The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Chapter Review 793

1951 J. D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye
1955 Joseph Heller publishes Catch-22
Allen Ginsberg publishes Howl
1957 Jack Kerouac publishes On the Road
1960 Black college students found Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
John F. Kennedy elected President
1961 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launch disastrous Bay of
Pigs invasion
Soviets build Berlin wall
John F. Kennedy founds Peace Corps
Freedom riders integrate buses in South
1962 Soviet Premier Khrushchev precipitates Cuban
missile crisis
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) issues
Port Huron Statement
1963 United States supports coup to oust President
Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam
Martin Luther King, Jr., gives “I Have a Dream”
speech during March on Washington
Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates President
Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson becomes president
1964 Congress endorses escalation of Vietnam War in
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Lyndon Johnson is elected president, begins Great
Society program
Congress passes historic Civil Rights Act
Free speech movement disrupts University of
California at Berkeley
1965 Congress passes Immigration Act, ending national
quota system
Medicare Act pays some medical costs for senior
citizens and the poor
Congress funds education with Elementary and
Secondary Education Act and Higher
Education Act

Black Muslim fanatics assassinate Malcolm X

1968 Communists strike all over South Vietnam in

Tet Offensive

Lyndon Johnson withdraws as candidate for

reelection

Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated

Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated

Richard Nixon is elected president

1969 Nixon announces “Vietnamization” of war

Apollo 11 lands on the moon

1970 Nixon announces “incursion” into Cambodia

Antiwar student protesters are killed at Kent State

University and Jackson State University

Congress passes Clean Air Act and creates

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

1972 Nixon’s “plumbers” burglarize Democratic

national headquarters at Watergate complex

Nixon and Kissinger visit China and Soviet Union

United States and Soviet Union sign Strategic

Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)

Nixon is reelected in landslide

1973 House Judiciary Committee begins impeachment

hearings against Nixon

Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns; Gerald Ford

is appointed vice president

Last American troops leave Vietnam

Nixon fires Watergate special prosecutor Archibald

Cox (Saturday Night Massacre)

1974 Supreme Court orders release of Nixon’s White

House tapes

Nixon resigns; Gerald Ford becomes president and

pardons Nixon

Milestones

Chapter Review

Key Terms

Bay of Pigs fiasco A military debacle in April 1961,
during an American-organized effort to invade
Cuba and drive Fidel Castro, the communist ruler,
from power. The invasion force of some 1,500
Cuban exiles was routed at the Bay of Pigs, a major
embarrassment for President John F. Kennedy, 767
beat school Also known as “beats,” “beatniks,” or
the “beat generation”—nonconformists in the late
1950s who rejected conventional dress and sexual
standards and cultivated avant-garde literature and
music, 778

Berlin wall Erected by East Germany in 1961 and

torn down by a Dutch company in 1989, the wall

isolated West Berlin from the surrounding areas in

communist controlled East Berlin and East

Germany, 767

Civil Rights Act of 1964 Legislation outlawing

discrimination in public accommodations and

employment on the basis of race, skin color, sex,

religion, or national origin, 772