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This Webpage summarizes key political and economic issues of the last twenty-five years, including continuing dependence on foreign oil; trade agreements and globalization; health and education reforms; increases in economic disparity and recession; tax policy; the national surplus, debt, and deficits; immigration; presidential resignation/impeachment; and the elections of 2000 and 2008.

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This webpage summarizes America’s role in the changing world, with mainly focusing on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and other topics such as the expansion of the European Union, the continuing crisis in the Middle East, and the rise of global terrorism.

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Abstract: "The fall of the [Soviet] empire," former Czech president Vaclav Havel wrote, "is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman Empire." It is true that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine--that the Soviet Union will use force if necessary to ensure that a socialist state remains socialist--and in so doing undercut the Communist leaders and regimes of Eastern and Central Europe in the critical year of 1989. But why did Gorbachev abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine? One Western leader above all others forced the Soviets to give up the Brezhnev Doctrine and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield: President Ronald Reagan.

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired.

In just two years--from 1989 to 1901--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. And then most of the world got on with living without asking:

Why did Communism collapse so quickly?

Why did a totalitarian system that appeared to be so militarily and economically strong disappear almost overnight?

What role did Western strategy and leadership play in the fall--or was it all due, as the Communists might put it, to a correlation of objective forces?

A decade ago, I edited a collection of essays by some of the world's leading authorities on Communism who suggested that a wide range of forces-- political, economic, strategic, and religious--along with the leadership of principled statesmen and brave dissidents brought about the collapse of Soviet Communism.

In my essay, I suggested that when Communist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe admitted they no longer believed in Communism, they dissolved the glue of ideology that had maintained their façade of power and authority.

I pointed out that the Communists failed, literally, to deliver the goods to the people. They promised bread but produced food shortages and rationing-- except for Party members and the nomenklatura. They promised the people land but delivered them into collectives. They promised peace but sent young men off to die in foreign wars in distant lands.

In this information age, I wrote, the Communists could not stop the mass media from sustaining and spreading the desire for freedom among the captive peoples. Far from being an impregnable fortress, Eastern and Central Europe was a Potemkin village easily penetrated by electronic messages of democracy and capitalism from the West.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, argued that Marxism-Leninism was an alien doctrine imposed by an imperial power culturally repugnant to the dominated peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. Disaffection was strongest in the cluster of states with the deepest cultural ties with Western Europe--East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.

Harvard Professor of History Richard Pipes said there were incidental causes of the Soviet Union's dissolution like the invasion of Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the vacillating personality of Mikhail Gorbachev. And there were more profound levels of causation like economic stagnation, the aspiration of national identities, and intellectual dissent. But the decisive catalyst, Pipes said, was the very nature of Communism, which was at one and the same time utopian and coercive.

The political philosopher Michael Novak discussed the long-term effect of atheism--a sine qua non of Communism--on the morale of people and their economic performance. Communism, he said, set out to destroy the "human capital" on which a free economy and a polity are based and in so doing sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

Soviet economics, economist Andrzej Brzeski wrote, was fatally flawed from the beginning. Replacing private property rights with state ownership gave rise to a huge class of functionaries committed only to preserving their domains and pleasing their political bosses.

Only the sustained use of force, credible terror, and a sense of isolation, Brzeski wrote, could keep the Communist system from collapsing.
One Leader Above All Others
"The fall of the [Soviet] empire," former Czech president Vaclav Havel wrote, "is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman Empire." And yet what do many historians say about the collapse of Soviet Communism?

That it was inevitable. That it happened in spite of and not because of President Truman's historic policy of containment and President Reagan's prudential policy of peace through strength. And the most misleading and untrue of all the conclusions: That the real hero of the Cold War was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

It is true that Gorbachev publicly repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine--that the Soviet Union will use force if necessary to ensure that a socialist state remains socialist--and in so doing undercut the Communist leaders and regimes of Eastern and Central Europe in the critical year of 1989. But why did Gorbachev abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine?

We must understand: He was not a liberal democrat but a modern Leninist who was trying to use glasnost and perestroika to preserve a one-party state with himself as the unelected head. Gorbachev discarded the Brezhnev Doctrine and adopted the Sinatra Doctrine--let the satellite states of Eastern and Central Europe practice Communism their way--for two reasons:

The Soviet Union no longer possessed in 1989 the military might that it had in 1956 when it brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution or in 1968 when it snuffed out the Prague Spring.

The Soviet Union desperately needed the trade and technology of the West to avoid economic collapse that it knew it would not obtain if it enforced the Brezhnev Doctrine.

There is one Western leader above all others who forced the Soviets to give up the Brezhnev Doctrine and abandon the arms race, who brought down the Berlin Wall, and who ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield. The one leader responsible more than any other for leading the West to victory in the Cold War is President Ronald Reagan.
"We Win and They Lose"
In 1980, after 35 years of containment, the Cold War seemed to be going poorly for the West. From martial law in Poland and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Communist rule in Mozambique and Angola, Marxism-Leninism was on the march.

The Atlantic alliance was seriously strained, some said broken. The Soviets had deployed SS-20s armed with nuclear warheads and aimed at major European cities. Western European governments wavered in their resolve to counter the Soviets, even on their own soil.

America and the West clearly needed a new strategy. And one was forthcoming, but not from an Ivy League university professor or a Washington think tank analyst or the editor of The New York Times but from a one-time film actor and governor.

In January 1977, four years before he was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan told a visitor that he had been thinking about the Cold War and he had a solution: "We win and they lose."

For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was time to stop playing for a tie and seek victory in the Cold War.

From his first week in office, President Reagan went on the offensive against the Soviet Union. In his first presidential news conference, Reagan denounced the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to "world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state."

The establishment was appalled at what it called saber-rattling and uninformed analysis. Harvard intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith insisted that the Soviet Union was economically strong and militarily powerful-- the only responsible policy was a continuation of détente leading at some future time to convergence between Communism and democracy.

Reagan did not agree. Based on intelligence reports and his own analysis, the President concluded that Communism was cracking and ready to crumble. He took personal control of the new victory strategy, chairing 57 meetings of the National Security Council in his first year in the White House.

The President was determined to reassure those who had lived behind the Iron Curtain for nearly 40 years that they had not been forgotten and that a new day of freedom would soon dawn for them. He never tired, for example, of praising the Hungarian people for their courageous stand for freedom and against tyranny in 1956. In October 1981, on the 25th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, he said that the Freedom Fighters' example had given "new strength" to America's commitment to freedom and justice for all people. In his address to the British Parliament in 1982, Reagan described how "man's instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination" surfaces again and again as shown in Hungary in 1956.

He first went public with his Cold War analysis in May 1982 when he declared in a speech at his alma mater that the Soviet empire was "faltering because rigid centralized control has destroyed incentives for innovation, efficiency, and individual achievement."

A month later, he told the British Parliament at Westminster that the Soviet Union was gripped by a "great revolutionary crisis" and that a "global campaign for freedom" would ultimately prevail. In memorable language, he predicted that "the march of freedom and democracy...will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."

Reagan directed his national security team to come up with the necessary tactics to implement his victory strategy. The result was a series of top-secret national security decision directives (NSDDs).

NSDD-32 declared that the United States would seek to "neutralize" Soviet control over Eastern and Central Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region, especially in Poland.

NSDD-66 stated that it would be U.S. policy to disrupt the Soviet economy by attacking a "strategic triad" of critical resources--financial credits, high technology, and natural gas. The directive was tantamount to a "secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union."

NSDD-75 stated that the U.S. would no longer coexist with the Soviet system but would seek to change it fundamentally. America intended to roll back Soviet influence at every opportunity.

"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!"
A subset of the Reagan strategy was U.S. support of pro-freedom forces in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, and Cambodia. A key decision was to supply Stinger ground-to-air missiles to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, who used them to shoot down the Soviet helicopters that had kept them on the defensive for years.

The year 1983 was a critical one for President Reagan and the course of the Cold War. In March, he told a group of evangelical ministers that the Soviets "are the focus of evil in this modern world" and the masters of "an evil empire."

The same month, the President announced that development and deployment of a comprehensive anti-ballistic missile system would be his top defense priority. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was called "Star Wars" by liberal detractors, but Soviet leader Yuri Andropov took SDI very seriously, calling it a "strike weapon" and a preparation for a U.S. nuclear attack.

Moscow's intense opposition to SDI showed that Soviet scientists regarded the initiative not as a pipe dream but as a technological feat they could not match. A decade later, the general who headed the department of strategic analysis in the Soviet Ministry of Defense revealed what he had told the Politburo in 1983: "Not only could we not defeat SDI, SDI defeated all our possible countermeasures."

In October 1983, Reagan dispatched 2,000 American troops, along with military units from six Caribbean states, to the island of Grenada to oust a Marxist regime that had seized power. It was the first time in nearly 40 years of the Cold War that America had acted to restore democracy to a Communist country. The Brezhnev Doctrine was successfully challenged, anticipating Gorbachev's abandonment of it six years later.

When Gorbachev became chairman of the Soviet Politburo in March 1985, he took command of a disintegrating empire. President Reagan understood this fundamental fact and, negotiating from strength, forced Gorbachev over the course of four summit meetings to concede that the Soviet Union could not win an arms race but had to sue for peace.

In addition to the summits, two events stand out in the second half of the Reagan presidency.

In June 1987, Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate and challenged the Soviet leader: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" No Western leader had ever before dared to issue such a direct challenge.

In the spring of 1988, President Reagan traveled to Moscow and beneath a gigantic white bust of Lenin at Moscow State University delivered an eloquent address on the blessings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. He quoted the beloved Russian poet Pushkin: "It's time, my friend, it's time." It was clear the President meant it was time for a free Russia.

The following year, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and Communism collapsed in Eastern and Central Europe. A pivotal event of "The Year of Miracles" came in September when Hungary opened its borders with Austria for more than 13,000 East Germans--the first breaching of the once-impregnable Berlin Wall.

President Reagan forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world socialization by challenging the Soviet regime's legitimacy, by regaining superiority in the arms race, and by using human rights as a weapon as powerful as any in the U.S. or Soviet arsenal.
"We...Owe Him Our Liberty"
The crucial role of leadership in any war, including a cold one, is demonstrated by the example of Ronald Reagan.

The Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was in an eight-by-ten foot cell in a Siberian prison in early 1983 when his Soviet jailers permitted him to read the latest issue of Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper.

Splashed across the front page, Sharansky recalled, was a condemnation of Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on the walls and talking through toilets, political prisoners spread the word of Reagan's "provocation." The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, Sharansky wrote, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity movement that brought down Communism in Poland and prepared the way for the end of Communism throughout Eastern and Central Europe, put his feelings about Reagan simply: "We in Poland...owe him our liberty."

So too do the many millions who lived behind the Iron Curtain and were caught up in one of the longest conflicts in history--the Cold War--which, because of leaders like Ronald Reagan, ended in victory for the forces of freedom.

Lee Edwards, Ph.D., is Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at The Heritage Foundation and Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He delivered these remarks at a meeting of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.

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Abstract: "The fall of the [Soviet] empire," former Czech president Vaclav Havel wrote, "is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman Empire."

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This web page analyzes the causes and consequences of the resurgence of the conservative movement, including social and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s, Supreme Court decisions on integration and abortion, the economic and social policies of the Reagan administration, and the role of the media.

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This document explain the development of the war in Vietnam and its impact on American government and politics, including the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the policies of the Johnson administration, protests and opposition to the war, the role of the media, the policies of the Nixon administration, and the growing credibility gap that culminated in the Watergate scandal.

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This website compares the social and economic policies of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, including support for civil rights legislation, programs for the elderly and the poor, environmental protection, and the impact of these policies on politics.

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This website analyzes the African American Civil Rights Movement, including initial strategies, landmark court cases and legislation, the roles of key civil rights advocates and the media, and the influence of the Civil Rights Movement on other groups seeking equality.

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The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn't end discrimination against Black people-they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, along with many white Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades.
WATCH: The Civil Rights Movement on HISTORY Vault
Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, " Jim Crow " laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn't use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.
READ MORE: How Jim Crows Limited African American Progress
Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be "separate but equal."
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?
World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II, most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren't given the better paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with-to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.
READ MORE: Why Harry Truman Ended Segregation in the US Military
Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks had complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn't find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement." Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks' courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 3, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.
READ MORE: Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock After Brown v. Board
Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power."
READ MORE: How the Greensboro Four Sit-In Sparked a Movement
Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 " Freedom Riders"-seven Black and six white activists-mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother's Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus, but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders-and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.-by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-only" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, who reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals
HISTORY and Google Earth: Follow the Freedom Riders' Journey Against Segregation During the Civil Rights Era
March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "I have a dream..."

King's " I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964-legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination -into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.
READ MORE: 8 Steps That Paved the Way to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as " Bloody Sunday." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.
READ MORE: Why People Rioted After Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination
Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.
READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline
Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr.

Sources

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives.
Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey.
Little Rock School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

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The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Little Rock Nine, Rosa Parks and many others.