American history (Full all chapters) Summary

March on Washington

A group of 250,000 black and white supporters of the civil rights

movement gathered in the capital to lend support to the civil rights

legislation pending in Congress. The most prominent organizer and

speaker was Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his "I Have a Dream"

speech at the rally.

Nuclear test-ban treaty

Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union decided to ban the

testing of nuclear weapons in the atmo-sphere and on the ocean floor

in this agreement, which was one response to the near-war over the

Cuban missile crisis.
John F. Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon B. Johnson assumes

presidency

vigorous reformer, which, ironically, helped Lyndon Johnson pass a

great deal of legislation that had stalled in Congress while Kennedy

was alive.

The movement expanded its mission to bring into question many aspects of

higher education at large American universities.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizes military action in Vietnam
President Johnson got the authority of Congress to allow the U.S. military to

react to attacks on American forces in Vietnam. This resolution was the sole

legislative basis for escalating the Vietnam War.
Freedom Summer
White students from northern colleges joined with civil rights veterans

in Mississippi in a campaign to register black voters. Fifteen civil rights

workers were killed in this effort.

Civil Rights Act

Congress passed this landmark legislation, outlawing racial

discrimination in employment, education, and transportation, after a

two-and-a-half-month filibuster against it by southern senators.

acts established programs that were intended to reduce the number

of poor people in the United States.
Johnson elected president
Lyndon Johnson defeated conservative Republican senator Barry

Goldwater in one of the largest landslides in American history.

assassinated while giving a speech in Harlem. Published posthumously, The

Autobiography of Malcolm X became one of the most influential books of the

1960s.

campaigns

North Vietnam's economy and force it to the bargaining table. Despite the use of

a million tons of bombs, neither objective was accomplished.
First U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam
The failure of the South Vietnamese army to defeat the Vietcong guerrillas led

Lyndon Johnson to commit American combat troops to the war. Guard duty at

air bases swiftly expanded to include the massive search-and-destroy sweeps of

an Americanized war in the Vietnamese countryside. By the time Johnson left

office, more than 500,000 U.S. troops had been sent to Vietnam.
Race riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles
Set off by the arrest of a black motorist, Watts was among the most serious

race riots of the many that occurred between 1964 and 1968. Beginning only

five days after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Watts riots

signified the apparent irrelevance of legal gains, and the great importance of

economic disadvantages, in the daily life of young black Americans.

1966 National Organization for Women (NOW) founded
Modeled on the NAACP, NOW was created "to bring women into full participation

in the mainstream of American society now." Membership grew from 1,000 in

1967 to 15,000 in 1971.
Stokely Carmichael proclaims black power
The black student movement in the South began to reject the strategy of

nonviolence in the face of increasing white opposition to racial change. The term

black power reflected the struggle for empowerment that came to characterize

the movement for black liberation.

Haight-Ashbury and other centers of counterculture life to seek the liberation

promised by alternative values and styles, by spiritual exploration, and by the

drug culture.

and killed 43 people, most of them black, in Detroit alone. Federal troops, some

of whom had just returned from Vietnam, were sent to restore order. President

Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders attributed their causes

to persistent racism and economic inequality in urban life.
1968 Tet offensive dashes American hopes of victory
Although American and South Vietnamese forces defeated this communist

attempt to smash the Saigon government, any illusion that America was winning

the war in Vietnam evaporated in the wake of simultaneous attacks throughout

the south. Public opinion in the United States began to shift away from support

for the war.
Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated
King was murdered by a sniper while he was in Memphis, Tennessee, to support

a sanitation workers' strike. His death set off a series of violent outbreaks by

blacks in more than a hundred cities and eliminated the black leader most able to

stir the conscience of white America.

throwing the antiwar campaign for the presidency into a turmoil from which it did

not recover and shattering the hopes of many that social change could be

achieved through the political system.

Chicago in an attempt to influence the Democrats to adopt an antiwar platform.

The public, watching on television, perceived the Democrats as a party of public

disorder and reacted with a backlash directed against the antiwar movement.

of the civil rights and antiwar movements. More loosely organized than NOW,

"women's liberation" looked beyond legal rights to broader questions of gender

roles and the connections between personal and social/political issues.

Chapter 29 : The 1970s: Toward a Conservative America

1968 Richard Nixon elected president

In a remarkable reversal of fortune, Nixon came back from defeats in 1960 and 1962 to win the Republican nomination and the election.

1969 Stonewall riot leads to gay liberation movement
The Stonewall was a gay bar in New York City where, in the summer of 1969,patrons fought back after being harassed by the police. The resulting rioting marked the emergence of a liberation movement that, like many of the day,moved beyond an older, legalistic approach to civil rights for homosexual men and women.
Vietnam moratorium
Millions of antiwar activists argued for a suspension of business as usual and held rallies against the war on October 15.
American Indian Movement seizes Alcatraz
As a protest against the treatment of native Americans, members of the

American Indian Movement (AIM) took over the deserted island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, offering to buy it from the federal government for the $24 worth of trinkets presumably paid for Manhattan in 1626.

1970 Nixon orders invasion of Cambodia; renewed antiwar protests
Despite earlier announcements that U.S. ground forces would be withdrawn from Vietnam, American troops invaded Cambodia in search of enemy staging areas. The announcement of this action generated a surge of protest from students and the antiwar movement.
Killings at Kent State and Jackson State
Four students at Ohio's Kent State University, and two at Mississippi's

historically black Jackson State, were killed by National Guardsmen during

protests against the invasion of Cambodia.

Environmental Protection Agency established

President Nixon established this agency to coordinate the federal government's more aggressive environmental policies.

Earth Day first observed

Twenty million Americans throughout the country gathered to express their support for environmental preservation

1971 Pentagon Papers published

Daniel Ellsberg, a disillusioned Defense Department official, leaked a classified study of America's growing involvement in Vietnam to the New York Times. The documents revealed that the public had often been deliberately misled about government policy.

Nixon suspends Bretton Woods system

The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 had used the U.S. dollar to stabilize world currency. In 1971, the system collapsed, allowing the dollar to float with the price of gold.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg institutes busing

The Supreme Court required the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district to transport students widely through the district in order to achieve desegregation.

1972 Revenue sharing begins

As part of Nixon's efforts to scale back the role of the federal government, states were given block grants of federal money to use as they saw fit.

Watergate break-in; Nixon reelected

Employees of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex to install wiretaps on the phones. Their arrest and trial led to the exposure of the questionable activities of the Nixon White House and campaign staffs. Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern, carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, reflecting the further collapse of the Roosevelt coalition.

Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment

First introduced in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), banning gender discrimination, finally passed both houses of Congress. After being sent to the states for ratification, it failed by three states.

Nixon visits People's Republic of China
Breaking with the twenty-three-year-old policy of trying to isolate communist China, Nixon began a process of diplomatic recognition that would be completed in 1979.
SALT I Treaty with Soviet Union
Efforts to reduce tensions with the USSR, and to manage the expansion of

superpower nuclear arsenals, were furthered by this agreement.

Christmas bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong
Following an announcement in October that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam,

negotiations deadlocked. Seeking to reassure the South Vietnamese that

American power would help them if the agreements were violated, the U.S. launched the war's most devastating bombing campaigns against Hanoi and Haiphong.

1973 Spiro Agnew resigns; Gerald Ford appointed vice-president

Vice-President Agnew was forced to resign after he was indicted for allegedly receiving kickbacks on construction contracts while he was governor of Maryland and vice-president. Under the newly ratified Twenty-fifth Amendment, Congressman Ford was appointed in his place.

Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion

This Supreme Court ruling declared that states could not prevent women from receiving abortions during the first three months of pregnancy.

Paris Peace Accords
These agreements established a cease-fire in Vietnam, with the U.S. to

withdraw combat troops in exchange for the return of all American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam.

War Powers Act
In an attempt to curb presidential power to wage undeclared war, Congress passed this act requiring the president to report any use of troops within forty-eight hours and to end hostilities within sixty days if Congress did not declare war.

1973-1974 Arab oil embargo; gas shortages

The largely Arab Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) refused to sell oil to the United States, Germany, or Japan in retaliation for their support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The oil embargo was a shock to the American public, and had a serious impact on the American economy. Long lines at gas stations and limitations on fuel purchases were the signals of an end to U.S. domination of the world economy, the view that was most familiar to individual Americans.

1974 Nixon resigns; Ford becomes president and pardons Nixon

To avoid being removed from office by impeachment, the president resigned, elevating Ford to the presidency.

1974-1975 Busing controversy in Boston

Court-ordered busing of black high school students into the Irish neighborhood of South Boston led to a series of violent confrontations between black and white students.

1975 Fall of Saigon
The war in Vietnam continued following the withdrawal of American forces. In April 1975, the South Vietnamese army was defeated and Vietnam was unified under the Hanoi government following the capture of the southern capital at Saigon

1975-1976 Recession

A negative balance of trade, deindustrialization, and significantly higher fuel prices contributed to a serious recession in 1975.

1976 Jimmy Carter elected president

Running as a Washington outsider, Carter, a Democrat and a former governor of Georgia, defeated Ford for the presidency.

1978 Carter brokers Camp David accords

President Carter negotiated a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel by inviting the heads of the two nations to the presidential retreat at Camp David, in Maryland.

Bakke v. University of California limits affirmative action

The Supreme Court ruled that racial factors could be considered in university admissions but that the establishment of racial quotas was illegal.

Love Canal crisis begins

Residents of the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, found that their homes had been built on a toxic-waste dump, and that they were becoming sick as a result. The widely publicized discovery, and the neighborhood's subsequent abandonment, contributed to a growing awareness of environmental pollution.

1979 Second oil crisis

The fundamentalist Islamic revolution in Iran caused oil prices to soar once again after a brief period of stability in the mid-seventies.

Three Mile Island nuclear accident

The central core of this nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, came close to a catastrophic meltdown, and led to the evacuation of a hundred thousand nearby residents, even though no radioactive material was ever released into the atmosphere.

Hostages seized at American embassy in Teheran, Iran

Fudamentalist Muslim students took fifty-two U.S. diplomats and staff hostage and held them for 444 days in retaliation for American admission of the deposed shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment

USSR invades Afghanistan

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led President Carter to react strongly for fear that the USSR was threatening Middle Eastern oil supplies.

1980 "Superfund" created to clean up chemical pollution

The Carter administration created this fund to help communities clean up polluted water and ground that had been contaminated by chemical waste.

Ronald Reagan elected president

Reagan was elected on a platform to restore the United States to prominence as a world power, and on his criticism of Carter's failure to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis.

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