Friday, July 30, 1965: Medicare and Medicaid

INDEPENDENCE, Mo., July 31 -- President Johnson signed his $6.5 billion medicare bill yesterday after journeying more than 1,000 miles to share "this time of triumph" with former President Truman. The new law, said the 81-year-old former president, will mean dignity, not charity "for those of us who have moved to the sidelines." Then, one hand on his cane, Mr. Truman stepped aside as Mr. Johnson told how the vast program of medical insurance for the elderly would help millions of Americans. ... 

     This document was a 133-page bill which soared past its final congressional test Wednesday. At a $6.5 billion price tag, it will provide hospital insurance for Americans over 65, set up a voluntary program to cover the doctors' bills of elderly Americans and boost Social Security benefits. Mr. Johnson's signature set in motion machinery that will reach Social Security pensioners in September -- in the form of retroactive increases in their government checks. The health insurance programs go into operation next July 1.

     -- From The Associated Press (full story: @)

* "Medicare and Social Security: Here're Your Rights and Benefits" (Newspaper Enterprise Association, July 1965): @

* "Who's Eligible for Medicare?" (NEA, July 1965): @
* "Medicaid Cost May Be Gigantic" (NEA, July 1966): @
* "Program of Medicare Goes In Effect Today" (United Press International, July 1, 1966): @
* "Happy Birthday, Medicare!" (Government Printing Office, 2014; includes link to full text of law): @

* President Johnson's remarks (LBJ Library): @

* "50th Anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid" (LBJ Library): @
* Summary (U.S. Senate): @

* Summary (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum): @
* Summary and links (www.policyalmanac.org): @
* National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare (1999): @
* Medicare Timeline (Kaiser Family Foundation): @
* "Generations: Medicare at 50 Years" (Kaiser Family Foundation): @
* "When Medicare launched, nobody had any clue whether it would work" (The Washington Post, 2013): @ 

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Wednesday, July 28, 1965: 'This ... is why we are in Vietnam'

President Johnson begins his news conference by announcing plans to increase U.S. troops in the Vietnam War from 75,000 to 125,000, along with doubling the monthly military draft quota from 17,000 to 35,000. He also lays out the reasons for America's increasing involvement, including this passage:

"We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else. ... Three presidents -- President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present president -- over 11 years have committed themselves and have promised to help defend this small and valiant nation. Strengthened by that promise,  the people of South Vietnam have fought for many long years. Thousands of them have died. Thousands more have been crippled and scarred by war. We just cannot now dishonor our word, or abandon our commitment, or leave those who believed us and who trusted us to the terror and repression and murder that would follow. This, then, my fellow Americans, is why we are in Vietnam." 

Johnson concludes with these words: "... as long as there are men who hate and destroy, we must have the courage to resist, or we will see it all, all that we have built, all that we hope to build, all of our dreams for freedom -- all, all will be swept away on the flood of conquest. So, too, this shall not happen. We will stand in Vietnam."

-- Map detail from "Azimuthal Equidistant Projection Centered on Saigon" (CIA, 1965): @

Resources
* Transcript (from "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States"): @

* Video & audio (Miller Center, University of Virginia): @

* "Build-Up in Viet Nam" (Toledo Blade, July 25, 1965): @
* "President Doubles Draft Call" (United Press International, July 28, 1965): @

* "LBJ Hikes Draft for Viet Nam War" (Associated Press, July 29): @

* "Johnson Tells Why Vietnam in Pamphlet" (Associated Press, August 24): @

* "Why Viet-Nam" (Department of Defense, 1965; includes remarks from Johnson's news conference; from Internet Archive): @

* "Johnson's Escalation of Vietnam: A Timeline" (Bill Moyers Journal, 2009): @ 
* Excerpt from "Presidents and Protestors: Political Rhetoric in the 1960s" (Theodore Windt, 1990): @
* "McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam" (Secretaries of Defense Historical Series, 2011): @
* Pentagon Papers (National Archives, 1969): @ 

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Sunday, July 25, 1965: Dylan goes electric

At the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan surprises the audience with his hard-rocking set. Accounts vary as to whether the crowd was unhappy over his new style of music or over the  quality of the sound system.

     -- Photo from Michael Ochs Archives

* Summary (www.history.com): @
* Summary (www.smithsonianmag.com): @

* Video of "Maggie's Farm" performance: @
* Video of Pete Seeger's account: @

* Set list (www.bobdylan.com): @

* Excerpt from "No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan" (Robert Shelton, 1986): @

* "No Direction Home": @ 
* "Newport: It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Playing R & R" (The Village Voice, August 5, 1965): @
* "The Legend of Dylan at Newport" (Sam Allis, The Boston Globe, 2002): @
* "Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties" (Elijah Wald, 2015): @

* "Dylan at Newport, 1965: Music, Myth and Un-Meaning" (Edward Renehan, 2015): @ 

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Friday, July 16, 1965: The Southern Courier

The Southern Courier was established in 1965 by college students and recent graduates to cover the civil rights movement and President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in the American South. Despite the paper's small size and relatively short publication life, The Southern Courier fulfilled an important and sorely needed role in the post-1965 South by providing African Americans and sympathetic whites with a broader sense of community in the fight for equality. The Southern Courier offered a more complex view of race relations to the general public.

     -- From Encyclopedia of Alabama (full summary: @)

* Southern Courier site (includes links to PDFs of every issue): @

* Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection (Alabama Department of Archives and History): @
* Summary from Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement: @

* "A Personal Historian's Memories of the American Civil Rights Era: Birmingham Alabama 1967" (Joan Tornow, 2015): @
* "Civil Rights: Student Editors from Harvard Plan an Independent Newspaper" (Nashua Telegraph, May 5, 1965): @

* "New Civil Rights Paper Covers Southern Issues" (The Michigan Daily, July 1, 1965): @
* "The Southern Courier: A Study of Civil Rights Journalism in Alabama" (Nieman Reports, December 1966, page 15): @

* Excerpt from "Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took On the Ku Klux Klan" (Wayne Greenhaw, 2011): @ 

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Wednesday, July 14, 1965: Mariner 4's photos of Mars

Man's first closeup picture of Mars shows a remarkably earth-like desert area -- but gives no hint of an answer to whether they mysterious planet could harbor life. The poorly defined picture snapped as Mariner 4 flew within 10,500 miles of Mars Wednesday was released Thursday night while the U.S. spacecraft was relaying its second picture across 134 million miles of space. Almost half the picture showed only the dark void of space, with but a small portion of the edge of Mars visible in the streaked and smudged frame. (From The Associated Press; full story: @)

     -- Image from NASA; all Mariner 4 photos: @

* "Mariner 4 Makes Flight Past Mars" (The New York Times): @

* Flight details (NASA): @

* "Mariner to Mercury, Venus and Mars" (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): @

* "Mariner 4: First Spacecraft to Mars" (Space.com): @

* "Blast from the past: Mariner 4's images of Mars" (The Planetary Society, 2012): @
* "Looking back at Mariner images of Mars" (The Planetary Society, 2013): @
* Hand-colored image: @ (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and @ (Dan Goods)

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July 1965: Polaroid Swinger

     For only a double sawbuck now, you get not only a Polaroid camera but also a chance to admire one of the simplest and smartest exposure systems since the day, a century and a quarter ago, when Daguerre first squinted into the sun and shot a picture of a man getting his shoes shined.

     The camera is the brand-new Swinger, just announced by Polaroid. Its gets its name from the way you carry it -- on a wrist strap. It shoots only black-and-white, 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches.

     -- "The Swinger: New $20 Polaroid" (Popular Science, August 1965): @

* "50 Years Ago, the Polaroid Swinger Found Instant Fame" (Christopher Bonanos, 2015): @

* "Instant: The Story of Polaroid" (Bonanos, 2012): @

* "The Polaroid Swinger: Changing the Market in an Instant" (Michael Beschloss, New York Times, 2015): @

* Instruction booklet (from www.cameramanuals.org): @

* TV ad (from archive.org): @
* "New for Camera Buffs" (Popular Mechanics, August 1965): @ 
* "Polaroid Produces Under-$20 Camera" (Associated Press, July 1965): @

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