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Yalta Conference
FDR & Churchill discussed with Stalin the conditions under which the USSR would enter the war against Japan & all 3 agreed that, in exchange for potentially crucial Soviet participation in the Pacific, the Soviets would be granted a sphere of influence in Manchuria following Japan's surrender. The Allied leaders also discussed the future of Germany, Eastern Europe and the United Nations. -
Period: to
1945-1980
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Containment Policy begins
Containment was a foreign policy strategy followed by the United States during the Cold War. First laid out by George F. Kennan, Containment stated that communism needed to be contained and isolated, or it would spread to neighboring countries. This spread would allow the Domino Theory to take hold, meaning that if one country fell to communism, then each surrounding country would fall as well, like a row of dominoes. -
Truman Doctrine announced
In a speech to Congress, Pres Truman asks for US assistance for Greece & Turkey to forestall communist domination of the 2 nations. Historians have often cited Truman's address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War. -
Jackie Robinson breaks MLB color barrier
The Brooklyn Dodgers announce the purchase of the contract of Jack Roosevelt Robinson from Montreal. Jackie makes his big-league debut against the Boston Braves making him the 1st African American to play in the major leagues. -
Marshal Plan
Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was intended to rebuild the economies and spirits of western Europe, primarily. Marshall was convinced the key to restoration of political stability lay in the revitalization of national economies. Further he saw political stability in Western Europe as a key to blunting the advances of communism in that region. -
Israel becomes a nation
Jewish leaders assembled at the Tel Aviv Museum to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence and announce the creation of the first modern Jewish state. The next day, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan attacked the fledgling country -
Truman issues Executive order 9981
Desegregation of the Armed Forces -
Truman's "Fair Deal"
His Fair Deal recommended that all Americans have health insurance, that the minimum wage be increased, and that, by law, all Americans be guaranteed equal rights. -
NATO established
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. The military alliance, which provided for a collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly increased American influence in Europe. -
Chinese Communist Revolution
Nationalists, led by Chaing Kai-Shek, were defeated at Nanjing and forced to flee to Taiwan. Communist rule was established in the People's Republic of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong. -
USSR has the atomic bomb
According to legend, the Soviet physicists who worked on the bomb were honored for the achievement based on the penalties they would have suffered had the test failed. Those who would have been executed by the Soviet government if the bomb had failed to detonate were honored as "Heroes of Socialist Labor," and those who would have been merely imprisoned were given "The Order of Lenin," a slightly less prestigious award. -
McCarthyism
Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly charges that Communists are in the U.S. State Department -
Korean War Begins
The Korean War begins when communist North Korea invades non-communist South Korea -
Hydrogen bomb invented
U.S. and its chief architect was Dr. Edward Teller. It was detonated in Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower elected President
34th president, served two terms as president -
Joseph Stalin dies
The second leader of the Soviet Union, serving as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. He created a series of Five Year Plans, created a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. He launched the Great Purge a campaign to rid the Communist Party of people accused of sabotage, terrorism and treachery. -
Korean War ends
Formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remain separate and occupy almost the same territory they had when the war began. -
Vietminh defeat French
Ho Chi Minh forces win against the French in their war for independence at the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu. -
Brown v. Board of Education ruling
Supreme Court ended segregation of public education -
Murder of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Money, MS, 14-yr-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman 4 days earlier. His assailants--the white woman's husband & her brother- beat and killed Emmett. The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the African American civil rights movement. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott Begins
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat which starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott in AL -
Elvis 1st appears on Ed Sullivan
Over 60 million people, both young and old, watched the show and many people believe it helped bridge the generation gap for Elvis' acceptance into the mainstream. -
40 million TVs in US
Top TV shows
1.I Love Lucy
2.The Ed Sullivan Show
3.General Electric Theatre
4.The $64,000 Question
5.December Bride
6.Alfred Hitchcock Presents
7.I've Got A Secret
8.Gunsmoke
9.The Perry Como Show
10.The Jack Benny Show -
Little Rock Nine
Ike sends troops to Little Rock, AR H.S. to ensure integration -
USSR launches Sputnik
The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. -
Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in
a civil rights protest that started, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. -
U2 incident
An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was brought down in the Soviet Union -
John F. Kennedy elected President
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Freedom Rides
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins to organize Freedom Rides throughout the South to try to de-segregate interstate public bus travel. -
Construction of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by East Germany that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls,which circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, and other defenses. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Aa event in which the Soviet Union had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba to annoy and scare the United States. -
Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique published
It is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. -
March on Birmingham
A campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. Leads to violence -
March on Washington
200,000 civil rights supporter march on Washington, D.C. to support legislation -
Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president of US
Took over as president when JFK was assassinated. Got elected president in the 1964 election and served just one term. -
Freedom Summer
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), CORE and the NAACP and other civil-rights groups organize a massive African American voter registration drive in Mississippi known as "Freedom Summer." Three CORE civil rights workers are murdered. In the five years following Freedom Summer, black voter registration in Mississippi will rise from a mere 7 percent to 67 percent. -
Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Congress resolution authorizing the president to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the US and to prevent aggression." -
Malcolm X assassinated
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March from Selma to Montgomery
King organizes a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for African American voting rights. A shocked nation watches on television as police club and teargas protesters. -
United Farm Workers association founded
Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta found it, in Delano, Calif., which becomes the largest and most important farm worker union in the nation. Huerta becomes the first woman to lead such a union. Under their leadership, the UFW joins a strike started by Filipino grape pickers in Delano. The Grape Boycott becomes one of the most significant social justice movements for farm workers in the United State -
Medicare & Medicaid programs (LBJ's Great Society)
This act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It established Medicare, a health insurance program for the elderly, and Medicaid, a health insurance program for the poor. -
Voting Rights Act passed
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Race Riots in Watts
A California officer, pulled over African American who the officer believed was intoxicated. African American failed to pass sobriety tests and soon after arrested. Officer refused to let African American's brother drive the car home, and radioed for it to be impounded. As events escalated, a crowd of onlookers steadily grew from dozens to hundreds. The mob became violent, throwing rocks and other objects while shouting at the police officers. -
Carmichael calls for "Black Power"
Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, calls for "black power" in a speech, ushering in a more militant civil rights stance. -
Kwanzaa is created
The holiday of Kwanzaa, based on African harvest festivals, is created in the U.S. by an activist scholar, Maulana Ron Karenga. -
Black Panthers are founded
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seales found the Black Panther Party, a radical black power group, in Oakland, California. Although it develops a reputation for militant rhetoric and clashes with the police, the group also becomes a national organization that supports food, education, and healthcare programs in poor African American communities. -
Thurgood Marshall becomes Supreme Court Justice
He becomes the first African American to serve as justice on Supreme Court. -
Tet Offensive
The North Vietnamese join forces with the Viet Cong to launch the Tet Offensive, attacking approximately one hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns. -
MLK is assassinated
At 6:05 p.m. in Memphis, TN, King was standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he and his associates were staying, when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the neck. -
Chicago Democratic Convention
the divisive politics of the convention, brought about by the Vietnam War policies of Pres Johnson, prompted the Dem party to completely overhaul its rules for selecting presidential delegates -- opening up the political process to millions. The violence between police & anti-Vietnam War protesters in the streets & parks of Chicago gave the city a black eye form which it has yet to recover from. -
Richard Nixon elected president
The Rep nominee, former VP Nixon, won the election over the Dem nominee, incumbent VP Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law & order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime. Analysts have argued the election of '68 is a realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 yrs. LBJ chose not to run. -
The Stonewall Riots occur
This event transforms the gay rights movement from one limited to a small number of activists into a widespread protest for equal rights and acceptance. Patrons of a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn, fight back during a police raid on June 27, sparking three days of riots. -
America lands on the moon
American Neil Armstrong has become the first man to walk on the Moon. As he put his left foot down first Armstrong declared: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He described the surface as being like powdered charcoal and the landing craft left a crater about a foot deep. -
First Earth Day
1st beginning as a protest to help the environment become an issue in US politics, Earth Day became an annual celebration to help promote awareness of some of our negative effects on our environments and ecosystems. -
Kent State shootings
National Guardsmen open fire on a crowd of student antiwar protesters at Ohio's Kent State University, resulting in the death of four students and the wounding of eight others. President Nixon publicly deplores the actions of the Guardsmen, but cautions: "when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." Several of the protesters had been hurling rocks and empty tear gas canisters at the Guardsmen. -
26th Amendment passed
Lowering the voting age in America from 21 to 18 began during World War II and intensified during the Vietnam War, when young men denied the right to vote were being conscripted to fight for their country. -
Pentagon Papers published
The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers, revealing a legacy of deception concerning U.S. policy in Vietnam on the part of the military and the executive branch. -
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever.
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever. -
Watergate Burglars arrested
A political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon -
Nixon reelected
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SCt decides on Roe v. Wade
Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health. Giving the right to women to have an abortion. -
Vietnam War ends
A cease-fire agreement in Paris, in the words of Richard Nixon, "brings peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia," is signed in Paris by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The agreement is to go into effect on January 28th -
Nixon resigns as President
Gerald Ford takes over as President of the US. In an evening televised address, Pres Nixon announces his intention to become the 1st pres in US history to resign. With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair, -
Iran Hostage Crisis
A group of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 US hostages. The immediate cause of this action was Pres Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to the US for cancer treatment. The students set their hostages free on January 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after Pres Reagan delivered his inaugural address. Sets up the movie "Argo". -
Ronald Reagan elected President
Reagan won the Republican nomination and successfully ran against incumbent President Jimmy Carter for president.