Timeline
This timeline is a framework of significant events that aims to show the intersectionality and overlap of the three exhibits presented: Racial Equality and Black Power, the Sexual Revolution and Women's Liberation, and Counter-Culture and the Vietnam War.
1950
- Senator Joseph McCarthy begins Communist Witch Hunt, a move meant to expose communists within the media and entertainment industries, as well as the United States government and U.S. Military.
- President Truman orders the construction of the Hydrogen Bomb.
1953
- First issue of Playboy, featuring Marilyn Monroe on the cover and centerfold, is published.
1954
- Brown v. Board of Education ruling: Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous decision on May 17, stating that "separate but equal" schools violated the 14th amendment, and was therefore unconstitutional.
- Brown II ruling: One year after the Brown v. Board decision, Justice Earl Warren read another majority decision stating that states needed to use "all deliberate speed," allowing legislation to be created that slowed the process of integration.
- Montgomery Bus Boybott begins: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the front of the bus to a white man on December 1, 1960. The NAACP defended the activist, and newcomer from Atlanta named Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the bus boycott that would take place in Montgomery for over a year. In December 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating in public buses was unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle.
1956
- Elvis gyrates on the Ed Sullivan Show, creating instant controversy with what is deemed as he "sexually-provocative" dancing.
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is formed and in August Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is elected president.
- Soviet Union launches Sputnik
1958
- Peace Symbol created
- First Sit-in in Greensboro, NC: On February 1, 1960, four African-American students from North Carolina Agriculture & Technical College walked into Woolworth's, sat at the lunch counter, and waited to be served.
- Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in April.
- Civil Rights Act is signed by Eisenhower on May 6th.
- Timothy Leary, noted Harvard psychologist, tries psilocybin mushrooms for the first time.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy is nominated President of the United States.
1961
- Eisenhower warns of the increasing power of the military industrial complex in his final speech as president.
- Richard Alpert takes psilocybin during the Harvard trials.
- Kennedy announces aid to Indochina and creates the Peace Corps.
- Freedom Rides: On May 4, 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) tried to test the 1946 Supreme Court ruling on Morgan v. Virginia which said that segregation on interstate travel is unconstitutional by traveling from Washington D.C. to New Orleans.
- Birth control pills available to the public
- Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl
- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
- Cuban Missle Crisis takes place, almost initiating a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.
- Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
- First Nuclear Test Ban treaty is signed
- Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- Beatlemania begins
- JFK assassinated in Dallas
- Lyndon Johnson escalates war in Vietnam
- Aldous Huxley dies from LSD overdose
- Freedom Summer: This program run by SNCC was a voter registration drive to help African-Americans learn their rights and vote across the South.
- Civil Rights Act: Signed by President Johnson on July 2, this Act banned discrimination in employment and outlawed segregation in public places.
- Millbrook LSD sessions conducted by Timothy Leary
- Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing funding for the Vietnam War
- Casey Hayden and Mary King spread a memo about sexual inequality within the civil rights movement
- Time Magazine calls young people "a generation of conformists."
- President Johnson outlines his "Great Society."
- March 6th, first solider sets foot on Vietnam soil
- Voting Rights Act: Signed by President Johnson on August 6, this Act prohibited all discriminatory voting practices including literacy tests and poll taxes.
- August 31st, burning draft cards becomes illegal
- September 5th, Michael Fallon terms the word "hippie" to the San Francisco counter-culture scene.
- Griswold v. Connecticut: establishes married couples have a right to birth control due to their "right to privacy"
- Black Panther Party for Self Defense is formed by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, CA.
- April 12th, Wall Street is papered with anti-war leaflets.
- FBI releases its findings on LSD causing the drug to get bad press.
- May 15th, 10,000 protestors attend anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C.
- The National Organization for Women (NOW) is created
- President Johnson extends affirmative action to women
- Beatles admit to psychedelic drug use.
- Monterey Pop Festival
- Summer of Love in San Francisco starts and is centered in Haight-Ashbury.
- Kate Millet's Sexual Politics
- Masters' and Johnson's Human Sexual Response
- Feminists bury a dummy representing "traditional womanhood" during a demonstration against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C.
- The bra burning myth is birthed due to the protest against the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assasinated on April 4 in Nashville, Tennessee.
- Bobby Kennedy assasinated
- Student Strike at San Francisco State University
- Stonewall Bar in NY City)
- The FBI begins widespread infiltration of women's movements
- Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party, jumps bail from a murder charge and flees to Cuba and then Algeria.
- October 15th, over half a million people march on Washington D.C. for Peace Day.
- American media is fascinated with the new women's movement
- The Catholic Church founds the National Right to Life Committee to prevent liberalization of abortion laws
- Abortion laws are liberalized in Hawaii, Alaska, and New York
- Lavender Menace Action (asserting the right to be public lesbians)
- May 4th, Kent State Massacre claims the lives of four students when the National Guard opens fire on anti-war protestors.
- Freshly elected to Congress, Bella Abzug demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam on her first day
- Huey Newton is freed after his manslaughter charges were dismissed. He is the only free leader of the Black Panther Party at this time.
- President Richard Nixon calls drug abuse "public enemy no. 1" and officially declares a War on Drugs.
- Pentagon Papers are published in the NY Times
- The Equal Employment Opportunity Act passes
- Representative Shirley Chisholm, an African American woman, is nominated by the Democratic Party to run for president. She loses.
- Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) is formed to improve working conditions for prostitutes
- Roe v. Wade: the right to abortion is federally established
- National Black Feminist Organization is formed
- Vietnam ceasefire agreement is signed after 58,000 U.S. casualties, draft ends
- Watergate
- Diana Russell's The Politics of Rape: The Victim's Perspective
- President Gerald R. Ford pardons Richard Nixon of all wrongdoing in relation to Watergate.
- Vietnam War ends
- Instead of the usual Man of the Year, Time magazine selects ten women
- CIA and FBI charged with the illegal surveillence of U.S. citizens and plotting assassinations of foreign leaders.
- Congress passes the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting federal Medicaid money for abortion and foreshadowing popular, widespread conservative backlash