Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was sworn in aboard Air Force One hours after JFK’s assassination in Dallas, used his ample skills in cajoling and arm-twisting to push through the most significant civil rights legisla­tion in American history, in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, after Kennedy’s death.

President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected as the nation’s chief executive, tried to dodge politically sensitive issues, maintaining a cau­tious, moderate approach. After riots by segregationists and the murder of innocent blacks in the Deep South, President Ken­nedy abandoned his cautious posture and advocated sweeping civil rights reform.

President Richard M. Nixon, the first president to resign from office in disgrace, sought to exert so much power in office that he eventually became tangled up in the Watergate scandal and its cover-up. These incidents ultimately led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and a burgeoning criminal investigation of his own conduct. Nixon’s secret White House taping system provided the smoking gun that would lead to the unraveling of his administration.

Dwight D. Eisenhower earned public acclaim during World War II as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. The first Republican since Herbert Hoover to occupy the White House, “Ike” planned to hold the line against further expansion of federal powers.

The Divinity School Address was delivered by Emerson to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1838. At the time, the Harvard community was strongly Unitarian, and Emerson's argument for a more transcendental view of God and faith was seen as radical, and touched off a great controversy.