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| 4235353231 | Barry Goldwater | This United States Senator from Arizona was the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure, he was known as "Mr. Conservative". He rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought through the conservative coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. His fiscally conservative and socially moderate campaign platform ultimately failed to gain the support of the electorate and he lost the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history. | 0 | |
| 4235353233 | Bay of Pigs | The Bay of Pigs invasion was one of the first attempts sponsored by the U.S. government to overthrow the Castro government of Cuba following the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Though the troops that fought in the invasion were exiles from Cuba, the operation was organized and funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The invasion was a disaster, both for the fighters, who were easily defeated and imprisoned, and for the administration of President John F. Kennedy, which had authorized the mission. | 1 | |
| 4235357452 | Berlin Wall | This barrier was constructed by East Germany in 1961, to completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls. The purpose of the barrier was to prevent the massive emigration and defection (3.5 million people!) of East Germans who crossed the border from East Berlin into West Berlin. Between 1961 and 1989, this barrier prevented almost all such emigration. The fall of this barrier in 1989 paved the way for German reunification, and served as a symbol of the end of the Cold War. | 2 | |
| 4235359913 | Civil Rights Act of 1964 | This landmark in American legal history, provided much of the legal basis for the modern civil rights movement. It outlawed discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It strengthened the federal government's ability to guarantee voting rights and end school segregation. | 3 | |
| 4235362506 | Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): | This civil rights organization was founded in 1942 by members who envisioned a nonviolent, interracial civil rights organization that emphasized integration with whites. Over the next several years, chapters of the group spread across the United States, applying the same techniques to knock down discriminatory barriers. It became famous in the 1960s, when it emerged as a leading force within the civil rights movement—particularly with its sponsorship of the Freedom Rides of 1961. In the mid-1960s, the group acquired a more militant, separatist stance and advocaded self-government by African Americans in black-majority areas. | 4 | |
| 4235366102 | Cuban Missile Crisis | In this 1962 event, the United States and Soviet Union came close to nuclear war when the United States insisted that the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba. The Soviets eventually did so, nuclear war was averted, and the crisis passed. The repercussions of this event were considerable. Having come closer to nuclear war than ever before, both the United States and the Soviet Union were more cautious about offensive deployment of nuclear arms during the remainder of the cold war. | 5 | |
| 4235369737 | Détente | This is a French term meaning the relaxation of tensions. The word was used to identify U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Chinese relations in the 1970s, as the superpowers pursued friendlier relations with each other to ease Cold War threats of nuclear war. This resulted in increased contact between East and West in the form of trade agreements and cultural exchanges. | 6 | |
| 4235371418 | Freedom Rides | These bus trips were taken by black and white civil-rights advocates in the 1960s to test the enforcement of federal regulations that prohibited segregation in interstate public transportation. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision that had rendered victorious the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956, CORE and SNCC decided that the time was right to force the Southern states to uphold the federal law. As the buses traveled farther south, the hostility and violence they met escalated. Beatings and further arrests greeted them in South Carolina and Alabama; local authorities did nothing to prevent or stop the rampaging violence perpetrated against the riders by the Ku Klux Klan. | 7 | |
| 4235376056 | Great Society | This term describes President Johnson's ambitious, multifaceted program of social and economic reforms designed to promote social equality and economic fairness for all Americans. His central goal was bold: he declared "unconditional war on poverty" and committed himself to eliminating poverty as it then existed. These programs expanded the role of the federal government in the nation's domestic policies. Whereas Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was a response to the deepest economic crisis in U.S. history, President Johnson planned to extend the affluence that the country was enjoying in the 1960s to those citizens who traditionally had been left behind. The president's antipoverty initiative included significant programs such as Head Start, Medicare, Medicaid. | 8 | |
| 4235377542 | Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | Congressional resolution passed in 1964 which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to take "all necessary measures" to ensure the security of US armed forces and to defeat aggression in South-East Asia. It arose from an attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats upon US naval vessels and, although technically not a declaration of war, it was interpreted by Johnson as offering a legal basis for his commitment of US troops to Vietnam. | 9 | |
| 4235379904 | Head Start | This Great Society Program was initiated in 1964 to prepare low-income children for school. It was the foundation of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, One reason for low-income children's educational disadvantage is that they have had less exposure than other children to such educational building blocks as numbers and the alphabet. This program furnishes that exposure and allows them to begin their formal school training on a more nearly equal footing with other students. Since its inception, nearly 18 million children have participated in the program. | 10 | |
| 4235381764 | Henry Kissinger | As National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State, he was the principal architect of U.S. foreign policy during the administrations of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He played a major role in the successful opening of diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1971 and in the implementation of the policy of coexistence with the Soviet Union known as détente. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords, which ended America's involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973. | 11 | |
| 4235389719 | Kent State University | On May 4th, 1970 four students were shot dead by National Guardsmen on the campus of this University near Cleveland, Ohio during a violent demonstration by students against the recent movement of US troops into Cambodia. It was the most notorious and bloody episode in the widespread unrest over the war which affected American universities at that period. | 12 | |
| 4235391820 | Lyndon B. Johnson | This Texas Senator was elected vice president in 1960 and became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. He was then elected president in 1964. His Great Society sought to use the nation's wealth to eradicate poverty and his civil-rights programs did more for African-American equality than any president since Abraham Lincoln. But these domestic accomplishments were overshadowed by his controversial decisions that mired the United States in the Vietnam War. He declined to run for re-election in 1968 after the TET Offensive in Vietnam. | 13 | |
| 4235393584 | Malcolm X | He was important in shaping a Black Muslim and black power movement that challenged the nonviolent and integrationist struggle for African-American equality favored by Martin Luther King Jr. Instead of integration and equality, advocated black separatism and self-dependence, using violent means if necessary for self-defense. But in 1964 he modified his views and publicly broke with the Black Muslims and preached racial solidarity. A year later he was assassinated while addressing a rally in Harlem, New York. Three Nation of Islam members were convicted of his murder. | 14 | |
| 4235393585 | March on Washington | In August 1963, this rally was arranged to push for a comprehensive civil rights bill in Congress, to call for national desegregation of schools, and to demand a higher minimum wage. Leaders of the event included A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In all, some 200,000 people marched to Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have A Dream" speech. The procession gave a new and fresh impetus to the growing civil rights movement and showed the government that action was needed quickly. | 15 | |
| 4235396162 | Martin Luther King | He was a US civil-rights campaigner, black leader, and Baptist minister. He first came to national attention as leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955-56, and was one of the organizers of the march of 200,000 people on Washington, DC in 1963 to demand racial equality, during which he delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 for his work as a civil-rights leader and an advocate of nonviolence. He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. | 16 | |
| 4235397817 | Medicaid/Medicare | These programs are the hallmarks of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. Established in 1965, the former is a U.S. health insurance program that provides care for indigent Americans and is administered mainly by state governments. The latter provides elderly people with insurance against hospitalization and lets older citizens buy inexpensive insurance to cover doctor bills and other health-related costs. | 17 | |
| 4235400096 | Montgomery Bus Boycott | The first major instance of black activism during the Civil Rights Movement. It began after a black woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested for sitting in the white section of a bus. Mobilized by Martin Luther King, the black community boycotted the bus service in Montgomery, Alabama, for 381 days until the bus company was persuaded by a 65 per cent drop in revenue, and a Supreme Court decision that declared bus segregation unconstitutional. The event also marked the beginning of King's rise as a Civil Rights leader. | 18 | |
| 4235402107 | My Lai Massacre | This village in Vietnam was the site of the most notorious U.S. military atrocity of the War. American soldiers massacred between 300-450 unarmed Vietnamese villagers (including women and children) at the village. Equally infamous was the cover-up of the incident perpetrated by the brigade and division staffs. The incident raised further questions about the morality of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. | 19 | |
| 4237086012 | Robert Kennedy | 20 |
