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Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
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Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden
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The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel
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The term acid rain is coined by Robert Angus Smith in the book Air and Rain
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The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution
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US Congress created the National Park Service
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On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for whites and African Americans -
In September 1957 nine African American students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High School, whose entire student population had until that point been white. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be called, encountered a large white mob and soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocking the entrance of the school. -
On February 1, 1960, a group of four freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the “whites only” lunch counter. They were refused service and eventually asked to leave. -
he Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six whites, who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Testing the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case Boynton v. Virginia (1960) the so-called Freedom Riders used facilities for the opposite race as their buses made stops along the way. The group was confronted by violence in South Carolina, and, on May 14, when one bus stopped to change a slashed tire. -
Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring
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On February 21, 1965, the prominent African American leader Malcolm X was assassinated while lecturing at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York. -
On March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, to call for a federal voting rights law that would provide legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. -
The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise
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On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by a sniper while standing on the second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He had been staying at the hotel after leading a nonviolent demonstration in support of striking sanitation workers in that city. His murder set off riots in hundreds of cities across the country, -
The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign was to gain more economic and human rights for poor Americans from all backgrounds. A multicultural movement, the campaign included Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and whites along with African Americans -
First Earth Day – April 22. Millions of people gather in the United States for the first Earth Day. US Environmental Protection Agency established
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Bloody Sunday, about 15,000 people gathered in the Creggan area of Derry on the morning of 30 January 1972 to take part in a civil rights march. -
Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer entered into force
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. -
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December. Countries commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide
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U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol
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U.S. announces it will cease participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation
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U.S. announces it will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation