the size of Israel, expelling Jordan from Jerusalem and the West Bank, Syria from the Golan Heights, and Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. Of the one million Palestinians on the West Bank before the conflict, more than 300,000 fled to Jordan, where they contributed significantly to growing unrest. The 1967 war diminished the prospects for peace in the Middle East, since Arab states found it difficult to accept such population movements and loss of territory. Moreover, despite Arab objections, in 1969 the Israeli government began to establish Jewish settlements in occupied areas. 1967–1968 Anti-Vietnam War Movement Erupts in the U.S. In conjunction with the civil rights campaigns, student radicalism, and counter-cultural movements of the 1960s, a powerful aversion to United States involvement in Vietnam developed among some Americans in the years after 1965. By 1967 the demand for civil rights had come to constitute an attack on the structure of racial oppression throughout the nation. This critique was strongly reinforced by spokesmen of what was called the “the New Left,” a movement led by students critical of social apathy and disillusioned with the military-industrial-academic establishment. American bombing and invasion of Vietnam provided the catalyst that brought these protests together with an older peace movement whose goal had been the abolition of nuclear weapons. Opposition to the war, and demonstrations reflecting it, grew as troop levels climbed and television and press coverage conveyed the suffering of civilians and military. The anti-war movement peaked after the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong’s Tet offensive of early 1968, but it proved crucial in persuading Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election. SEE FIGURE 55 APRIL, JUNE 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated By 1968 the anti-war movement had inspired a substantial counter-mobilization on the part of those who supported American efforts in Vietnam, creating a highly charged polarization in national attitudes. In April of that year, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., champion of civil rights and a vigorous critic of the war, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and several days of civil unrest and rioting ensued. In subsequent weeks campus violence escalated sharply as students in the United States, France, and Germany took to the streets to protest of the
war and racial injustice. In June a second assassination stunned the nation, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angeles shortly after winning the California presidential primary. In August young radicals battled police in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. The coalition that had kept the Democrats the majority party for 30 years began to come apart as much of the South and White working class gravitated toward the Republican opposition. SEE FIGURE 56
DECEMBER 1968 Interstate 405 Completed in Orange County
Figure 55. (Top) Florida State University students march in an antiwar protest. Image courtesy of Florida State Archives Memory Collection and Cpl. Chris Lyttle. Figure 56. Civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addresses the crowd during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. It was during this address that he made his “I Have a Dream” statement.
Eisenhower as president generally preferred the initiatives of private enterprise, but when there was a military justification he could and did support governmental activity. One of his major accomplishments in this regard was the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, at that point the largest public works project in American history. This law authorized construction of a national highway system for which the federal government paid 90% of costs and the states 10%. The new system resulted in gains for the trucking and automobile industry but exacted costs in the form of pollution, energy consumption, and the decay of central cities (because new highways made commutes between urban centers and residential suburbs quicker). Of regional significance was the completion in late 1968 of Orange County’s Interstate 405, the major north-south highway running from the San Fernando Valley through the western areas of Los Angeles to southeastern Irvine, where it converged with Interstate 5. By 2008 the I-405’s average daily traffic reached 374,000 vehicles, highest in the nation.
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