ENGL C101 Guide for Debilyn Kinzler: The 1960s

1960

• Democrat John F. Kennedy wins the U.S. Presidential Election after defeating Republican Richard Nixon. 
• Birth control approved for contraceptive use. 
• U2 spy plane shot down over Russia. 

1961

• Bay of Pigs invasion was an unsuccessful U.S.-backed operation to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. 
• Berlin Wall was erected. 
• Gagarin first man to orbit the Earth
• Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961

1962

• James Meredith, the first Black student to register at the University of Mississippi
• The Cuban Missile Crisis has the world on the edge of another world war. 
• Telstar transmits the first transatlantic television pictures. 

1963

• United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald
• Lyndon Johnson becomes President
• More than a quarter million people participated in the historic Civil Rights march on Washington for jobs and freedom. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. 

1964

• United States President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. 
• Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. 
• U.S. Surgeon General published a report that cigarette smoking was responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality rate of smokers over non-smokers. 

1965

• Martin Luther King, Jr. leads a peaceful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. 
• The first spacewalk was completed by Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. 
• Malcolm X was assassinated. 
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson
• The first wave of US combat troops came ashore in South Vietnam. 

1967

• The Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs play against each other in the first Super Bowl.
• Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
• Israeli-Arab Six-Day War

1968

• Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated.
• Richard Nixon became the 37th President of the United States
• Apollo 8 orbits the moon

1969

• Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to arrive on the Moon during NASA's Apollo 11 mission. 
• June 28, 1969, marks the beginning of the Stonewall Uprising, a series of events between police and LGBTQ+ protesters that stretched over six days. 
• The Woodstock Music Festival began on August 15, 1969, and was billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music". Attracted more than 400,000 attendees.  

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