Although they had white supporters and sympathizers, the modern civil rights movement was designed, led, organized, and manned by African Americans, who placed themselves and their families on the front lines in the struggle for freedom. Their heroism was brought home to every American through newspaper, and later, television reports as their peaceful marches and demonstrations were violently attacked by law enforcement. Officers used batons, bullwhips, fire hoses, police dogs, and mass arrests to intimidate the protesters. The second characteristic of the movement is that it was not monolithic, led by one or two men. Rather it was a dispersed, grass-roots campaign that attacked segregation in many different places using many different tactics.

While some groups and individuals within the civil rights movement advocated Black Power, black separatism, or even armed resistance, the majority of participants remained committed to the principles of nonviolence, a deliberate decision by an oppressed minority to abstain from violence for political gain. Using nonviolent strategies, civil rights activists took advantage of emerging national network-news reporting, especially television, to capture national attention and the attention of Congress and the White House.

The leadership role of black churches in the movement was a natural extension of their structure and function. They offered members an opportunity to exercise roles denied them in society. Throughout history, the black church served not only as a place of worship but also as a community "bulletin board," a credit union, a "people's court" to solve disputes, a support group, and a center of political activism. These and other functions enhanced the importance of the minister. The most prominent clergyman in the civil rights movement was Martin Luther King, Jr. Time magazine's 1964 "Man of the Year" was a man of the people. His tireless personal commitment to and strong leadership role in the black freedom struggle won him worldwide acclaim and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Students and seminarians in both the South and the North played key roles in every phase of the civil rights movement—from bus boycotts to sit-ins to freedom rides to social movements. Church and student-led movements developed their own organizational and sustaining structures. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the SCLC), founded in 1957, coordinated and raised funds, mostly from northern sources, for local protests and for the training of black leaders. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, founded in 1957, developed the "jail-no-bail" strategy. SNCC's role was to develop and link sit-in campaigns and to help organize freedom rides, voter registration drives, and other protest activities. These three new groups often joined forces with existing organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, and the National Urban League. The NAACP and its Director, Roy Wilkins, provided legal counsel for jailed demonstrators, helped raise bail, and continued to test segregation and discrimination in the courts as it had been doing for half a century. CORE initiated the 1961 Freedom Rides which involved many SNCC members, and CORE's leader James Farmer later became executive secretary of SNCC.

The administration of President John Kennedy was a mixed blessing. Kennedy supported enforcement of desegregation in schools and public facilities. Attorney General Robert Kennedy brought more than 50 lawsuits in four states to secure black Americans' right to vote. However, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, concerned about possible Communist influence in the civil rights movement and personally antagonistic to Martin Luther King Jr., used the FBI to investigate King and other civil rights leaders.

The Kennedy administration

Kennedy was president for only about 1,000 days. This brief tenure was marked by such notable events as the acceleration of the United States' role in the space race, the beginning of the escalation of the American role in the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba -- events that aggravated the Cold War with the USSR, attack of the Freedom Rides, mob violence directed at James Meredith during the integration of the University of Mississippi, the jailing of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Birmingham campaingn, and the appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy to his Cabinet as Attorney General.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald, apprehended for the crime, was himself fatally shot by Jack Ruby before he could be formally charged or brought to trial. Four days after Kennedy and Oswald were killed, President Lyndon Johnson created the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination.

After Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson served out the remainder of the term in manner he felt was consistent with Kennedy's agenda. He convinced Kennedy's cabinet to serve out the rest of the term, including Robert Kennedy (despite the acrimonious relationship between Johnson and Kennedy). He also used his considerable political savvy to ensure passage the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These actions allowed Johnson to easily win the 1964 presidential election.

History of the United States (1964-1980)

Civil rights

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 changed the political mood of the country. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, capitalized on this situation, using a combination of the national mood and his own political savvy to push Kennedy's agenda; most notably, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Act had an immediate impact on federal, state and local elections. Within months of its passage on August 6, 1965, one quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one third by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout — 74% — and led the nation in the number of black leaders elected. In 1969 Tennessee had a 92.1% voter turnout, Arkansas 77.9% and Texas 73.1%.

Election of 1964

In the election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson positioned himself as a moderate, contrasting himself against his GOP opponent, Barry Goldwater, whom the campaign characterized as hardline right wing. Most famously, the Johnson campaign ran a commercial entitled the "Daisy Girl" ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals, which then segues into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion. The ads were a response to Goldwater's advocacy of tactical nuclear weapons in combatting communism in Asia.

Johnson soundly defeated Goldwater in the general election, winning 64.9% of the popular vote, the largest percentage differential since the 1824 election. However, Johnson's loss of support in Southern states was evident and signified a reversal in electoral fortunes for Democrats who had depended on the "solid South" as an electoral base.

Until the issue of civil rights divided conservative southern whites from the rest of the party, the political coalition of labor unions, minorities, liberals, and southern whites (the New Deal Coalition) had allowed the Democrats to control the government for nearly 30 years.

The War on Poverty and the Great Society

Many federal assistance programs for individuals and families, including Medicare, which pays for many of the medical costs of the elderly, were begun in the 1960s during President Lyndon Johnson's (1963-1969) "War on Poverty." Although some of these programs encountered financial difficulties in the 1990s and various reforms were proposed, they continue to have strong support from both of the United States' major political parties. In addition, the Medicaid program finances medical care for low-income families. Additionally, during the 1960s the federal government provided Food Stamps to help poor families obtain food, and the federal and state governments jointly provide welfare grants to support low-income parents with children.

The Vietnam War

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Tet Offensive

In many ways the Vietnam War was a direct successor to the French Indochina War which was fought, by the French, to maintain control of their colony, Indochina. After the Vietnamese communist forces, or Viet Minh (led by Ho Chi Minh) defeated the French colonial army in 1954, the colony was granted independence and was later partitioned into a communist North and noncommunist South.

In 1956 elections that might have reunified the country were cancelled because leaders in the South and their U.S. ally feared that Ho Chi Minh would win. In response, the National Liberation Front (NLF) (commonly known as the Viet Cong) was formed as a guerrilla movement, drawing from the South Vietnamese peasantry and working class, but with full support from the North to oppose the South Vietnamese government.

U.S. involvement in the war gradually increased, though there never was a formal declaration of war. The U.S. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 gave broad Congressional support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war. U.S. troop deployments and casualties steadily increased after this point.

At first, the U.S. public largely supported the war, but the NLF-led 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam shattered much of that support.

The antiwar movement

There had been a small movement of opposition to the war within certain quarters of the United States starting in 1964, especially on certain college campuses. Some in the U.S. opposed the war on moral grounds, while others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives or a clear exit strategy.

This was happening during a time of unprecedented leftist student activism, and of the arrival at college age of the demographically significant "baby boomers." World War II ended in 1945, and the Korean conflict ended in 1953; thus most, if not all, baby boomers had never been exposed to war.

In addition, the Vietnam War was unprecedented for the intensity of media coverage—it has been called the first television war—as well as for the stridency of opposition to the war by the so-called "New Left."

The divide between pro- and anti-war Americans would continue long after the conclusion of the war and become another factor leading to the "culture wars" that would increasingly divide Americans on into the Twenty-First century.