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Period: to
The years of 1946 to 1979
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On February 26 1946, racial tensions led to mass arrests of African Americans in Columbia, Tennessee.
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In 1947, Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African Americans to play major League baseball.
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On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military.
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1950-1954 U.S. aid to France for Vietnam
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In 1954, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization formed
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In 1954- Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
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May 7, 1954 French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam
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In 1955 Rosa Parks Bus ride 55-56-mont. Bus Boycott
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In 1956 - Southern Manifesto sought to counter the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
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1957 nine young African American students volunteered to enroll at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They faced an angry mob and could not get into the building.
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In 1957 Congress voted to pass the Civil Rights Act. President Eisenhower signed the bill into law, which established the Untied States Civil Rights Commission and gave it the power to investigate violations, of civil rights.
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In 1957- SCLC formed
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By 1957 a communist rebel group in the South known as the National Liberation Front NLF had committed itself to undermining the Diem government and uniting vietnam under a communist flag. NLF guerrilla fighters called Vietcong.
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In 1957 the Soviet Union launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 called into question American Technological superiority.
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October 1958 NASA was created as civilian agency responsible for coordinating America’s activities in space
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In 1959, Fidel Castro became Cuban Prime Minister
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1960 John F Kennedy was elected as President of the United States
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1960 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee goal was to create a grass-roots movement that involved all classes of African Americans in the struggle to defeat white racism and to obtain equality.
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On February 1, 1960, four African American college students ordered doughnuts and coffee at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina
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Beginning in 1961 President John F Kennedy sent Special Forces Troops to South Vietnam to advise the Army of the Republic of Vietnam ARVN on more effective ways to fight the Communist Forces.
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In the spring of 1961, CORE staged a Freedom ride though the Deep South Riders set off in two separate buses from Washington DC, bound for New Orleans, En route they defied Segregationist codes
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May 1961 Alan Shepard is the First American to fly in space.
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In 1961 the Peace Corps was created
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Bay of pigs Invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961
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August 31, 1961 workers start building the Berlin wall. The ninety-six-mile-long wall would divide Soviet controlled East Berlin from democratic West Berlin.
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In August and September of 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
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Feb 1962 Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth
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James Meredith became the First African American student to integrate the University of Mississippi after winning a federal case guaranteeing his right to do so in 1962
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In 1963 U.S. Great Britain, and the Soviet Union signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
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1963 MLK Jr letter from Birmingham jail.
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The Equal pay Act 1963 required equal wages for “equal work” in industries engaged in commerce.
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The March on Washington took place on August 28, 1963. Organizers had hoped for 100,000 demonstrators, More than double that number showed up, having made the Journey to the Capital from around the country.
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In Nov 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas.
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In 1964 President Johnson Congress authorized the use Force to defend American Troops by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
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July 1964 the Civil Rights Act became law.
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The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act created the Job Corps to train young men and women between the ages of 16 and 21 in the work skills they needed to acquire better jobs and move out of poverty.
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In 1964 Martin Luther King received the Nobel Peace Prize
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Feb 1965- Troop escalations in Vietnam
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By 1965 most of the troops sent to Vietnam were no longer volunteers who had enlisted in the Army Instead they were draftees- Young men drafted into military service- who had been assigned a tour in vietnam.
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By the end of 1965, there were 184,300 U.S. troops in Vietnam, and only 636 American soldiers had died in the war.
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In 1965 the Water Quality Act aimed to "restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters."
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1966 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panthers
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1966 the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act established safety standards for automotive vehicles and created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to administer them.
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Clean Water Restoration Act 1966 provided federal funds for the construction of sewage treatment plants. This act and others that followed over the next decade had a significant impact in reducing pollution and restoring rivers
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The Air Quality Act 1967 aimed at improving water and air standards, in the country
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July 2, 1967 Thurgood Marshall was the first Black Supreme Court Justice
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In 1968, the first Special Olympics was held in Chicago
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In April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King was struck by a shot from a high-powered rifle. He died at a hospital at the age of 39.
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July 1969 Neil Armstrong left his spacecraft Columbia’s landing vehicle and became the first man to step on the moon.
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Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970. It was established to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection.
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July 7, 1971 the 26h Amendment was put in place changing the voting age to 18.
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In 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the US Supreme Court legalized abortion.
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In 1978 the EPA investigated Love Canal, New York for toxins.
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On March 28, 1979, the core of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, began to melt after the reactor malfunctioned.
