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Margaret Chase Smith
Margaret Chase Smith is the only woman ever elected to four successive terms in the U.S. Senate During her eight years in the House, Smith supported New Deal social legislation, worked to improve the status of women in the armed forces, and opposed making the House Un-American Activities Committee a permanent body. -
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond, a dixiecrat supporting state's rights, lost to Harry Truman in the 1948 elections. He was later elected into senate where he fought against civil rights. -
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss, a high-ranking official in the U.S. State Department, became a symbol of the communist threat to the United States following a 1948 accusation denouncing him as a Soviet spy. His controversial conviction cleared the way for the communist witch-hunt that occupied American political life during the early 1950s. -
Mohammad Mosaddeq
A charismatic and eccentric figureMohammad Mosaddeq became a symbol of Iranian independence from neocolonialism when he nationalized the country's oil reserves, which led to a worldwide showdown between Iran (formerly called Persia) and the Western powers at the height of the Cold War. -
Hubert Humphrey
As a U.S. senator, vice president of the United States, and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president, Hubert H. Humphrey established a reputation as a leader during the civil rights struggle and war on poverty. -
AFL-CIO
At its conception, the CIO was an organization of semi- or unskilled labor from mass-production industries and was composed of industrial unions rather than craft unions like the AFL. This meant that CIO labor recruiters would organize all of the workers in one industry or plant into a single union, rather than organizing them on the basis of their industrial craft skills. -
Jim Crow Laws
From the end of the Civil War until the mid-1950s, Jim Crow laws, the system of de jure racial segregation in the South, separated blacks from whites in all aspects of public life, from drinking fountains to schools. -
Ralph Abernathy
Baptist clergyman Ralph Abernathy was Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest coworker during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) after King's death. Called for Montgomery bus strike. -
Southern Manifesto
A petition signed by 96 Southern politicians in the U.S. Congress. The Southern Manifesto ardently supported the long-standing policy of segregation in the United States and decried the federal government's attempts to force desegregation on the populace. -
SCLC
The SCLC advocates assertive nonviolence and passive resistance. In 1963, the group led a march on Washington, D.C. that put the civil rights movement in the national spotlight. That year, the group also organized a campaign for desegregation in Birmingham, Alabama -
Flexible Response
Flexible response was a strategic defense policy developed to replace U.S. dependence on nuclear weapons and "massive retaliation." Flexible response called for a sizable increase in conventional armed forces prepared to fight nonnuclear battles, including wars of counterinsurgency against Communist guerrillas. The image is indeed a diaper ad...enjoy -
The New Frontier
John F. Kennedy presented a program for reform, called the New Frontier, that would foster the development of capitalism and Americanization in foreign countries and enact such significant domestic policies as new civil rights legislation; more comprehensive welfare, social security, and health insurance; and urban development and renewal. -
Timothy Leary
As one of the leading lights of the 1960s counterculture, Timothy Leary embraced psychedelic drugs and an unconventional lifestyle as the means for discovering one's true relation to the universe. This metaphysical concept was and is controversial, raising questions as to the role of government and society in regulating an individual's life. -
The Alliance for Progress
The Alliance for Progress was both a publicly and privately funded program created by President John F. Kennedythat aided economic development and military expansion in Latin America. Comprising the United States and 19 Latin American countries (with the notable exception of Cuba), the alliance planned to stop the spread of communism by encouraging improvements in education, health, housing, and agriculture within the region while providing counterinsurgency training to the region's arm -
James Meredith
James Meredith's application to the University of Mississippi in 1961 sparked a violent crisis that opened the way to the desegregation of the university and eventually of the state at large. -
Operation Mongoose
The Cuban Project (also known as Operation Mongoose or the Special Group or the Special Group Augmented) was a program of CIA covert operations developed during the early years of US President John F. Kennedy. On November 30, 1961 aggressive covert operations against the communist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba was authorized by President Kennedy -
Camelot
The years of the Kennedy presidency became enshrined in U.S. popular culture as an ideal period or "Camelot" of the modern era. -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act required equal pay for both genders for jobs requiring substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility and for jobs that have similar working conditions. One of several federal efforts to eradicate sex discrimination, the Equal Pay Act remains in effect today, although many women's rights activitists have criticized the law's narrow focus. -
Earl Warren
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Warren reluctantly agreed to accept President Lyndon B. Johnson's request that he head the official investigation into the matter. The conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone has never been disproven, but it continues to remain a source of controversy. -
24th Amendment
Prohibition of tax payment as a qualification to vote in federal electionsv -
Schwerner
Schwerner was one of three men who were tortured and killed. They were CORE workers stationed in Mississippi. -
Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater was the republican who ran against Johnson in the 1964 election. He wanted to nuke Vietnam and thought the Great Society policies were comunist. -
VISTA
The domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was a group of people who worked with little pay among poor people and in areas that had few public services. It was the brainchild of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. -
Stockely Charmichael
Starting with SNCC he formed the idea of black power. He later assisted in removing the noviolent part of SNCC then left to join the black panters. -
Kerner Commission
Officially known as the National Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission was a 10-man, one-woman panel assembled by President Lyndon B. Johnson following racial riots in Newark and Detroit. -
James Earl Ray
James Earl Ray is the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.. However, it was found to be true that he was part of a much larger conspiracy. -
1968 year of turmoil
Events transpiring within the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement permanently altered the way Americans perceive and respond to their government and society today. From the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to the protests at the Olympic Games and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, events in 1968 set the stage for cultural, political, and economic change over the next generation. -
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during summer of 1967. It opened with the release of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1st, 1967 and closed with Woodstock in the summer of 1969, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion -
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger was the principal architect of U.S. foreign policy during the administrations of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For his efforts to negotiate a settlement of the Vietnam War, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. -
Altamont
The concert that became known simply as Altamont was one of the most tragic events in rock and roll. Held by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Raceway in San Francisco on December 6, 1969, the concert was a wild night of violence. Out of control Hell's Angels attacked the crowd, and the peaceful ideals of the counterculture deteriorated into a blood-soaked horror. -
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly is a leading spokesperson for the conservative viewpoint on issues ranging from women's rights to national defense. She played a major role in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. -
Love Canal
Government documents estimate that approximately 21,000 tons of waste were placed in the area. In 1953, Hooker deeded the property to a New York school district for $1. The deed attempted to limit Hooker's future liability for its past activities at the property. -
Gloria Steinem
A feminist activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine. Gloria Steinem has been a symbol of the women's liberation movement in the United States for more than 30 years. -
National Women Political Caucus
The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) was formed to put women in positions of power at all levels of government, to increase women's political activism, and to end legal inequities. -
Spiro Agnew
Only the second vice president to resign from office, Spiro Agnew was known as a vocal spokesperson for President Richard Nixon's policies but was forced to resign in 1973 amid charges of bribery and tax evasion. -
AIM
Modeled on African-American civil rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was formed as a Native American response to white hegemony in the United States. Exhorting American Indians to reembrace their sacred and cultural traditions, AIM sought to advance the cause of Native American rights. -
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern became one of Congress' most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War and the most prominent leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party after Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968. He secured the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1972 only to be overwhelmingly defeated by President Richard Nixon in the general election -
Howard Hunt
He worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and later the White House under President Richard Nixon. Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy and others, was one of the White House's "plumbers" — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks." Hunt, along with Liddy, engineered the first Watergate burglary and in the ensuing Watergate Scandal -
H.R. Haldeman
"I put on too much pressure, and in the process laid the groundwork for the mental attitude that 'the job must be done,' which badly served the cause when Watergate struck. By then, our whole crew was so strongly indoctrinated in the principle that there were to be results, not alibis, that they simply once again swung into action—doing what they felt was expected of them." -
john Erlichmann
he worked on Nixon's campaign for governor of California and in 1968, managed Nixon's national campaign schedule. His loyalty, industriousness, and willingness to follow orders without question led to his appointment by President-elect Nixon in 1968 as presidential counsel. In 1969, he was promoted to presidential assistant for domestic affairs. -
ERA
ERA stands for Equal Rights Amendment. The original proposal provided that "men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." -
Shah Reza Pahlavi
The Shaw of Iran...Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi ruled Iran as shah from the time his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi (Reza Khan), was deposed in 1941 until he was himself deposed by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. During his reign on the Peacock Throne, the shah managed to concentrate all political power in the palace and earned a reputation for oppressive autocracy. -
Ayatollah Khomeini
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini inspired the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979 that ousted the shah of Iran, allowing Khomeini to return from exile to establish a theocracy in his country. One of the modern era's most influential revolutionary leaders, Khomeini used the 1978-1979 revolution to infuse the Iranian state with a fundamentalist Islamic crusade. -
Glasnost
Glasnost is the Russian word for publicity but is more commonly translated as openness. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the policy of glasnost in 1986 as a means of increasing freedom of expression within the Soviet Union. -
Manuel Noriega
The 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States removed him from power; he was captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992. Noriega's U.S. prison sentence ended in September 2007;[5] pending the outcome of extradition requests by both Panama and France.
