History 301

Devine

Fall 2013

 

Study Questions: W.J. Rorabaugh, Kennedy and the Promise of the Sixties

 

Introduction

 

1. How were the early 1960s “promising” in two distinct ways? Why did some aspects of this “promising” time pose problems?

 

2. How can a mood of national optimism and high hopes prove a double-edged sword for reformers’ efforts to bring about significant social change?

 

3. What were the pros and cons of more people giving public expression to private thoughts? How did this trend begin to change American culture during the early ‘60s?

 

4. Why were the early 1960s an “in-between time”?  Why does Rorabaugh believe JFK was well-suited to be president during such an “in-between time”?

 

 

Chapter 1

 

1. Why did the prosperity of the “Great Barbecue” make some Americans anxious and uncomfortable?

 

2. How did the election of 1960 mark a change in both the way candidates secured the presidential nomination and the way they campaigned for office?

 

3. How was Kennedy’s White House different than Eisenhower’s – how it was organized, the kinds of people who were hired, how decisions were made, etc.?

 

 

Chapter 2

 

1. How did the Cold War on the home front begin to change during the early 1960s

 

2. How did Americans react – both publicly and privately – to the Bay of Pigs fiasco?

 

3. Why did many Americans believe the US was “losing” the Cold War in the early 1960s? How did this fear play out in American society – in politics, in culture, in daily life?

 

4. How did WSP, SPU, and SDS differ from SANE? Why were these organizations more reflective of the national mood in the early ‘60s?

 

5. What does Rorabaugh mean when he says Kennedy’s policies could be “strangely enigmatic”? (64) What evidence does he cite to back up this claim?

 

 

Chapter 3

 

1. Why was MLK’s strategy of non-violence a significant innovation in the Civil Rights struggle? Why does Rorabaugh believe that King “depended upon and embraced the widespread optimism of the times”? (69)

 

2. Why did the Civil Rights struggle in the US have international ramifications?

 

3. How did the emergence of a rising black middle class, migration patterns, and television shape the younger generation of Civil Rights activists?

 

4. How did SNCC’s attitude and organizational structure reflect the mood of a “promising time”?

 

5. Why was Mississippi a particularly difficult nut to crack for the Civil Rights Movement? What long term conditions and short term tactics inhibited racial progress?

 

6. What lessons did MLK learn from the failure of desegregation efforts in Albany, Georgia? How did he apply them in Birmingham?

 

7. Why did events in Birmingham prove a catalyst for the expansion of the Civil Rights Movement?

 

8. Why was the death of Medgar Evers at turning point in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement?

 

9. How does Rorabaugh assess MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech? What were its strengths and shortcomings?

 

10. How did activists in the Civil Rights Movement show that the “personal was political”?

 

 

Chapter 4

 

1. What accounts for Jackie Kennedy’s popularity during the early 1960s? How did her image enhance the sense it was a “promising time”?

 

2. How did the decline of the “Protestant Establishment” change American culture and politics during the early 1960s? Why did the “Establishment’s” authority come into question?

 

3. How did attitudes about marriage, sex, and sexuality reflect the ”in-between” nature of the early ‘60s? How did the relationship between Al Lowenstein and Barbara Boggs reflect this “in-between-ness”?

 

4. How did Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique challenge the notion that the early ‘60s were an optimistic, promising time? Why was the book able to get a positive reception in 1963, whereas it would not have ten or more years earlier?

 

 

Chapter 5

 

1. Why does Rorabaugh believe that during the 1950s there was no “broadly shared, coherent worldview” or “cosmology”?  How did ‘50s conservatism serve as “place holder” for such a cosmology?

 

2. How did the Beats herald the emergence of a “promising time”? What alternative did they offer to the 1950s culture of conformity?

 

3. How did the spontaneity of the avant-garde artists signal the arrival of a new cultural mood? Why did they believe that liberation came through the destruction of existing cultural underpinnings (182)?

 

4. How did Bob Dylan’s songwriting demonstrate the influences of ideas that had emerged during the late 1950s and early 1960s? What distinguished Dylan’s work from that of 1930s singers like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie?

 

5. How was the folk revival of the early ‘60s a further illustration that this period was an “in-between” time – looking both forward and backward?

 

6. How did both Bob Dylan’s music and Andy Warhol’s painting test cultural limits and force audiences to reinterpret – yet not entirely reject – American culture?

 

7. How were Pop Art and the consumer culture related?

 

8. Why did psychedelic drugs attract such figures as Ginsberg, Huxley, Kesey, and Leary? What “promise” did they hold? Why were their differences of opinion regarding the dissemination and distribution of psychadelics?

 

 

Chapter 6

 

1. How did many Americans transform the single event of the Kennedy assassination into a commentary on the country?

 

2. How did television help the American people to “process” the assassination?

 

3. How did Kennedy’s death change public and private assessments of him and his presidency?

 

4. Why was Kennedy’s death especially troubling for the young?  What long term effect did it have on that generation?

 

5. Why does Rorabaugh conclude the early ‘60s were a promising age, not a golden age?

 

 

Conclusion

 

1. Rorabaugh argues that the Cold War was the “most important fact in American life” during the early ‘60s. How did it affect Kennedy’s approach to leadership? The Civil Rights Movement? The emerging culture that challenged old limits and hierarchies?