The 60s in Pictures:

A Turbulent Decade in American History

Visit:
www.mrmcgowan.blogspot.com
 1960

President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon

during prosperous times for America
 1960
• WW2 War hero Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term
as President is coming to an end. His Vice President
Richard Nixon is expected to become the 35th
President.
• Civil rights are a major issue across America and
mainly in the Southern states.
• The US is involved in a Cold War which costs billions
keeping up in the arms race and the space race.
• The US is involved in containing communism,
particularly in Vietnam formerly French Indochina
• Cuba has recently had a communist revolution bringing
Fidel Castro to power.
February 1960 Winter Olympics

Vice President Nixon opens

the VIII Winter Olympiad
at Squaw Valley, California.

The USA win 3 golds. The

USSR top the medal table
with 7 golds.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
 John F. Kennedy
• Son of controversial Joe Kennedy, a wealthy businessman
and disgraced former US Ambassador to Britain, Senator
John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts runs for the
Democratic nomination for President, which he wins.
• Kennedy is handicapped by being a Catholic and the
potentially the youngest ever President.
• He trades on his youthfulness and his record as a war hero
in his own right.
• He is aided by his glamorous lifestyle and his beautiful wife,
Jacqueline.
• His running mate is the Texan Lyndon B. Johnson.
 Nixon v Kennedy: TV Debates

• A series of TV debates take place for the first time in US

history. Kennedy is judged to have won. Radio listeners
believe Nixon was the winner.
 8 November 1960 Election

• Kennedy defeats Nixon in the Electoral College by 303 to 219 votes.

• The popular vote was very close. JFK’s 34,226,731 to Nixon’s 34,108,157
• Above, The Kennedy Family celebrate
 1961 John. F Kennedy’s Inauguration

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask

what you can do for your country.”
 1961 JFK’s team

Veteran politician Ford CEO Robert S.

Lyndon Baines Johnson McNamara is
is Vice President appointed Defense
Secretary
1961 Robert F. Kennedy Attorney General

• Kennedy appoints
younger brother
Bobby as Attorney
General
 “Camelot”

President Kennedy and his children Caroline and John Jr

 1 March 1961 Peace Corps

• JFK creates the Peace Corp, sending young

American volunteers to developing countries
12 February 1961 First Man in Space

• Cosmonaut Major Yuri

Gagarin becomes the
First Man in Space
aboard Soviet rocket
Vostok 1
5 May 1961 First American in Space

• Commander Alan
Shepard becomes
the first American
in space
 May 1961 Kennedy’s Moon shot Speech

• “This nation should commit itself to achieving the

goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on
the moon and returning him safely to the Earth”
 May 1961 LBJ visits Vietnam

• Vice President Johnson visits South Vietnam. Shortly

after US ‘advisors’ begin to flood South East Asia
 The First Lady

• Jackie Kennedy is revered as a style icon and

her glamour wins many friends
 April 1961 Bay of Pigs

A failed invasion force of 5000 US backed Cuban exiles causes

embarrassment for the White House. Castro remains in
power.
 June 1961 Vienna Summit

• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev meets Kennedy.

Khrushchev believes JFK to be weak and inexperienced
 August 1961 Berlin Wall

• The Soviet backed East Germany erect the

Berlin Wall dividing Berlin
12 September 1962 Kennedy speech at Rice
University

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to

the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are
hard”
The Apollo Program was well and truly born.
 September/October 1962

• Two people die during University of Mississippi

riots
October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

A US naval blockade around Cuba – who have installed

Soviet missiles - almost brings the USA and the
USSR to nuclear war.
November 1962 California Governor Race

Former Vice President Richard Nixon loses the race

for Governor of California to incumbent Pat Brown
 June 1963

• Black students admitted to University of Alabama

26 June 1963 Berlin Wall address

“Ich bein ein Berliner”

 Robert Kennedy’s war on organised crime

The Attorney General waged a war on mafia and organised

crime. Convictions rose some 800% during his term in
office.
28 August 1963 “I Have A Dream”

Dr Martin
Luther King
addresses
200,000
people in
Washington
DC
 2 November 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem
assassinated

• South Vietnamese President Diem is overthrown and

murdered in a coup d’etat.
• The US Government knew in advance of the plot but
declined to intervene.
 22 November 1963
Nightmare on Elm Street

President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas Texas

The President is rushed to hospital, but after suffering severe head
wounds is given the Last Rites by a priest and then pronounced
dead.
 CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite breaks down announcing President
Kennedy’s death

“From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: "President

Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. 2 o'clock
Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago”
 1963 - LBJ

• LBJ is sworn in as 36th President of the USA aboard Air

Force One.
 Lee Harvey Oswald
Former US marine and
Soviet defector, Lee
Harvey Oswald is
arrested on suspicion of
being the assasin who
fired the fateful shots
from the Texas Book
Depository
24 November 1963
• Lee Harvey
Oswald is
murdered live
on TV by Jack
Ruby.

• This event fuels

conspiracy
theories that
exist to this day.
 1963 JFK Funeral

John F. Kennedy Jr salutes his fathers funeral

cortege
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961-63)

President Kennedy’s grave in Arlington

Cemetery, Washington DC
 May 1964

LBJ delivers speech on his ‘Great Society’

 1964 LBJ signs Civil Rights Act

President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act which ended

racial segregation in schools and in the working
environment.
 Vietnam
The Vietnam conflict was similar
in set up to Korea.

The communist controlled North

versus the US backed South.

Hanoi was the capital of the

North

Saigon was South Vietnam’s

capital.
 August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin

• USS Maddox is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin

by North Vietnam
 Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh helped free
North Vietnam from
French rule.

Becomes President of
North Vietnam in 1945

Leader of the Vietcong –

the National Liberation
Front for South Vietnam
 3 September 1964 RFK quits

Robert Kennedy resigns as Attorney General, amid

rumours of a feud with President Johnson.
 October 1964 Khrushchev's Removal

Soviet Leader Khrushchev is ousted by Leonid

Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin
 1964 Election

LBJ defeats Barry Goldwater by 486 Electoral

College votes to 52
 1964 New York Senate Race

Robert Kennedy wins New York senate seat with

backing from President Johnson
1965 Vietnam Escalation
• At the end of
1965 180,000
US troops
were in South
Vietnam.
• At end of 1966
it was
350,000.
• By 1967
500,000 men
were
stationed in
South East
Asia.
February/March 1965 Aerial attack on South
and North Vietnam begins
 August 1965 Watts Riots

A 6 day riot in
LA costs 34
lives. The
causes are
attributed to
discrimination
against blacks
August 1965 LBJ signs Voting Rights Act

• President Johnson
passes into law the
Voting Rights Act
which outlawed
discriminatory
voting practices
designed to prevent
blacks from voting
2 November 1965

Quaker Norman Morrison

sets fire to himself in
protest against US
involvement in Vietnam
outside Robert
McNamara’s offices
13 January 1966

Robert C. Weaver
becomes the first
black cabinet
member
 15 May 1966

Thousands of anti war protesters

demonstrate in Washington DC
 1966 Muhammad Ali

“I aint got no quarrel

with the Vietcong”

World Heavyweight champion

Muhammad Ali comes out
against the Vietnam War
 October 1966 LBJ visits Vietnam

President Johnson visits US troops in South

Vietnam attempting to boost morale
 8 November New Governor for California

Former actor, Ronald Wilson Reagan wins the

race for California Governor.
 27 January 1967

The crew of Apollo 1 are killed in a fire during a

test.
 4 April 1967

In New York, Dr Martin Luther King denounces

the war in Vietnam
 8 June 1967

USS Liberty attacked by friendly Israeli aircraft

killing 34 sailors
 June 20 1967 Muhammad Ali jailed

Muhammad Ali is jailed for 5 years for refusing

the draft
 23 July 1967 Detroit Race Riots

43 people killed in race riots. Other riots have and

will occur in Minneapolis, Newark, Tampa and
other cities
 August 30 1967

Thurgood Marshall is appointed the first black

Justice of the US Supreme Court
 31 January 1968

North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, a series of

attacks across South Vietnam
 1 February 1968

Richard Nixon announces his candidacy for the

Republican Party nomination for President
 16 March 1968 My-Lai Massacre

• 347 civilians murdered by US troops in

Vietnam
 16 March 1968

New York senator Bobby Kennedy announces he

will stand for the Democratic Party nomination
31 March 1968 LBJ not to run again

President
Johnson
decides to
withdraw
from the
Presidential
race
 4 April 1968

Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated in

Memphis by James Earl Ray
4 April 1968

Fearing mass riots, in

Indianapolis, Robert Kennedy
makes an impassioned plea
for unity after Dr Martin
Luther King’s death.
Major riots break out, but not
in Indianapolis.
 11 April 1968 LBJ signs Civil Rights Act

The 1968 version made it illegal to decline to sell or rent

housing to a person based on religion or ethnicity
 May 1968 McNamara resigns

Robert S. McNamara
resigns as Secretary of
Defense, a post he held
since January 1961
 5 June 1968

Senator Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by

Sirhan Sirhan in the Ambassador Hotel, Los
Angeles
16 October 1968

At the Mexico
Olympics, 2 black
athletes who win gold
and bronze in the 200
metres raise their fists
in a Black Power
salute
 November 1968

Richard Milhous Nixon is elected to the Office

of the President of the United States of
America
 December 1968 “Earthrise”

Apollo 8 send back a famous image of Earth

 May 1969

A teenager dies of a mystery illness in St Louis,

Missouri. This is the first known case of HIV/Aids.
 28 June 1969

Stonewall Riots in New York begin the Gay

Rights movement
 18 July 1969

Edward Kennedy, younger brother of JFK and RFK is

involved in the Chappaquiddick incident in which a
young woman dies
 20 July 1969

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz

Aldrin set foot on the Moon. It cost $24 billion.
 August 1969

Woodstock Music Festival occurs in upstate

New York
 September 1969

• North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh dies

15 October 1969

Hundreds of
thousands more
protest against the
Vietnam war
 3 November 1969

President Nixon asks for the ‘Silent Majority’ to

support the war
The final Vietnam War US casualty list is as
follows:

DEAD 58,159
WOUNDED 303,635
MISSING 1,719
Epilogue
November 17 1970 14 men charged over My Lai
massacre. Only 1 was finally convicted, Lt
William Calley.
In August 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as President facing
impeachment over the Watergate scandal
29 March 1975 US troops finally leave Vietnam.
After the fall of Saigon, it was renamed Ho
Chi Minh City
• Fidel Castro remained President of Cuba until
standing down in February 2008.