American Global Power from Empire to Superpower

Introduction

Lyndon Baines Johnson became the thirty-sixth president of the United States on November 22, 1963, a date that is perhaps more memorable as the date of his predecessor’s assassination in Dallas. Later that night back in Washington Johnson remarked to his friend and speechwriter Horace Busby that “…when I came back to Washington tonight as President there were on my desk the same things that were on my desk when I came to Congress in 1937.” ¹

With this statement Johnson had telegraphed his own priorities that night to Busby and then outlined them to a joint session of Congress on November 27^th.  He emphasized continuity with the Kennedy administration goals and noted that these included care for the elderly, jobs, mental health care, and passages of the Civil Rights Bill. In the area of foreign affairs Johnson called for “peace through strength” and stated that the country would keep its commitments in Vietnam and Berlin.  ²

Johnson also noted that “We will carry on the fight against poverty and misery, and disease and ignorance, in other lands and in our own.” ³ These words foreshadow the bulk of what Johnson would work on as president and the bulk of what students will be learning about in this unit as well. Johnson’s commitment to both social justice and the containment of Communism in Southeast Asia would become a delicate and difficult balancing act. In this unit students will be asked to think about how attempting to maintain American power abroad by containing communism would come to affect those less fortunate at home waiting for the benefits of the Great Society and the War on Poverty to improve their lives.

School Information

I currently teach at Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose, California. Mt. Pleasant is a racially diverse school within the city of San Jose but outside of the immediate downtown area. So, it is a cross between an urban and suburban school. According to information found on the California School Dashboard the student population is roughly 1300 students. Roughly seventy-one percent of the students are LatinX while roughly sixteen percent of the students are Asian. Roughly six percent are Filipino and the remaining students are Native American, African American, Pacific Islander, and White.

About three quarters of the students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. At Mt. Pleasant I teach World History and Ethnic Studies, to students that do not opt for Honors or Advanced Placement classes.

Because my students are predominantly students of color and from mainly lower socioeconomic status families they are especially attuned to the idea of individual rights and the inequality of the society in which they live. Looking at how decisions a country makes about maintaining their empire and the impact that those decisions have on the poor people in the home country will be something that they can relate to and engage with.

This unit will likely be taught in conjunction with a larger unit on Imperialism and Colonialism. Most World History courses focus on European Imperialism but by incorporating this unit students will see that the United States played a role in this era as well. Students will examine how Johnson’s goals of eliminating poverty and promoting social justice were undermined by his determination to defend South Vietnam from Communism and maintain the Cold War Empire that had been established in the years after World War Two. In looking at primary and secondary sources students will seek to understand how the Great Society and the war in Vietnam fit together, what Johnson’s goals were for each, and how he tried to manage the situation so that the United States could be successful and accomplish both goals.

The unit will be situated in the middle of the school year, and the primary source analysis embedded within this unit will create an opportunity for students to demonstrate the analysis and communication skills that they have learned throughout the year. Projects and papers within this unit will take the place of more traditional assessments of students writing and presentation skills.

Initially students will be given background information to enable their thinking about concepts within the unit. This information will include, though may not be limited to, the policy of containment, the history of Vietnam especially from ~1945 on, Johnson’s assumption of the Presidency, Johnson’s motivations for the Great Society, and the escalation of war in Vietnam. Students will read and discuss excerpts from several secondary sources along the way to facilitate this learning. Students will go on to investigate the interaction politically and economically between the war in Vietnam and the Great Society programs, think about the idea of America as an empire and have preserving that empire in Vietnam affected the home front and then close out with thoughts about and connections to the present day.