TIMELINE

AMERICA IN THE WORLDPOLITICS AND POWERIDENTITYENVIRONMENT AND GEOGRPAHYWORK, EXCHANGE, AND TECHNOLOGY
1940

  • Truman Doctrine

  • Israel created (1947)

  • Marshall Plan (1948)

  • Containment strategy emerges

  • NATO created; West Germany created (1949)

  • GI Bill (1944)

  • Loyalty-Security Program

  • Taft-Hartley Act (1947)

  • Truman reelected (1948)

  • Truman’s Fair Deal (1949)

  • To Secure These Rights (1947)

  • Desegregation of armed services (1948)

  • Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

  • Continued South-North migration of African Americans

  • First Levittown opens (1947)

  • FHA and VA subsidize suburbanization

  • Bretton Woods system established: World Bank, International Monetary Fund

  • Baby boom establishes new consumer generation

1950

  • Permanent mobilization as a result of NSC-68

  • Korean War (1950–1953)

  • Geneva Accords regarding Vietnam (1954)

  • Cold War liberalism

  • McCarthyism and Red Scare

  • Eisenhower’s presidency (1953–1961)

  • Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

  • Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

  • Little Rock — Central High School desegregation battle

  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded (1957)

  • Disneyland opens (1955)

  • National Highway Act (1956)

  • Growth of suburbia and Sunbelt

  • Atomic bomb testing in Nevada and Pacific Ocean

  • Treaty of Detroit (1950)

  • Military-industrial complex begins to rise

  • National Defense Education Act (1958) spurs development of technology

1960

  • Cuban missile crisis (1962)

  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964)

  • Johnson sends ground troops to Vietnam; war escalates (1965)

  • Tet offensive (1968); peace talks begin

  • John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier

  • John F. Kennedy assassinated (1963)

  • Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory (1964)

  • War on Poverty; Great Society

  • Riots at Democratic National Convention (1968)

  • Greensboro sit-ins

  • The Feminine Mystique (1963)

  • Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (1964–1965)

  • National Organization for Women founded (1966)

  • Alcatraz occupation (1969)

  • Black Power

  • Student and antiwar activism

  • Great Society environmental initiatives

  • Urban riots (1964–1968)

  • Kerner Commission Report (1968)

  • • Economic boom

  • Government spending on Vietnam and Great Society

  • Medicare and Medicaid created (1965)

1970

  • Nixon invades Cambodia (1971)

  • Paris Accords end Vietnam War (1973)

  • Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1978)

  • Iranian Revolution (1979) and hostage crisis (1979–1981)

  • Richard Nixon’s landslide victory (1972)

  • Watergate scandal; Nixon resigns (1974)

  • Jimmy Carter elected president (1976)

  • Moral Majority founded (1979)

  • Equal Rights Amendment (1972)

  • Roe v. Wade (1973)

  • Bakke v. University of California (1978)

  • Harvey Milk assassinated (1978)

  • First Earth Day (1970)

  • Environmental Protection Agency established (1970)

  • Endangered Species Act (1973)

  • Three Mile Island accident (1979)

  • Energy crisis (1973)

  • Inflation surges, while economy stagnates (stagflation)

  • Deindustrialization

  • Tax revolt in California (1978)