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Discrimination Banned by Roosevelt
It was the first federal action to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States. -
Congress of Racial Equality formed
One of the leading activist organizations in the early years of the American civil rights movement. -
Jackie Robinson joins Brooklyn Dodgers
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American in the major leagues when he plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. -
Desegregation of the military by Truman
Executive Order 9981 abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. -
U.S. aid France in Vietnam
Harry Truman authorizes $15 million in military aid to the French -
Brown v. Board of Education
Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that American state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality -
France surrender to Viet Minh troops
Communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping to prevent the French from reclaiming their former colonial possession. -
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization formed
An international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. -
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Montgomery bus boycott
A political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. -
“The Southern Manifesto”
Document written in the United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. -
Little Rock 9
A group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed
An African-American civil rights organization. -
NASA created
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. -
Fidel Castro overthrows Batista
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement and its allies against the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. -
First “sit in”
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed
One of the major American Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s. It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at a May 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. -
Vietcong formed
Also known as the National Liberation Front, was a mass political organization in South Vietnam and Cambodia with its own army. -
Alliance for Progress
Aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. -
JFK Inaugural Addresses
In which he announced that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." -
Peace Corps created
A volunteer program run by the United States government. Its official mission is to provide social and economic development abroad through technical assistance, while promoting mutual understanding between Americans and populations served. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored rebel group Brigade 2506. -
First “Freedom Ride”
Seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia, which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. -
Special Forces Troops sent to South Vietnam
President Kennedy approves sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. These troops would be the 1st U.S. troops to arrive. -
Berlin Wall Construction begins
The Wall cut off West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. -
Meredith wins case and is permitted to attend “Ole Miss”
James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi. Chaos soon broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
John Glenn first from U.S. to orbit Earth
Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
Also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
King sends letter from Birmingham jail
Martin Luther King Jr. began writing his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," directed at eight Alabama clergy who were considered moderate religious leaders. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed
Prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. -
March on Washington / “I have a dream” speech
The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. "I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
Birmingham church bombing
Four black girls were killed and at least 14 others were injured, sparking riots and a national outcry. When a bomb exploded at a church with a predominantly black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often-dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans. -
JFK assassinated
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. while riding in a motorcade in Dallas during a campaign visit. Kennedy’s motorcade was turning past the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza with crowds lining the streets—when shots rang out. The driver of the president’s Lincoln limousine, with its top off, raced to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, but after being shot in the neck and head, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. -
Beatlemania
The intense fan frenzy directed towards the English rock band the Beatles. Their popularity grew in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, and by the end of the year the press had adopted the term "Beatlemania" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the group's concert performances. -
SNCC forms “Freedom Summer”
The 1964 Freedom Summer project was designed to draw the nation’s attention to the violent oppression experienced by Mississippi blacks who attempted to exercise their constitutional rights, and to develop a grassroots freedom movement that could be sustained after student activists left Mississippi. -
24th Amendment
The United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
A joint resolution that the United States Congress passed in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
Economic Opportunity Act-(Job Corps and Head Start)
Authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. -
Voting Rights Act
Outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Water Quality Act
Required states to issue water quality standards for interstate waters, and authorized the newly created Federal Water Pollution Control Administration to set standards where states failed to do so. -
Immigration and Nationality Act
The law abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been the basis of U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s. -
National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities
An independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. -
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
A program created by the U.S. Department of Education to distribute funding to schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families. -
Malcolm X assassinated
In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. -
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Operation Rolling Thunder
Gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the United States 2nd Air Division, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. -
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Selma to Montgomery Marches
The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil-rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama. In an effort to register black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. The protesters—under the protection of federalized National Guard troops—finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery. -
National Traffic Motor Vehicle Safety Act
Enacted in the United States to empower the federal government to set and administer new safety standards for motor vehicles and road traffic safety. The Act was the first law to establish mandatory federal safety standards for motor vehicles. -
Black Panthers formed
The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft and from all sanctions of so-called white America, the release of all African Americans from jail, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. -
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1967 Detroit Riot
The 1967 Detroit Riots were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and some 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service. -
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Tet Offensive
A series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces, on scores of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam. It was considered to be a turning point in the Vietnam War. -
My Lai Massacre
the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S. Army officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage. -
MLK assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among black Americans. King was standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where he and his associates were staying, when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the neck. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later, at the age of 39. -
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. -
Nixon Affirmative Action
As President Nixon asserted, "We would not impose quotas, but would require federal contractors to show 'affirmative action' to meet the goals of increasing minority employment." -
Tinker v. Des Moines School District
A landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools. -
U.S. First Man on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. -
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Woodstock
Woodstock was a music festival held on a dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains, northwest of New York City. Billed as “An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music,” the epic event would later be known simply as Woodstock and become synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Woodstock was a peaceful celebration and earned its hallowed place in pop culture history. -
Environmental Protection Agency Created
An independent agency of the United States federal government for environmental protection. -
Paris Peace Accords
Officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, was a peace treaty signed to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.
