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Little Rock Nine
Following Brown v. Board of Education, the NAACP registered 9 black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock in the 1957 school year. The school refused to let the students attend, and President Eisenhower responded by having the students escorted to class by a detachment of US Army Airborne troops. -
NDEA authorized education loans
After the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, it became clear American needed to catch up in the fields of math and science, so the NDEA was signed in to provide for math and science educations as scientific research was overhauled. -
Landrum-Griffin Act
Public opinion of organized labor began to decline as evidence surfaced of corruption and racketeering. The Landrum-Griffin Act responded by curbing the power of union officials. -
Sit-In Movement
When a group of nonviolent antisegregation protesters sat in a segregated Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, a wave of sit-ins began in segregated establishments across the South, raising public awareness of the scope of Southern segregation. The most successful wave of sit-ins took place in Nashville, Tennessee, where lunch counters were desegregated as a result. -
John F. Kennedy
53th President. -
Trade Expansion Act
In order to stimulate international trade, JFK lowered the American protective tariff. -
March on Washington
200,000 to 300,000 civil rights protesters in one of the largest civil rights rallies of all time in support of JFK's civil rights legislation. The rally is famous as the setting for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and for helping pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965). -
JFK assassination
FK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson was immediately sworn into the presidency. -
War on Poverty
During his State of the Union address, LBJ announced the War on Poverty, an undertaking which would be embodied by the Great Society in 1965, a series of New Dealish economic reforms. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment to the Constitution abolished the use of a poll tax in national votes. From 1964 onward black communities wouldn't be subjected to poll taxes during elections. -
Voting Rights Act
The culmination of much civil rights agitation for Black Americans, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices by states aiming to disenfranchise minorities. -
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination
The civil rights movement lost its de facto leader to James Earl Ray, who killed King in his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The killing set off a spree of riots and saw the end of the nonviolent protest movement, with the militant black power phase picking up pace. -
Richard Nixon
37th President -
Stonewall Inn Riots
After a violent raid by New York police against gays in the Stonewall Inn, a wave of gay liberation riots began in protest across the country. This event is credited as the beginning of the gay rights movement. -
Man on the Moon
Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin land on the moon. The U.S. economy spends a lot of money to make this happen. -
Clean Air Act
This legislation resulted in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal regulatory body dedicated to upholding the environmental regulations set in place by earlier Clean Air Acts. -
26th Amendment
The 26th Amendment to the Constitution reduced the legal voting age to 18, bringing in a generation of young voters. -
Nixon Visits China
President Richard Nixon visits China, an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China. This helped open trade for the economy. -
Equal Rights Amendment
Although sex discrimination in education was banned by Title IX of the Education Opportunities Act, the Equal Rights Act, which would outlaw sex discrimination in the workplace, was passed by Congress but failed to be ratified by the states. -
Microsoft
Bill Gates founded Microsoft, which is a time dominated the home computer operating system market. -
Fall of Saigon
By the end of 1975, the North Vietnamese had resumed their invasion and rapidly taken South Vietnam. Over 500,000 South Vietnamese fled Vietnam to escape the communists.
