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Anti-war Rally downtown NYC
The Hard Hat Riot occurred on May 8, 1970, in New York City. It started around noon when about 200 construction workers, at the behest of the Nixon Administration, were mobilized by the New York State AFL-CIO to attack some 1,000 college and high school students and others who were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings, the Vietnam War, and the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
The doctrine of black and white students being equal in all public schools. -
President Roosevelt bans discrimination in defense military
This was to get rid of ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry. -
First African American baseball player (Jackie Robinson)
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. -
Truman orders desegregation of military
Executive Order 9981 is an executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. -
America increases aid to the French
French–American relations refers to the diplomatic, social, economic and cultural relations between France and the United States since 1776. France was the first ally of the new United States. The 1778 treaty and military support proved decisive in the American victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary War. France fared poorly, with few gains and heavy debts, which were contributing causes of France's own revolution and eventual transition to a Republic. -
French Surrender
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. -
Brown v. Board of Education
A 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. -
SEATO formed
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954 in Manila, Philippines. -
Bus Boycotts
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. -
"Southern Manifests"
The Declaration of Constitutional Principles was a document written in February and March 1956, in the United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. -
Accords call for free election
Ngo Dinh Diem consolidated his power as the President of South Vietnam. He declined to have a national election to unify the country as called for in the Geneva Accords. In North Vietnam Ho Chi Minh apologized for a disastrous land reform program he had initiated in 1955. The several thousand Viet Minh cadres the North had left behind in South Vietnam focused on political action rather than insurgency. The South Vietnamese army attempted to root out the Viet Minh. -
Vietcong launches insurgency
Viet Cong (VC), in full Viet Nam Cong San, English Vietnamese Communists, the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam (late 1950s–1975) and the United States (early 1960s–1973). The name is said to have first been used by South Vietnamese Pres. -
Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. -
SCLC founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., had a large role in the American civil rights movement. -
NASA is 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. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. -
Castro overthrows Batista's rigime
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. -
SDS is formed
Students for a Democratic Society was a national student activist organization in the United States that was one of the main representations of the New Left. Founded in 1960, the organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s, with over 300 chapters recorded nationwide by its last convention in 1969. -
Greensboro Sit-in
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African-American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is 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
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
John Glenn 1st American to orbit Earth
One of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space. -
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail and The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
16th St. Baptist Church Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when four members of the Klu Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church. -
U.S. , Great Britain, and Soviet Union signed nuclear test ban theory
The Partial Test Ban Treaty is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. -
JFK is assassinated
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician and journalist who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Malcolm X Breaks away from Nation of Islam
Departure from Nation of Islam. On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced his break from the Nation of Islam. He was still a Muslim, he said, but felt that the Nation had "gone as far as it can" because of its rigid teachings. -
SNCC Organizes Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer Begins. On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred arrived. The next day, two of the white students, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both from New York, and a local African American, James Chaney, disappeared. -
Civil Rights Act
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician and journalist who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Malcolm X shot and killed
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a 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 from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War. -
American troops arrive in Vietnam
March 8, 1965 - The first U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam as 3500 Marines land at China Beach to defend the American air base at Da Nang. They join 23,000 American military advisors already in Vietnam. -
Selma Campaign / Bloody Sunday
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. -
Congress Passes voting rights act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. -
Black Panthers and "Black Power"
The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community. -
Thurgood Marshall becomes first African American in the justice system
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer, serving as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. -
Congress divided into "hawks and doves"
In 1967, Congress was divided into two camps: hawks and doves. Hawks supported the war and believed they were fighting communism. -
Fulbright holds public hearings on the war
The Fulbright Hearings refers to any of the set of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam conducted between 1966 and 1971. -
My Las Massacre
The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968. -
MLK is assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 -
RFK Assassination
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was 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. -
Nixon wins Election
The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Nixon bombs Cambodia
Operation Menu was the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970 as part of both the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. -
America is first to the moon
The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. -
Affirmative Action passed by Nixon
Johnson's work on affirmative action would be furthered by President Richard Nixon whose Executive Order 11478 passed in August 8, 1969, and called for unilateral affirmative action in all government employment. -
Nixon attempts to break stalemate
In 1970, President Nixon tried to break the stalemate in the peace process by (1 point) pulling U.S. forces out of Cambodia. ... ordering a ground attack on Vietcong bases in Cambodia. -
Kent state and Jackson state killings
Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. The event happened only 11 days after the Kent State shootings, in which National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio, which had first captured national attention. -
26th amendment is added to constitution
The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. -
My Lai Massacre becomes public
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. -
Publication of Pentagon Papers in the NY Times
The New York Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the first article in the series was titled "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement". The study was dubbed The Pentagon Papers during the resulting media publicity. -
Paris Peace Accords
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. -
Vietnam becomes a nation
Vietnam is a Southeast Asian country on the South China Sea known for its beaches, rivers, Buddhist pagodas and bustling cities. -
Vietnam invades Cambodia
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War, otherwise known in Vietnam as the Counter-offensive on the Southwestern border, was an armed conflict between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea. -
Newark and Detroit Race Riots
The 1967 Newark riots was one of 159 race riots that swept cities in the United States during the "Long Hot Summer of 1967". This riot occurred in Newark, New Jersey, between July 12 and July 17, 1967. Over the four days of rioting, looting, and property destruction, 26 people died and hundreds were injured.
