The Kent State shootings occurred on May 4, 1970 when members of the Ohio National Guard fired shots at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. Some of the students were protesting President Nixon’s Cambodian Campaign, others were walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance. In response to the shootings, […]
Archive | Politics
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 3, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He served eight years as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, and waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy in 1960. He was elected President in 1968, defeating Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ended […]
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and activist who is widely known as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. On October 14, 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize […]
Vietnam War Protests
Opposition to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War began with demonstrations in 1964 against the escalating role of the U.S. military in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. This movement informed and helped shape the vigorous and polarizing debate, primarily in the United States, during the second half of the […]
JFK Assasination
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 at 12:30pm while riding in a motorcade in Dealey Plaza with his wife Jacqueline, and Texas governor John Connally and his wife Nellie. A ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission following the assassination concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former marine, acted alone in […]
The Peace Corps
President John F. Kennedy issues an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. The Corps, a volunteer program run by the U.S. government, works with abroad with governments, schools, non-profit organizations, and entrepreneurs in education, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment. Volunteers are American citizens, typically under 30 with a college degree, who enroll for a two […]
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, commonly known as JFK, was born in Brookline, MA on May 29, 1917. He served in the Navy, and then continued his family’s political legacy by becoming a US Congressman and Senator. He defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election to become the 35th President of the United […]
Malcom X
Malcolm X (1925–1965) was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. […]