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The Story of Notre Dame


America - Europe

A Transatlantic Diary 1961 - 1989

Klaus Lanzinger


Historical Events 1964-67

1) U.S. presidential election November 1964

In the U.S. presidential election on November 3, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson won a landslide victory. With 61.3% of the votes cast, Johnson gained the largest share of the votes, which up to that time had ever been achieved by a candidate in a presidential election. On January 20, 1965 he was sworn in as President of the United States. His running mate Senator Hubert H. Humphrey assumed the office of Vice President.

2) On September 9, 1965 Charles de Gaulle declared the withdrawal of France from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

On December 19, 1965 Charles de Gaulle was reelected president of France.

3) The escalation of the war in Vietnam 1965-67

After American installations had been attacked by units of the Vietcong, President Johnson ordered in February, 1965 air strikes against military targets in North Vietnam. With the increasing deployment of ground troops, the war in Vietnam escalated more and more.

4) Racial unrests in American cities 1965-67

From 1965-67 severe racial unrests occurred in the ghettos of American cities, which took on the character of a civil war. It began with the riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles in August, 1965. During the summer of 1967 the unrests spread like wild fire through the cities in the North and the Midwest, among them especially severe in Newark, New Jersey, Detroit, Michigan, and in Kansas City, Missouri. Added to that were the wild demonstrations against the war in Vietnam on American university campuses.


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