Americans Respond to the Vietnam War: A Document Based Question Activity - TeachRock
All of the materials and some good ideas of how students can analyze them and share what they find.
18: Turbulent 1960s
Admiral Jeremiah Denton Blinks T-O-R-T-U-R-E using Morse Code as P.O.W. - YouTube
That might be a good way to teach students about the importance of context. Just show the short video to them (only about a minute and a half) and they can listen to him saying that he is healthy and being fed well. etc. Make sure they don't see anything else on the page. Although we can take what he is saying at face value, when we consider the context, our understanding changes. They might notice that he is blinking a lot. He is doing that on purpose - he is blinking the word "torture" in morse code. That is what context does to interpretation.
"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan 1964 - YouTube
If we "Trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state" ..." we'll take the first step into a thousand years of darkness"
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960–1974 brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 125,000 pages of text and 50 hours of video at completion, this searchable collection is the definitive electronic resource for students and scholars researching this important period in American history, culture, and politics.
President Nixon 's daily schedule, March 1972
Sometimes the most prosaic historical evidence can be the most informative. Teachers can have students skim through these diaries to get a sense of what a president's day looked like in the early 1970s. Many of the names may surface in a Watergate lesson, do any of the events listed correspond to other events teachers talk about?
Barry Goldwater 1964 Campaign Film, "Choice": Opening - YouTube
This excerpt from a Goldwater campaign film that the candidate ultimately vetoed does give insight into the growing cultural divide of the 1960s that has continued for the next fifty years. Teachers can advance to the 2:30 minute mark and show just a minute of the video to get value from the clip.
1968 United States presidential election in New Jersey - Wikipedia
New Jersey teachers should always let students know that George Wallace took 9% of the vote in New Jersey in 1968. His was not just a "southern" message. If this sparks a discussion, remind then that Abraham Lincoln did not win New Jersey in 1864
'Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam,' LIFE Magazine, June 1969 | Time.com
Across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed in seven days halfway around the world "in connection with the conflict in Vietnam."
Moments of Crisis: Watergate - Teaching American History
Webinar recording of more than an hour addressing Watergate. This is for teacher's only
New Jersey election results in 1969 - rejects lowering voting age from 21 to 18
In this election, voters rejected a referendum to lower the voting age to 18. Why? Is there something students can find in these results that answer that question or raise questions that can be answered to help understand it better?
G. Harrold Carswell - Nixon Nominee for Supreme Court rejected by Senate 51 - 45
Teachers can grab material from Carswell's support for segregation and present it to students with the goal of having them think about his nomination for the Supreme court. What does this say about the United States in 1969?
Licklider -- Intergalactic -- Aliens
The title of this 1963 document seems suspicious, but it is only the product of a scientist's sens of humor. This memo from the Advanced Products Research Agency (ARPA) is one of the foundational plans for what would become the internet
The Computer as a Communications Device - JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor
April 1968 - Thirty years before Americans started to access the internet through their phones, JCR Licklider predicted how computers would change how people live their lives with astonishing accuracy.
Richard Nixon and the Rise of American Environmentalism | Science History Institute
An easily forgotten aspect of the Nixon presidency may have had a larger impact than what Nixon is generally known for. This article shows a scientific perspective of an American preisdency
Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945) | The American Yawp Reader
Students may be surprised to see the "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" in Vietnam's Declaration of Indepdence
Lyndon Johnson's Watergate | The Heritage Foundation
Did the Johnson whitehouse order the FBI to surveill the Goldwater campaign? This article and others make this claim and it was repeated by Republicans at the Impeachment Hearings of Donald Trump - is this true? What is the evidence?
Re-examining the 1960s, Part Two | Teaching Tolerance
This longer article is only for teachers in the summer or over a break when they have time to step back and look at the last semester of the US II course and consider how they teach the 1960-1990 period. It's important to note that this professor talking about his approach is predicated on a narrative structure to history instruction, only on a much broader scale than the taught narrative canon. Such an approach is doomed to collapse of its own weight - because we can't include everything.
Desert Sun 24 March 1969 — Rally for Decency Orange Bowl
35,000 teenagers packed into the Orange Bowl for a "rally for decency" changes the narrative of the cultural rebellion of the 1960s
Robert Kennedy Speech - Martin Luther King's Death - YouTube
Not only could Bobby Kennedy just quote Aeschylus off the top of his head, he can touch a moment without any preparation. THis is arguably the best contemporaneous political speech in American history. Teachers should skip the "I have a dream" clip they have seen a dozen times before and use this 4 minute speech instead
Letter from House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford to President Richard M. Nixon | National Archives
The summary introduction included with this document gives teachers and students a brief but concise description of the resignation of Spiro Agnew and the selection and appointment of Gerald Ford as Vice President in 1973
An Evening at the White House with Merle Haggard - YouTube
This an example of the growing cultural divide between the Muskogee America and the Woodstock America.
Vaccine History: Developments by Year | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Never ever part of any US History course anywhere, that is - before Covid-19. Now this should be included in every US History course in the nation
Barry Goldwater, Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech (1964)
Goldwater's acceptance speech is used by many historians to mark the birth of the modern conservative movement. It has quotes for "Do Nows", lesson introductions, DBQs and full analysis lessons. Creative teachers can throw it into a lesson about today and perhaps convince students this speech was made in 2016 - see if they can be convinced
This 1967 educational film predicts the technology we’d be using in the future - YouTube
There are many examples of predictions of the future that were wrong, this one is eerily accurate. Showing students this Bell Labs view of the future made in 1967 might make students wonder why this vision of the future didn't come more quickly given how accurate it was. Or maybe teachers can show it just for fun.
Hard Hat Riots — Blog - For The Record — NYC Department of Records & Information Services
Article with images and film footage of what was called the "Hard Hat Riot". This includes other primary source documents such as posters using images from Kent State to motivate students to march and strike
LBJ and Richard Russell on Vietnam | Miller Center
This is a recorded conversation between President Lyndon Johnson and Senator Richard Russell concerning Vietnam in May 1964, before Tonkin. This includes the audio and the text, showing the remarkable difference between what Johnson is saying in public and what he is saying in private. It also shows that Johnson and Russell agreed that they didn't "know what we are going to get out of there?
NBC NEWS - 1968 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION (NIGHT 3) - YouTube
Raw footage from the television broadcast, not a documentary. It is much more authentic and effective for understanding to show students what Americans saw on their television sets rather than a documentary in which footage is edited for the film.
Richard Nixon 1968 Campaign Ads - YouTube
Nine minutes of Nixon-Agnew television commercials from 1968
![[Article] The Paranoid Style in American Politics, By Richard Hofstadter | Harper's Magazine](https://rdl.ink/render/https%3A%2F%2Fharpers.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F06%2Fharpers-d-1500x500-1.jpeg?width=92&height=&ar=&mode=&format=avif&dpr=2)
[Article] The Paranoid Style in American Politics, By Richard Hofstadter | Harper's Magazine
Written in the 60s, this article says much about the politics of 2020
Remembering the original Woodstock, 1969 - Rare Historical Photos