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US aid France in Vietnam
Truman sends the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Indochina to Vietnam to assist the French. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of U.S. military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces. -
French surrender
On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region. -
Brown vs Board
landmark 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 -
Montgomery bus boycott
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. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement. -
Southern Manifesto
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. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed
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. -
Fidel Castro takespower
Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. -
Sit Ins Start
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. -
Viet Cong Formed
The Viet Cong, also known as the National Liberation Front, was a mass political organization in South Vietnam and Cambodia with its own army the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) – that fought against the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War, eventually emerging on the winning side. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the major American Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s. It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at a May 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. -
Beatles Form
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The line-up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr led the band to be regarded as the foremost and most influential in history -
Students for Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), American student organization that flourished in the mid-to-late 1960s and was known for its activism against the Vietnam War. SDS, founded in 1959, had its origins in the student branch of the League for Industrial Democracy, a social democratic educational organization. -
First Freedom Ride
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. -
John F. Kennedy presidency
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. -
Peace Corps Formed
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
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored rebel group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961 -
Construction of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
“letter from Birmingham jail” MLK
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. -
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
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 -
I Have a Dream Speech
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
16th Street 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. -
J.F.K 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 -
Economic Opportunity Act
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–452) authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. -
Teach Ins
"Teach ins" were popularized during the U.S. government's involvement in Vietnam. The first teach-in, which was held overnight at the University of Michigan in March 1965, began with a discussion of the Vietnam War draft and ended in the early morning with a speech by philosopher Arnold Kaufman. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
DescriptionThe Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident -
Hippies arrive
A hippie (sometimes spelled hippy) is a member of the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. -
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (Pub.L. 89–563) was enacted in the United States in 1966 to empower the federal government to set and administer new safety standards for motor vehicles and road traffic safety. -
Water Quality Act
The 1965 legislation directed the states to develop water quality standards. ... In 1972, the Clean Water Act legislation came into effect. The act aimed to "restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters." -
Immigration and Nationality Act
The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States. -
National Foundation on The Arts and The Humanities Act
An act to provide for the establishment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities to promote progress and scholarship in the humanities and the arts in the United States, and for other purposes. -
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1965. Part of Johnson's "War on Poverty," the act has been the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by the United States Congress. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
.. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified. -
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. -
U.S enters Vietnam
On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines came ashore at Da Nang as the first wave of U.S. combat troops into South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 U.S. military advisers already in place. -
Medicare & Medicaid formed
On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the bill that led to the Medicare and Medicaid. The original Medicare program included Part A (Hospital Insurance) and Part B (Medical Insurance). -
Black Panther Party Formed
The Black Panther Party, originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. -
Clean Water Act
The previous year's Water Quality Act required the states to establish and enforce water quality standards for all interstate waters that flowed through their boundaries. ... The bill that Lyndon Johnson signed on November 3, 1966, was one shaped largely by Senator Edmund Muskie's Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution. -
Haight Ashbury
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. -
Air Quality Act
Air quality Act of 1967 also authorized expanded studies of air pollutant emission inventories, ambient monitoring techniques, and control techniques. -
Detroit Riot
The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 1967 Detroit Rebellion or 12th Street riot was the bloodiest incident in the "Long, hot summer of 1967". -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive, or officially called The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than 1968 by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War -
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination
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. -
Vietnam war crosses to Cambodia
The Cambodian Civil War was a military conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam -
Jackson State killings
The Jackson State killings occurred on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, a group of students were confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. -
26th Amendment
26th Amendment gives 18-year-olds the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” -
New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the First Amendment. The ruling made it possible for The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship or punishment. -
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.
