effects on the United States as a Soviet controlled or Soviet affiliated entity only 90 miles from America's shores. All of this was part of the generous portfolio of foreign policy troubles that

B

Eisenhower had to face as he finished his second term. Though in spite of all this, America still liked Ike.

C

He was very popular and on his way out he gave a great speech that we want to spend a little bit of time talking about his farewell address.

B

Other presidents since George Washington had given

C

farewell addresses, but I think it's safe to say that this one and Washington's are the two most distinguished farewell addresses, at least to this point in American history. Ronald Reagan would do a very fine one too, a few years later. He was trying to emulate Washington. In a lot of ways. He was trying to emulate that sense that Washington had that everything he did was a personal example.

B

Eisenhower, of course, served two terms in

C

the presidency, as Washington had. There had been a constitutional amendment that

B

would not have permitted him to run

C

for a third term, ironically sought by Republicans. And the first person to be adversely

B

affected by the amendment was a Republican.

C

So, so much for constitutional tinkering.

B

But this farewell address was his benediction, his effort also to look into the

C

crystal ball and, and envision what the

B

American future might be like and what

C

dangers there might be in store for the nation as it moved forward.

B

Some of this was very far reaching.

D

As we peer into society's future, we, you and I, and our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

B

By the way, he worked on this

C

speech quite a bit.

B

He started working on it in 1959.

C

He had assistance from several of his aides in working and reworking different points of it. So this was a carefully wrought speech that reflected his considered judgments.

B

He warned against the expanded scope of government which he had in many ways presided over. He warned that the high level of military preparedness that the Cold War had necessitated had dangers. It could distort the character of the

C

nation's institutions over the long haul if

B

we didn't guard against it.

D

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex, by which he

B

meant the combination of a large military

C

establishment and the armaments industry that supported it.

D

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

B

Nor should we let the process of scientific research become the prisoner of government funding, or let democratic governance become captive

C

to a technocratic elite class.

B

It was a surprising speech. I think even now it makes for surprising reading coming from one of the greatest generals in American history who had presided over D day, who had presided

C

over a vastly expanded military effort, but

B

warning against the possible dangers of military predominance in American society, harkening back in some ways to the ideal of the early American republic, in which the military ideal was the citizen soldier and the militiaman, not a large standing permanent army,

C

which was a temptation to corruption and abuse of power.

B

This might seem an inconsistency, but I think it's more properly understood as a recognition on his part that we needed to hold these two things in tension,

C

that the exigencies of the present had made necessary for us an expansion of powers of government that we would not have otherwise have sought, and that the

B

ideal in some ways remains the ideal

C

to which we should aspire, that American

B

ideals are not dead, they're not dispensable.

C

But they may need to be adapted. They may need to be held in tension with other requirements, with other exigencies. Balance was a word he used throughout the speech. He used it 10 times, and it really represented his ideal.

B

Not to go all one way or

C

to go all another way, but to hold intention in equilibrium, in balance, competing but equally worthy imperatives.

E

Hi there. It's Bill Gray from Hillsdale. College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a quick favor? Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. 250 years that the greatest country in human history, the United States of America, has been dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But to secure these rights, we need an education that helps citizens to be self governing. From kindergarteners to lifelong learners, we need more people to understand the principles of liberty that make America great. In fact, we are seeking to educate millions and millions more through efforts like the podcast you're listening to right now. Hillsdale College has been expanding its educational outreach throughout through free online courses, free issues of imprimis, free help for K12 schools all across America, and yes, free podcasts like this one. However, these efforts are not without cost and Hillsdale College is a non profit institution that doesn't take a single penny from the taxpayer, not one penny to remain proudly independent. So your tax deductible gift before December 31st can help us make a difference. With your generous gift, you'll support our work to reach and teach millions the principles that make our country free and prosperous. You'll be making a real difference for liberty in America. Please make your tax deductible gift of 2550 or even $100 today by visiting Hillsdale. Edu Cye that's Hillsdale. Edu C. Thank you for standing with us. Now back to the show.

F

You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed Podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the Genesis Store story alongside the Robertsons.

B

The election of 1960 to choose Eisenhower's

C

successor was extremely interesting one and a very close election. The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, who had been Eisenhower's Vice president and a very active vice president who performed many more duties than had been to that point, the norm for vice presidents.

B

The Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy, a

C

senator from Massachusetts who lacked the experience

B

of Nixon, but was a charismatic, handsome, young and vigorous candidate, even a glamorous candidate who had about him an air of athleticism and energy that seemed to

C

betoken a more energetic presidency.

B

One of his campaign slogans was let's get this country moving again. And he called his campaign platform the new frontier, which was an allusion to

C

the idea that the frontier was the source of American distinctiveness and American democracy.

B

Kennedy was very narrowly elected, a very

C

close, very hard fought race.

B

Kennedy gave a very impressive, well crafted

C

inaugural address that made no bones about his determination to prosecute the cold war

B

in vigorous terms, more vigorous than Eisenhower

C

had, more confrontive than Eisenhower had.

G

Go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of, of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

B

And for any foreign listeners who might be looking for indications about where things

C

were likely to go.

B

He said, let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to any assure the

C

survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge and more.

B

Very strong statement.

C

Maybe in some ways a statement that we look back with a certain amount of irony in light of what was to come.

B

But he was presenting America as a land of hope in another way, a fresh way, as a struggler on behalf

C

of, of the cause of freedom in the world as a whole and calling

B

Americans to a sense of duty to

C

participate in that struggle.

B

There was a whiff of progressivism about

C

him, of bringing the experts together from

B

Harvard and Yale and all of the

C

best places to concentrate their skills on the running of a more efficient economy.

B

A lot of his domestic program didn't

C

get much of anywhere. Kennedy was very poor at working with the Congress, but he was very successful in the economy.

B

He, unlike many Democrats, rejected the orthodoxy

C

of John Maynard Keynes notion that economic growth would not be affected by levels of taxation. He accepted the idea, the Andrew w. Mellon idea, that a cut in taxes would actually produce greater revenues in the economy.

B

The Kennedy years had the same kind of effect on economic growth as the Mellon years.

C

It was a period of great prosperity.

B

Kennedy's economic advisors, all of whom had

C

opposed this cutting of taxes, were surprised by the sharp increase. Gross national product up 40%, job growth doubled, and so on.

B

Kennedy was very interested in the exploration of outer space.

C

That was part of his new frontier effort.

B

Kennedy made the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, a goal that was met under the administration of a different president.

C

But Kennedy getting deservedly much of the credit for having succeeded in that task.

B

In foreign policy, a very mixed bag.

C

Kennedy was obsessed by Cuba, by the presence of a dictatorship, a communist dictatorship in Cuba, and was obsessed with the idea of getting rid of Castro.

B

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union over Cuba came to

C

a near catastrophic moment when the Soviets had installed surreptitiously medium range missiles on the island of Cuba and these were discovered by American surveillance planes.

B

Thirteen days of very tense negotiations ensued

C

in which it seemed possible that a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union might result.

B

That didn't happen in the end, mostly because of the superiority of the United

C

States Navy, convinced the Soviets to back down and a face saving way to do so was found.

B

But it was an alarm to both

C

sides about the dangers of a miscalculation in the future and had a sobering effect.

B

What Kennedy would have done in Vietnam

C

and Southeast Asia and other troubled spots of the world is largely a matter of speculation. He had sent 16,000 advisors to Vietnam, but was becoming distressed with the situation. And some historians think he would have decided to leave Southeast Asia to its own fate. Others think he would have escalated the involvement. We'll never know because Kennedy was brutally assassinated by a lone gunman on November 22, 1963 while in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Even Americans who were not particularly enamored of Kennedy were shocked and saddened by this incident. He wasn't all that popular as a president. He wasn't seen as terribly effective.

B

He was in Texas because he needed

C

the votes of Texas to be reelected in 1964 and he knew it.

B

After Kennedy's death, it seemed that something had gone out of national life.

C

Some excitement, some charisma, some glamour, a

B

sense of energy and optimism. With that all coming to abrupt end, it felt to Americans, many Americans like the end of an era. Prominent among the elements of his agenda

C

that did not become enacted was civil rights legislation for African Americans.

B

Kennedy had campaigned on the promise of

C

civil rights legislation in 1960, but once

B

he was in office he was intimidated

C

by the non support of his Southern Democratic co partisans. They held the balance of power in Congress.

B

Kennedy was very risk averse in that

C

kind of domestic policy,

B

did not wish to incur their wrath and so he

C

didn't push the matter.

B

To the great frustration of some of his supporters and civil rights leaders such as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Who found him to be Unreliable and timid and prone to what King called tokenism. And they began to try to devise

C

ways to force his hand.

B

And principal among these was a march

C

on Washington that King helped to organize in 1963. That arguably is one of those demonstrations that helped turn the tide of events. A few words about King first.

B

Though King was the son and grandson of Baptist clergymen, he'd been educated at

C

Boston University in part.

B

And he managed to meld a kind of evangelical piety from his upbringing with

C

ideas of social change that he had learned at Boston University and from his reading.

B

And also he was influenced by Mohandas Gandhi in favoring an approach to social change that involved the use of non

C

violent resistance to unjust laws.

B

King's speeches are well worth reading, especially from this era. They're full of tributes to the Christian moral tradition, the American dream, and to the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He would explicate the meaning of these texts and then say, how can the African Americans desire for rights and recognition

C

be denied

B

in light of these documents

C

and these promises that have been made in American life?

B

How could it be seen as anything less than a fulfillment of the American

C

Dream, a fulfillment of the stated intentions of the Declaration of Independence?

B

This was actually quite characteristic of the

C

temper of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 60s. It was determined, it was dignified, it

B

was peaceful, but it was also provocative. It sought to challenge injustice by flouting unjust laws and seeking integration into society.

C

Seeking inclusion in society, not a separate peace, but a combined peace, a common community, a beloved community, as King liked to say.

B

So this phase of the civil rights

C

movement, the post war civil rights movement reaches a pinnacle in 1963 with there was actually a couple of other incidents. Demonstrations in Birmingham that were turned in which the police turned violently on protesters. And the whole country was able to see that happen.

B

But then In August of 1963 comes

C

the March on Washington.

B

Kennedy is still alive, still present, still active, very much the target of the march. Kennedy was being pressed to put his back into the passage of the civil rights bill that was before the Congress at that time. And the King organized an enormous March, 200,000 or more people involved congregating in

C

Washington, around the Reflecting pool by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. And they heard King, among other speakers, deliver a very memorable speech, the speech we sometimes call I have a dream speech, which perfectly expressed that hopeful spirit.

B

This is the land of hope again

C

manifesting itself that had animated the movement at that point.

B

A reconciling spirit.

C

I'll just quote a few lines from it. Something. This is so familiar to all Americans.

B

But I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.

C

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.

B

I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons

C

of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. And on from there.

B

Powerful oratory mingling the emotional side of

C

the evangelical preacher with the hopeful determination of the social reformer and political visionary

B

and drawing together some of the most

C

central affirmations of American history.

B

This proved an irresistible force.

C

Kennedy heard the speech.

B

He had feared that the march was

C

going to be a divisive event that was going to set off public opinion. But he was wrong about that.

B

Although he did not live to see it.

C

Thanks to his assassin, the Civil Rights

B

Bill would pass in 1964 under a different president, followed in 1965 by a voting Rights act that further enshrined and

C

protected civil rights for African Americans.

B

These did not solve the problem of

C

bigotry and racial inequality in America, but they were a huge step in the right direction.

B

Now the task of seeing this agenda

C

through fell to Kennedy's Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, or LBJ, as he would soon become known.

B

This was a difficult transition for more reasons than one.

C

Obviously, coming into the presidency after a brutal assassination. A brutal and sudden assassination, a shocking assassination, is never easy.

B

Add to that the fact that Kennedy

C

and Johnson were as different as two

B

men can be and didn't like one another one bit. They did not have a good working

C

relationship as president and Vice president during Kennedy's time in office.

B

Kennedy was resentful of Johnson's greater experience, his greater knowledge as a figure who

C

had worked his way up the ladder politically of the way the political process worked.

B

Johnson resented Kennedy because Kennedy had beaten

C

him in the contest for the Democratic

B

nomination and knew that he was on the ticket only to add regional balance

C

to attract the votes of Texas, which otherwise a Democratic candidate, particularly a Massachusetts Democrat, would not have been likely to attract on his own.

B

Moreover, the contrast between the two men could not have been starker. Johnson was a large, rough, hewn, unsophisticated

C

man from the Texas hill country with

B

a major drawl and who had graduated not from Harvard but from Southwest Texas State Teachers College. He had none of the charm and

C

refinement of the Kennedys and their circle, but he made up for these deficiencies with a colossal ambition, an intricate and intimate knowledge of the workings of the levers of power, and a mind that

B

has variously been called ruthless, conniving, devious,

C

clever, all put in the service of

B

very high ideals and noble beliefs. A man of great paradoxes.

C

And we'll unpack some of those paradoxes in our next lecture. Thank you.

H

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. If you want to continue learning, please visit hillsdale.edu course. There you will find over 40 free online courses, including Ancient Christianity, the Genesis Story, Classic Children's Literature, and many more. The courses include additional readings, study guides, fully produced videos, and you can chat with your fellow students on a dedicated forum. Upon completing a course, you will also get a certificate. All our courses are free because we believe that what you'll learn will enrich your life and that a virtuous citizen is the best defense for liberty. So pursue the education necessary for freedom and happiness at Hillsdale. Edu coursetoday. That's Hillsdale Edu Course. Thanks for listening.