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John Kennedy Assassinated
This event sent the country into a downward spiral lasting until the early eighties. At first, the left blamed right wing extremists for the murder, but the murderer turned out to be one of their own. Kennedy's assassination opened the door for a massive government expansion and Southeast Asian war. His successor's natural legislative skill led to policies Kennedy could never have passed. -
Civil Rights Act passed
Without the Kennedy Assassination, this may have died in congress. President Johnson’s legislative skill shepherded the bill through to law. Since a Democratic president passed the law, the African American vote shifted from a swing constituency to 90% Democratic. Although more Republicans than Democrats supported the act, white southerners began abandoning Johnson’s party. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson full authority to wage war in Vietnam. As a result of his bungling, the war ripped a hole in the country leading to the radicalization of the left and the destruction of the old New Deal coalition forged by Franklin Roosevelt. -
The Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act banned discrimination in voting. In less than a generation, African Americans became a force in Democratic politics. In the early seventies, African American office holding spiked within the inner cities. Many of these office holders tended to be more liberal than the rest of the country and helped pulled the Democratic Party leftward. -
Watts Riot
Urban rioting plagued the north throughout the sixties. White Americans could not understand the phenomenon. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, but the cities still burned. This created further separation between whites and blacks, but also between conservatives and liberals. The worst riots occurred in Newark and Detroit in 1967. -
National Organization for Women (NOW) Founded
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an organization founded in 1966 and which has a membership of 500,000 contributing members set up for the advancement of women. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. -
The first Super Bowl is played
Super Bowl I highlightsThe First AFL-NFL World Championship Game in professional American football, later known as Super Bowl I and referred to in some contemporary reports as the Supergame, was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. The National Football League (NFL) champion Green Bay Packers defeated the American Football League (AFL) champion Kansas City Chiefs by the score of 35–10. -
Tet Offensive
U.S. troops had been in Vietnam for three years before the Tet Offensive, and most of the fighting they had encountered were small skirmishes involving guerilla tactics. Although the U.S. had more aircraft, better weapons, and hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers, they were stuck in a stalemate against the Communist forces in North Vietnam and the guerilla forces in South Vietnam (known as the Viet Cong). The United States was discovering that traditional warfare tactics did not necessaril -
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. When Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as the leader of the a Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, he began a long tenure as the spokesperson for nonviolent protest in the Civil Rights Movement. As a Baptist minister, he was a moral leader to the community. -
Woodstock Festival in White Lake, New York
Woodstock highlights (J. Hendrix)The Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or the Woodstock Festival was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969. During the sometimes rainy weekend, thirty-two acts performed outdoors in front of 500,000 concert-goers. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history.
