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Civil Rights Movement
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A. Phillip Randolph talks to Truman
A. Phillip Randolph met with President Truman and threatens a march on Washington D.C. is he does not desegregate jobs in the defense industries. Truman agreed to desegregate those jobs if Randolph calls off the march. -
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WWII
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Hiroshima & Nagasaki
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Cold War
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"Iron Curtain" Speech
Winston Churchill gave a speech about the division of Europe. He explained that the western part of Europe was Democratic and the Eastern part of Europe was Communist. Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, said that Churchill's speech was a "call to war." Stalin had already given a speech earlier in the year saying that capitalism and communism were incompatible and another war was inevitable. -
Berlin Airlift
After the Berlin Blockade, President Truman ordered the Berlin Airlift. The U.S. flew in supplies to people needing food, water, and medicine to West Berlin from 1948-1949. This kept the people of West Berlin from wanting to join the Soviet Union. -
Truman Desegregates the Military
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Formation of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created after WWII. NATO was a military alliance of democratic countries that would protect each other if someone tried to fight against them. -
Korean War
President Truman sent troops to help democratic South Korea after the invasion of communist North Korea. This is an example of the Truman Doctrine changed foreign policy in America. Before the Truman Doctrine, America did not want to be involved in conflicts in the Eastern Hemisphere. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education case started off as five cases. Most of the small cases were defeated, but In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren rejected the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of "separate but equal" as unconstitutional. There was a unanimous ruling against segregation in 1954 by the Supreme Court. Lawyer Thurgood Marshall was later appointed as the first African American to be appointed to the Supreme Court. -
Murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till was a black 14 year old who was murdered on the false accusation of whistling at Carolyn Bryant. Roy Bryant, Carolyn's husband, and his brother in law kidnapped and lynched Emmett Till. The murderers were believe "not guilty", by the all white jury that worked their case. Then later wrote an article explaining what they did to him and why they did it, but because they were proven not guilty they could not be put back on trial. -
Little Rock 9
First group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he sent in the 101st Airborne to escort the students to class. -
Launch of Sputnik 1
The Russians launched the first artificial satellite into the earth's orbit. This triggered the Space Race and led to the creation of NASA. The Russian's were also the first to put a person into space. -
Bay of Pigs
America trained anti-Castro Cubans to fight and helped them invade the Bay of Pigs, Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. The mission failed horribly and the anti-Cubans were defeated by Castro's army. -
End of Cuban Missile Crisis
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro asked Russia to place a nuclear ballistic missile in Cuba to stop further invasions and give the Russians the ability to quickly hit any target in America. Eventually, Russia agreed to take missiles out of Cuba if America would take missiles out of Turkey. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther king was arrested for breaking an unjust law against political demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama. He refused to get bailed out to point out how African-Americans was unfairly treated, he wrote the letter to respond to the white clergy men who had bashed him and told him that the civil rights movement was not happening at the right time and that he was going about it the wrong way. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
Outside Jackson's home in Mississippi, African American civil rights leader Medgar Evers is shot to death by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith.
During World War II, he volunteered for the U.S. Army and participated in the Normandy invasion. In 1952, he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).Evers traveled through his home state encouraging poor African Americans to register to vote and recruiting them into the civil rights movement. -
Assassination of MLK
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Moon Landing
America landed the first person on the moon and ended the Space Race with the Soviet Union.