American History Tellers - The Cold War - The Long 1960s | 5

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

America sent a man to the moon in 1969, and with Neil Armstrong’s first steps, the United States projected to the world an image of American power, wealth and achievement. But it was hardly just for bragging rights. The space race started under Kennedy to compete with the Soviets on a global stage, but it was under Johnson that its goals became domestic. NASA, Head Start, Medicaid and even the war in Vietnam were domestic social programs, used at least in part to alleviate poverty, provide jobs and desegregate the country.But the spending on these programs birthed a new political movement on the right demanding smaller government - and attracted the ire of progressives on the left who thought the money spent on rockets to be misdirected. Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam intensified, costing the nation far more than just money.For more on NASA’s efforts to desegregate the South, check out the book “We Could Not Fail,” by Richard Paul and Steven Moss.For more on the African American women who worked as human computers for NASA, overcoming discrimination and sexism to change history, we recommend the book “Hidden Figures,” by Margot Lee Shetterly.Finally, Audra Wolfe’s book, “Competing with the Soviets,” was crucial to our overall understanding of the Cold War.Support the show by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine that it's spring, 1965. You're in Manhattan. It's a sunny day, but with enough of a breeze to keep things comfortable. You're at the playground with your four-year-old. Children swarm over the equipment, forming and breaking new alliances faster than you can follow. The sounds of laughter and happy screams fill the air.

Your daughter is making new friends on the merry-go-round. You're doing the same, but from the more stable setting of a bench. What are you doing for childcare? I need to go back to work, but I don't know what I'd do with my daughter. I can't wait for kindergarten this fall. I'm right there with you. But have you heard about Head Start? It's a free preschool program. It starts this summer. Free? How's that work? Is it through a church or something? A piercing scream briefly distracts you from this conversation, but it seems to be of delight. You keep an eye on the kids, but concentrate on what your new acquaintance has to say.

It's important. No, Head starts a new government program. There's an income test, but if you're below it, it's free. The kids get breakfast and physicals, too. You can volunteer if you want, but you don't have to. No strings attached. The program sounds almost too good to be true, but also just what you need. I'll check it out. After your day at the park, you start asking around. It seems like you're the last

person to hear about Head Start. Half the people you know have already enrolled their kids. When June rolls around, you're ready. You and your daughter head to the local rec center for her first day of preschool. The organizers have taken over the gym. You wouldn't call the transformation complete. You see a cluster of bench weights and basketballs shoved into a corner, but the walls are festooned in construction paper cutouts of sun, stars, and rainbows, and there's a pleasant odor of cheese sandwiches and milk. You spot a familiar face.

Hey, thanks for the tip. Want to grab a cup of coffee after drop-off? I'd love to, but I'm on staff. They put out a call for child care workers. I don't have much experience aside from family, but they offer training. Turns out Head Start's a jobs program, too. Everything about Head Start turns out to be a pleasant surprise. By the time summer's over, your daughter can write her own name and recite your phone number with confidence.

She knows her alphabet and proudly counts aloud to anyone who will listen. And there are benefits for you as well. There's a social worker on site. She signed you up for a new government program, Medicaid, and she's hooked you up with community legal services. You're hoping they can help you out with your landlord who hasn't made any of the repairs he's promised. President Johnson apparently meant it when he pledged a war on poverty. Yet, you can't help wonder about the language. Why a war?

Wasn't the country already involved in enough conflict? What did the war on poverty have to do with the new war in Vietnam? Could the United States successfully fight two wars on different fronts? What did the war on poverty have to do with the new war in Vietnam? Could the United States successfully fight two wars on different fronts? You and the rest of the country, we're about to find out. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking.

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Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. I'm Lindsey Graham. This is the fifth episode in our six-part series on the Cold War. So far, we've mostly focused on the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, the differences in ideology, the concept of containment, the threat of nuclear war. Today, we're turning the lens back to the domestic front. American politics and culture changed dramatically over the course of the Cold War. In 1955, a person could still lose their job for socializing with communists.

But by 1970, anti-war protests filled the streets. What happened? How did the United States go from limiting freedom of expression in the name of fighting the Cold War to fighting the concept of war itself? It's a complicated story involving everything from civil rights to the growing conservative movement. But no matter how you tell it, the story keeps coming back to one thing. People's ideas were changing about what government should and shouldn't do for America and Americans. Let's go back to 1961 when President Kennedy had just taken office.

Literally just taken office. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. That famous line is from Kennedy's inauguration address. It follows a rousing call for Americans to join with the citizens of the world to explore the stars, conquer the deserts, and eradicate disease. It was a call for sacrifice, for citizens to put aside their own particular needs in favor of the needs of their country and their world. And here's Kennedy just a few months later.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too. Again, the same themes, sacrifice and challenge. The United States can do anything, even the unthinkable goal of sending a man to the moon less than a decade after the country launched its first satellite. It would not be easy, but it would be worth it.

For Kennedy, the point of the space program was to show the rest of the world what Americans and their government could do. Kennedy delivered his moon speech at Rice University in Texas, a state that would benefit tremendously from the space program. In the video of the speech, you can see Vice President Lyndon Johnson, a native Texan, smiling broadly at that line. Johnson sitting right behind the president, doing the things that a vice president usually does when the president speaks, sometimes scribbling notes, other times looking around to see who he might recognize in the crowd.

There's another moment in this speech, though, about four and a half minutes in, where Johnson leans back, takes off his glasses, and wipes the sweat off his brow. Johnson couldn't know it then, but the hard task of sending a man to the moon would ultimately fall to him, not President Kennedy. The Apollo program was expensive, ambitious, and difficult, and the United States might well have abandoned it had Kennedy not been assassinated in 1963. But Johnson got the job done. Johnson had been a champion of spaceflight for most of his time in elected office. As Senate Majority Leader in the late 1950s, Johnson pushed through the legislation that created NASA. Even so, Johnson saw the space race somewhat differently

than Kennedy. For Kennedy, space was about prestige. The United States' technical reputation had suffered under the Soviet Union's early success with Sputnik. Kennedy wanted to show that democracy could accomplish just as much as communism. Kennedy, in other words, was looking outwards. Johnson certainly cared about national offense, but he also cared deeply about addressing poverty and racism. He believed that neither problem could be solved without fixing the other. In his first State of the Union address, delivered in January 1964, Johnson declared unconditional war on poverty in America. Johnson twisted every

arm in Congress to push through a suite of bills that committed the country to addressing racism and poverty. In just over a year, between June 1964 and August 1965, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the law that created Medicare and Medicaid. Collectively, these programs came Rights Act, and the law that created Medicare and Medicaid. Collectively, these programs came to be known as the Great Society. This was an expansive, optimistic vision of what the government could do, not for the rest of the world, but for Americans. And Johnson made sure NASA administrators understood that they were running a Great Society program, too. Imagine that it's 1965, and you're a recruiter for NASA. Your job is to visit colleges and universities

and convince young scientists and engineers to come help send a man to the moon. When you took this job, you assumed it would be a cakewalk. Who wouldn't want to work for NASA? And in fact, it's been no trouble at all signing up bright young men, even a few women, from the South's technical schools. But this isn't a straight numbers game. One day, your boss calls you in for a talk. So listen, I just got a call from Jim Webb up at headquarters. How are we doing on minority recruitment? Not much luck so far. Gone over

to Tuskegee, Morehouse, Prairie View, even up to Howard, but I can't even get anyone to meet with me. Your boss takes some notes, then looks across the brim of his horn-rimmed glasses. He's not happy. Those are good engineering schools. I know they're producing qualified people. You've got good jobs here. What's the problem?

You look back at him. He's a mirror image of yourself, only 15 years older. Both of you are white men in short-sleeved shirts, skinny ties, glasses. I suspect it's us, actually. Us? What do you mean? Well, the aerospace companies. Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop. They've all hired black recruiters, and those guys are snatching up all the engineers. For me, I'm not competitive in that space.

NASA's been very public about its commitment to civil rights, and NASA's a federal agency. Even Ebony has written about NASA's interest in black engineers. I just don't understand it. The air conditioning hums in the background. The heat and humidity of a southern summer is brutal. Yeah, with all due respect, sir, I think there's something else, too. Location. It's a hard sell asking the country's top black engineers to move to Florida, Alabama, Texas. We can't guarantee housing or schools for

their kids. California is a little more appealing. Over and over again, President Johnson made clear to NASA's administrator, Jim Webb, that he wanted the agency to hire minorities. And over and over again, NASA claimed it couldn't find them. In 1965, only a little over 3% of NASA's entire workforce, from engineers to janitors, was Black. And this was an agency whose major R&D sites were scattered across the very states where Black Americans lived. The brilliant Black women computers portrayed in the hit movie Hidden Figures were real. In a handful of cases, federal employment at NASA facilities offered rare career opportunities for Black scientific and technical professionals. But Johnson had hoped for more than this. In their book, We Could Not Fail, historians Richard Paul and Stephen Moss show how Johnson had hoped to use the power of a massive,

high-profile federal agency to desegregate the South. NASA didn't manage to pull this off, but the presence of an enormous federal agency with enormous federal powers did drive some more limited change. The Apollo program was decentralized. Only a relatively small fraction of the 400,000 people working in the space program worked directly for NASA. But NASA nevertheless insisted that its more than 20,000 contractors follow equal opportunity hiring rules.

And, unlike NASA itself, the contractors managed to find Black employees for all levels of their organizations. Giant facilities require enormous construction crews and ongoing maintenance. And in the 1960s, large organizations needed lots and lots of clerical support. Aerospace companies who valued their federal contracts hired minority workers, both in the South and elsewhere. Johnson was convinced that the United States could not become a great society without modernizing the South. Racism and segregation weren't the only problems plaguing the South in the 1950s and early 1960s. The South had an agricultural economy, and cotton was failing. Tractors and milking machines meant that farms needed fewer workers. The South's education system lagged, with little money invested in education at any level.

The region had fewer colleges and universities to train a changing workforce. Houston, Huntsville, Hampton, Cape Canaveral, even Hancock County, Mississippi, NASA built its facilities in a giant crescent above the Gulf of Mexico. And as predicted, the South changed. The space program brought new infrastructure, new money, and new people to the South. Communities that wanted NASA dollars learned to live with the federal rules that banned segregated facilities. Apollo was a jobs program, a regional development project, a civil rights program, and a technological spectacle all rolled up in one. And, against all odds, it succeeded at its most important task.

Contact right. Okay, engine stop. Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again.

Thanks a lot. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of their spacecraft and onto the moon. An estimated 600 million people, one-sixth of the world's population, watched the spectacle unfold on live television. It was a moment designed both to inspire humanity and display American strength. It was also phenomenally expensive. All told, Apollo cost more than $25 billion in 1970 currency. That's well over $100 billion in today's dollars. In 1964, the moment of peak spending,

the Apollo program absorbed almost 4% of the entire federal budget. And as we've seen, this wasn't the only thing Johnson was spending money on. Healthcare costs money. Job training programs cost money. Preschools cost money. And don't forget, the United States was also still engaged in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. In 1965, the United States had more than 30,000 nuclear weapons. 30,000. And each of these bombs needed a deployment system, planes, missiles, and warheads. By 1965, the U.S. had about 1,000 land-based ICBMs and another 400 or so submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

In the 1990s, the Brookings Institution attempted to put a dollar figure on this nuclear arsenal. The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project found that between 1940 and 1996, the United States spent nearly $5.5 trillion on its nuclear weapons complex. Analyst Stephen Schwartz puts this figure into context. If we could represent $5.8 trillion as a stack of dollar bills, it would reach from the Earth to the Moon and nearly back again a distance of more than 459,000 miles. That's a lot of money. And there's one more thing. Johnson was doing all of this while ramping up a war in Vietnam. that unveils the complex truth behind these scandals. In our exclusive season, The Hare Krishna Murders, dive into the twisted world of a rogue sect of Hare Krishnas. When devotees mysteriously disappear,

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And on Wondery+, you can binge entire new seasons before they're publicly available. Start your free trial of Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify to start listening today and uncover the real story behind America's most notorious scandals. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a

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It wasn't that long ago that the new year was just over the horizon. You made your resolutions, vowed to finally start that business, design that website, launch that blog. But now here we are, into 2018. The future is here, so don't put it off any longer. It's time to finally make your dream a reality, and you can do it with Squarespace. Whether you're showcasing your work, selling products or services, or promoting your physical or online business, Squarespace makes it incredibly easy to design the website of your dreams. Everything is optimized right out of the box. With analytics that help you grow in real time, built-in search engine optimization, and 24-7 award-winning customer support, the only thing stopping you from making it happen is you. The future is here. Make it brighter with Squarespace.

Go to squarespace.com for a free trial. And if you'd like to support American History Tellers and you want to hear more shows like it, then please, when you're ready to launch, use the offer code TELLERS to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com, offer code TELLERS. So, you're getting married. You know, even though there are movies and reality shows based entirely on the stress of planning a wedding, it wasn't until my own wedding

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It's a Saturday night, and your son's home from college. The dinner table brims with the fruits of federal employment. A roast, a casserole, a little wine for you and your wife. The smell of baked goods is in the air because you've been promised brownies for dessert. You're a picture perfect vision of a happy American family. The talk turns to politics. In just a few weeks, your son will cast his first presidential ballot. And, as so often happens when families talk politics, there's some disagreement. Is that a goddamn gold water pin on your jacket, son? Where did you get that? At a meeting of the college young Republicans, dad. Johnson's spending the economy into the ground. All these new programs, they're irresponsible. You know, those government

programs built this house and are paying for your college. What do you think Apollo is about? It's wasteful, dad. We had a guest speaker the other night, a scientist, and he said we don't need manned spaceflight to learn about the moon. You can just use probes and robots. It's a giant waste of money. You lean back from your chair, arms crossed against your chest. You're serious. You do understand I work on rocket development. Rockets are fine, Dad.

We need rockets for defense. But all the rest of it? Apollo's just the tip of the iceberg. It's extravagant, just like the war on poverty. Now, wait a minute. You're just quoting Goldwater, aren't you? I remember him calling Apollo extravagant. Every technical professional I know supports Johnson. This country needs science and technology, and science and technology depends on the government. Now it's your son's turn to look skeptical. There's nothing in the Constitution about paying for science. Government's grown too big. That's what the Goldwater campaign's

all about. Goldwater's going to reimagine government. Goldwater's going to reimagine me out of a job. You and your son agree to disagree on Goldwater and the space program. A few weeks later, President Johnson is re-elected in a landslide, winning 44 states and the District of Columbia. Goldwater's Republican Revolution did not arrive in 1964. Still, his campaign was revolutionary. In the primary, Goldwater bested the more mainstream candidate, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Close associate of former President Eisenhower, Rockefeller was a centrist who supported civil rights and the basic elements of the welfare state. Rockefeller represented the kind of Republicanism popular in the 50s. Historians often refer to the 1950s as the era of consensus

politics, when moderate Republicans and Democrats agreed on major principles of governance. Both parties supported national defense and a limited welfare state, and both parties agreed that fulfilling these roles required a sizable federal government. Goldwater rejected this consensus. He embraced a form of free-market conservatism that might now be characterized as libertarianism. He voted against the Civil Rights Act, opposed foreign aid, and federal support to education. Mainstream Republicans in the 1960s described Goldwater's politics as extreme, a label that the candidate himself embraced at the 1964 Republican Convention. I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Goldwater's self-presentation as a radical conservative alienated mainstream voters in 1964. But his critique of government spending planted a seed for the rebirth of the Republican Party in the 1970s. And Goldwater wasn't the only political figure complaining about Apollo. By 1965, public opinion polls consistently showed that the majority of Americans opposed the budget for Apollo. In 1964, the sociologist Amitai Estioni published a book titled Moondoggle that laid out the financial case against the program. Conservatives like Goldwater wanted to end the race to the moon because they wanted to

slash government spending. Liberals, especially black liberals, opposed Apollo because they wanted to shift government spending. Put yourself in Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 15, 1969, the day before the launch of Apollo 11. You're one of the thousands of reporters and special guests who have already gathered in the tropical Florida heat. Tomorrow will be a zoo,

with spectators lining the roads and fields of central Florida. Everyone will be hoping for a glimpse of the giant Saturn V rocket that would propel the three-man crew into the heavens. The roar is said to be deafening. Some folks are hoping to hear it as far away as Orlando. It turns out that there's some excitement today, too, though. But this event wasn't advertised. Another reporter tips you off.

You need to head outside to the gates if you want to catch today's story. Reverend Abernathy's leading a protest. Should be starting any time now. Reverend Abernathy, the civil rights leader? None other. And I hear he's bringing some mules. Good visuals for the press, you know? The crowd has gathered in the field outside the gates to the facility. You arrive just in time to see the head of NASA, Thomas Paine, pull up with

a bunch of other NASA suits. A group of about 100 black protesters is waiting for them, marching in a circle. Even from where you're standing, you can pick out the familiar tune of We Shall Overcome. As advertised, they've brought four mules and two rickety wagons. They've also brought a microphone and a PA. Payne strides out to meet them. The two leaders shake hands, and Abernathy steps up to the mic. Abernathy starts off acknowledging the achievements of the space race and the heroism of the astronauts. But then he gets to his point. This country has a distorted sense of national priorities. One-fifth of the nation lacks adequate food, clothing, medical care, and shelter.

He pauses a moment, letting the crowd take in the contrast between the poverty of the protesters and the Saturn V looming behind him. I want NASA scientists and engineers and technicians to find ways to use their skills and tackle the problems we face in society. Now it's Payne's turn to respond. He looks uncomfortable. This wasn't the kind of press coverage he had in mind. He leans into the mic. If we could solve the problems of poverty in the United States

by not pushing the button to launch man to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push the night. If we could solve the problems of poverty in the United States by not pushing the button to launch man to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push the button. A gasp goes through the crowd of reporters. Payne pauses a moment to wipe the sweat off his brow. I hope you will hitch your mule wagons to our rockets and use the space program as a spur to the nation to tackle problems boldly in other areas. You're struck by Payne's sincerity. By the time he finished speaking, he offered VIP passes for a busload of protesters to attend the launch tomorrow. It's a nice bit of rhetoric, this idea of hitching mule wagons to rockets.

But the contrast between the protesters' poverty and the rocket is so stark, you can't but ask yourself the very question that Abernathy wanted you to. If the United States can put a man on the moon, why can't it solve problems here on Earth? This incident, and others like it, really happened. It's described in Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, a new book by historian Neil Marr. Marr describes how NASA administrators tried to cope with the changing politics of the space program in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Johnson chose not to run for re-election in 1968. The new occupant of the Oval Office, Republican Richard Nixon, lacked Johnson's

passion for fighting poverty and racism. Nixon's views on government spending weren't as radical as Goldwater's either. Nixon kept several of Johnson's war on poverty programs, and he signed the law that created the Environmental Protection Agency. But, like Goldwater and black activists alike, Nixon thought the space program a gigantic waste of money. Nixon announced that NASA's fate would be evaluated like any other domestic agency. NASA and space exploration were important, but they weren't privileged. With the moon mission accomplished, Nixon slashed NASA's budget.

In 1970, two of the remaining Apollo missions were cut. By the late 1960s, Americans from all across the political spectrum had rethought their understanding of the role of government in everyday life. On the right, a new movement had come to coalesce around the idea that the growth of government limited individual freedom. They wanted freedom from regulation, freedom from taxes, even freedom from participating in public institutions like schools. Those on the left wanted a more interventionist government to protect citizens' rights. They defined rights broadly to include housing, health care, possibly even a universal income.

The Cold War consensus was ending. This consensus had been based on anti-communism. The political parties put aside their ideological differences about the role of government in service to the broader project of fighting communism. Liberals tolerated large defense budgets and conservatives tolerated social programs,

so long as both protected the nation against the communist threat. But just a decade later, no one wanted programs merely designed to show off the can-do spirit of the American government. Those on the right opposed big government on principle, and those on the left wanted the government to deliver on social promises. And in the meantime, the United States found

itself in the middle of a violent, expensive war against communism in Southeast Asia. This wasn't the nuclear apocalypse that Americans had been led to expect. Instead, it was a messy, old-fashioned war, fought with guns and mortar shells in the middle of a jungle. This kind of war against communism, a war with troops on the ground and heavy casualties, turned out less popular than anti-communists had anticipated. The American presence in Vietnam had been growing since the mid-1950s.

Vietnam split into two when the French agreed to leave in 1954. Communists ruled the North, while a U.S.-backed dictatorship held sway in the South. When President Johnson took office in 1963, the United States had approximately 20,000 troops in Vietnam. By the time Nixon took the oath of office in 1969, more than a half million American troops were there. This was a brutal war. By the time the last troops left in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans had been killed. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese killed range widely, but even the most conservative suggest that at least 1.5 million people died, and most estimates range much higher than that. Americans weren't afraid

of making sacrifices for what they considered to be a just war, but the reports from Vietnam were troubling. The United States wasn't protecting democracy in South Vietnam, and the Vietnamese didn't seem to want the Americans there in the first place. Returning American soldiers and war reporters alike brought back troubling stories of what sounded like war crimes. In February 1968, war correspondent Pete Arnett asked an American officer to explain why the United States had bombed the city of Bontrae. The city was a regional capital about 45 miles southeast of Saigon. At least 500 people had been killed and more than 10,000 people displaced. The major's response,

reproduced in AP stories across the country, shocked the American public. Here's what he said. It became necessary to destroy the town to save it. What was the United States destroying? What was it saving in Vietnam? What was the war in Vietnam destroying back at home? In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis

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Imagine that it's 1966, and you live in a working-class community. Maybe it's a street of suburban tract houses on Long Island, or an older neighborhood in a steel town like Bethlehem or Pittsburgh. The houses line up neatly on the street, just far enough apart to give the illusion of privacy. Picket fences, weekend barbecues, kids on bikes, the American dream. Like many of your neighbors, you've spent time in the service. Your tour in Korea qualified you for the GI Bill. It helped you buy this house. You're not surprised when you hear that your neighbor's son is enlisting.

But you are surprised by the details. Your other neighbor fills you in over a beer. You hear about Bobby? Yeah, he's off to basic training in a few weeks. Just signed up with the army. He dropped out of high school, right? I mean, if he's not going to college, he won't get a deferment, so better that he enlists on his own. I used to think so, but I'm not so sure now. You know, he failed the test the first time. Judy was relieved. She didn't want him going off to Vietnam. If he failed the test, how did he get in?

They can't get enough men. McNamara's got a new program to take the rejects. It's supposed to be a jobs program with remedial training. You let out a low whistle. It's early evening, and the crickets are just starting up. It should be an idyllic scene. But you've got a sinking feeling about this. Still, you're grateful for what the military did for you.

Maybe it'll all work out. Military services is the great equalizer, and if Bobby can't pass a military entrance exam, he's not likely to get much good work here at home anyway. This is a good opportunity for him. Your neighbor nods his head lightly and takes another sip. True, that's true. If he comes back. Vietnam was a working-class war. By the mid-1960s, the United States was drafting 30,000 to 40,000 men a month. Draft deferments and medical exemptions kept men from middle-class families who didn't want to serve at home. It's not that middle-class

people didn't serve in Vietnam. They did. But as historian Christian Appy explains, the less privileged you were, the more likely you were to end up in Vietnam. According to Appy, 80% of the men who served in Vietnam possessed only a high school education, if that. The military repeatedly lowered its standards in hope of recruiting more soldiers. The program that enlisted our hypothetical soldier was called Project 100,000. Secretary of Defense McNamara instituted it to offer the poor an opportunity to serve. According to Appy, only 6% of the Project 100,000 enlistees received any additional training at all. His assessment of the

program is devastating. These men had a death rate twice as high as American forces as a whole. On April 4, 1967, the Reverend Martin Luther King delivered a powerful speech connecting the war on poverty to the war in Vietnam. King's Riverside Church speech isn't quite as famous as his I Have a Dream speech or his Mountaintop speech, but it was a turning point for Americans involved in the anti-war movement. King began on a hopeful note, calling back to the potential and the promise of the war on poverty programs. A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. But from there, the speech takes a darker turn

Then came the build-up in Vietnam And I watched this program broken and eviscerated As if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war King's speech offers a grim assessment of the United States' Cold War priorities. The new anti-poverty programs were quickly abandoned in favor of buying bombs for Vietnam. And when it came to civil rights, the United States was willing to integrate its armed forces, but not at schools or cities. And it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home.

It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. A year later, a year to the day after delivering this speech, King would be assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was there as part of the Poor People's Campaign, the same campaign that would bring Reverend Abernathy to the Apollo launch. Every now and then, there's a sea change year in American politics. In 1861, the nation fell into civil war. In 1877, Reconstruction ended. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt started building the New Deal.

1968 was one of those years. From today's perspective, it's hard to grasp just how disorienting 1968 was. The news was nonstop, and it was consistently shocking. Already, before King's assassination, American citizens had seen reports of war atrocities being committed in their own names. President Johnson, now deeply unpopular, announced that he would not seek re-election. King's murder sparked riots in more than 100 American cities. Chicago, Baltimore, and Kansas City burned. Some of the heaviest damage took place in Washington's historically black neighborhoods,

including the commercial corridors near Howard University. Federal troops set up a machine gun post on the western steps of the Capitol building. On campuses, even middle-class white students were getting in on the protest movement. In the last week of April, anti-war demonstrators shut down campus after campus. At Columbia University, hundreds of students occupied university buildings for days until they were dragged out by police. In June, Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, better known as Bobby Kennedy, was assassinated in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel. He had just won the California primary.

And in August, the Democratic convention turned into a bloody brawl in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel. He had just won the California primary. And in August, the Democratic convention turned into a bloody brawl between anti-war protesters and the police. The entire country watched the spectacle unfold live on TV. Everything just seemed out of control. The flashpoint for all of it was Vietnam. The United States had originally gone to Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism.

Back in the 1950s, Eisenhower and his advisors believed in the domino theory. If one country fell to communism, they all might. But U.S. policymakers hadn't quite thought this policy through. Would it attempt to stop the spread of communism everywhere? Or just in areas central to its sphere of influence? What if a communist government were elected democratically? This is what happened in Vietnam, or would have happened had the United States not propped up the government in the South.

The country was supposed to have a democratic election in 1956 that would decide its fate. Most observers, including the CIA, assumed that Vietnamese citizens would choose to join with the communist North. The leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Nghiem, canceled the election. The United States continued to support him anyway. Nghiem's rule was brutal and corrupt. Accordingly, he was assassinated in November 1963, which led the United States to say it remained in South Vietnam to maintain stability. Within a few years, the reasoning changed again. If the United States left, the South Vietnamese government would obviously collapse, and all the United States' efforts would have been in vain. It would be a

national humiliation. Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had built his career on anti-communism. As a young congressman from California, Nixon served on the HUAC committee and sponsored anti-communist legislation from the floor. If there was one thing consistent about Nixon's politics, it was his anti-communism. So, it was all the more striking that by 1968, even Richard Nixon campaigned on the promise to negotiate with communists. By 1968, even Richard Nixon thought the war in Vietnam pointless. Nixon promised peace with honor. Neither of those things, it turns out, would come to pass under Nixon's presidency. Nixon continued to escalate the war in Vietnam, taking the bombing to neighboring

Cambodia. In the process, he lied to Congress, the public, and even some of his own military leaders. The president's attempts to cover his tracks ultimately led to the Watergate scandal. Nixon resigned in disgrace in August 1974. Peace with honor would prove equally elusive for the American people in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With Martin Luther King's death, some factions of the civil rights movement moved toward more militant protests, including armed self-defense. Other radical left-wing groups like the Weather Underground engaged in domestic terrorism, blowing up banks and research laboratories to prove a point. According to one report in the New York Times, the United States experienced more than 4,000 domestic bombings just in the one year between January 69 and January 1970.

That year, a low point came on May 4. On that day, the Ohio National Guard fired live rounds into a crowd of anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. In 1970, the United States was losing the Cold War in Vietnam. It was also losing any sense that the Cold War was worth fighting at home. Peace with honor would eventually come, but it would take another 20 years. Next time on American History Tellers,

we'll explain how the Cold War finally ended. It's a story that involves three presidents, a trip to the Chinese Wall, and an evil empire. The last two decades of the Cold War had some surprises in store, from handshakes in space to a human rights revolution. All that and more next time on American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Tellers. If you did, do us a favor

and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, iHeartRadio, and every major listening app, as well as Wondery.com. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you might have missed. You'll also find some offers from our sponsors. Please support our show by supporting them. If you'd like to hear more of American History Tellers and other Wondery shows, in addition to extra content, early access, and exclusive perks, you can subscribe to Wondery Plus. Go to wondery.com slash plus. That's P-L-U-S. Wondery.com slash plus. And thank you. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship.

This episode was written by Audra Wolfe, Ph.D., executive producers Ben Adair and Hernán López for Wondery. dot com slash survey. Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London. Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes. Even if you haven't read the book, you think you know the story. One of the incredible things about Dracula is that not only is it this wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today. The vampire doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror, so when we look in the mirror, the only thing we see is our own monstrous abilities. From the host and producer of American History Tellers and History Daily comes the new podcast, The Real History of Dracula. We'll reveal how author Bram Stoker raided ancient folklore,

exploited Victorian fears around sex, science, and religion, and how even today we remain enthralled to his strange creatures of the night. You can binge all episodes of The Real History of Dracula exclusively with Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus and The Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.