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Period: to
Era of Activism
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Publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.The New Yorker started serializing Silent Spring in June 1962, and it was published in book form (with illustrations by Lois and Louis Darling) by Houghton Mifflin later that year. When the book Silent Spring was published, It dealt with public concerns with pesticides and pollution of the environment. -
Publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique
A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century. In 1966, Friedan founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men". -
UFW’s Nationwide Boycott of grapes picked on nonunion farms
The mostly Filipino American members of another union, the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), walk out on strike against Delano-area grape growers on Sept. 8, and ask Cesar's largely Latino NFWA to join the walkouts. On Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day, the NFWA, with 1,200-member families, votes to join a strike. Thus begins the five-year Delano Grape Strike. -
Publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a book detailing resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety. It was a pioneering work, openly polemical but containing substantial references and material from industry insiders. It made Nader a household name. -
NOW is founded
NOW was founded on June 30, 1966, in Washington, D.C., by 28 women and men attending the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. It had been three years since the Commission reported findings of women being discriminated against. -
Woodstock
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre (2.4 km²; 240 ha, 0.94 mi²) dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County. -
Congress passes the Clean Air Act
By 1970, the issue needed to be addressed again. Although important legislative precedents had been set, the existing laws were deemed inadequate. Although technically an amendment, the Clean Air Act of 1970 was a major revision and set much more demanding standards. -
First Earth Day celebration
Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this first Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. -
The EPA is established
It was in this atmosphere that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970. EPA was not a carefully crafted well integrated organization in the beginning. President Nixon, by Executive Order "reorganized" the Executive Branch by transferring 15 units from existing organizations into a now independent agency, EPA. Four major Government agencies were involved. -
Supreme Court rules to legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case
Was a landmark, controversial decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests for regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother's health. -
Protesters from the AIM take over the reservation at Wounded Knee
The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States. In October 1973 the American Indian Movement gathered its forces from across the country onto the Trail of Broken Treaties, championing Indian unity. The national AIM agenda focused on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty.AIM gained international press when it seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and in 1973 had a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
