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The Peace Corps sentthousands of young Americans abroad to assist underdeveloped countries. The Alliance forProgress was designed as a broad assault upon the economic and social problems of LatinAmerica.In June 1961 a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles supported by the CIA attempted aninvasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Although the attempt was a dismal failure, the SovietUnion tried to install Soviet mediation-range ballistic missiles and bombers in Cuba.
Kennedymet the Soviet Union challenge and displayed great mind in dealing with what was probablythe most serious confrontation of the Cold War era. He gave the promise not to invade Cuba.The leader of the Soviet Union Nikita.Khrushchev also promised to recall the weapons fromCuba. The two leaders succeeded in setting up a “Hot Line” to facilitate a quick exchange ofviews in case of major crises, and in signing a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that halted surfaceatmospheric and outer space testing.
While Kennedy was president he frequently said: “All Iwant them to say about me is what they said about John Adams, “He kept the peace”. In thespeech he had intended to give in Dallas on November 22,1963, the day of his assassination,Kennedy declared: “We ask…that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that wemay achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ”peace on earth, goodwilltoward men”. Kennedy’s sensible policy not only reduced the tension between the two butalso started the policy of so-called “détente”.Even the long and bloody war in Vietnam (1965-73), finished by the victory of thelatter, was not allowed to interfere into it. In May 1972 President Nixon flew to Moscow tosign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union.
The idea of SALTwas to slow down the arms race as well as to make war between them less likely. When theSoviet troops marched into Afghanistan in 1979 American Congress refused to renew theSALT agreement.Both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to develop new,more deadly nuclear missiles and in the early 1980s détente looked dead. In the middle of the1980s American military strength was increased so much that president Reagan realized thenecessity to slow down the race M. Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985 in the USSR, alsobelieved that the huge cost of the arms race was crippling the Soviet Union economy.
In 1987Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty. Accordingto the treaty both countries agreed to destroy all their land-based medium and shorter-rangenuclear missiles within 3 years. A hope was born that a new time of peaceful cooperationbetween the SU and the USA might be possible now. “I believe that future generations willlook back to this time and see it as a turning point in world history. We are not in a cod warnow” the British prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in 1988 .Afro-Americans after the World War IIWorld War II paved the way for change in the he area of civil rights. In 1946 presidentTruman created a President’s Committee to investigate the status of civil rights in America andrecommend their improvements. In 1947 the committee called for changes in lynch laws, votinglaws, for elimination of discrimination in the armed forces and in the federal civil servicethrough the creation of the Fair Employment board. A lot of cases were passed to the SupremeCourt.
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of children in public schools on thebasis of race as unconstitutional. After the decision had been given, the question appeared howthe nation, and particularly the Southern population, would respond to itUnder President D. Eisenhower desegregation made progress. But in the Deep Southresistance to it began even to harden. White Citizen’s groups were created, and the Ku KluxKlan was revived. In 1956 nineteen Southern senators issued a “Manifesto” against “forcedintegration”. Economic reprisals were taken against blacks and the progressive organizationswere under constant fire.
The first open official resistance occurred in Little Rock (Arkansas),when the school board approved of a plan to admit a few black students to central High all-whiteschool. The night before the opening of the school the governor of Arkansas appeared ontelevision to announce that he was strongly against the plan. In 1963 President Kennedy had todispatch regular army troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to put down a riot when black JamesMeredith tried to be enrolled as a university student. “ It ought to be possible for Americanstudents of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed bytroops”,- the president commented..
By 1964 only 1.17% of all black students were attendingschools with white pupils. Schools for black students were usually much inferior to schools inmiddle-class neighborhoodsOn December 1, 1955 black woman Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Alabama and satdown in the free whites-only section, as she was very much tired. Whites and the bus driverbegan to threaten her, but she did not move. Her arrest proved to be the catalyst for a new blackprotest movement. Under the leadership of Baptist clergyman Martin Luther King, Montgomeryblacks formed the Improvement Association, boycotted the bus lines, and referred their case tothe state court and then to the Supreme Court. Seventy-five percent of the black populationwalked to work.
Both the District court and Supreme Court ruled that segregated busing wasunconstitutional. The movement propelled King into a position of national prominence and led tothe organization of a regional group called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference orSCLC, a group of one hundred southern clergymen of the beliefs that churches and churchleaders must assume civil rights. From the beginning its emphasis was on nonviolence, and itsguiding light was Dr. Martin Luther King. The organization was active in the areas of voterregistration, protests, and citizenship. Although SCLC preached nonviolence, blacks werebeaten, set upon by police dogs, and hit with water from high-pressure water hoses. Still thebrutal treatment of black demonstrators shown by national television little by little stirred thenation’s conscience.
More and more whites became convinced that it was time for the blacks toachieve equality.Martin Luther King was primarily responsible for the March on Washington in 1963for Jobs and Freedom – the largest civil rights rally in American history. Over 250000 blacks andwhites gathered to ask the president for a federal fair employment practice. They also demandednew civil rights legislation. The protests of the 1950s, the March on Washington, Birmingham,and the consciences of white Americans climaxed in a monumental Civil Rights Act in 1964,claiming the discrimination based on race or sex in all public facilities and in all areas ofinterstate commerce as illegal. The Voting Rights Act abolished the number of discriminatingdevices and provided protection for persons seeking the right to vote.From 1965 to 1968 King’s direction was a much more northerly one.
He becameinvolved in peace movements against the Vietnamese War and in better housing conditions forblacks in northern ghettos. King’s leadership cannot be overestimated. He was the driving forceof the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the apostle of nonviolent protest. He viewed theworld in terms of a brotherhood of people and accomplished so much more than black leadersbefore him. King never lived to see whether his “dream” would be realized. . His life was cutshort by his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TennesseeBlack Americans began to play a much greater role in American society.
The blackmiddle class has appeared. The struggle was long and hard, but blacks have gained morepositions of power and prestige than ever before in politics, in the media, in police, in justice, ineducation, in sports and offer a lot of promise. The slogan “black is beautiful” today has taken ona new meaning In Virginia, Douglas Wilder became the nation’s first elected black governor.When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, there were only 300 black elected officials,now there are more than 7000.Emanuel Cleaver was elected mayor of Kansas City – a city whereonly one of four votes is black.
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