Bay of Pigs fiasco A military debacle in April 1961, during an American-organized effort to invade Cuba and drive Fidel Castro, the communist ruler, from power. The invasion force of some 1,500 Cuban exiles was routed at the Bay of Pigs, a major embarrassment for President John F. Kennedy, 767 beat school Also known as “beats,” “beatniks,” or the “beat generation”—nonconformists in the late 1950s who rejected conventional dress and sexual standards and cultivated avant-garde literature and music, 778
Black Muslim fanatics assassinate Malcolm X Communists strike all over South Vietnam in Tet Offensive
Lyndon Johnson withdraws as candidate for reelection
Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated Richard Nixon is elected president Nixon announces “Vietnamization” of war Apollo 11 lands on the moon Nixon announces “incursion” into Cambodia Antiwar student protesters are killed at Kent State University and Jackson State University Congress passes Clean Air Act and creates Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Nixon’s “plumbers” burglarize Democratic national headquarters at Watergate complex Nixon and Kissinger visit China and Soviet Union United States and Soviet Union sign Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)
Nixon is reelected in landslide House Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against Nixon
Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns; Gerald Ford is appointed vice president Last American troops leave Vietnam Nixon fires Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox (Saturday Night Massacre)
Supreme Court orders release of Nixon’s White House tapes
Nixon resigns; Gerald Ford becomes president and pardons Nixon
Berlin wall Erected by East Germany in 1961 and torn down by a Dutch company in 1989, the wall isolated West Berlin from the surrounding areas in communist controlled East Berlin and East Germany, 767
Civil Rights Act of 1964 Legislation outlawing discrimination in public accommodations and employment on the basis of race, skin color, sex, religion, or national origin, 772
Cuban missile crisis The showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union during October 1962, after the Soviet Union had sneaked medium-range nuclear missiles into communist Cuba. After President John F. Kennedy publicly demanded their removal and ordered the blockade of Cuba, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to do so, averting a nuclear war, 768 detente A French term, meaning the relaxation of tensions, applied to an easing of Cold War antagonisms during the 1970s. Under President Richard Nixon and foreign affairs adviser Henry Kissinger, detente was a strategy to allow the United States to weaken the bonds between the Soviet Union and communist China, 786 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) A federal agency created in 1970 to oversee environmental monitoring and cleanup programs, 788 Great Society The sweeping legislative agenda of President Lyndon Johnson; it sought to end poverty, promote civil rights, and improve housing, health care, and education. The program was criticized as costly and ineffective, 772 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Congressional action, undertaken at President Johnson’s request, giving the President the authority to deploy U. S. troops to repel aggression in Southeast Asia. This provided congressional sanction for the escalation of the Vietnam war, 780
Medicare A social welfare measure, enacted in 1965, providing hospitalization insurance for people over sixty-five and a voluntary plan to cover doctor bills paid in part by the federal government, 776
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) A
Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet
Union in 1972, restricting the testing and deployment of nuclear ballistic missiles, the first of several such treaties, 787 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) A civil rights organization, founded in 1960, that drew heavily on younger activists and college students. After 1965, under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael and then H. Rap Brown, the group advocated “Black Power.”, 769 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) An organization created by leftist college students in the early 1960s; it organized protests against racial bigotry, corporate exploitation of workers, and, especially after 1965, the Vietnam war, 779 Tet offensive A wide-ranging offensive, launched by North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops throughout South Vietnam in February 1968. It failed to cause the South Vietnamese government to collapse, but persuaded many Americans that the war was not winnable. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his decision not to run for reelection several months later, 782 United States v. Richard M. Nixon A Supreme Court ruling (1974) that obliged President Richard Nixon to turn over to the Watergate special prosecutor sixty-four White House audiotapes; these helped prove that Nixon had known about the cover-up of the Watergate burglary, 792 Voting Rights Act of 1965 Federal legislation that empowered federal registrars to intervene when southern states and municipalities refused to let African Americans register to vote, 776 Watergate scandal A complex scandal involving attempts to cover up illegal actions taken by administration officials and leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, 790
World History
