Article Cycle Four - FINAL

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Dec 6, 2023

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Stephen Kramer Professor Mellinger Contemporary American History 10/22/2021 Article Cycle Four President John F. Kennedy discussed his domestic agenda, which he called a “New Frontier for America” in his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination on July 15 th , 1960, in Los Angeles, California. President Kennedy stated that “The New Frontier is here”, where the possibilities of progression for the country were endless ( Kennedy, 1960 ). Instead of branding “The New Frontier” as a list of what the United States government was going to do, rather a set of challenges for the American public ( https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/6739 ). After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lydon B. Johnson took over presidency and during his Commencement Speech at the University of Michigan, President Johnson discussed his own domestic agenda which his called “The Great Society”, and in his plan he outlined the need to follow in Kennedy’s progressive political footsteps. The main concerns of Johnson’s domestic agenda were focused on providing aid to underprivileged Americans, the regulation of natural resources, and protecting the American consumer ( Germany, 2020 ). In 1959, the revolutionary army backed by Fidel Castro would commence a new era of Cuban history after overthrowing the corrupt Cuban president Fulgencio Batista. President Eisenhower and his administration were suspicious of Castro, as he began to implement leftist
economic policies revolve around agrarian restructuring, land redistribution, and the nationalization of private organizations. By 1960 the United States enacted a near-total trade embargo, in order to economically detach the Cuban regime, and in 1961 President Kennedy and his administration had broken off formal relations with Cuba. The CIA operating under the false pretense that the Castro’s regime lacked the popular support, with Cuban citizens revolting against him if presented the opportunity, began to recruit banished Cuban nationals to take part in an invasion of the island as President Kennedy gave the green light which would later be referred to as the Bay of Pigs. The attempted coup to overflow Castro failed, as Cuban soldiers and citizens overpowered the exiles ( Locke & Wright, 2021 ). After President Kennedy spoke with Soviet premier Khrushchev in 1961, relations between the US and Soviet Union were furthered strained as Khrushchev revived the threat to solve the long-standing problem in Berlin, President Kennedy would be forced to restore his plans to respond to maneuvers with every possible resource available to the United States, including nuclear weapons. Just two months after the meeting with Kennedy and Khrushchev did the Soviets join arms with the East Germans to construct the Berlin Wall. Another foreign policy crisis that Kennedy was obliged to face was the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Khrushchev and the Soviets ordered a secret-deployment of nuclear missiles that had the capability of reaching the United States within minutes. After consulting with his top advisors over a number of days, Kennedy decided to implement the blockade of Cuba and the threat of a full invasion if the Soviets and Cuba did not comply. After some back and forth between the Soviets and the Kennedy administration to come to an agreement, but eventually
Khrushchev would back out of Cuba and President Kennedy promised to remove the nukes aimed in the direction of Russia in Turkey ( Selverstone, 2020 ). President Johnson’s major domestic policy which he referred as the “Great Society” in his commencement speech in 1964, as stated above focused mainly on providing aid to disadvantaged Americans, but his agenda also addressed the inequalities in education, allocating aid to provide remedial services for impoverished districts which no other president at the time was able to do due to disagreement regarding aid that was given to Catholic schools. On July 30 th , 1965, Johnson signed into law, a bill that established the Medicare and Medicaid programs ( Germany, 2020 ), these programs continue to protect the health of Americans today in 2021. The general argument that Henry Thoreau made in a speech given in 1849, that would later be known as “Civil Disobedience” was to advocate the need to focus on the individual’s conscience over imposed laws, as well as pointing out the injustices in American policies and institutions regarding slavery and the Mexican-American War ( https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/excerpt-from-civil-disobedience ). In Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963, King states that he was brought to Birmingham because of the injustices, that “injustices anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Dr. King explains that process of civil disobedience in his letter, stating “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. (2) Negotiation. (3) Self-purification and (4) Direct Action ( King, 1963 ). The importance of non-violent civil disobedience is how violence is removed from the equation, peaceful demonstrations can solidify an individual’s argument rather than forcing it down someone’s throat” ( King, 1963 ).
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