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Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president.
Eisenhower was elected president after promising to end the Korean War. He believed in the Domino Theory, stating that if one country falls to communism then all the surrounding countries will also fall. The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States would intervene in the Middle East to stop the spread of communism. Eisenhower supported civil rights and helped Little Rock Highschool become integrated. He served for two terms. -
Period: to
1954-1975
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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
The supreme court ruled that segregation in the public schools was "inherently unequal" and thus unconstitutional. -
Operation Wetback
In a massive roundup of illegal immigrants, as many as 1 million Mexicans were apprehended and returned to Mexico. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
A yearlong black boycott on the city buses whcih served a notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation. -
Interstate Highway Act of 1956
This was a $27 billion plan to build forty-two thousand miles of sleek, fast motorways. This created countless construction jobs and speede the suburbanization of America. -
Eisenhower Doctrine
This doctrine pledged U.S. military and economic aid to Middle Eastern nations threatened by communist aggression. -
Little Rock Central Highschool
Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School. Confronted with a direct challenge to federal authority, Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes. -
Sputnik
The soviets were successful in launching their first satellite. This resulted in the creation of NASA in America and directed billions of dollars to missile development. Late in 1958, the National Defense and Education Act authorized $887 million on loans to needy college students and in grants for the improvement of teaching the sciences and languages. -
First moon landing
Kennedy promoted a multibillion-dollar project to land an American on the moon. After spending $24 billion, two American astronauts planted human footprints on the moons surface. -
Sit-in movement
Black college students in North Carolina demanded service at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter. The sit-in movement rolled swiftly across the South, swelling into a wave of wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins to compek equal treatment in restaurants, transportation, employment, housing, and voter registration. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed
Southern black students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to give more focus and force to the efforts of the sit-in movement. -
John F. Kennedy is elected.
Kennedy was the youngest man ever to be elected president, and he represented the younger generation. His idea of a "New Frontier" quickened patriotic pulses. Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps, and also during his administration Americans set foot on the moon. He supported civil rights. Kennedy was assasinated on November 22, 1963. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
In an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, some twelve hundred exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. When they started losing, Kennedy stood fast in his decision to keep hands off, and the ant-Castroites surrendered. Kennedy assumed full responsibility for the failure. -
Peace Corps Created
The Peace Corps was an army of idealistic and mostly youthful volunteers who would bring American skills to underdeveloped countries. -
America gets involved in Vietnam
Anti-Diem agitators noisily threatened to topple the pro-American government from power. In late 1961, Kennedy ordered a sharp increse in the number of U.S. troops in south Vietnam. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The aerial photographs of American spy planes revealed that the Soviets were secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy and Kruschev now began a game of "nuclear chicken". Kennedy ordered a naval "quarantine" of Cuba and demanded immediate removal of the weaponry. On October 28, Kruschev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba if the US would end the quarantine and not invade the island. -
Birmingham Campaign
Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a campaign agianst discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama. Peaceful civil rights marchers were repelled by police with attack dogs and electric caddle prods. The fire department also used high pressure water hoses against the demonstrators. -
Kennedy's speech
Kennedy delievered a speech at American University, Washington, D.C. He urged Americans to abandon a view of the Soviet Union as a Devil-ridden land filled with fanatics and instead to try and lay the foundations of a realistic policy of peaceful existence with the Soviets. -
March on Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr. led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peacefyl "March on Washington" in support of new civil rights legislation. -
Lyndon B. Johnson is elected president.
Johnson took over the presidency after JFK was assasinated. He called his domestic program the Great Society, and it fought poverty and racial injustice. He had four big legislative achievements: aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The act banned racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public, including theaters, hospitals, and restuarants. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
After American destroyers were allegedyl fired upon by the north Vietnamese, Johnson ordered a "limited" retaliatory air raid against the North Vietnamese bases. Congress passes the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which virtually abdicated their war-declaring powers and handed the president a blanck check to use further force in Southeast Asia. -
Pleiku, South Vietnam
Viet Cong guerillas attacked an american air base at Pleiku, South Vietnam. By the middle of March 1965, the Americans had "operation Rolling Thunder" in full swing--regular full-scale bombing attacks against North Vietnam. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registrars into several southern states. -
MLK is assasinated
He was killed by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee. The killing of King cruelly robbed the American people of one of the most inspirational leaders in their history. -
Richard Nixon is elected president.
Nixon applied himself to putting America's foreign policy in order. His announced policy, called Vietnamization", was to withdraw 540,000 U.S. troops from south Vietnam over an extended period. The Nixon Doctrine proclaimed that the United States would honor its existing defense commitments but in the future, Asians and others would have to fight their own wars. Nixon expanded the Great Society programs. He resigned on August 8, 1974, after the Watergate scandal was exposed. -
Cambodia Invasion
Without consulting Congress, Nixon ordered American forces to join with the South Vietnamese in cleaning out the enemy sanctuaries in officially neutral Cambodia. Angry students nationwide responded to the Cambodian invasion with rock throwing, window smashing, and arson. -
Watergate scandal
Five men working for the Republican Committe for the Re-elaction of the president were caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel and bugging rooms. Following was a great scandal in which many prominent members of nixon's administration resigned. The Supreme court ruled that President Nixon had to submit all tapes to congress. Once the tapes were revealed, Nixon resigned from the preisency on August 8, 1974. -
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford was the first unelected president; his name had been submitted by Nixon as a vice-presidential candidate. President ford's popularity and respect sank when he issued a full pardon of Nixon. Ford signed the Helsinki accords, which recognized Soviet boundaries and helped to aid tension between the two nations. During his presidency, South Vietnam was defeated. -
Defeat in Vietnam
Early in 1975, the North Vietnamese made their full invasion of South Vietnam, which quickly fell. The last of the Americans were evacuated on April 29, 1975.
