Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 24
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The incipient nations of Africa were rebellious.Fidel Castro had taken control of Cuba. Unrest was evident in all LatinAmerica. Kennedy’s first two innovations – the Peace Corps and theAlliance for Progress – captured the imagination of much of the world.The Peace Corps sent thousands of young Americans abroad to assistunderdeveloped countries. The Alliance for Progress was designed as abroad assault upon the economic and social problems of Latin America.In June 1961 a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles supported by the CIAattempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
Although the attemptwas a dismal failure, the Soviet Union tried to install Soviet mediationrange ballistic missiles and bombers in Cuba. Kennedy met the SovietUnion challenge and displayed great mind in dealing with what wasprobably the most serious confrontation of the Cold War era. He gave thepromise not to invade Cuba. The leader of the Soviet UnionNikita.Khrushchev also promised to recall the weapons from Cuba. Thetwo leaders succeeded in setting up a “Hot Line” to facilitate a quickexchange of views in case of major crises, and in signing a Nuclear Test93Ban Treaty that halted surface atmospheric and outer space testing.
WhileKennedy was president he frequently said: “All I want them to say aboutme 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 dayof his assassination, Kennedy declared: “We ask…that we may be worthyof our power and responsibility, that we may achieve in our time and forall time the ancient vision of ”peace on earth, goodwill toward men”.Kennedy’s sensible policy not only reduced the tension between the twobut also started the policy of so-called “détente”.Even the long and bloody war in Vietnam (1965-73), finished by thevictory of the latter, was not allowed to interfere into it. In May 1972President Nixon flew to Moscow to sign the Strategic Arms LimitationTreaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union.
The idea of SALT was to slowdown the arms race as well as to make war between them less likely.When the Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan in 1979 AmericanCongress refused to renew the SALT agreement. Both the United Statesand the Soviet Union continued to develop new, more deadly nuclearmissiles and in the early 1980s détente looked dead. In the middle of the1980s American military strength was increased so much that presidentReagan realized the necessity to slow down the race M.
Gorbachev, whocame to power in 1985 in the USSR, also believed that the huge cost ofthe arms race was crippling the Soviet Union economy. In 1987Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force(INF) treaty. According to the treaty both countries agreed to destroy alltheir land-based medium and shorter-range nuclear missiles within 3years. A hope was born that a new time of peaceful cooperation betweenthe SU and the USA might be possible now.
“I believe that futuregenerations will look back to this time and see it as a turning point inworld history. We are not in a cod war now” the British Prime MinisterMargaret 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.
In1946 president Truman created a President’s Committee to investigate thestatus of civil rights in America and recommend their improvements. In1947 the committee called for changes in lynch laws, voting laws, forelimination of discrimination in the armed forces and in the federal civilservice through the creation of the Fair Employment board. A lot of caseswere passed to the Supreme Court.
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that94segregation of children in public schools on the basis of race asunconstitutional. After the decision had been given, the question appearedhow the nation, and particularly the Southern population, would respondto it.Under President D. Eisenhower desegregation made progress. But inthe Deep South resistance to it began even to harden.
White Citizen’sgroups were created, and the Ku Klux Klan was revived. In 1956nineteen Southern senators issued a “Manifesto” against “forcedintegration”. Economic reprisals were taken against blacks and theprogressive organizations were under constant fire. The first open officialresistance occurred in Little Rock (Arkansas), when the school boardapproved of a plan to admit a few black students to central High all-whiteschool. The night before the opening of the school the governor ofArkansas appeared on television to announce that he was strongly againstthe plan. In 1963 President Kennedy had to dispatch regular army troopsto Oxford, Mississippi, to put down a riot when black James Meredithtried to be enrolled as a university student. “It ought to be possible forAmerican students of any color to attend any public institution they selectwithout having to be backed by troops”, - the president commented.
By1964 only 1.17% of all black students were attending schools with whitepupils. Schools for black students were usually much inferior to schoolsin middle-class neighborhoods.On December 1, 1955 black woman Rosa Parks boarded a bus inAlabama and sat down in the free whites-only section, as she was verymuch tired. Whites and the bus driver began to threaten her, but she didnot move. Her arrest proved to be the catalyst for a new black protestmovement. Under the leadership of Baptist clergyman Martin LutherKing, Montgomery blacks formed the Improvement Association,boycotted the bus lines, and referred their case to the state court and thento the Supreme Court.
Seventy-five percent of the black populationwalked to work. Both the District court and Supreme Court ruled thatsegregated busing was unconstitutional. The movement propelled Kinginto a position of national prominence and led to the organization of aregional group called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference orSCLC, a group of one hundred southern clergymen of the beliefs thatchurches and church leaders must assume civil rights.
From the beginningits emphasis was on nonviolence, and its guiding light was Dr. MartinLuther King. The organization was active in the areas of voter95registration, protests, and citizenship. Although SCLC preachednonviolence, blacks were beaten, set upon by police dogs, and hit withwater from high-pressure water hoses. Still the brutal treatment of blackdemonstrators shown by national television little by little stirred thenation’s conscience. More and more whites became convinced that it wastime for the blacks to achieve equality.Martin Luther King was primarily responsible for the March onWashington in 1963 for Jobs and Freedom – the largest civil rights rallyin American history.
Over 250000 blacks and whites gathered to ask thepresident for a federal fair employment practice. They also demandednew civil rights legislation. The protests of the 1950s, the March onWashington, Birmingham, and the consciences of white Americansclimaxed in a monumental Civil Rights Act in 1964, claiming thediscrimination based on race or sex in all public facilities and in all areasof interstate commerce as illegal. The Voting Rights Act abolished thenumber of discriminating devices and provided protection for personsseeking the right to vote.From 1965 to 1968 King’s direction was a much more northerly one.He became involved in peace movements against the Vietnamese Warand in better housing conditions for blacks in northern ghettos. King’sleadership cannot be overestimated.
He was the driving force of the CivilRights movement of the 1960s and the apostle of nonviolent protest. Heviewed the world in terms of a brotherhood of people and accomplishedso much more than black leaders before him. King never lived to seewhether his “dream” would be realized. . His life was cut short by hisassassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TennesseeBlack Americans began to play a much greater role in Americansociety.
The black middle class has appeared. The struggle was long andhard, but blacks have gained more positions of power and prestige thanever before in politics, in the media, in police, in justice, in education, insports and offer a lot of promise. The slogan “black is beautiful” todayhas taken on a new meaning In Virginia; Douglas Wilder became thenation’s first elected black governor. When the Voting Rights Act of1965 was passed, there were only 300 black elected officials, now thereare more than 7000.Emanuel Cleaver was elected mayor of Kansas City –a city where only one of four votes is black. General Colin Powell rose toprominence during the Gulf War and was invited to Bush administrationlater to the position of State Secretary. He was changed by black woman96Conzolesa Right.
The climax – the election of the first black PresidentBarack Obama at the end of 1908.Barack Obama’s trip to Moscow inJune, 2009 was an impressive diplomatic performance to shift theorientation of U.S.-Russia relations fro the past to the future.The American Indian Today. During World War II approximately 25thousand Indians served in the armed forces, the majority as enlisted menin the army. Many were awarded for bravery. Because of increasedcontact with the white world, some Indians preferred the white man’sways and were assimilated. Many others returned to the reservations.Those who remained in white society lived in two worlds with twocultures.After World War 11 under the Eisenhower administration in 1953 somemeasures were taken to accelerate assimilation and destroy remainingIndian culture, which provided a real threat to the tribes.
So-called“relocation” policy was implemented. Many Indians were screened, andthose judged best suited to survive in the cities were chosen in thereservations.” Relocation Centers” exist in Los Angeles, San Francisco,Chicago, Phoenix, and Minneapolis. Some Indians were successfullyrelocated and started to live in the white urban world. Others returned tothe reservations or remained jobless and homeless in the city.However, not all postwar policies were so disastrous.
In 1946 an IndianClaims Commission was established to make amendments for breaking ofsome 400 treaties made in colonial days. It gave permission to the Indian,whose number is now about two million, to sue the government foradjusted compensation for lands or other properties taken from them asthe result of broken treaties. Under President Kennedy the governmentperused new programs of education, vocational training, housing, andeconomic development.
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