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Truman introduces the Fair Deal
In September 1945, United States President Harry Truman addressed Congress and presented a 21 point program of domestic legislation outlining a series of proposed actions in the fields of economic development and social welfare. The proposals to Congress became more and more abundant and by 1948 a legislative program that was more comprehensive came to be known as the Fair Deal. The program included a medical insurance plan for all Americans and the FEPC to open employment to African Americans. -
Baby Boomers
The term "baby boom" most often refers to the dramatic post-World War II baby boom (1946-1964). There are an estimated 78.3 million Americans who were born during this demographic boom in births. -
Republicans sweep Midtern Elections
Elections to the United States House of Representatives for the 80th United States Congress took place in 1946. These midterm elections occurred in the middle of President Harry S. Truman's first term. The president's lack of popular support is widely seen as the reason for the Democrats' congressional defeat. For the first time since before the Great Depression, Republicans were seen as the party which could best handle the American economy. -
Dr. Spock releases new book
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, written by Benjamin Spock, was first published on 14 July 1946, and is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. -
The Beat Generation
The Beat Generation is a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. Central elements of "Beat" culture included experimentation with drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being. -
Gwendlyn Brooks becomes first African American to win Pulitzer Prize
Her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, published in 1945 by Harper and Row, brought her instant critical acclaim. She received her first Guggenheim Fellowship and was one of the “Ten Young Women of the Year” in Mademoiselle magazine. In 1950, she published her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, which won her Poetry magazine’s Eunice Tietjens Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first given to an African-American. -
The First Levittown
Levittown gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. founded by William Levitt, who built the district as a planned community between 1947 and 1951. William Levitt is considered the father of modern suburbia. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country -
UNIVAC Revealed
The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. Design work was begun by their company, Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and was completed after the company had been acquired by Remington Rand. (In the years before successor models of the UNIVAC I appeared, the machine was simply known as "the UNIVAC".) -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others, as listed below. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system. -
Antipolio vaccine created
The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. -
Rosa Pards arrested
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference is founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. During its early years, SCLC struggled to gain footholds in black churches and communities across the South. Social activism in favor of racial equality faced fierce repression from police, White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan. -
Highway Act of 1956 becomes law
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was enacted on June 29, 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of 25 billion dollars for the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 20-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time. -
Election fo 1956
The United States presidential election of 1956 saw a popular Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully run for re-election. The 1956 election was a rematch of 1952, as Eisenhower's opponent in 1956 was Democrat Adlai Stevenson, whom Eisenhower had defeated four years earlier. -
1957 Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction. After it was proposed to Congress by then-President Dwight Eisenhower, Senator James Strom Thurmond sustained the longest one-person filibuster in history in an attempt to keep it from becoming law. The bill passed the House with a vote of 270 to 97 and the Senate 60 to 15. President Eisenhower signed it on 9 September 1957. -
Sputnik Launch
Sputnik 1 was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race within the Cold War. -
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American radical right-wing political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It was founded in 1958 by Robert W. Welch Jr. (1899–1985), who developed an elaborate infrastructure that enabled him to keep a very tight rein on the chapters. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. SNCC's major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
