The Eve of Destruction

Historian James T. Patterson argues that 1965 was the pivotal "hinge" year of postwar American history, when the optimistic early 1960s gave way to the turbulent era Americans now think of as "the Sixties." He traces a dramatic arc from the buoyant confidence of late 1964 through landmark liberal legislation, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the Watts uprising in Los Angeles, showing how these events fractured the nation's social cohesion and set the stage for years of polarization.

Patterson opens with President Lyndon B. Johnson lighting the National Christmas Tree in December 1964 and proclaiming "the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem" (xi). The declaration seemed plausible. Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act, won a landslide election, and presided over a booming economy. Income inequality was historically modest, unemployment was falling, and more than 75 percent of Americans trusted the government. Commentators predicted a liberal epoch, and popular culture reflected broad conformity: Television offered wholesome family entertainment, Hollywood enforced its restrictive Production Code banning profanity and nudity, and the Beatles' biggest hit was the unthreatening "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Yet Patterson identifies gathering storms. The civil rights movement had exposed deep racial injustice: Only one percent of Black students in the Deep South attended schools with white students, all 11 Southern states banned interracial marriage, and the murder of three civil rights workers during Freedom Summer 1964 revealed the ferocity of white resistance. In Northern cities, de facto segregation persisted, sparking racial disturbances in Harlem and elsewhere. At the Democratic National Convention, Johnson's compromise with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a racially integrated challenge delegation, left Black activists feeling betrayed. On the foreign policy front, Johnson had used a disputed Gulf of Tonkin incident to secure a congressional resolution authorizing military action in Vietnam, even as he privately confided to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy that the conflict was not "worth fightin' for" (22). By late 1964, he had quietly resolved to escalate if necessary but shared none of this with the public.

Patterson portrays Johnson as a domineering, crude, yet extraordinarily effective congressional manager who deployed what journalists called the "Johnson Treatment," a relentless style of persuasion combining flattery, threats, and physical intimidation. His insecurities, particularly about his education at a little-known Texas college, coexisted with boundless ambition to outperform Franklin D. Roosevelt in domestic reform. Johnson moved fast. Early in 1965, he secured passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the first large-scale federal investment in public school funding, signing it at the one-room Texas schoolhouse he had attended as a child. He simultaneously advanced Medicare, which created health insurance for Americans 65 and older, and a companion program called Medicaid for low-income people. Together they represented the most significant expansion of America's social safety net since the New Deal, signed into law on July 30. Johnson also signed landmark immigration reform at the Statue of Liberty in October, abolishing the discriminatory national-origins quota system.

Meanwhile, the struggle for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, reached a climax. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. chose Selma knowing that Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark, a volatile racist who wore a Confederate flag on his helmet, would overreact to nonviolent protests and produce televised brutality that would galvanize the nation. Over several weeks, Clark's deputies beat demonstrators with clubs and cattle prods and forced young Black people on a grueling march. On March 7, "Bloody Sunday," 600 marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge were attacked by troopers wielding nightsticks, bullwhips, and barbed-wire-wrapped rubber tubing. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), suffered a fractured skull, and ABC broadcast 15 minutes of footage to millions of viewers. Johnson addressed Congress on March 15, raising his arms and repeating key words from the civil rights hymn: "And . . . we . . . shall . . . overcome!" (83). King wept watching the speech. After the march from Selma to Montgomery attracted 25,000 people, Congress passed a strong voting rights bill, which Johnson signed on August 6.

Patterson argues that the escalation of the Vietnam War was the most transformative event of 1965. On February 7, Vietcong guerrilla forces in South Vietnam attacked an American base near Pleiku, killing eight Americans. Johnson ordered sustained air raids, launching Operation Rolling Thunder on March 2, and on March 8 sent 3,500 marines to Danang as the first American combat troops in Asia since the Korean War. Bundy cautioned Johnson to alert the public that "the struggle in Vietnam will be long" (94), but the president refused, fearing debate would undermine his domestic agenda. Through spring and summer, he secretly authorized offensive missions and approved tens of thousands of additional troops. When General William Westmoreland cabled on June 7 that South Vietnamese forces could not hold without massive reinforcement, Undersecretary of State George Ball warned against engagement, citing France's defeat despite sending a quarter million troops, but the rest of Johnson's inner circle supported escalation. On July 28, Johnson announced he was sending 50,000 more men, concealing that the year-end total would reach at least 175,000. Patterson judges the decision "badly flawed" (173), noting it was not premised on any belief that more troops would bring victory.

A parallel crisis erupted in the Dominican Republic, where Johnson dispatched over 23,000 troops to quell a rebellion he claimed was communist-inspired despite his own advisers' doubts. The intervention deepened accusations of a presidential "credibility gap."

Five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles erupted. The arrest of a young Black man for drunk driving on August 11 escalated into six days of burning, looting, and clashes requiring more than 13,000 National Guardsmen. Thirty-four people died, roughly 1,000 were injured, and damage exceeded $40 million. Johnson raged, "How is it possible? After all we've accomplished?" (182). Patterson argues the uprising revealed that many Black Americans in Northern cities had lost faith in nonviolent, interracial strategies. Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, assassinated the previous February, had urged Black people to take control of their own destinies, and the sentiment was spreading.

In the aftermath, Johnson retreated from the promise he had made in a June commencement address at Howard University to pursue not just legal equality but "equality as a fact and as a result" (124). He declared a "war on crime" reflecting rising popular anxieties. Programs within the Great Society, Johnson's ambitious domestic reform agenda, encountered mounting criticism: The War on Poverty was attacked from both Left and Right, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lacked meaningful enforcement powers. Antiwar protests intensified through the fall, with demonstrations in 40 cities drawing an estimated 100,000 people. By year's end, the cultural landscape was shifting too: The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Bob Dylan's electric "Like a Rolling Stone" redirected popular music toward louder, more confrontational territory, while Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" topped the charts. Conservative spokesman Ronald Reagan prepared to run for governor of California on a "law and order" platform, and neoconservative intellectuals questioned government's capacity to solve complex social problems. American troop strength in Vietnam had risen from 23,000 advisers to 184,000 soldiers, with 1,863 killed and 7,337 wounded.

In an epilogue, Patterson traces how the forces of 1965 continued to reshape American life. Reagan won the California governorship, Republicans gained substantially in Congress, and SNCC's Stokely Carmichael called for "Black Power." The Vietnam War consumed ever more lives, with 6,143 Americans killed in 1966 alone. Urban disorders worsened, campuses erupted, and the assassinations of King and Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 deepened the trauma. While landmark 1965 legislation remained on the books, the liberal consensus that produced it was shattered. Patterson concludes: "After 1965, for better and for worse, many aspects of life in the United States would never be the same again" (247).