AMH 2020 EXAM 4

Black Muslims (Elijah Muhammad)

Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Robert Poole; October 7, 1897 - February 25, 1975) was a religious leader, who led the Nation of Islam (NOI) from 1934 until his death in 1975. He was a mentor to Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and Muhammad Ali, as well as his own son, Warith Deen Mohammed.

Libya

The coastal plain of Libya was inhabited by Neolithic peoples from as early as 8000 BC. The Afroasiatic ancestors of the Berber people are assumed to have spread into the area by the Late Bronze Age. The earliest known name of such a tribe was the Garamantes, based in Germa. The Phoenicians were the first to establish trading posts in Libya.[30] By the 5th century BC, the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, Carthage, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic, came into being. In 630 BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the area around Barca in Eastern Libya and founded the city of Cyrene.[31] Within 200 years, four more important Greek cities were established in the area that became known as Cyrenaica.[32]In 525 BC the Persian army of Cambyses II overran Cyrenaica, which for the next two centuries remained under Persian or Egyptian rule. Alexander the Great was greeted by the Greeks when he entered Cyrenaica in 331 BC, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control of the Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. After the fall of Carthage the Romans did not immediately occupy Tripolitania (the region around Tripoli), but left it instead under control of the kings of Numidia, until the coastal cities asked and obtained its protection.[33] Ptolemy Apion, the last Greek ruler, bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome, which formally annexed the region in 74 BC and joined it to Crete as a Roman province. As part of the Africa Nova province, Tripolitania was prosperous,[33] and reached a golden age in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when the city of Leptis Magna, home to the Severan dynasty, was at its height.[33] On the Eastern side, Cyrenaica's first Christian communities were established by the time of the Emperor Claudius.[34] It was heavily devastated during the Kitos War[35] and almost depopulated of Greeks and Jews alike.[36] Although repopulated by Trajan with military colonies,[35] from then started its decline.[34] Libya was early to convert to Nicene Christianity and was the home of Pope Victor I; however, Libya was a hotbed for early heresies such as Arianism and Donatism. This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. The decline of the Roman Empire saw the classical cities fall into ruin, a process hastened by the Vandals' destructive sweep through North Africa in the 5th century. When the Empire returned (now as East Romans) as part of Justinian's reconquests of the 6th century, efforts were made to strengthen the old cities, but it was only a last gasp before they collapsed into disuse. Cyrenaica, which had remained an outpost of the Byzantine Empire during the Vandal period, also took on the characteristics of an armed camp. Unpopular Byzantine governors imposed burdensome taxation to meet military costs, while the towns and public services—including the water system—were left to decay. By the beginning of the 7th century, Byzantine control over the region was weak, Berber rebellions were becoming more frequent, and there was little to oppose Muslim invasion.[37]

October Surprise

In American political jargon, an October surprise is a news event deliberately created or timed or sometimes occurring spontaneously to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the U.S. presidency. The reference to the month of October is because the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections) is in early November. Therefore, events that take place in late October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters. Since the 1972 presidential election (when it came into use), the term "October surprise" has been used preemptively during the campaign season by partisans of one side to discredit late-campaign news by the other side.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson (/ˈlɪndən ˈbeɪnz/; August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973), often referred to by the initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Formerly the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a United States Representative and as the Majority Leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people who have served in all four federal elected positions.[b] Born in a farmhouse in Stonewall, Texas, Johnson was a high school teacher and worked as a congressional aide before winning election to the US House of Representatives in 1937. Johnson won election to the US Senate in 1948 after winning the Democratic Party's nomination by an extremely narrow margin that was manufactured by friendly political machines.[2] He was appointed to the position of Senate Majority Whip in 1951. He became the Senate Minority Leader in 1953 and the Senate Majority Leader in 1955. He became known for his domineering personality and the "Johnson treatment", his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation. Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election. Although unsuccessful, he accepted the invitation of then-Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate. They went on to win a close election over the Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson succeeded him as president. The following year, Johnson won in a landslide, defeating Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. With 61.1 percent of the popular vote, Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote of any candidate since the largely uncontested 1820 election. In domestic policy, Johnson designed the "Great Society" legislation to expand civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services and his "War on Poverty". Assisted in part by a growing economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during his administration.[3] Civil rights bills that he signed into law banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace and housing; the Voting Rights Act prohibited certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed, encouraging greater emigration from regions other than Europe. Johnson's presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism after the New Deal era. In foreign policy, Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war. The number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased dramatically, from 16,000 advisors in non-combat roles in 1963 to 525,000 in 1967, many in combat roles. American casualties soared and the peace process stagnated. Growing unease with the war stimulated a large, angry anti-war movement based chiefly among draft-age students on university campuses. Johnson faced further troubles when summer riots began in major cities in 1965 and crime rates soared, as his opponents raised demands for "law and order" policies. While Johnson began his presidency with widespread approval, support for him declined as the public became frustrated with both the war and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized as anti-war elements denounced Johnson; he ended his bid for renomination after a disappointing finish in the New Hampshire primary. Nixon was elected to succeed him, as the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years collapsed. After he left office in January 1969, Johnson returned to his Texas ranch, where he died of a heart attack at age 64, on January 22, 1973. Johnson is ranked favorably by many historians because of his domestic policies and the passage of many major laws that affected civil rights, gun control, wilderness preservation, and Social Security, although he also drew substantial criticism for his escalation of the Vietnam War.[4][5]

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta Georgia, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi.King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and in 1957 became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. The following year, he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. He alienated many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". J. Edgar Hoover considered him a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 on. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. Sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, effectively a life sentence as Ray was 41 at the time of conviction, Ray served 29 years of his sentence and died from hepatitis in 1998 while in prison. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

assassination of mlk

Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, in London at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.[1] He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful; he died in prison in 1998.[2] The King family and others believe the assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, Mafia and Memphis police, as alleged by Loyd Jowers in 1993. They believe that Ray was a scapegoat. In 1999, the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jowers for the sum of $10 million. During closing arguments, their attorney asked the jury to award damages of $100, to make the point that "it was not about the money." During the trial, both sides presented evidence alleging a government conspiracy. The government agencies accused could not defend themselves or respond because they were not named as defendants. Based on the evidence, the jury concluded Jowers and others were "part of a conspiracy to kill King" and awarded the family $100.[3][4] The allegations and the finding of the Memphis jury were later rejected by the United States Department of Justice in 2000 due to lack of evidence.[5]On Thursday, April 4, 1968, King was staying in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The motel was owned by businessman Walter Bailey and named after his wife. Reverend Ralph Abernathy, a colleague and friend, later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations he and King had stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy Suite".[15] According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's last words were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at a planned event. King said, "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."[16] King had gone out onto the balcony and was standing near his room when he was struck in the face at 6:01 p.m. by a single .30-06 bullet fired from a Remington Model 760 rifle.[17] The bullet entered through King's right cheek, breaking his jaw and several vertebrae as it traveled down his spinal cord, severing his jugular vein and major arteries in the process, before lodging in his shoulder. The force of the shot ripped King's necktie off. King fell backward onto the balcony, unconscious.[18] Shortly after the shot was fired, witnesses saw a man, later believed to be James Earl Ray, fleeing from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Ray had been renting a room there. Police found a package dumped close to the site, which included a rifle and binoculars, both with Ray's fingerprints. Ray had purchased the rifle under an alias six days earlier. A worldwide manhunt was triggered, which culminated in the arrest of Ray at London's Heathrow Airport two months later.[19] At the time, Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the deck, bleeding profusely from the wound in his cheek.[17][20] Jesse Jackson stated after the shooting that he cradled King's head as King lay on the balcony, but this account was disputed by other colleagues of King; Jackson later changed his statement to say that he had "reached out" for King.[21] Andrew Young, a colleague from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, first believed King was dead, but found he still had a pulse.[22] King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He never regained consciousness and died at 7:05 p.m.[23] According to Taylor Branch, his autopsy revealed that despite being aged just 39, his heart was in the condition of a 60-year-old man, which Branch attributed to the stress of his 13 years in the Civil Rights Movement.[24]

Iran-Contra Controversy

The Iran-Contra affair (Persian: ماجرای ایران-کنترا‎, Spanish: Caso Irán-Contra), popularized in Iran as the McFarlane affair,[1] the Iran-Contra scandal, or simply Iran-Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2] The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.The official justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The plan was for Israel to ship weapons to Iran, for the United States to resupply Israel, and for Israel to pay the United States. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the hostages.[3][4] However, as documented by a congressional investigation, the first Reagan-sponsored secret arms sales to Iran began in 1981 before any of the American hostages had been taken in Lebanon. This fact ruled out the "arms for hostages" explanation by which the Reagan administration sought to excuse its behavior.[5] The plan was later complicated in late 1985, when Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council diverted a portion of the proceeds from the Iranian weapon sales to fund the Contras, a group of anti-Sandinista rebels, in their insurgency against the socialist government of Nicaragua.[3] While President Ronald Reagan was a vocal supporter of the Contra cause,[6] the evidence is disputed as to whether he personally authorized the diversion of funds to the Contras.[3][4][7] Handwritten notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on 7 December 1985 indicate that Reagan was aware of potential hostage transfers with Iran, as well as the sale of Hawk and TOW missiles to "moderate elements" within that country.[8] Weinberger wrote that Reagan said "he could answer to charges of illegality but couldn't answer to the charge that 'big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages.'"[8] After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages.[9] The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the affair were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.[10] On 4 March 1987, Reagan made a further nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for the affair and stating that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages".[11] The affair was investigated by the U.S. Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs.[3][4][7] In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal.[12] The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been Vice President at the time of the affair.[13]

9-11

The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11)[a] were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda[3][4][5] against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks resulted in 2,977 victim fatalities, over 25,000 injuries, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.[6][7] Additional people have died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacksFour passenger airliners operated by two major U.S. passenger air carriers (United Airlines and American Airlines)—all of which departed from airports in the northeastern United States bound for San Francisco and Los Angeles—were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. Debris and the resulting fires caused a partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, which led to a partial collapse of the building's west side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was initially flown toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers thwarted the hijackers. 9/11 is the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history and the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers[8] in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed, respectively. Suspicion quickly fell on al-Qaeda. The United States responded by launching the War on Terror and invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had failed to comply with U.S. demands to extradite Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent terrorist attacks. Although Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, initially denied any involvement, in 2004 he claimed responsibility for the attacks.[2] Al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives. After evading capture for almost a decade, bin Laden was located in Pakistan and killed by SEAL Team Six of the U.S. Navy in May 2011, during the Obama administration. The destruction of the World Trade Center and nearby infrastructure seriously harmed the economy of New York City and had a significant effect on global markets, which resulted in the closing of Wall Street until September 17 and the civilian airspace in the U.S. and Canada until September 13. Many closings, evacuations, and cancellations followed, out of respect or fear of further attacks. Cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, and the Pentagon was repaired within a year. On November 18, 2006, construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site. The building opened on November 3, 2014.[9][10] Numerous memorials have been constructed, including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although unconfirmed, there are allegations of Saudi Arabian involvement in the attacks.[11] The primary evidence is the content of the 28 redacted pages of the 2002 Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. These 28 pages contain information regarding the material and financial assistance given to the hijackers and their affiliates leading up to the attacks by the Saudi Arabian government.[12] As a consequence of the attacks, the United States has been in a state of national emergency ever since 2001.[13]

Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Tết Mậu Thân 1968), or officially called The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than 1968 (Vietnamese: Tổng Tiến công và Nổi dậy Tết Mậu Thân 1968) by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong (VC), was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.[14] The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, when the first major attacks took place.[15]The offensive was launched prematurely in the late night hours of 30 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack allowed allied forces some time to prepare defensive measures. When the main operation began the next morning, the offensive was countrywide and well coordinated; eventually more than 80,000 PAVN/VC troops struck more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital.[16] The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side up to that point in the war. Hanoi had launched the offensive in the belief that the offensive would trigger a popular uprising leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Although the initial attacks stunned the allies, causing them to lose control of several cities temporarily, they quickly regrouped, beat back the attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on PAVN/VC forces. The popular uprising anticipated by Hanoi never happened. During the Battle of Huế, intense fighting lasted for a month, resulting in the destruction of the city. During their occupation, the PAVN/VC executed thousands of people in the Massacre at Huế. Around the U.S. combat base at Khe Sanh, fighting continued for two more months. The offensive was a military defeat for North Vietnam though General Westmoreland reported that defeating the PAVN/VC would require 200,000 more American soldiers and activation of the reserves, prompting even loyal supporters of the war to see that the current war strategy required re-evaluation.[17] The offensive had a strong effect on the U.S. government and shocked the U.S. public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation; American public support for the war soon declined and the U.S. sought negotiations to end the war. The term "Tet Offensive" usually refers to the January-February 1968 offensive, but it can also include the so-called "Mini-Tet" offensive that took place in May and the Phase III Offensive in August, or the 21 weeks of unusually intense combat which followed the initial attacks in January.[citation needed

balanced budget

A balanced budget (equilibrium)(particularly that of a government) is a budget in which revenues are equal to expenditures. Thus, neither a budget deficit nor a budget surplus exists (the accounts "balance"). More generally, it is a budget that has no budget deficit, but could possibly have a budget surplus.[1] A cyclically balanced budget is a budget that is not necessarily balanced year-to-year, but is balanced over the economic cycle, running a surplus in boom years and running a deficit in lean years, with these offsetting over time. Balanced budgets and the associated topic of budget deficits are a contentious point within academic economics and within politics. Many economists argue that moving from a budget deficit to a balanced budget decreases interest rates,[2] increases investment,[2] shrinks trade deficits and helps the economy grow faster in the longer term.[2]

Anti-War Movement

An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts, or to anti-war books, paintings, and other works of art. Many activists distinguish between anti-war movements and peace movements. Anti-war activists work through protest and other grassroots means to attempt to pressure a government (or governments) to put an end to a particular war or conflict.

Missisippi freedom summer

Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. Blacks had been cut off from voting since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population.

George Wallace

George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 - September 13, 1998)[1] was an American politician who served as the 45th Governor of Alabama for four terms. During his tenure, he promoted "low-grade industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools".[2] He sought the United States presidency as a Democrat three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, unsuccessfully each time. He is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views.[3][4][5] Wallace was known as "the most dangerous racist in America"[6] and notoriously opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"Born in Clio, Alabama, Wallace attended the University of Alabama School of Law and served in United States Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he won election to the Alabama House of Representatives and served as a state judge. Wallace first sought the Democratic nomination in the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election. Initially a moderate on racial issues, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance after losing the 1958 nomination. Wallace ran for governor again in 1962, and won the race. Seeking to stop the racial integration of the University of Alabama, Wallace earned national notoriety by standing in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama, blocking the path of black students.[7] Wallace left office after one term due to term limits, but his wife, Lurleen Wallace, won the next election and succeeded him, though he was the de facto governor.[2] Wallace challenged sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 Democratic presidential primaries, but Johnson prevailed in the race. In the 1968 presidential election, Wallace ran a third party campaign in an attempt to force a contingent election in the United States House of Representatives, thereby enhancing the political clout of segregationist Southern leaders. Wallace won five Southern states but failed to force a contingent election; As of 2019 he remains the most recent third-party candidate to receive pledged electoral college votes from any state. Wallace won election to another term as Governor of Alabama in 1970 and ran in the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, once again campaigning for segregation. His campaign effectively ended when he was shot in Maryland by Arthur Bremer, and Wallace remained paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life. Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison for the shooting, which was later reduced to 53 years following an appeal; he served 35 years of the reduced sentence and was paroled in 2007. Wallace won re-election as governor in 1974, and he once again unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries. In the late 1970s, Wallace announced that he became a born-again Christian and moderated his views on race, renouncing his past support for segregation. Wallace left office in 1979 but reentered politics and won election to a fourth and final term as governor in 1982. Wallace is the fourth longest serving governor in US history having served 16 years and 1 day in office.[8] Describing his impact on national politics despite his lack of success in presidential races, two biographers termed Wallace "the most influential loser" of 20th-century American politics.[9][10]

James McCord

James Walter McCord Jr. (January 26, 1924 - June 15, 2017)[2] was an American CIA officer, later involved as an electronics expert in the burglaries which precipitated the Watergate scandal.[3]

Assassination of JFK

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.[1] Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald firing in ambush from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered.Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department 70 minutes after the initial shooting. Oswald was charged under Texas state law with the murder of Kennedy, as well as that of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who had been fatally shot a short time after the assassination. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though it was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial. After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald.[2] Kennedy was the eighth and most recent US President to die in office, and the fourth (following Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) to be assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson automatically assumed the Presidency upon Kennedy's death.[3] A later investigation, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that the injuries that Kennedy and Connally sustained were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy"[4] as analysis of a dictabelt audio recording pointed to the existence of an additional gunshot and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President".[5][6] The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the possible conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" with respect to information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy.[7] As recommended by the HSCA, the acoustic evidence indicating conspiracy was subsequently re-examined and rejected.[8] In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the U.S. Justice Department concluded active investigations and stated "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".[9] However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80 percent of Americans suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.[10][11]

Judge John Sirica

John Joseph Sirica (March 19, 1904 - August 14, 1992) was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the trials stemming from the Watergate scandal. He rose to national prominence when he ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over his recordings of White House conversations. Sirica's involvement in the case began when he presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars. He did not believe the claim that they had acted alone, and through the use of provisional sentencing, strongly encouraged them to give information about higher-ups before final sentencing. One defendant, James W. McCord Jr., wrote a letter describing a broader scheme of involvement by people in the Nixon administration. For his role in uncovering the truth about Watergate, Sirica was named Time magazine's Man of the Year in January 1974.

Students for a Democratic Society/port Huron statement

The Port Huron Statement[1] is a 1962 political manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers retreat in Port Huron, Michigan (now Lakeport State Park), for the group's first national convention[2]

Southern Christian leadership conference

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., had a large role in the American civil rights movement.[1]

Invasions of Afghanistan and iraq

The United States invasion of Afghanistan occurred after the September 11 attacks in late 2001,[1] supported by close US allies. The conflict is also known as the US war in Afghanistan.[2] Its public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.[3] The United Kingdom was a key ally of the United States, offering support for military action from the start of preparations for the invasion. It followed the Afghan Civil War's 1996-2001 phase between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance groups, although the Taliban controlled 90% of the country by 2001. The US invasion of Afghanistan became the first phase of the War in Afghanistan (2001-present).US President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda; bin Laden had already been wanted by the FBI since 1998. The Taliban declined to extradite him unless given what they deemed convincing evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks,[4] and ignored demands to shut down terrorist bases and hand over other terrorist suspects apart from bin Laden. The request was dismissed by the US as a meaningless delaying tactic, and it launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001 with the United Kingdom. The two were later joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance troops on the ground.[5][6] The US and its allies rapidly drove the Taliban from power by December 17, 2001, and built military bases near major cities across the country. Most al-Qaeda and Taliban members were not captured, escaping to neighboring Pakistan or retreating to rural or remote mountainous regions during the Battle of Tora Bora.[citation needed] In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to oversee military operations in the country and train Afghan National Security Forces. At the Bonn Conference in December 2001, Hamid Karzai was selected to head the Afghan Interim Administration, which after a 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) in Kabul became the Afghan Transitional Administration. In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.[7] In August 2003, NATO became involved as an alliance, taking the helm of ISAF.[8] One portion of US forces in Afghanistan operated under NATO command; the rest remained under direct US command. Taliban leader Mullah Omar reorganized the movement, and in 2002, it launched an insurgency against the government and ISAF that continues to this day.[9][10The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 and lasted just over one month,[24] including 21 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "End of major combat operations", after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.[25]The U.S.-led coalition sent 177,194 troops into Iraq during the initial invasion phase, which lasted from 19 March to 1 May 2003. About 130,000 arrived from the U.S. alone, with about 45,000 British soldiers, 2,000 Australian soldiers, and 194 Polish soldiers. 36 other countries were involved in its aftermath. In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops assembled in Kuwait by 18 February.[26] The coalition forces also received support from the Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan. According to U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition aimed "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."[27] Others place a much greater emphasis on the impact of the September 11 attacks, on the role this played in changing U.S. strategic calculations, and the rise of the freedom agenda.[28][29] According to Blair, the trigger was Iraq's failure to take a "final opportunity" to disarm itself of alleged nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that U.S. and British officials called an immediate and intolerable threat to world peace.[30] In a January 2003 CBS poll, 64% of Americans had approved of military action against Iraq; however, 63% wanted Bush to find a diplomatic solution rather than go to war, and 62% believed the threat of terrorism directed against the U.S. would increase due to war.[31] The invasion of Iraq was strongly opposed by some long-standing U.S. allies, including the governments of France, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand.[32][33][34] Their leaders argued that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that invading that country was not justified in the context of UNMOVIC's 12 February 2003 report. And while hundreds of chemical weapons were found in Iraq after the invasion, they determined to be produced before the 1991 Gulf War, from years earlier in Saddam Hussein's rule and were unusable.[35][36] About 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs were discovered during the Iraq War, but as these had been built and abandoned before 1991, the discoveries of these chemical weapons also did not support the government's invasion rationale.[36] On 15 February 2003, a month before the invasion, there were worldwide protests against the Iraq War, including a rally of three million people in Rome, which the Guinness Book of Records listed as the largest ever anti-war rally.[citation needed][37] According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.[citation needed][38] The invasion was preceded by an airstrike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 20 March 2003. The following day, coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. While special forces launched an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf to secure Basra and the surrounding petroleum fields, the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region and engaging in the Battle of Nasiriyah on 23 March. Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command-and-control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance. On 26 March, the 173rd Airborne Brigade was airdropped near the northern city of Kirkuk, where they joined forces with Kurdish rebels and fought several actions against the Iraqi Army to secure the northern part of the country. The main body of coalition forces continued their drive into the heart of Iraq and met with little resistance. Most of the Iraqi military was quickly defeated and the coalition occupied Baghdad on 9 April. Other operations occurred against pockets of the Iraqi Army, including the capture and occupation of Kirkuk on 10 April, and the attack on and capture of Tikrit on 15 April. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the central leadership went into hiding as the coalition forces completed the occupation of the country. On 1 May President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations: this ended the invasion period and began the period of military occupation.

voting rights act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.[7][8] It was signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections.[7] Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act secured the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.[9]The Act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. The Act's "general provisions" provide nationwide protections for voting rights. Section 2 is a general provision that prohibits every state and local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. The Act also contains "special provisions" that apply to only certain jurisdictions. A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without receiving preapproval from the U.S. Attorney General or the U.S. District Court for D.C. that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities.[10] Another special provision requires jurisdictions containing significant language minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and other election materials. Section 5 and most other special provisions apply to jurisdictions encompassed by the "coverage formula" prescribed in Section 4(b). The coverage formula was originally designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination in 1965, and Congress updated the formula in 1970 and 1975. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it was no longer responsive to current conditions.[11] The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without a coverage formula, Section 5 is unenforceable.[12]

urban riots-watts detroit

The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion,[1] took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965.On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving.[2][3] A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight with police.[2] Community members reported that the police had hurt a pregnant woman, and six days of civil unrest followed.[3] Nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths[4] and over $40 million in property damage. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

leaks/plumbers

The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, the "Room 16 Project," or more officially, the White House "Special Investigations Unit" was a covert White House Special Investigations Unit, established within a week after the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" in June 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop and/or respond to the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. The work of the unit "tapered-off" after the bungled "Ellsberg break-in" but some of its former operatives branched into illegal activities while still employed at the White House together with managers of the Committee to Re-elect the President, including the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal.[1] The group has been described as Nixon's "fixers".[2]

welfare Form

Welfare reforms are changes in the operation of a given welfare system, with the goals of reducing the number of individuals dependent on government assistance, keeping the welfare systems affordable, and assisting recipients to become self-sufficient. Classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives generally argue that welfare and other tax-funded services reduce incentives to work, exacerbate the free-rider problem, and intensify poverty. Socialists, on the other hand, generally criticize welfare reform because it usually minimizes the public safety net, and strengthens the capitalist economic system. Welfare reform is constantly debated because of the varying opinions on the government's determined balance of providing guaranteed welfare benefits, and promoting self-sufficiency.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action describes policies that support members of a disadvantaged group that has previously suffered discrimination (and may continue to) in such areas as education, employment, or housing.[1][2][3][4] Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances. The nature of affirmative action policies varies from region to region. Some countries use a quota system, whereby a certain percentage of government jobs, political positions, and school vacancies must be reserved for members of a certain group; an example of this is the reservation system in India. In some other regions where quotas are not used, minority group members are given preference or special consideration in selection processes. In the United States, affirmative action in employment and education has been the subject of legal and political controversy. In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Grutter v. Bollinger, held that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as a plus-factor when evaluating applicants holistically and maintained the prohibition on the use of quotas.[5] In other countries, such as the UK,[6][7][8] affirmative action is rendered illegal because it does not treat all races equally. This approach to equal treatment is described as being "color blind". In such countries, the focus tends to be on ensuring equal opportunity and, for example, targeted advertising campaigns to encourage ethnic minority candidates to join the police force. This is sometimes described as "positive action".

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954),[1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that American state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (349 U.S. 294 (1955)) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".The case originated in 1951, when the public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll the daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school further away. The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations then filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas rendered a verdict against the Browns, relying on the precedent of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court had ruled that racial segregation was not in itself a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if the facilities in question were otherwise equal, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Browns, then represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. The Court's decision in Brown partially overruled Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities.[note 1] It paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement,[3] and a model for many future impact litigation cases.[4] In the American South, especially the "Deep South", where racial segregation was deeply entrenched, the reaction to Brown among most white people was "noisy and stubborn".[5] Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as "Massive Resistance", created by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in the case of Cooper v. Aaron, the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown, and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling.

18 1/2 minute gap

By the Spring of 1973, the Watergate coverup had begun to unravel. Haldeman resigned on April 30, replaced as Chief of Staff by Alexander Haig. On May 17, a Senate Select Committee on Watergate began hearings. Chairman of the Committee was North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, a lawyer who had a long-established record as a defender of civil liberties. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield chose Ervin to head the committee because his integrity was respected on both sides of the aisle. The ranking Republican was Howard Baker of Tennessee, who would become Senate Minority Leader in 1977, then Majority Leader in 1981-84 with the Reagan landslide, and eventually serve as President Reagan's Chief of Staff in 1987-88. Ervin and Baker set the constructive tone for the Committee, which focused on serious investigation, rather than partisan attacks on either side. President Nixon had been using a voice-activated tape recording system for all Oval Office conversations, White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed to the Senate on July 16, 1973. Presidents since Truman had recorded some conversations, but Nixon's recording of everything was unique. Two days after Butterfield's revelation, the taping system was dismantled, and the tapes put under Haig's custody. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox had been appointed by Attorney General Elliot Richardson in May 1973. Cox and the Senate Committee both issued subpoenas for some of the tapes, but Nixon refused to comply, claiming executive privilege. Among the tapes at issue was the June 20, 1972, Nixon-Haldeman meeting. On Saturday evening, October 20, 1973, Cox was fired and the Office of Special Prosecutor abolished. Attorney General Richardson had resigned rather than carry out Nixon's order to fire Cox, and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus did the same. Solicitor General Robert Bork was next in line, and he later recounted that he too considered resigning, but then decided that the constitutional crisis would be even worse if the President could not find a cabinet official who would carry out his orders. The "Saturday Night Massacre" instantly ignited the greatest American political firestorm in living memory (or at any time since), and Nixon quickly retreated, acceding to the appointment of Texas corporate lawyer Leon Jaworski as the new Special Prosecutor. Nixon moved forward to implement his preferred alternative to turning over the tapes, a plan which the Senate Committee had been willing to accept, but Cox was not: Nixon's long-time personal secretary Rose Mary Woods would type transcripts of the tapes. Nixon would remove portions which he considered irrelevant to the subpoenas. Mississippi Senator John Stennis would listen to the tapes, to verify the transcripts' accuracy. Stennis, who had first entered the Senate in 1947, was a very conservative Democrat from Mississippi. His integrity was widely respected; he was Chair of the Senate Ethics Committee, and author of the Senate's first Code of Ethics. However, Stennis was 82 years old, and hard of hearing. Without Stennis participating, the White House would release the transcripts the next year, in April 1974. But something would be missing. On November 17, 1973, the White House informed Federal District Judge John Sirica that the 18 1/2 minute Nixon-Haldeman conversation of June 20, 1972, had been erased. White House Counsel Fred Buzhardt told the Court that he no explanation for the erasure. Nixon's Secretary Rose Mary Woods took the blame for the first five minutes of the erasure. She said that she had been transcribing the tape, and when she reached to take a phone call, her foot hit a pedal on the recording machine, inadvertently causing the tape player to "record" over the original tape's contents. Reporters were called to the White House to watch her perform a re-enactment, and the photos of her performing a tremendous stretch, which she supposedly held for five minutes, were rejected as implausible. Moreover, the particular tape recording machine does not operate the way she had claimed; simply pressing the foot pedal to "record" would not initiate a recording unless the play button was being manually depressed at the very same time. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig blamed the 18 1/2 minute gap on a "sinister force." In January 1974, experts who examined the tape reported that were four or five separate erasures. Nixon was determined to hold on, and while his support among Democrats and Independents had collapsed, he retained the support of a dwindling majority of Republicans.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstiːn/ BURN-steen; born February 14, 1944) is an American investigative journalist and author.While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.[1] Bernstein's career since Watergate has continued to focus on the theme of the use and abuse of power via books and magazine articles. He has also done reporting for television and opinion commentary. He is the author or co-author of six books: All the President's Men, The Final Days, and The Secret Man, with Bob Woodward; His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time, with Marco Politi [it]; Loyalties; and A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.[2] Additionally, he is a regular political commentator on CNN.Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor.[1]While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein; the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.[2] Woodward continued to work for The Washington Post after his reporting on Watergate. He has since written 19 books on American politics, 13 of which topped best-seller lists.

civil dsobedience

Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government. By some definitions[specify], civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called 'civil'. Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance.[1][2] Henry David Thoreau popularized the term in the US with his essay Civil Disobedience, although the concept itself has been practiced longer before. It has inspired Mahatma Gandhi in his protests for Indian independence against the British Raj; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protests during the civil rights movement in the US. Although civil disobedience is considered to be an expression of contempt for law, King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."[3]

Eugene McCarthy

Eugene Joseph McCarthy (March 29, 1916 - December 10, 2005) was an American politician and poet from Minnesota. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. McCarthy sought the Democratic nomination in the 1968 presidential election, challenging incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. McCarthy sought the presidency five times, but never won.Born in Watkins, Minnesota, McCarthy became an economics professor after earning a graduate degree from the University of Minnesota. He served as a codebreaker for the United States Department of War during World War II. McCarthy became a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the state affiliate of the Democratic Party) and won election to the House of Representatives in 1948. He served until winning election to the Senate in 1958. McCarthy was a prominent supporter of Adlai Stevenson II for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960 and was himself a candidate for the Democratic vice presidential nomination in 1964. He co-sponsored the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, though he later expressed regret about the impact of the bill and became a member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. As the 1960s progressed, McCarthy emerged as a prominent opponent of President Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War. After Robert Kennedy declined the request of a group of anti-war Democrats to challenge Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries, McCarthy entered the race on an anti-war platform.[2] Though he was initially given little chance of winning, the Tet Offensive galvanized opposition to the war and McCarthy finished in a strong second place in the New Hampshire primary. After that primary election, Kennedy entered the race and Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election. McCarthy and Kennedy each won several primaries before Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. The 1968 Democratic National Convention chose Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's preferred candidate, as its presidential nominee. McCarthy did not seek re-election in the 1970 Senate election. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 but fared poorly in the primaries. He ran in several more races after that, but never won election to another office. He ran as independent in the 1976 presidential election and won 0.9% of the popular vote. He was a plaintiff in the landmark campaign finance case of Buckley v. Valeo and supported Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.

Sit-ins, freedom riders

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[3] which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[4] The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961,[5] and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[6]Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines.[7][page needed] Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955) that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. The ICC failed to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.[citation needed] The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides, beginning in 1960, followed dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities. The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be criminal and arrested them in some locations. In some localities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions, and allowed mobs to attack the riders.

G. Gordon Liddy

George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930), known as G. Gordon Liddy, is a former FBI agent, lawyer, talk show host, actor, and figure in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon Administration. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the scandal.[1]Working alongside E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in May and June 1972. After five of Liddy's operatives were arrested inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, subsequent investigations of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and refusing to testify to the Senate committee investigating Watergate. He served nearly fifty-two months in federal prisons.[2] He later joined with Timothy Leary for a series of popular debates on various college campuses, and similarly worked with Al Franken in the late 1990s. Liddy served as a radio talk show host from 1992 until his retirement on July 27, 2012.[3] His radio show as of 2009 was syndicated in 160 markets by Radio America and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States.[4] He has been a guest panelist for Fox News Channel in addition to appearing in a cameo role or as a guest celebrity talent on several television shows

Hilary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton[2] (née Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker. She served as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, as a United States senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the 67th United States secretary of state from 2009 until 2013. Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president of the United States by a major political party when she won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016. She was the first woman to win the popular vote in an American presidential election.

Huburt Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 - January 13, 1978) was an American politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978. He was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1968 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Richard Nixon.Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. At one point he helped run his father's pharmacy. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University and worked for the Works Progress Administration, the Minnesota war service program, and the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in 1944. In 1945, he won election as mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.[1]Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. At one point he helped run his father's pharmacy. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University and worked for the Works Progress Administration, the Minnesota war service program, and the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in 1944. In 1945, he won election as mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.[1] Humphrey served three terms in the Senate from 1949 to 1964. He was the Senate Majority Whip from 1961 to 1964. During his tenure, he was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps, sponsored the clause of the McCarran Act that threatened concentration camps for "subversives", proposed making Communist Party membership a felony, and chaired the Select Committee on Disarmament. He unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination in 1952 and 1960. After Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidency, he chose Humphrey as his running mate, and the Democratic ticket was elected in the landslide 1964 election. In March 1968, Johnson made his surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection, and Humphrey launched his campaign for the presidency. Loyal to the Johnson administration's policies on the Vietnam War, he saw opposition from many within his own party and avoided the primaries to focus on winning the delegates of non-primary states at the Democratic Convention. His delegate strategy succeeded in clinching the nomination, and he chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate. In the general election, he nearly matched Nixon's tally in the popular vote but lost the electoral vote by a wide margin. After the defeat, he returned to the Senate until his death in 1978.

Huey Newton & Bobby Seale/black panther party

Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 - August 22, 1989) was a revolutionary African-American political activist who, along with fellow Merritt College student Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of a police officer and in 1974 was accused of shooting a woman, leading to her death. During this time, he continued to pursue an academic career, eventually earning a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980.[1][2] In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.

James Farmer

James Leonard Farmer Jr. (January 12, 1920 - July 9, 1999) was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr."[1] He was the initiator and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1961, which eventually led to the desegregation of interstate transportation in the United States.[1]In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee of Racial Equality in Chicago along with George Houser, James R. Robinson, Samuel E. Riley, Bernice Fisher, Homer Jack, and Joe Guinn. It was later called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and was dedicated to ending racial segregation in the United States through nonviolence. Farmer served as the national chairman from 1942 to 1944. By the 1960s, Farmer was known as "one of the Big Four civil rights leaders in the 1960s, together with King, NAACP chief Roy Wilkins and Urban League head Whitney Young."[2][3][4]

John Mitchell

John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913 - November 9, 1988) was the 67th Attorney General of the United States (1969-1972) under President Richard Nixon. Prior to that, he had been a municipal bond lawyer, chairman of Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, and one of Nixon's closest personal friends.After his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, he served as chairman of Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. Due to multiple crimes he committed in the Watergate affair, Mitchell was sentenced to prison in 1977 and served 19 months. As Attorney General, he was noted for personifying the "law-and-order" positions of the Nixon Administration, amid several high-profile anti-war demonstrations

John Dean

John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) is a former attorney who served as White House Counsel for United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness.[1] His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution ultimately resulted in a reduced sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland. After his plea, he was disbarred as an attorney. According to the FBI, Dean was the "master manipulator" of the Watergate affair.about his experiences in a series of books and toured the United States to lecture. He later became a commentator on contemporary politics, a book author, and a columnist for FindLaw's Writ. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party.[2][3][4] Dean has been particularly critical of the party's support of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and of neoconservatism, strong executive power, mass surveillance, and the Iraq War.[2][5][6][7][8][9]

Stokely Carmichael (Black Power)

Kwame Ture (/ˈkwɑːmeɪ ˈtʊəreɪ/; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael, June 29, 1941 - November 15, 1998) was a prominent American socialist organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global Pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending Howard University. He eventually developed the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later serving as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and lastly as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).[1]Carmichael was one of the original SNCC freedom riders of 1961 under Diane Nash's leadership. He became a major voting rights activist in Mississippi and Alabama after being mentored by Ella Baker and Bob Moses. Like most young people in SNCC, he became disillusioned with the two-party system after the 1964 Democratic National Convention failed to recognize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as official delegates from the state. Carmichael chose to develop independent black political organizations, such as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and, for a time, the national Black Panther Party. Inspired by Malcolm X's example, he articulated a philosophy of "black power", and popularized it both by provocative speeches and more sober writings. Carmichael became one of the most popular and controversial Black leaders of the late 1960s. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, secretly identified Carmichael as the man most likely to succeed Malcolm X as America's "black messiah". The FBI targeted him for personal destruction through its COINTELPRO program, and Carmichael fled to Africa in 1968. He re-established himself in Ghana, and then Guinea by 1969, where he adopted the new name of Kwame Ture.

spiro agnew

Less than a year before Richard M. Nixon's resignation as president of the United States, Spiro Agnew becomes the first U.S. vice president to resign in disgrace. The same day, he pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals. Agnew, a Republican, was elected chief executive of Baltimore County in 1961. In 1967, he became governor of Maryland, an office he held until his nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1968. During Nixon's successful campaign, Agnew ran on a tough law-and-order platform, and as vice president he frequently attacked opponents of the Vietnam War and liberals as being disloyal and un-American. Reelected with Nixon in 1972, Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, after the U.S. Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of his political corruption, including allegations that his practice of accepting bribes had continued into his tenure as U.S. vice president. He died at the age of 77 on September 17, 1996. Under the process decreed by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Nixon was instructed to the fill vacant office of vice president by nominating a candidate who then had to be approved by both houses of Congress. Nixon's appointment of Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan was approved by Congress and, on December 6, Ford was sworn in. He became the 38th president of the United States on August 9, 1974, after the escalating Watergate affair caused Nixon to resign.

Spiro Agnew resigns

Less than a year before Richard M. Nixon's resignation as president of the United States, Spiro Agnew becomes the first U.S. vice president to resign in disgrace. The same day, he pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals.Agnew, a Republican,Under the process decreed by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Nixon was instructed to the fill vacant office of vice president by nominating a candidate who then had to be approved by both houses of Congress. Nixon's appointment of Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan was approved by Congress and, on December 6, Ford was sworn in. He became the 38th president of the United States on August 9, 1974, after the escalating Watergate affair caused Nixon to resign. was elected chief executive of Baltimore County in 1961. In 1967, he became governor of Maryland, an office he held until his nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1968. During Nixon's successful campaign, Agnew ran on a tough law-and-order platform, and as vice president he frequently attacked opponents of the Vietnam War and liberals as being disloyal and un-American. Reelected with Nixon in 1972, Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, after the U.S. Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of his political corruption, including allegations that his practice of accepting bribes had continued into his tenure as U.S. vice president. He died at the age of 77 on September 17, 1996.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his controversial advocacy for the rights of blacks; some consider him a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans, while others accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, he spent his teenage years living in a series of foster homes following his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. Little engaged in several illicit activities, and was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and changed his name to Malcolm X because, he later wrote, Little was the name that "the white slavemaster ... had imposed upon [his] paternal forebears". After being paroled in 1952, he quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders. During the civil rights movement, Malcolm X served as the public face of the controversial group for a dozen years, where he advocated for black supremacy, the separation of black and white Americans, and rejected the notion of the civil rights movement for its emphasis on racial integration. He also expressed pride in some of the social achievements he made with the Nation, particularly its free drug rehabilitation program. In the 1950s, Malcolm X endured surveillance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the Nation's supposed links to Communism. In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, and in particular, with its leader Elijah Muhammad. Expressing many regrets about his time with them, which he had come to regard as largely wasted, he instead embraced Sunni Islam. Malcolm X then began to advocate for racial integration and disavowed racism after completing Hajj, whereby he also became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.[A] After a brief period of travel across Africa, he notably repudiated the NOI, and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to emphasize Pan-Africanism. Throughout 1964, his conflict with the NOI intensified, and on February 21, 1965, he was assassinated by three of its members. Malcolm X Day is celebrated in various cities and countries worldwide, and hundreds of streets and schools in the U.S. are named in his honor.

Ted Koppel and Nightline

Nightline (or ABC News Nightline) is ABC News' late-night television news program broadcast on ABC in the United States with a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. Created by Roone Arledge,[3] the program featured Ted Koppel as its main anchor from March 1980 until his retirement in November 2005. Its current, rotating anchors are Byron Pitts and Juju Chang. Nightline airs weeknights from 12:37 to 1:07 a.m., Eastern Time, after Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which had served as the program's lead-out from 2003 to 2012.In 2002, Nightline was ranked 23rd on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.[4] It has won three Peabody Awards, one in 2001,[5] and two in 2002 for the reports "Heart of Darkness"[6] and "The Survivors".[7] Through a video-sharing agreement with the BBC, Nightline repackages some of the BBC's output for an American audience. Segments from Nightline are shown in a condensed form on ABC's overnight news program World News Now. There is also a version of Nightline for sister cable channel Fusion.

Robert Kennedy assassinated, 1968

On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot.[3]Following dual victories in the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Senator Kennedy spoke to journalists and campaign workers at a live televised celebration from the stage of his headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel. Shortly after leaving the podium and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired from a handgun. Kennedy died in the Good Samaritan Hospital 26 hours later. The shooter was 24-year-old Sirhan Sirhan. In 1969, Sirhan was convicted of murdering the senator and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972. A freelance newspaper reporter recorded the shooting on audio tape, and the aftermath was captured on film.[4] Kennedy's remains were taken to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York for two days of public viewing before a funeral Mass was held on June 8. His funeral train traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., and throngs of spectators lined the route to view the journey.[5] His body was interred at night in Arlington National Cemetery near his brother John.[6] His death prompted the United States Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was also a presidential candidate; he went on to win the Democratic nomination but ultimately lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Much like his brother's assassination, Robert Kennedy's assassination has led to a number of conspiracy theories; to date, no credible evidence has emerged that Sirhan was not the shooter, or that he didn't act alone. Kennedy and Huey Long of Louisiana (in 1935) are the only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated.

assassination of jfk

Open main menu Wikipedia Search Assassination of John F. Kennedy Language Download PDF Watch Edit John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.[1] Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald firing in ambush from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered.Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department 70 minutes after the initial shooting. Oswald was charged under Texas state law with the murder of Kennedy, as well as that of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who had been fatally shot a short time after the assassination. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though it was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial. After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald.[2] Kennedy was the eighth and most recent US President to die in office, and the fourth (following Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) to be assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson automatically assumed the Presidency upon Kennedy's death.[3] A later investigation, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that the injuries that Kennedy and Connally sustained were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy"[4] as analysis of a dictabelt audio recording pointed to the existence of an additional gunshot and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President".[5][6] The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the possible conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" with respect to information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy.[7] As recommended by the HSCA, the dictabelt evidence suggesting conspiracy was subsequently re-examined and rejected.[8] It was determined that the dictabelt recorded different gunshots which were fired at another location in Dallas and at a different time which was not related to the assassination.[8] In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the U.S. Justice Department concluded active investigations and stated "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".[9] However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80 percent of Americans suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.[10][11]

Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896),[2] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality - a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".[3][4] The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877).The decision involved a case that originated in 1892 when Homer Plessy, an "octoroon" (person of seven-eighths white and one-eighth black ancestry) resident of New Orleans, deliberately violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for white and non-white passengers. Upon being charged, Plessy's lawyers defended him by arguing that the law was unconstitutional. He lost at trial, and his conviction was affirmed on his appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Plessy then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case. In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7-1 decision against Plessy ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, stating that although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of white and black Americans, it did not and could not require the elimination of all social or other "distinctions based upon color". The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals—the "police power"—and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional. Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history.[5] Despite its infamy, the decision itself has never been explicitly overruled.[6] However, a series of subsequent decisions beginning with the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education—which held that the "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools and educational facilities—have severely weakened Plessy to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled.[7]

"Read my lips, no new taxes"

Read my lips: no new taxes" is a phrase spoken by then-American presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention as he accepted the nomination on August 18. Written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, the line was the most prominent sound bite from the speech. The pledge not to tax the American people further had been a consistent part of Bush's 1988 election platform, and its prominent inclusion in his speech cemented it in the public consciousness. The impact of the election promise was considerable, and many supporters of Bush believe it helped Bush win the 1988 presidential election. The line later hurt Bush politically. Although he did oppose the creation of new taxes as president, the Democratic-controlled Congress proposed increases of existing taxes as a way to reduce the national budget deficit. Bush negotiated with Congress for a budget that met his pledge, but was unable to make a deal with a Senate and House that was controlled by the opposing Democrats. Bush agreed to a compromise, which increased several existing taxes as part of a 1990 budget agreement.[1] In the 1992 presidential election campaign, Pat Buchanan repeatedly cited the pledge as an example of a broken promise in his unsuccessful challenge to Bush in the Republican primaries. In the general election, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, running as a moderate, also cited the quotation and questioned Bush's trustworthiness. Bush lost his bid for re-election to Clinton, prompting many to suggest his failure to keep the pledge as a reason for his defeat.

George H.W. Bush/voodoo Economics

Reaganomics (/reɪɡəˈnɒmɪks/; a portmanteau of [Ronald] Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey),[1] or Reaganism, refers to the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with and characterized as supply-side economics or trickle-down economics or voodoo economics by political opponents, while Reagan and his political advocates preferred to call it free-market economics. The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and tighten the money supply in order to reduce inflation.[2] The results of Reaganomics are still debated. Supporters point to the end of stagflation, stronger GDP growth, and an entrepreneur revolution in the decades that followed.[3][4] Critics point to the widening income gap, what they described as an atmosphere of greed, and the national debt tripling in eight years which ultimately reversed the post-World War II trend of a shrinking national debt as percentage of GDP.[5][6]

Nixon's resignation

Richard Nixon's resignation speech was an address made on August 8, 1974, by President of the United States Richard Nixon to the American public. It was delivered in the Oval Office. The purpose of the speech was for Nixon, who had been intimately involved in the events surrounding the Watergate scandal that occurred during his controversial re-election campaign in 1972, to announce to the nation that he was resigning from office.[1] Watergate had cost Nixon much of his political support, and at the time of his resignation, he faced almost certain impeachment and removal from office.Nixon was the ninth (and most recent) incumbent president not to complete the four-year term to which they had been elected since the presidency was established in 1789. He was however, the first to do so for a reason other than dying in office.[2] His presidential resignation remains the only one in U.S. history.

Teflon President

Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004) was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and became the highly influential voice of modern conservatism. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975.Reagan was raised in a low-income family in small towns of northern Illinois. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports commentator on several regional radio stations. After moving to California in 1937, he found work as an actor and starred in a few major productions. Reagan was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild—the labor union for actors—where he worked to root out Communist influence. In the 1950s, he moved into television and was a motivational speaker at General Electric factories, during which time he became a conservative. Reagan was a Democrat until 1962 when he switched to the Republican Party. In 1964, Reagan's speech "A Time for Choosing" supported Barry Goldwater's foundering presidential campaign and earned him national attention as a new conservative spokesman. Building a network of supporters, Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966. As governor, Reagan raised taxes, turned a state budget deficit to a surplus, challenged the protesters at the University of California, ordered in National Guard troops during a period of protest movements in 1969, and was re-elected in 1970. He twice ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination, in 1968 and 1976. Four years later in 1980, he won the nomination and then defeated the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. At 69 years, 349 days of age at the time of his first inauguration, Reagan was the oldest person to have been elected to a first term, until Donald Trump (aged 70 years, 220 days) in 2017. Reagan is still, however, the oldest president elected, at 73 years, 349 days of age at his second inauguration. Reagan faced former vice president Walter Mondale when he ran for re-election in 1984, and defeated him, winning the most electoral votes of any U.S. president, 525, or 97.6% of the 538 votes in the Electoral College. It was the second-most lopsided presidential election in modern U.S. history after Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 victory over Alfred M. Landon, in which he won 98.5% or 523 of the (then-total) 531 electoral votes.[1] Soon after taking office as president, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending. In his first term, he survived an assassination attempt, spurred the War on Drugs, and fought public sector labor. Over his two terms, the economy saw a reduction of inflation from 12.5% to 4.4% and an average real GDP annual growth of 3.4%. Reagan enacted cuts in domestic discretionary spending, cut taxes, and increased military spending, which contributed to increased federal outlays overall, even after adjustment for inflation. Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including ending the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Iran-Contra affair. In June 1987, four years after he publicly described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!", during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. He transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Gorbachev. The talks culminated in the INF Treaty, which shrank both countries' nuclear arsenals. Reagan began his presidency during the decline of the Soviet Union, and the Berlin Wall fell just ten months after the end of his term. Germany reunified the following year, and on December 26, 1991 (nearly three years after he left office), the Soviet Union collapsed. When Reagan left office in 1989, he held an approval rating of 68%, matching those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later Bill Clinton, as the highest ratings for departing presidents in the modern era.[2] He was the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve two full terms after a succession of five prior presidents did not. Although he had planned an active post-presidency, Reagan disclosed in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier that year. Afterward, his informal public appearances became more infrequent as the disease progressed. He died at home on June 5, 2004. His tenure constituted a realignment toward conservative policies in the United States, and he is an icon among conservatives. Evaluations of his presidency among historians and the general public place him among the upper tier of American presidents.

SALT II

SALT II was a series of talks between United States and Soviet negotiators from 1972 to 1979 which sought to curtail the manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. It was a continuation of the SALT I talks and was led by representatives from both countries. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to 2,250 of all categories of delivery vehicles on both sides. The SALT II Treaty banned new missile programs (a new missile defined as one with any key parameter 5% better than in currently deployed missiles), so both sides were forced to limit their new strategic missile types development and construction, such as the development of additional fixed ICBM launchers. Likewise, this agreement would limit the number of MIRVed ballistic missiles and long range missiles to 1,320.[10] However, the United States preserved their most essential programs like the Trident missile, along with the cruise missiles President Jimmy Carter wished to use as his main defensive weapon as they were too slow to have first strike capability. In return, the USSR could exclusively retain 308 of its so-called "heavy ICBM" launchers of the SS-18 type. A major breakthrough for this agreement occurred at the Vladivostok Summit meeting in November 1974, when President Gerald Ford and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev came to an agreement on the basic framework for the SALT II agreement. The elements of this agreement were stated to be in effect through 1985. An agreement to limit strategic launchers was reached in Vienna on June 18, 1979, and was signed by Leonid Brezhnev and Carter at a ceremony held in the Redoutensaal of the imperial Hofburg Palace.[11] Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and in September of the same year, the United States discovered that a Soviet combat brigade was stationed in Cuba.[12] Although President Carter claimed this Soviet brigade had only recently been deployed to Cuba, the unit had been stationed on the island since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.[13] In light of these developments, President Carter withdrew the treaty from consideration in January 1980 so that it was never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Its terms were, nonetheless, honored by both sides until 1986.[14] SALT II was superseded by START I in 1991.[15]

swift boat controversy

Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, formerly known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), was a political group (527 group) of United States Swift boat veterans and former prisoners of war of the Vietnam War, formed during the 2004 presidential election campaign for the purpose of opposing John Kerry's candidacy for the presidency. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative "swiftboating", to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The group disbanded and ceased operations on May 31, 2008.[1] SBVT asserted that Kerry was "unfit to serve" as President based upon his alleged "willful distortion of the conduct" of American servicemen during that war, and his alleged "withholding and/or distortion of material facts" as to his own conduct during that war.[2] SBVT stated that "Kerry's phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compel us to step forward."[3] The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy and the disposition of his discharge. (See John Kerry military service controversy.) Further, SBVT said that Kerry's later criticism of the war was a "betrayal of trust" with other soldiers, and that by his activism he had caused direct "harm" to soldiers still at war. These claims caused tremendous controversy during the election, particularly because most of the organization's members had not been in a place to assess Kerry, while most[4] of the Vietnam veterans who had served with him supported Kerry's version of events.[5][6][7][8][9][10] Registered under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, SBVT publicized its criticisms of Kerry during the election campaign in a book, in television advertisements that the group ran in swing states and in the media coverage some members received. The group was the subject of several complaints to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). After the election, the group was credited by media and praised by conservatives as contributing to Kerry's defeat.[11] The group's tactics are considered an example of a successful political smear campaign[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] for its widely publicized[19] and later discredited claims.[20][21]

election of 1944/republican revolution

The 1944 United States presidential election was the 40th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. The election took place during World War II. Incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey to win an unprecedented fourth term.Roosevelt had become the first president to win a third term with his victory in the 1940 presidential election, and there was little doubt that he would seek a fourth term. Unlike in 1940, Roosevelt faced little opposition within his own party, and he easily won the presidential nomination of the 1944 Democratic National Convention. However, that convention dropped Vice President Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in favor of Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri. Governor Dewey of New York emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination after his victory in the Wisconsin primary, and he defeated conservative Governor John W. Bricker at the 1944 Republican National Convention. As World War II was going well for the United States and its Allies, Roosevelt remained popular despite his long tenure. Dewey campaigned against the New Deal and for a smaller government, but was ultimately unsuccessful in convincing the country to change course. The election was closer than Roosevelt's other presidential campaigns, but Roosevelt still won by a comfortable margin in the popular vote and by a wide margin in the Electoral College. Rumors of Roosevelt's ill health, though somewhat dispelled by his vigorous campaigning, proved to be prescient; Roosevelt died less than three months into his fourth term and was succeeded by Truman.

Chicago Democratic Convention nat'l convention

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26-29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois. As President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, the purpose of the convention was to select a new presidential nominee to run as the Democratic Party's candidate for the office.[1] The keynote speaker was Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).[2] Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine were nominated for President and Vice President, respectively.The convention was held during a year of violence, political turbulence, and civil unrest, particularly riots in more than 100 cities[3] following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4.[4] The convention also followed the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5.[5] Both Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had been running for the Democratic nomination at the time.

OPEC Crisis/win-whip inflation now!

The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War.[1] The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States with the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa. By the end of the embargo in March 1974,[2] the price of oil had risen nearly 400%, from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy.[3] It was later called the "first oil shock", followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the "second oil shock".Whip Inflation Now (WIN) was a 1974 attempt to spur a grassroots movement to combat inflation in the US, by encouraging personal savings and disciplined spending habits in combination with public measures, urged by U.S. President Gerald Ford. The campaign was later described as "one of the biggest government public relations blunders ever".[1] People who supported the mandatory and voluntary measures were encouraged to wear "WIN" buttons,[2] perhaps in hope of evoking in peacetime the kind of solidarity and voluntarism symbolized by the V-campaign during World War II.

American Independent Party/George Wallace

The American Independent Party (AIP) is a far right political party in the United States that was established in 1967. The AIP is best known for its nomination of former Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who carried five states in the 1968 presidential election running on a segregationist "law and order" platform against Richard M. Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey. The party split in 1976 into the modern American Independent Party and the American Party. From 1992 until 2008, the party was the California affiliate of the national Constitution Party. Its exit from the Constitution Party led to a leadership dispute during the 2016 election.

Berlin Wall Crisis

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krise) occurred between 4 June - 9 November 1961, and was the last major politic-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post-World War II Germany. The Berlin Crisis started when the USSR launched an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western armed forces in West Berlin. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall. The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—the last to be attended by the Communist Party of China—was held in Moscow during the crisis.

bay of pigs and cuban missle crisis

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krise) occurred between 4 June - 9 November 1961, and was the last major politic-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post-World War II Germany. The Berlin Crisis started when the USSR launched an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western armed forces in West Berlin. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall. The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—the last to be attended by the Communist Party of China—was held in Moscow during the crisis.

Chicago 7

The Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight, also Conspiracy Eight/Conspiracy Seven) were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged by the federal government with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois, on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Bobby Seale, the eighth man charged, had his trial severed during the proceedings, lowering the number of defendants from eight to seven. The trial resulted in five of the seven convicted for inciting riots. All were acquitted of conspiracy. However, during the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced all of the defendants to lengthy sentences for Contempt of court. In subsequent proceedings, the judge's contempt charges were reversed, and all of the convictions for inciting riots were overturned.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[4] It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, and racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations.Initially, powers given to enforce the act were weak, but these were supplemented during later years. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment. The legislation had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, but opposed by filibuster in the Senate. After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the bill forward, which in its final form was passed in the U.S. Congress by a Senate vote of 73-27 and House vote of 289-126. The Act was signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, at the White House.

Hillary Clinton/universal health care

The Clinton health care plan was a 1993 healthcare reform package proposed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 presidential election. The task force was created in January 1993, but its own processes were somewhat controversial and drew litigation. Its goal was to come up with a comprehensive plan to provide universal health care for all Americans, which was to be a cornerstone of the administration's first-term agenda. The president delivered a major health care speech to the US Congress in September 1993. During his speech he proposed an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees. Opposition to the plan was heavy from conservatives, libertarians, and the health insurance industry. The industry produced a highly effective television ad, "Harry and Louise", in an effort to rally public support against the plan. Instead of uniting behind the original proposal, many Democrats offered a number of competing plans of their own. Hillary Clinton was drafted by the Clinton Administration to head a new Task Force and sell the plan to the American people, which ultimately backfired amid the barrage from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and considerably diminished her own popularity. On September 26, 1994, the final compromise Democratic bill was declared dead by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell.[1]

Monica Lewinsky/impeachment

The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was a U.S. political sex scandal that involved 49-year-old President Bill Clinton and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The sexual relationship took place between 1995 and 1997 and came to light in 1998. Clinton ended a televised speech in late January 1998 with the statement that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky". Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. He was subsequently acquitted on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial.[1] Clinton was held in civil contempt of court by Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving misleading testimony in the Paula Jones case regarding Lewinsky[2] and was also fined $90,000 by Wright.[3] His license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas for five years; shortly thereafter, he was disbarred from presenting cases in front of the United States Supreme Court.[4] Lewinsky was a graduate of Lewis & Clark College. She was hired during Clinton's first term in 1995 as an intern at the White House and was later an employee of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Some believe that Clinton began a personal relationship with her while she worked at the White House, the details of which she later confided to Linda Tripp, her Defense Department co-worker who secretly recorded their telephone conversations.[5] In January 1998, Tripp discovered that Lewinsky had sworn an affidavit in the Paula Jones case, denying a relationship with Clinton. She delivered tapes to Kenneth Starr, the Independent Counsel who was investigating Clinton on other matters, including the Whitewater scandal, the White House FBI files controversy, and the White House travel office controversy. During the grand jury testimony, Clinton's responses were carefully worded, and he argued, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is,"[6] with regard to the truthfulness of his statement that "there is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship".[7] The wide reporting of the scandal led to criticism of the press for over-coverage.[8][9][10] The scandal is sometimes referred to as "Monicagate",[11] "Lewinskygate",[12] "Tailgate",[13] "Sexgate",[14] and "Zippergate",[14] following the "-gate" construction that has been used since Watergate.

CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President)

The Committee for the Re-election of the President (also known as the Committee to Re-elect the President), abbreviated CRP, but often mocked by the acronym CREEP,[1] was a fundraising organization of United States President Richard Nixon in his 1972 re-election campaign.Planning began in late 1970 and an office opened in the spring of 1971. Besides its re-election activities, CRP employed money laundering and slush funds, and was involved in the Watergate scandal.[2] The CRP used $500,000 in funds raised to re-elect President Nixon to pay legal expenses for the five Watergate burglars. This act helped turn the burglary into an explosive political scandal. The burglars, as well as G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, John N. Mitchell, and other Nixon administration figures, were imprisoned over the break-in and their efforts to cover it up.[citation needed] The acronym CREEP was derisively applied to the CRP as a nickname by Nixon's opponents; the pejorative became popular due to the Watergate scandal.[3][4]

Little Rock Central High School/Orval Faubus

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background."[2]CORE was founded in Chicago, Illinois, in March 1942. Among the founding members were James L. Farmer, Jr., George Houser, James R. Robinson, Samuel E. Riley, Bernice Fisher, Homer Jack, and Joe Guinn. Of the 50 original members, 28 were men and 22 were women, roughly one-third of them were black and two-thirds white.[3][4] Bayard Rustin, while not a father of the organization, was, as Farmer and House later said, "an uncle to CORE" and supported it greatly. The group had evolved out of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, and sought to apply the principles of nonviolence as a tactic against segregation.[5] The group's inspiration was Mahatma Gandhi's teachings of non-violent resistance.[6] Krishnalal Shridharani, a popular writer and journalist as well as a vibrant and theatrical speaker, had been a protege of Gandhi and had been jailed in the Salt March whose book War Without Violence influenced the organisation.[7] Gandhi had, in turn, been influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, the American author, poet, and philosopher. At the time of CORE's founding Gandhi was still engaged in non-violent resistance against British rule in India; CORE believed that nonviolent civil disobedience could also be used by African-Americans to challenge racial segregation in the United States.[

Contract with America/newton grinch

The Contract with America was a legislative agenda advocated for by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. Written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Many of the Contract's policy ideas originated at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.[1][2] The Contract with America was introduced six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election, the first midterm election of President Bill Clinton's Administration, and was signed by all but two of the Republican members of the House and all of the Party's non-incumbent Republican Congressional candidates. Proponents say the Contract was revolutionary in its commitment to offering specific legislation for a vote, describing in detail the precise plan of the Congressional Representatives, and broadly nationalizing the Congressional election. Furthermore, its provisions represented the view of many conservative Republicans on the issues of shrinking the size of government, promoting lower taxes and greater entrepreneurial activity, and both tort reform and welfare reform. Critics of the Contract describe it as a political ploy and election tool designed to have broad appeal while masking the Republicans' real agenda and failing to provide real legislation or governance. The 1994 elections resulted in Republicans gaining 54 House and 9 U.S. Senate seats. When the Republicans gained this majority of seats in the 104th Congress, the Contract was seen as a triumph by party leaders such as Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the American conservative movement in general.

Great Recession

The Great Recession was a period of general economic decline (recession) observed in world markets during the late 2000s and 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map).[1][2] The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression and it is often regarded as the 2nd worst downturn of all time.[3][4] The Great Recession stemmed from the collapse of the United States real estate market in relation to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the subprime mortgage crisis, though policies of other nations contributed as well. According to the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of U.S. recessions), the recession in the U.S. began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, thus extending over 19 months.[5] The Great Recession resulted in a scarcity of valuable assets in the market economy and the collapse of the financial sector (banks) in the world economy; some banks were bailed out by the U.S. federal government.[6][7] The recession was not felt equally around the world; whereas most of the world's developed economies, particularly in North America, South America and Europe, fell into a definitive recession, many more recently developed economies suffered far less impact, particularly China, India and Poland, whose economies grew substantially during this period.

Great Society

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964-65. It was coined during a 1964 speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University of Michigan and came to represent his domestic agenda.[1] The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier.[citation needed] Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide victory in the 1964 elections that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.[2] Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.[3]

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88-408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.It is of historic significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist "any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty". This included involving armed forces. It was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Senator Gruening objected to "sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated". (Tonkin Gulf debate 1964) The Johnson administration subsequently relied upon the resolution to begin its rapid escalation of U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam and open warfare between North Vietnam and the United States.

Washington Post

The Washington Post (sometimes abbreviated to WaPo) is a major American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It has the largest circulation in the Washington metropolitan area.[ambiguous] Daily broadsheet editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and VirginiaThe newspaper has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. This includes six separate Pulitzers awarded in 2008, second only to The New York Times's seven awards in 2002 for the highest number ever awarded to a single newspaper in one year.[6] Post journalists have also received 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards. In the early 1970s, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal. Their reporting in The Washington Post greatly contributed to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In years since, the Post's investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.[7] In October 2013, the paper's longtime controlling family, the Graham family, sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company established by Jeff Bezos, for $250 million in cash.[8][9]

Ho Chi Minh Trail

The Hồ Chí Minh trail (Vietnamese: Đường Trường Sơn, "Annamite Range Trail") was a logistical system that ran from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) through the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia. The system provided support, in the form of manpower and materiel, to the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (called the Viet Cong or "VC" by its opponents) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), or North Vietnamese Army, during the Vietnam War.It was named by the Americans after North Vietnamese president Hồ Chí Minh. Presumably the origin of the name came from the First Indochina War because there was a Viet Minh logistics line called the Route of Ho Chi Minh,[1] and in 1961, as the present trail developed, Agence France-Presse [AFP] announced on the radio that a North-South trail had now opened, and they named the corridor La Piste de Hồ Chí Minh, or in English the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.[2] The trail ran mostly in Laos, and was called by the communists the Trường Sơn Strategic Supply Route (Đường Trường Sơn), after the Vietnamese name for the Annamite Range mountains in central Vietnam,[3] and the communists further identified the trail as either West Trường Sơn (Laos) or East Trường Sơn (Vietnam).[4] According to the United States National Security Agency's official history of the war, the Trail system was "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century".[5] The trail was able to effectively supply troops fighting in the south, a military feat unparalleled given it was the site of the single most intense bombing campaign in history, with bombs dropping on average every seven minutes.[6]

the imperial presidency

The Imperial Presidency, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., is a book published in 1973 by Houghton Mifflin. This book details the history of the Presidency of the United States from its conception by the Founding Fathers through the latter half of the 20th century. The author wrote the book out of two concerns: first, that the US Presidency was out of control and second, that the Presidency had exceeded its constitutional limits.[1]A presidency becomes imperial when it relies on powers beyond those allowed by the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution established three separate branches of government, not for efficiency but to avoid the arbitrary exercise of power. The government outlined by the Constitution was to replace and improve upon the imperial executive government of King George III of Britain.[2] The book links the president's accumulation of foreign powers during wartimes to the accretion of domestic powers. The Constitution and its authors determined that the power to initiate a war belonged to the Congress. The president had the responsibilities to conduct ongoing wars and ongoing foreign relations, and to respond to sudden attacks if Congress were not in session.[3] As the United States became a great world power and then a superpower, the presidency acquired more war powers despite the Constitution. That reduced Congress' powers and the separation of powers, which is necessary to avoid the arbitrary use of power.[4] Through various means, presidents subsequently acquired powers beyond the limits of the constitution. The daily accountability of the president to the Congress, the courts, the press, and the people has been replaced by an accountability of only once each four years, during an election. The changes have occurred slowly over the centuries so that what appears normal differs greatly from what was the original state of America.[5]

kent state and jackson state massacres

The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre),[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of neutral Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30 of that year. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.[8][9] There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students,[10] and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[11] The Jackson State killings occurred on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, a group of students were confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.[1] The event happened only 11 days after the Kent State shootings, in which National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio, which had first captured national attention.

March on Washington

The March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 1941-1946, organized by activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin[1] as a tool to produce a mass march on Washington, D.C., was designed to pressure the U.S. government into desegregating the armed forces and providing fair working opportunities for African Americans. When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting discrimination in the defense industry under contract to federal agencies, Randolph and collaborators called off the march. Randolph continued to promote non-violent actions to advance goals for African Americans. Future civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and other younger men were strongly influenced by Randolph and his ideals and methods.

Cuban Boatlift/marieliftos

The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans, who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between 15 April and 31 October 1980. The term "Marielito" (plural "Marielitos") is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. While the boatlift was incited by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, generations of Cubans had immigrated to the United States before the boatlift in search of both political freedom and economic opportunities.After approximately 10,000 Cubans tried to gain asylum by taking refuge on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy, the Cuban government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The ensuing mass migration was organized by Cuban Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The arrival of the refugees in the United States created political problems for President Jimmy Carter. His administration struggled to develop a consistent response to the immigrants, and it was discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in late October 1980. By that time as many as 125,000 Cubans had reached Florida.

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were cohorts and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur or Further, organizing parties and giving out LSD.[1] During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the mid-1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Wolfe also documents a notorious 1966 trip on Further from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time.[2] Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman,[3] Paul Foster, Dale Kesey (his cousin), George Walker, the Warlocks (now known as the Grateful Dead), Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman (who overlapped with Kesey and Babbs as creative writing graduate students at Stanford University) were associated with the group to varying degrees.[citation needed] These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee Quarnstrom, in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955 — the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person — to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.[1] Many important figures in the civil rights movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, the ten front seats were reserved for whites at all times. The ten back seats were supposed to be reserved for blacks at all times. The middle section of the bus consisted of sixteen unreserved seats for whites and blacks on a segregated basis.[17] Whites filled the middle seats from the front to back, and blacks filled seats from the back to front until the bus was full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created; it was illegal for whites and blacks to sit next to each other. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person, she was sitting in the first row of the middle section.[18] Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back.[19] Occasionally, bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard.[20] National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott.[21]

Panama Canal release

The Panama Canal expansion project (Spanish: ampliación del Canal de Panamá), also called the Third Set of Locks Project, doubled the capacity of the Panama Canal by adding a new lane of traffic allowing for a larger number of ships, and increasing the width and depth of the lanes and locks allowing larger ships to pass. The new ships, called New Panamax, are about one and a half times the previous Panamax size and can carry over twice as much cargo. The expanded canal began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The project has: Built two new sets of locks, one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and excavated new channels to the new locks. Widened and deepened existing channels. Raised the maximum operating water level of Gatun Lake.[1] Then-Panamanian President Martín Torrijos formally proposed the project on 24 April 2006, saying it would transform Panama into a First World country. A national referendum approved the proposal by a 76.8 percent majority on 22 October, and the Cabinet and National Assembly followed suit. The project formally began in 2007.[2] It was initially announced that the Canal expansion would be completed by August 2014 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal, but various setbacks, including strikes and disputes with the construction consortium over cost overruns, pushed the completion date back several times.[3][4][5] Following additional difficulties including seepage from the new locks, the expansion was opened on 26 June 2016. The expansion doubled the Canal's capacity. On March 2nd 2018, the Panama Canal Authority announced that 3,000 New Panamax ships had crossed the canal expansion during its first 20 months of operation.[6]

Henry Kissinger-paris Peace accords

The Paris Peace Accords, (Vietnamese: Hiệp định Paris về Việt Nam) officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam (Hiệp định về chấm dứt chiến tranh, lập lại hòa bình ở Việt Nam), was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries. US ground forces up to that point had been sidelined with deteriorating morale and gradually withdrawn to coastal regions, not partaking in offensive operations or much direct combat for the preceding two-year period.[1][2] The Paris Agreement Treaty would in effect remove all remaining US Forces, including air and naval forces in exchange for Hanoi's POWs.[2] Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day.[2] The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.[3][4]The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968, after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to fulfill the agreement. The main negotiators of the agreement were United States National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Lê Đức Thọ; the two men were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, although Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept it. The agreement's provisions were immediately frequently broken with no response from the United States. Fighting broke out in March 1973, and North Vietnamese offenses enlarged their control by the end of the year. Two years later, a massive North Vietnamese offensive conquered South Vietnam.[2]

Timothy Leary

The Zihuatanejo Project was a psychedelic training center and intentional community created during the beginning of the counterculture of the 1960s by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert under the umbrella of their nonprofit group, the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). The community was located in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, and took up residence at the Hotel Catalina in the summers of 1962 and 1963.[1]Leary and Alpert first discovered the town of Zihuatanejo in 1960. After the Marsh Chapel Experiment in 1962 they decided the area would make a good location for a training center.[2] The idea for the community was influenced by Aldous Huxley's fictional novel, Island (1962).[3][

New Frontier/Peace Corps

The Peace Corps Program To participate in the Peace Corps program, countries must meet certain requirements: A country must invite the Peace Corps Based on its limited budget, the Peace Corps decides which countries it can be active in and prioritizes each country's needs Peace Corps volunteers must be safe Peace Corps volunteer Arthur Young near Mikumi, Tanganyika (Tanzania) Once these requirements are met, the Peace Corps begins working with the foreign government. Countries seeking help from the Peace Corps propose areas that could benefit from the skills of volunteers. The Peace Corps then matches assignments within foreign nations to applicants with the appropriate skills. Life as a Peace Corps volunteer is not easy and volunteers face many challenges, from language barriers to poor living conditions. There is no salary. Volunteers receive a monthly stipend for room, board, and few essentials—"enough to be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and basic needs. Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they are stationed—doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language." Culturally, volunteers work to build trust within their communities and share their skills to solve challenges that face developing communities. Volunteers work in many different fields, including, education, health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS training, agriculture, business, community development, forestry, and environmental protection. Since the inception of the Peace Corps, some 200,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries. They have learned more than 200 languages and dialects. The Peace Corps Today The Peace Corps is always adapting to the times and to an ever-changing world, but has never wavered from its three original goals: To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans The program continues to reflect the evolving priorities of the US government and changes in the population of the United States. Today, on average, volunteers are older than their predecessors and more experienced in specialized fields. After more than five decades of service, the Peace Corps is more vital than ever and still growing. From John F. Kennedy's inspiration came an agency devoted to world peace and friendship and volunteers who continue to help individuals build a better life for themselves, their children, their community, and their country.

Archibald Cox/"Saturday Night

The Saturday Night Massacre is the name popularly applied[1] to the series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal. U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork considered resigning, but did as Nixon asked. The political and public reactions to Nixon's actions were negative and highly damaging to the president. The impeachment process against Richard Nixon began ten days later, on October 30. A new special counsel was appointed on November 1, 1973,[2] and on November 14, 1973, a court ruled that the dismissal had been illegal.[3][4]

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War superpowers, on the issue of arms control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II. Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, Finland, in November 1969.[1] SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries. Although SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979, the United States Senate chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which took place later that year. The Soviet legislature also did not ratify it. The agreement expired on December 31, 1985 and was not renewed. The talks led to the STARTs, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, which consisted of START I (a 1991 completed agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia, which was never ratified by the United States), both of which proposed limits on multiple-warhead capacities and other restrictions on each side's number of nuclear weapons. A successor to START I, New START, was proposed and was eventually ratified in February 2011.

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (1960)

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced /snɪk/ SNIK) was one of the major American Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s.[1][2] It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at a May 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. After its involvement in the Voter Education Project, SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support its work in the South, allowing full-time organizers to have a small salary. Many unpaid grassroots organizers and activists also worked with SNCC on projects in the Deep South, often becoming targets of racial violence and police brutality. SNCC played a seminal role in the freedom rides, the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Selma campaigns, the March Against Fear and other historic events. SNCC may be best known for its community organizing, including voter registration, freedom schools, and localized direct action all over the country, but especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.In the later 1960s, inspired by fiery leaders such as Stokely Carmichael, SNCC focused on black power, and draft resistance to the Vietnam War. As early as 1965, executive secretary James Forman said he "did not know how much longer we can stay nonviolent" and in 1969, SNCC officially changed its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee to reflect the broadening of its strategy.[3] It passed out of existence in the 1970s following heavy infiltration and suppression by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), spearheaded as part of COINTELPRO operations during the 1960s and 70s led by J. Edgar Hoover.[4]

Invasion of Panama

The United States Invasion of Panama, codenamed Operation Just Cause, occurred between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990. It occurred during the administration of President George H. W. Bush and ten years after the Torrijos-Carter Treaties were ratified to transfer control of the Panama Canal from the U.S. to Panama by 1 January 2000.During the invasion, de facto Panamanian leader, general, and dictator Manuel Noriega was deposed, president-elect Guillermo Endara was sworn into office, and the Panama Defense Forces was dissolved.

Invasion of Grenada

The United States invasion of Grenada began on 25 October 1983, led by the United States into the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, 100 miles (160 km) north of Venezuela, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury. It resulted in an American victory within a matter of days. It was triggered by the strife within the People's Revolutionary Government which resulted in the house arrest and execution of the previous leader and second Prime Minister of Grenada Maurice Bishop, and the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council with Hudson Austin as Chairman. The invasion resulted in the appointment of an interim government, followed by democratic elections in 1984. The country has remained a democratic nation since then.Grenada gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. The Communist New Jewel Movement seized power in a coup in 1979 under Maurice Bishop, suspending the constitution and detaining several political prisoners. In 1983, an internal power struggle began over Bishop's foreign policy, and a military junta captured and executed him and his partner Jacqueline Creft on 19 October, along with three cabinet ministers and two union leaders. The Reagan Administration in the U.S. launched a military intervention following appeals by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and Grenada's Governor-General Paul Scoon due to "concerns over the 600 U.S. medical students on the island" and fears of a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis. The invasion began on the morning of 25 October 1983, just two days after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which was unrelated. The invading force consisted of the Army's rapid deployment force, Marines, Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and ancillary forces totaling 7,600 troops, together with Jamaican forces and troops of the Regional Security System (RSS).[9] The force defeated Grenadian resistance after a low-altitude airborne assault by Rangers on Point Salines Airport at the south end of the island, and a Marine helicopter and amphibious landing on the north end at Pearls Airport. Austin's military government was deposed and replaced by a government-appointed by Scoon. The invasion was criticized by many countries including Canada. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privately disapproved of the mission and the lack of notice that she received, but she publicly supported it.[10] The United Nations General Assembly condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law" on 2 November 1983 with a vote of 108 to 9.[11] Conversely, there was broad public support in the United States[12] and the Grenadian population approved of American intervention, appreciating the fact that there had been relatively few civilian casualties, as well as the return to democratic elections in 1984.[13][14] The date of the invasion is now a national holiday in Grenada called Thanksgiving Day, commemorating the freeing of several political prisoners who were subsequently elected to office. A truth and reconciliation commission was launched in 2000 to re-examine some of the controversies of the era; in particular, the commission made an unsuccessful attempt to find Bishop's body, which had been disposed of at Austin's order and never found. The invasion also highlighted issues with communication and coordination between the different branches of the American military when operating together as a joint force, contributing to investigations and sweeping changes in the form of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and other reorganizations.

Gerald Ford / pardon of Nixon

The pardon of Richard Nixon (Proclamation 4311 Wikisource has information on "Proclamation 4311") on September 8, 1974, by US President Gerald Ford granted Richard Nixon, Ford's predecessor, a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president.[1][2] In particular, the pardon covered Nixon's actions during the Watergate scandal. In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford, who had succeeded to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation, explained that he felt the pardon was in the best interests of the country and that the Nixon family's situation was "a tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."[3] After Ford left the White House in 1977, he privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision that suggested that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that its acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[4][5]

Bull Connor and Birmingham

Theophilus Eugene Connor (July 11, 1897 - March 10, 1973), known as Bull Connor, was an American politician who served as Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, for more than two decades. He strongly opposed activities of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Under the city commission government, Connor had responsibility for administrative oversight of the Birmingham Fire Department and the Birmingham Police Department, which also had their own chiefs. Connor was a Southern Democrat.Connor enforced legal racial segregation and denied civil rights to black citizens, especially during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Birmingham campaign of 1963. He became an international symbol of institutional racism. Bull Connor directed the use of fire hoses and police attack dogs against civil rights activists; child protestors were also subject to these attacks.[2][3] National media broadcast these tactics on television, horrifying much of the country. The outrages served as catalysts for major social and legal change in the Southern United States and contributed to passage by the United States Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[4]Local civil rights activists had been unable to negotiate much change with the city or business leaders, in their efforts to gain integration of facilities and hiring of blacks by local businesses. They invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his team to help mount a more concerted campaign. The day after the April election, he and local civil rights leaders began "Project 'C'" (for "confrontation") in Birmingham against the business community. They used economic boycotts and demonstrations to seek integration of stores and job opportunities. Throughout April 1963 Martin Luther King led smaller demonstrations, which resulted in his arrest along with many others.[20] King wanted to have massive arrests to highlight the brutal police tactics used by Connor and his subordinates. (By extension, the campaign was intended to demonstrate the general suppression by other Southern police officials as well). After King was arrested and jailed, he wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail, which became noted as an expression of moral argument for civil rights activism. The goal of the campaign was to gain mass arrests of non-violent protesters and overwhelm the judicial and penal systems. It would also demonstrate to national media and local residents the strong desire of African Americans to exercise their constitutional rights as citizens.

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 - January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall graduated from the Howard University School of Law in 1933. He established a private legal practice in Baltimore before founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. In that position, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer, and Brown v. Board of Education, which held that racial segregation in public education is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. Marshall retired during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, and was succeeded by Clarence Thomas.

Reaganomics (trickle-down economics)

Trickle-down economics, also called trickle-down theory, refers to the economic proposition that taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society should be reduced as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term. In recent history, the term has been used by critics of supply-side economic policies, such as "Reaganomics." Whereas general supply-side theory favors lowering taxes overall, trickle-down theory more specifically targets taxes on the upper end of the economic spectrum.[1][2] The term "trickle-down" originated as a joke by humorist Will Rogers and today is often used to criticize economic policies which favor the wealthy or privileged while being framed as good for the average citizen. David Stockman, who as Ronald Reagan's budget director championed Reagan's tax cuts at first, later became critical of them and told journalist William Greider that "supply-side economics" is the trickle-down idea:[3][4]Political opponents of the Reagan administration soon seized on this language in an effort to brand the administration as caring only about the wealthy.[citation needed] Some studies suggest a link between trickle-down economics and reduced growth.[5][6] Trickle-down economics has been widely criticized particularly by left-wing (socialist and social liberal) and moderate politicians and economists, but also some right-wing (conservative) politicians. A 2019 study in the Journal of Political Economy found, contrary to trickle-down theory, that "the positive relationship between tax cuts and employment growth is largely driven by tax cuts for lower-income groups and that the effect of tax cuts for the top 10 percent on employment growth is small."[7]

LSD- Tune In,Turn Off, and drop out

Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967, Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". It was also the title of his spoken word album recorded in 1966. On this lengthy album, Leary can be heard speaking in a monotone soft voice on his views about the world and humanity, describing nature, Indian symbols, "the meaning of inner life", the LSD experience, peace, and many other issues. 1988, in an interview with Neil Strauss, Leary said the slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary added McLuhan "was very much-interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that's a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial of the time. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'"[1] The phrase was used by Leary in a speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York city on September 19, 1966. It urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics by detaching from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. It was also the motto of his League for Spiritual Discovery.[2] The phrase was derided by conservative critics.[who?]Turn on, tune in, drop out is also the title of a book (ISBN 1-57951-009-4) of essays by Timothy Leary, covering topics ranging from religion, education, and politics to Aldous Huxley, neurology, and psychedelic drugs. 1967, Leary (during the salon known as the Houseboat Summit) announced his agreement with a new ordering of the phrase as he said, "I would agree to change the slogan to 'Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.'"[5] During his last decade, Leary proclaimed the "PC is the LSD of the 1990s"—"turn on, boot up, jack in" re-worked the phrase to suggest joining the cyberdelic counterculture.[6]

Nixon's Detente

th countries stood to gain if trade could be increased and the danger of nuclear warfare reduced. In addition, Nixon-a candidate for reelection-was under fire at home from those demanding social change, racial equality, and an end to the Vietnam War. The trip to Russia, like his historic trip to China a few months earlier, permitted him to keep public attention focused on his foreign policy achievements rather than his domestic problems. Nixon's trip to China had also heightened the Soviets' interest in détente; given the growing antagonism between Russia and China, Brezhnev had no wish to see his most potent rivals close ranks against him. On May 22 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Moscow. He and Brezhnev signed seven agreements covering the prevention of accidental military clashes; arms control, as recommended by the recent Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (salt); cooperative research in a variety of areas, including space exploration; and expanded commerce. The salt treaty was approved by Congress later that summer, as was a three-year agreement on the sale of grain to the Soviets. In June 1973, Brezhnev visited the United States for Summit II; this meeting added few new agreements, but did symbolize the two countries' continuing commitment to peace. Summit III, in June 1974, was the least productive; by then, the salt talks had ground to a halt, several commercial agreements had been blocked in Congress because of Soviet treatment of Jews, and the Watergate investigation was approaching a climax. Nixon's successor in the talks, President Jimmy Carter, supported salt ii, but also pressed a military buildup and a human rights campaign, which cooled relations between the countries. With the election of Ronald Reagan, who emphasized military preparedness as the key to Soviet-American relations, détente as Nixon had envisioned it came to an end.