Sherman Brawner's Timeline 1954-1975

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Jan 20, 1953

http://us-presidents.theblaze.com/q/38/7317/When-did-President-Dwight-D-Eisenhower-take-office-in-the-White-House Eisenhower was a Republican president who served before as a gneral. He was the allied supreme commander of D-Day. He was president from 1953-1961.

Timeline

Period: Jan 1, 1954 to Dec 31, 1975

Brown v. Board of Educaton

May 17, 1954

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=87' Brown v. Board of Education was a unanimous ruling and declared that "separate but equal" facilities were unconstitutional. This reversed the earlier decision of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Rosa Parks

Dec 1, 1955

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and was arrested.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dec 1, 1955

http://www.history.com/topics/montgomery-bus-boycott For 13 months, African Americans boycotted buses because of Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a white man. This boycott went all the way to the supreme court and eventually ruled segreation of buses unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle.

Interstate Highway System

Jun 29, 1956

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/homepage.cfm The Interstate Highway System was a $27 billion plan to build 42,000 miles of roadways. It created tons of construction jobs and speeded up suburbanization.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Sep 9, 1957

This set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.

Integration at Little Rock

Sep 24, 1957

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_history/white-house-stories/eisenhower-enforces-racial-integration-of-schools.html Eisenhower sent in troops from the 101st airbourne division to forcibly integrate nine black students into the Centrl High School that were being kept out by Arkansas' governor, Orval Faubus.

Sit-In Movements in North Carolina

Feb 1, 1960

http://www.ushistory.org/us/54d.asp Four African Americans in Greensboro, North Carolina, protested for desegregation by sitting at a Woolsworth lunch counter. Though they were arrested for misconduct, they sparked a revolution of peaceful protest.

John F. Kennedy

Jan 20, 1961

Democratic Kennedy won the election of 1960 and pledged to get the country moving again. He was the youngest president ever elected.

Bay of Pigs invasion

Apr 17, 1961

http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-Bay-of-Pigs.aspx 1400 Cuban refugees were sent to overthrow Fidel Castro and his communist forces. They were miserably defeated within 24 hours and the United States did not promise help like they said they would.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Oct 22, 1962

http://www.history.com/topics/cuban-missile-crisis The Soviets had missiles facing the United States from Cuba. After an intense standoff between U.S. ships and Soviet ships, the Soviet ships turned around. The result was a near nuclear war.

MLK's I Have a Dream

Aug 28, 1963

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0874987.html In Washington D.C., MLK delivered a moving speech to thousands of listeners, preaching equality. It is the most well-known of his speeches and an iconic symbol of civil rights.

March on Washington

Aug 28, 1963

This march was a peaceful protest lead by Martin Luther King Jr. to gain "jobs and freedom" for his fellow African Americans. It was here that MLK gave his riveting "I have a dream" speech in the national mall in Washington DC.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/marchonwashington.html

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Nov 22, 1963

http://us-presidents.theblaze.com/l/43/Lyndon-B-Johnson' He became presideent after Kennedy's assassination and was elected to office in the 1964 presidental election.

Geneva Conference

Jul 21, 1964

http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/geneva-conference.html This conference officially split Vietnam into North and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel. It propelled Us involvement in Vietnam by appointing a "democratic" Ngo Dinh Diem as leader of the South. The North, however, was communist and lead by Ho Chi Minh.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Aug 2, 1964

This was an "unprovoked attack" on the US Maddox by North Vietnamese forces. Though the US claimed that it was unprovoked, they hid the fact that the US Maddox had been providing support to South Vietnam.

Tonkin Gulf Resolution

Aug 7, 1964

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=98 This was Congress' response to the attack on the US Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin Invasion. With a unanimous vote in the House and only two votes of dissention in the Senate, Johnson was given a blank check to escalate US involement in Vietnam.

Malcom X assasination

Feb 21, 1965

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/feb-21-1965-malcolm-x-is-assassinated-by-black-muslims/ Malcom X, a civil rights activist who believed in African American equality through self defense was assasinated on February 21, 1965. Previously committed to the nation of Islam, two black muslims felt that he had betrayed Islam's ideals by removing himself and assasinated him.

Operation Rolling Thunder

Feb 24, 1965

Operation Rolling Thunder was a bombing campaign on North Vietnam under President Johsnon. It was supposed to only last eight weeks but ended up lasting for eight years. Its target was North Vietnam and NLF controlled areas in South Vietnam.

Selma March

Mar 25, 1965

http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_selma_to_montgomery_march/ The people marching from Selma to Montgomery were beaten by police on their peaceful, nonviolent journey to obtain their right to vote.

Medicare

Jul 30, 1965

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/medicarebill.htm He signed the Medicare Bill into law, which called for national healthcare for the elderly.

Tet Offensive

Jan 30, 1968

On the Vietnamese holidy, Tet, North Vietnamese took advantage of the vulnerable South Vietnamese and American forces and attacked. Although the Americans won each one of these battles, this attack broke any hope of the Americans winning the war.

Dr. Martin Luther King's Assasination

Apr 4, 1968

http://history1900s.about.com/cs/martinlutherking/a/mlkassass.htm Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King Jr., was assasinated on April 4 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennesee.

Richard Nixon

Jan 20, 1969

http://us-presidents.theblaze.com/l/7/Richard-Nixon Republican candidate Nixon won the election of 1968 although he only garnished 43.4% of the popular vote. He won reelection in 1972 by a landslide.

Watergate

Jun 17, 1972

Five burglars were caught in the Democratic Offices at Watergate. Nixon claimed to have not known about these misdoings, but more inverstigation proved otherwise. He was impeached for obstruction of justice and then resigned in 1974.

Vietnamization

Dec 21, 1972

This was Nixon's strategy to slowly pull American forces out of Vietnam and turn over the fighting to the South Vietnamese. It was finally completed in 1975.

Withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam

Jan 22, 1973

After many years of fighting, the US officially withdrew its troops from Vietnam in 1973; however, much to their dismay, Vietnam fell to communism shortly after, in 1975.

Gerald Ford

Aug 9, 1974

http://us-presidents.theblaze.com/l/3/Gerald-Ford Ford was the first and only president to be made, not elected, president. He was appointed to vice president after Spiro Agnew's resignation and stumbled his way into the presidency when Nixon resigned.

Ford pardons Nixon

Sep 8, 1974

A month after Ford took office, he publicly gave Nixon a presidental pardon, thus freeing him from any crimes he may have committed as president. This caused a lot of anger and distrust with the American people.

Helinski Accords

Aug 1, 1975

http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/245 It was a declaration signed by 33 countries to reduce tensions between the communist eastern world and the free western world. This was an attempt to reach a detente.