Lyndon Johnson, who had won the 1964 election by a huge margin (486 to 52 in the electoral college) would not have that same good fortune in 1968. The escalation of the War in Vietnam translated into a decline in popularity for Johnson. By late 1967, over 500,000 American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. Draftees made up 42 percent of the ( Read more... )

An October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November Presidential election, whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because election day is in early November, events that take place in October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters and allow less time to take ( Read more... )

Jack Roosevelt Robinson, better known as Jackie, was an professional baseball player who became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers put him in the lineup at first base on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, it was the ( Read more... )

Her autobiography is entitled Unbought and Unbossed. In an era when it seemed unthinkable for a woman or an African-American, let alone an African-American woman, to become President, Shirley Chisholm bravely ignored these barriers and challenged a number of her white male colleagues for the leadership of her party. In 1972, she became the first ( Read more... )

On March 21, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began the start of his third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.


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In 1972 incumbent President Richard Nixon sought re-election to the Presidency, after winning the office in a close contest four years earlier. It was the second election in which Nixon had been in a tight race, losing narrowly in 1960 in an election he believed had been stolen from him. In 1972 Nixon believed that his rise to power constituted a ( Read more... )

When the 1964 election came around, Lyndon Johnson had been an "incumbent" for less than a year. But in that time he had achieved a lot, following up on the legacy of his predecessor John F. Kennedy, accomplishing more than Kennedy would likely have been able to achieve. Following Kennedy's death on November 22, 1963, Republican leaders called for ( Read more... )

Today the Martin Luther King Day holiday is being celebrated. April 4th, 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination and later that month I had the opportunity to visit Memphis and tour the Civil Rights Museum and view the preserved Lorraine Motel where Dr. King died. I thought it fitting to day to repost the entry in this ( Read more... )

In the 1972 election, Richard Nixon would eventually achieve a landslide victory over Democrat George McGovern. But as the election approached, Nixon's re-election was far from certain. Nixon had been elected in 1968 on a platform to end American involvement in Vietnam, but four years later, the war raged on. Nixon's strategy of gradually handing ( Read more... )

Richard Nixon won a resounding victory in his re-election bid for president in 1972. But earlier on in the race, it wasn't clear that this would be the case. As the year opened, Nixon was still managing a war that he had been elected to bring an end to. Nixon had been elected in 1968 on a platform of ending American involvement in Vietnam, but his ( Read more... )