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Declaration of Independence Established
When conflict between American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, Americans were fighting for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer (Revolutionary War), the movement for independence from Britain grown and delegates of the Continental Congress was faced with a vote on the issue. A five-man committee drafted a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence–written largely by Jefferson. -
13th Amendment Ratified
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery in America after the conclusion of the American Civil War. The amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” -
The Battle of the Little Bighorn
The battle took place near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Tensions had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. When a number of tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army, dispatched to confront them. Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting and his forces were outnumbered "Custer’s Last Stand". -
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The Great Migration
6 million African Americans moved from rural South to North, Midwest, and West due to unsatisfactory economic opportunities, unfair legal system, inequality in education. After their population had a significant increase in Chicago and other cities, migrants were forced to deal with labor. Due to housing tensions, many African Americans built their own shelter. This began a new era of increasing political activism among African Americans.
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The Prophet was Published
In the aftermath of World War I, the Lebanese-born, Boston-based poet-philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote what would become one of the world’s most translated works of philosophy: The Prophet. This collection of inspirational sermons delivered by a fictional prophet—on love, marriage, work, reason, self-knowledge and ethics—challenged tired orthodoxies and oppressive ideologies. -
The KKK Marches in Washington
This event symbolizes the Nadir of Race Relations, a terrible era from 1890 to 1940 when race relations grew worse and worse. During this period white Americans became more racist than at any other point in our history, even during slavery. Also during the Nadir, the phenomenon of sundown towns swept the North. These are towns that were for decades—and in some cases still are—all-white on purpose. -
Thomas Dorsey Invents the Gospel Blues
In Chicago, African American composer Thomas Dorsey (nightclub jazz pianist) wrote a song inspired by his wife’s death in childbirth "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" became the foundation for the modern African American gospel music tradition. Its success stimulated an entirely new music industry. It became a touchstone for the dramatic role that music played in sustaining and forwarding America's Civil Rights movement; Martin Luther King Jr. often asked supporters to sing it before they marched. -
FDR Accepts the 1936 Democratic Presidential Nomination
The “political equality we once had won,” as he accepted the Democratic nomination for a second presidential term in 1936, rendered “meaningless in the face of economic inequality.” The government no longer belonged to the people but had been taken hostage by “privileged princes" In the Great Depression, he promised that his New Deal would recalibrate the balance of power between the people and the “economic royalists.” In result, working people flocked to the Democratic Party. -
The North Atlantic Treaty Is Signed
Intervening twice in the previous 32 years to restore peace in Europe, the U.S. was finally committed to an international alliance in peacetime, focused on preventing war. That act shaped the foreign policy, politics, military spending, military structure, doctrine, equipment and military ethos for future years. It had a remarkable and salutary effect on helping to bring a Europe together as a group of free and democratic states. -
Emmett Till Is Murdered
Till—a teenager who his killers thought had flirted with a white woman—changed the country. In Chicago, Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley Till, insisted on an open casket at her son’s funeral: She said she “wanted the world to see” her son’s mutilated corpse, battered beyond recognition. Magazines and newspapers ran the photo, signaling the power of shocking images as a new weapon in the generations-long struggle for black rights. -
The Birth Control Pill Is Approved
The Pill, which was much more effective, transformed society. Americans began to think differently about sex, contraception and about women’s capacity to control their own bodies and participate as truly equal members of society. Sex uncoupled from procreation, the freedom to choose when and if to become a mother, the ability for a woman to plan her life without fear of an unwanted pregnancy —these opened the door for the liberation of women. -
The Children March in Birmingham
The civil rights breakthrough in the 1960s required galvanizing the whole country, not just through rational arguments but by really breaking down people’s emotional resistance and making citizens across the country see they needed to do something. Demonstrations spread like wildfire all across the country. It led to the March on Washington and it pushed President Kennedy to propose what became the Civil Rights Act basically a month after those demonstrations. -
Howard Smith Amends the Civil Rights Act
Representative Howard Smith of Virginia offered a one-word amendment to Civil Rights Act, adding sex to the list of forms of discrimination prohibited by the act. Smith, a segregationist, opposed the bill but he argued that if it passed, white women should get the same protections being extended to black men and women.
Many legislators hoped, and others feared, that adding gender equality would kill the entire bill. -
Ronald Reagan Speaks to Conservatives
Barry Goldwater’s campaign was floundering a week before the 1964 election. Republican regulars were dejectedly heading for the exits. Ronald Reagan proceeded to electrify the country. His 30-minute address, labeled “A Time for Choosing,” carried Reagan to White House, revive American conservatism and pushed away the concept of Soviet communism. -
The Immigration and Nationality Act Is Signed
President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, catalyzing an increase in cultural diversity in the US. In the wake of the civil rights movement. The 1965 act was meant to promote family unification, level the field for lawful entry and ease the way for foreign-born professionals. Today over 40 million foreign-born individuals live in the United States, about three-quarters of whom have legal status.
