The Presidential election of 1960 was held in an atmosphere of strained international telling and increasing racial tension in the United States . In an super closemouthed competition , DemocratJohn F. Kennedyand his track mate , Lyndon B. Johnson , defeat the Republican prospect , Richard M. Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge . Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic and theyoungest presidentto be elected .
Kennedy hollo upon Americans to meet the challenges of a " new frontier — the frontier of the 1960 ’s . " He had served only two yr and 10 months of his term when he was assassinate in Dallas , Texas , November 22 , 1963 . Upon succeed to the Presidency Johnson promised to continue Kennedy ’s alien and domestic policies . In 1964 Johnson and his running mate , Hubert H. Humphrey , gain ground election by a landslip , defeat Republican nominee Barry M. Goldwater and William E. Miller . Johnson plight his administration to the task of progress a " Great Society . "
The Domestic Scene
Much of the lawmaking proposed by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson continued in the social - benefit custom of the New Deal . During the Kennedy government activity , 1961 - 63 , enactment of some measures was block by a conglutination of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats . Legislation enacted included laws that established the Alliance for Progress ( an attention program for Latin America ) , created the Peace Corps ( a strange aid programme using volunteers ) , granted Union assist to depressed areas , provide retraining of unemployed workers , liberalize societal certificate benefit , conjure up the lower limit wage , and supply federal finances for teaching . Kennedy also obtained broad sanction to abridge tariffs . At the time of his death , Congress was consider a tax - cut bill and a comprehensive civic rights vizor , both passed in 1964 .
Lyndon Johnson ’s telling election triumph in 1964 made it potential to devolve antecedently blocked bills and novel " Great Society " proposals . Among police enact during 1965 - 69 were those inaugurating Medicare ; creating two new executive department ( Housing and Urban Development , and Transportation ) ; guarantee voting rights ; reclaim immigration procedures ; controlling gun sale ; and granting federal help to Education Department , to impoverished area in the Appalachians , to cities for refurbishment , and to scurvy - income families for lodging .
The civil rights movement began gaining impulse early on in the 1960 ’s . In the South , Negroid , or motley groups of blacks and whites , challenged segregation jurisprudence by " sitins " at restaurants and " exemption rides " on buses . In 1962 James Meredith , a black , entered the traditionally all - white University of Mississippi , although rioting by campus segregationists had to be appease by federal troops . Civil rightfulness demonstrations grew in turn , reaching a high decimal point in 1963 with a borderland on Washington , D.C. , by some 200,000 person in accompaniment of the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . In 1965 dissent against discrimination in voter registration in the South led to act of a voting rights police .
Although progress was being made in benefit equal rights for blacks , rioting erupted periodically in the black ghettos of many city beginning in the summer of 1965 . Widespread riot follow the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King , Jr. , in 1968 . Soon after , Congress excrete an undetermined - occupancy police in the hope of easing the racial crisis . The civil rights movement , however , already had begun to convert ; militant Negroid were calling not for integrating but for black power ( dominance over their own community ) .
The race with the Soviet Union to appropriate space speed . briefly after the United States achieve its first manned place flight , in 1961 , President Kennedy committed the commonwealth to putting a piece on the moon by the close of the decade . In 1962 John H. Glenn , Jr. , in the Friendship 7 became the first American to revolve the earth . United States space vehicles relayed elaborate characterisation of the moon for the first time in 1964 . The death of three astronaut in a education accident in 1967 delayed the Sun Myung Moon program , but in 1968 the man Apollo 8 spacecraft orbited the moonshine .
During the period 1961 - 69 there was unprecedented economic emergence . Unemployment drop to about 4 per cent , but it remained a chronic problem . In 1964 a federal antipoverty program was enacted to attack the introductory causal agent of poverty . By 1968 , however , spiraling inflation had become a menace to successfulness and led Congress to pass an income revenue enhancement growth .
Far - reaching reverberation in state politics resulted from a 1964 Supreme Court reallocation opinion — the so - called " one man , one vote " decision . The court hold that all districts from which extremity of country legislative body are elected must be approximately equal in population . In 1968 the opinion was extended to local governmental bodies .
In 1961 the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution gave District of Columbia residents the rightfield to vote in Presidential elections . The 24th Amendment ( 1964 ) get rid of poll taxes in Union elections . The25th Amendment(1967 ) provide for persistence of tycoon in the event of Presidential disability .
Foreign Affairs
The United States was involved in several international crisis in the 1960 ’s despite continued efforts to allay Cold War stress . In 1961 East Germany , act on Soviet instructions , built a paries between East and West Berlin to arrest the flow of East German refugee to West Germany . This legal action produced a crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States over Western rights in Berlin , which since World War II had been occupied by Soviet , American , British , and French forces . There were fears of a major confrontation but the crisis was eased by diplomatic measure .
In 1961 Cuban deportation , rail with the aid of the United States , invaded their homeland at the Bay of Pigs in an abortive attack to overrule the Communist regime of Fidel Castro . Cuba was again an issue in 1962 , when President Kennedy forced the Soviet Union to remove missile it had send out there . After the crisis — which was so serious that it might have led to nuclear fight between the two superpowers — Soviet - American coitus improved . A limited nuclear test - ban treaty was talk terms in 1963 and consular and space pact in 1967 .
United States tie with Latin America were strengthen by the Alliance for Progress in 1961 . However , carnal knowledge were strain for a time accompany President Johnson ’s despatch of troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent seizure of that res publica ’s political science by communistic subversive .
United States involvement in Southeast Asia dilate steady in the 1960 ’s . In 1962 , to prevent further Communist insight of Laos , the United States participate in negotiation that led to an outside agreement to guarantee the neutrality of that country . economical and military aid to South Vietnam to fight Communist guerrillas , begun in the 1950 ’s , finally extend to President Johnson ’s dispatch of turgid issue of American scrap troop in 1965 . The continued " escalation " ( elaboration ) of the Vietnamese War make worldwide business and provoked an antiwar movement in the United States . Despite the try that began in 1968 to negotiate a colonization , the war continued .
1968 Presidential Election
By the time of the 1968 election crusade , there was much partitioning in the nation result from opposition to the Vietnamese War and from the racial strife spark off by the polite right movement . President Johnson decided not to lam for reelection , his popularity having declined sharply . The campaign was marked by the character assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York , who was seeking the Presidential nomination of the Democratic party , and by a trigger-happy confrontatlice at the popular normal in Chicago .
In the election , former Vice President Richard M. Nixon , the Republican candidate , won a narrow triumph over Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey and a third - political party candidate , George C. Wallace .
