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History >> Civil Rights for Kids

African-American Civil Rights Movement

March on Washington Aug 28, 1963
from the United States Information Agency

The African-American Civil Rights Movement was an ongoing fight for racial equality that took place for over 100 years after the Civil War. Leaders such asMartin Luther King, Jr., Booker T. Washington, and Rosa Parks paved the way for non-violent protests which led to changes in the law. When most people talk about the "Civil Rights Movement" they are talking about the protests in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Background

The Civil Rights Movement has its background in the abolitionist movement before theCivil War. Abolitionists were people that thought slavery was morally wrong and wanted it to come to an end. Before the Civil War, many of the northern states had outlawed slavery. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln freed the enslaved with the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, slavery was made illegal with the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Segregation and the Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow Drinking Fountain
by John Vachon

After the Civil War, many southern states continued to treat African-Americans as second class citizens. They implemented laws that kept black people separate from white people. These laws became known as Jim Crow laws. They required separate schools, restaurants, restrooms, and transportation based on the color of a person's skin. Other laws prevented many black people from voting.

Early Protests

In the early 1900s, black people began to protest the Jim Crow laws that southern states were implementing to enforce segregation. Several African-American leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells joined together to found the NAACP in 1909. Another leader, Booker T. Washington, helped to form schools to educate African-Americans in order to improve their status in society.

The Movement Grows

The civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s when theSupreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was illegal in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Federal troops were brought in to Little Rock, Arkansas to allow the Little Rock Nine to attend a previously all white high school.

Major Events in the Movement

The 1950's and early 1960's brought about several major events in the fight for the civil rights of African-Americans. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted for over a year and brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to the forefront of the movement. King led a number of non-violent protests including the Birmingham Campaign and the March on Washington.

Lyndon Johnson signing Civil Rights Act
by Cecil Stoughton

Civil Rights Act of 1964

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law byPresident Lyndon Johnson. This act outlawed segregation and the Jim Crow laws of the south. It also outlawed discrimination based on race, national background, and gender. Although there were still many issues, this law gave the NAACP and other organizations a strong base on which to fight discrimination in the courts.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

In 1965, another law was passed called the Voting Rights Act. This law said that citizens could not be denied the right to vote based on their race. It outlawed literacy tests (a requirement that people be able to read) and poll taxes (a fee that people had to pay to vote).

Interesting Facts about the African-American Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Act was originally proposed by President John F. Kennedy.

The 1968 Civil Rights Act, also known as the Fair Housing Act, outlawed discrimination in the selling or renting of housing.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee was once the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in 1968.

Today, African-Americans have been elected or appointed to the highest positions in the U.S. government including Secretary of State (Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice) and President (Barack Obama).

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History >> Civil Rights for Kids

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Kids learn about the history of the African-American Civil Rights Movement including segregation, Jim Crow laws, protests, Martin Luther King, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

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Emmett Till was an African American teenager whose murder outraged much of the country and the world. It helped to start the civil rights movement in the United States. Early...

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Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-ds-05267)

The civil rights movement came to national prominence in the United States during the mid-1950s and continued to challenge racial segregation and discrimination through the 1960s. Many organizations, notably the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), arranged nonviolent demonstrations to call attention to specific inequalities experienced by Black people, while individuals also challenged unjust laws independently. The civil rights movement eventually achieved equal rights legislation, but not without challenges. In the late 1960s complications arose as various groups confronted the enduring economic and social consequences of past oppression. These problems persisted in subsequent decades, and the idea of real equality remained elusive well into the 21st century. Nonetheless, the intrepid supporters of the civil rights movement took some of the hardest first steps toward equality.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the "separate but equal" ruling of (1896), which had allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for white and Black Americans to prevail throughout the South during the first half of the 20th century. While the Brown ruling applied only to schools, it implied that segregation in other public facilities was unconstitutional as well.

1957: The Little Rock Nine and the Little Rock Central High School Integration

On February 1, 1960, a group of four African American students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically Black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the "whites only" lunch counter. They were refused service and eventually asked to leave. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be called, however, remained seated until closing and returned the next day with about 20 other Black students. The sit-in grew in the following weeks with protestors taking every seat in the establishment and spilling out of the store. As protestors were arrested, others would take their places so that the establishment was unceasingly occupied. The protest spread to other cities, including Atlanta and Nashville. After months of protests, facilities began to desegregate throughout the country, and the Greensboro Woolworth's started to serve African American patrons in July.

1960: Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration

On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. They were met with angry mobs shouting their disapproval, and, throughout the day, parents marched in to remove their children from the school as a protest to desegregation. Every subsequent day of that academic year Bridges was escorted to school, enduring insults and threats on her way, and then learning her lessons from her young teacher, Barbara Henry, in an otherwise empty classroom. Her bravery later inspired the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With (1964).

The Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six white people who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Testing the Supreme Court's ruling on the case Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which extended an earlier ruling banning segregated interstate bus travel (1946) to include bus terminals and restrooms, the Freedom Riders used facilities for the opposite race as their buses made stops along the way. The group was confronted by violence in South Carolina, and, on May 14, when one bus stopped to change a slashed tire, the vehicle was firebombed and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Unable to travel farther, the original riders were replaced by a second group of 10, partly organized by the SNCC, originating in Nashville. As riders were either arrested or beaten, more groups of Freedom Riders would take their place. On May 29 U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce bans on segregation more strictly, an edict that took effect in September.

1963: Birmingham Demonstrations

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC launched a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, with local Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to undermine the city's system of racial segregation. The campaign began on April 3, 1963, with sit-ins, economic boycotts, mass protests, and marches on City Hall. The demonstrations faced challenges from many sides, including an indifferent African American community, adversarial white and Black leaders, and a hostile commissioner of public safety, Eugene ("Bull") Connor. On April 12 King was arrested for violating an anti-protest injunction and placed in solitary confinement. The demonstrations continued, but, after a month without any concessions, King was convinced to launch the Children's Crusade. Beginning on May 2, 1963, school-aged volunteers skipped school and began to march. Many submitted politely to arrests, and local jails quickly filled up. On May 3 Connor ordered the police and fire department to set high-pressure water hoses and attack dogs on protesters. The violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators continued in ensuing days, causing outrage in the community, and gaining national attention. The negative media spurred Pres. John F. Kennedy to propose a civil rights bill on June 11. Although the Birmingham campaign eventually negotiated an agreement with local reforms, tensions remained high in the city, and the meeting places of civil rights activists were continually threatened. A bomb on September 15 at 16th Street Baptist Church killed four African American girls and injured 14 others.

The demonstrations of 1963 culminated with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28 to protest civil rights abuses and employment discrimination. A crowd of about 250,000 individuals gathered peacefully on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to listen to speeches by civil rights leaders, notably Martin Luther King, Jr. He addressed the crowd with an eloquent and uplifting message that famously became known as the " I Have a Dream " speech.

On July 2, 1964, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a stronger version of what his predecessor, President Kennedy, had proposed the previous summer before his assassination in November 1963. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Although controversial, the legislation was a victory for the civil rights movement.

On March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state's capital, Montgomery, to call for a federal voting rights law that would provide legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. State troopers, however, sent marchers back with violence and tear gas, and television cameras recorded the incident. On March 9 King tried again, leading more than 2,000 marchers to the Pettus Bridge, where they encountered a barricade of state troopers. King led his followers to kneel in prayer and then he unexpectedly turned back. The media attention prompted President Johnson to introduce voting rights legislation on March 15, and on March 21 King once again led a group of marchers out of Selma; this time, they were protected by Alabama National Guardsmen, federal marshals, and FBI agents. Marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 25, where King addressed the crowd with what would be called his "How Long, Not Long" speech. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law several months later, on August 6. It suspended literacy tests, provided for federal approval of proposed changes to voting laws or procedures, and directed the attorney general of the United States to challenge the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.

A series of violent confrontations between the city police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of Los Angeles began on August 11, 1965, after a white police officer arrested a Black man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Later accounts indicated that Frye resisted arrest but were unclear whether police had used excessive force. Violence, fires, and looting broke out over the next six days. The disturbance resulted in 34 deaths, more than 1,000 injuries, and $40 million in property damage. The McCone Commission later investigated the causes of the riots and concluded that they were not the work of gangs or the Black Muslim movement, as the media had previously suggested. The violence was more directly a reaction to the great economic challenges that African Americans in urban centers faced: poor housing, schools, and job prospects that civil rights legislation had not improved.

In the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X and urban uprisings, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality. The Black Panthers launched numerous community programs that offered such services as tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, and free shoes to disadvantaged people. The programs confronted the economic problems of African Americans, which the party argued the civil rights reforms did not do enough to address. The Black Panthers' socialist viewpoint, however, made them a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterintelligence program ( COINTELPRO), which accused them of being a communist organization and an enemy of the U.S. government. A campaign to annihilate the group came to a head in December 1969 with a police shoot-out at the group's Southern California headquarters and the killing of Fred Hampton and another Panther during an Illinois state police raid. The Black Panther Party's operations, however, continued into the 1970s, albeit less actively.

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Virginia statutes prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional in the case . The case was decided nine years after Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, had pleaded guilty to having violated Virginia state law prohibiting a white person and a "colored" person from leaving the state to be married and returning to live as man and wife. Their one-year prison sentence was suspended on the condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return as husband and wife for 25 years. Once settled in Washington, D.C., the couple filed suit in a Virginia state court in 1963. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which reversed their conviction. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous court that the freedom to marry was a basic civil right and that to deny that freedom based on the groundless classifications outlined in Virginia state's law was "to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law." The ruling thus invalidated laws against interracial marriage in Virginia and 15 other states.

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little rock central high school integration

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agricultural and technical college of north carolina

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alabama christian movement for human rights

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national advisory commission on civil disorders

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Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

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Find out more about the key events that shaped the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, and the founding of the Black Panther Party.

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5 Things To Know About The Black Panthers

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The Holocaust by BrainPop (English Version)

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The Bob Fitch Photography Archive - Spotlight at Stanford

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The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary black nationalist organization founded in Oakland, California and active from 1966 to 1982. The Black Panthers instituted a variety of community social programs designed to alleviate poverty, combat police brutality, and improve health in black communities. The Black Panther Party's most widely known initiatives were its armed citizens' patrols and its Free Breakfast for Children program. Most of the photographs in this gallery were taken during a March 28-31, 1972 Black Community Survival Conference Rally at Greenman Field, with images of Party chairman Bobby Seale speaking as well as food distribution, blood testing, and a voter registration drive. There are also many photos from a 1968 "Free Huey" rally in De Fremery Park following the arrest of BPP co-founder Huey Newton in October 1967. The rally featured speeches from Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and guest Reies Tijerina, New Mexico's leader of the Chicano land grant reclamation movement. There are also a few images of the Panther Party's headquarters following a violent attack by two Oakland police officers on September 10, 1968.

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Black Panther Party, Oakland, California, 1968-1972

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The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary black nationalist organization founded in Oakland, California and active from 1966 to 1982. The Black Panthers instituted a variety of community social programs designed to alleviate poverty, combat police brutality, and improve health in black communities.

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Brainpop: Causes of The Great Depression

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Sharecropping | Themes | Slavery by Another Name | PBS

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Watch experts and descendants weigh in on how sharecropping emerged and ensnared people in a new form of slavery.

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Kids learn about the history of the Holocaust during World War II. Jewish people were killed by the German Nazi Party.

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The Great Depression lasted from August 1929 to June 1938, but unemployment remained above 10% until 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II.

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The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | BrainPOP

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Introduction
The mass movement for racial equality in the United States known as the civil rights movement started in the late 1950s. Through nonviolent protest actions, it broke through the pattern of racial segregation. Segregation was the practice in the South through which Black Americans were not allowed to use the same schools, churches, restaurants, buses, and other facilities as white Americans. The movement also achieved the passage of landmark equal-rights laws in the mid-1960s. These laws were intended to end discrimination against people because of their race ( see racism). This article provides an overview of some of the main events of the civil rights movement. To read about the movement in greater depth in its historical context, see Black Americans.

Background
When the United States first became a country, the majority of the Black people who lived there were enslaved. They were not considered citizens. They were thus not granted the basic rights of citizens in the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1788. This was changed several decades later with three amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) ended slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted citizenship to people who had formerly been enslaved. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) gave Blacks the same voting rights as whites (in other words, the men could vote but the women could not).

In the South, however, new laws were passed to effectively prevent Black people from voting and to reinforce segregation practices ( see Reconstruction Period). White people in the South used poll taxes (charging fees to vote) and other measures to stop Black people from voting. Laws called Black codes kept Black people from owning property or having certain kinds of jobs.

In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court approved racial segregation by allowing "separate but equal" facilities for Blacks and whites. The Court decided this in the case of (1896). In reality, however, the separate institutions and services provided were not equal. Those provided for Black people were not as good as those for white people.

1940s and '50s
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued a series of desegregation cases before the Supreme Court. They led to the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas). In that case, the Court ruled on May 17, 1954, that having separate schools for Black students made the schools fundamentally unequal and was thus unconstitutional. This historic decision inspired a mass movement by Blacks and sympathetic whites to end racial segregation and inequality. Many whites, especially in the South, however, strongly resisted this movement. ( See also Little Rock Nine.)

On December 1, 1955, a Black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. This sparked a major protest, the Montgomery bus boycott. It helped ignite the civil rights movement. Two local Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy, led a long, nonviolent boycott of the bus system. To participate in this protest, Black people and others stopped using the buses. Without their bus fares, the bus system received less money than usual. In this way, the boycott eventually forced the bus company to desegregate its buses.

Similar protest actions soon spread to other communities in the South. King became the leading voice of the civil rights movement. In 1957 he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate and lead this massive resistance movement.

In 1960 a group of Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, insisted on being served a meal at a "whites only" lunch counter ( see Greensboro sit-in). This was one of the first of the movement's many prominent civil rights sit-ins, a form of nonviolent protest. In a sit-in, participants enter a business or public place and remain seated until they are forcibly removed or their grievances are addressed. The sit-in movement was largely led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Its techniques were patterned on the nonviolent civil disobedience methods of the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. As the movement spread across the United States, it forced the desegregation of department stores, supermarkets, libraries, and movie theaters.

In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), under the leadership of James Farmer, began a new program of nonviolent protests. It started sending participants on Freedom Rides on buses and trains throughout the South and elsewhere. The purpose of the rides was to test and break down segregation practices on interstate transportation. By September of that year, some 70,000 students, both Black and white, were thought to have participated in the movement. Roughly 3,600 of the participants were arrested for their participation. All together, they traveled to more than 20 states.

The civil rights movement reached its climax on August 28, 1963, in the March on Washington. This was a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., to protest racial discrimination and to demonstrate support for civil rights laws then being considered in Congress. It attracted more than 200,000 participants, including both Blacks and whites. The highlight of the march was King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech. It rallied civil rights advocates throughout the country.

In the years that followed, the civil rights movement won several important legal victories. On July 2, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It was one of the most comprehensive civil rights laws to be enacted by Congress. The act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, and federal programs. It also regulated literacy tests and other registration requirements for voting to ensure they were not biased against Blacks. A year later, Johnson enacted the Voting Rights Act. The enforcement of this act ended the tactics that had been used in the South to prevent Blacks from voting. This led to great increases in the numbers of Blacks who registered to vote.

The progress of the period was accompanied by violence against Blacks and civil rights workers, however. On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, the field secretary of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, was killed near his home in Jackson. During the summer of 1964, members of the SNCC and other civil rights workers who were attempting to register voters in Mississippi were routinely beaten and jailed. In mid-June three of the workers were arrested and killed by local law officials in Philadelphia, Mississippi. On April 4, 1968, the civil rights movement suffered a devastating blow when King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Even before the death of King, some Black people, particularly residents of poor urban areas, had begun to look for new leadership. Many urban residents had grown increasingly impatient with the slow progress of the nonviolence movement. They noted the failure of recently enacted civil rights legislation to make significant changes in their lives. In 1965 nearly one half of Black Americans lived below the poverty level. The majority still experienced discrimination or violence daily. In the mid-1960s this frustration erupted into race riots, including a major disturbance in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California, in 1965.

In this period the civil rights movement as a unified effort disintegrated. Civil rights leaders advocated different approaches and varying degrees of militancy. The growing militancy of Black activists was inspired in part by Black nationalist Malcolm X, who had been assassinated in 1965. Increasingly, Black Americans sought to achieve political power and cultural autonomy by building Black-controlled institutions. The more militant Black power movement split off from the civil rights movement. Black nationalist organizations such as the Black Panthers were established, and the SNCC adopted a more radical stance.

In the decades that followed, many civil rights leaders sought to achieve greater direct political power by being elected to political office. They also sought to improve employment and educational opportunities for Black people through affirmative-action programs, which give preference to minorities in job hiring and college admissions decisions.

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The mass movement for racial equality in the United States known as the civil rights movement started in the late 1950s. Through nonviolent protest actions, it broke through...

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Kids learn the history of the Vietnam War during the Cold War. A fight between the communists of North Vietnam and the US supported South.

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Contents

1. Black Panthers Origins and History

2. Political Activities And Social Programs

3. Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

4. The FBI And COINTELPRO

5. New Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community.

Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities. At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. The organization later declined as a result of internal tensions, deadly shootouts and FBI counterintelligence activities aimed at weakening the organization.

Black Panthers Origins and History

Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1961 while students at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

They both protested the college's "Pioneer Day" celebration, which honored the pioneers who came to California in the 1800s, but omitted the role of African Americans in settling the American West. Seale and Newton formed the Negro History Fact Group, which called on the school to offer classes in Black history.

They founded the Black Panthers in the wake of the assassination of Black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed Black teen named Matthew Johnson.

Originally dubbed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in October 1966. The Black Panthers' early activities primarily involved monitoring police activities in Black communities in Oakland and other cities.

As they instituted a number of social programs and engaged in political activities, their popularity grew. The Black Panthers drew widespread support from urban centers with large minority communities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. By 1968, the Black Panthers had roughly 2,000 members across the country.
READ MORE: How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement
Political Activities And Social Programs

Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization's philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized Black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.

While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office. They were unsuccessful on this front. By the early 1970s, FBI counterintelligence efforts, criminal activities and an internal rift between group members weakened the party as a political force.

The Black Panthers did, however, start a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The Black Panthers were involved in numerous violent encounters with police. In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther's newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.

Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.

Black Panther bookkeeper Betty Van Patter was found beaten and murdered in 1974. No one was charged with the death, though many believed that party leadership was responsible.

The FBI And COINTELPRO

The Black Panthers' socialist message and black nationalist focus made them the target of a secret FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO.

In 1969, the FBI declared the Black Panthers a communist organization and an enemy of the United States government. The first FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1968 called the Black Panthers, "One of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security."

The FBI worked to weaken the Panthers by exploited existing rivalries between black nationalist groups. They also worked to undermine and dismantle the Free Breakfast for Children Program and other community social programs instituted by the Black Panthers.
READ MORE: How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government
In 1969, Chicago police gunned down and killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were asleep in their apartment.

About a hundred bullets were fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers' side.

Although the FBI was not responsible for leading the raid, a federal grand jury later indicated that the bureau played a significant role in the events leading up to the raid.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982.

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Members of the original Black Panther Party say there's no relation between the New Black Panther Party and the original Black Panthers.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have called the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

Sources

5 things to know about the Black Panthers. USA Today.
Black Panther Party. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, free breakfast pioneers.

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The Black Panthers made up a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against African Americans. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities.

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The Great Depression - 5 Minute History Lesson

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Video: Vietnam War Explained

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Vietnam was wracked by war for much of the mid-20th century. After winning its independence from France in 1954, Vietnam was temporarily divided into two parts, North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Vietnam War followed, pitting North Vietnam and its allies against South Vietnam and its allies, principally the United States. In Vietnam the conflict is known as the American War.

North Vietnam had a communist government. It sought to unify the country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. On the other side, the anticommunist government of South Vietnam fought to keep Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. Initially, the Viet Cong- guerrillas trained by North Vietnam-fought South Vietnamese forces. The Viet Cong were later joined by the army of North Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was a manifestation of Cold War tensions between the communist Soviet Union and the anticommunist United States. North Vietnam received weapons and military advisers from the Soviet Union and China. The United States provided South Vietnam with advisers beginning in 1950s and sent U.S. troops to fight in the war from 1965 to 1973. U.S. leaders believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, it would lead to the "fall" of neighboring states to the communists-an idea known as the domino theory.

In the end, the North was victorious, and Vietnam was reunited under communist rule. The Vietnam War lasted more than 20 years, from 1954 to 1975. It resulted in the deaths of more than 3 million people, including combatants on both sides and Vietnamese civilians. The war also caused massive destruction and economic disruption in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War has its roots in the country's colonial history. In the 19th century France gradually conquered Vietnam. It eventually ruled Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. French rule continued until World War II, when Japan occupied Vietnam. In 1943 a Vietnamese nationalist group known as the Viet Minh began fighting the Japanese for Vietnam's freedom. The group was led by the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh -a man who was to play a major role in Vietnamese history. Ho's Viet Minh liberated much of northern Vietnam from Japanese control.

After Japan lost World War II, Ho declared Vietnam's independence on Sept. 2, 1945. France, however, believed that Indochina was still rightfully its colony and was determined to retake control. By the end of the year, the French had seized southern Vietnam, but the communist-led Viet Minh retained control of the north. From 1946 to 1954 the Viet Minh fought France in what became known as the First Indochina War. The United States, which was opposed to the spread of communism, helped fund and equip the French. Ho built support among the Vietnamese people and waged an increasingly successful guerrilla war from bases in the countryside. After suffering a major defeat in 1954, France decided to pull out of Vietnam.

The peace accords of 1954 officially ended French rule. They also temporarily divided the country at the 17th parallel of latitude in order to separate Ho's Viet Minh and the French forces. In the north was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam. It was led by Ho and had a communist government. Its capital was Hanoi. In the south a U.S.-backed, anticommunist government led by Ngo Dinh Diem took control. It became the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam. Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) was its capital.

According to the peace accords, Vietnam was to be reunified in 1956, after elections for a new government were held. The North's Viet Minh leaders enjoyed wide popularity and seemed certain to win. For this reason, the United States and the government of South Vietnam never allowed the vote to take place, leaving the country divided.

Diem's rule of South Vietnam grew increasingly repressive. He used totalitarian methods to silence opposition, installed his family members in key positions of power, and failed to enact promised land reforms. He also gave preferential treatment to Roman Catholics, though most of the people were Buddhists. These actions embittered the Vietnamese and helped to bolster Ho's popularity.

A guerrilla force now known as the Viet Cong emerged in the South to oppose Diem's regime. By 1957 they had begun a program of terrorism, assassinating South Vietnamese government officials and functionaries. They ultimately killed tens of thousands of people associated with the government. The group was formed and led by communists, including many former members of the Viet Minh who lived in the South. They were soon joined, however, by numerous noncommunists who opposed the dictatorial regime. In 1959 the Viet Cong launched an armed insurgency to overthrow Diem and reunify Vietnam. The following year the National Liberation Front (NLF) was formed as the political arm of the Viet Cong.

The Viet Cong were trained and armed by North Vietnam. The North infiltrated supplies and personnel into the South via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This system of mountain and jungle paths and later modern roads led through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. The government of South Vietnam received military equipment, financial aid, and training from the United States.

There were no front lines in the war; patches of communist-held territory spread gradually across the map of South Vietnam. For the most part, the Viet Cong fought a guerrilla war of ambush, terrorism, and sabotage. They used small units to maintain a hold on the countryside, leaving the main urban areas to government authorities. Frequently the Viet Cong attacked at night, withdrawing afterward to the security of the jungle. Seldom was the South Vietnamese army able to fight them in the open. The Viet Cong's forces included full-time soldiers as well as villagers who lived at home and acted as part-time guerrillas. These villagers harassed the government, police, and security forces with booby traps, mines, raids, kidnappings, and murders.

Despite its U.S. training, the army of South Vietnam was ill-prepared to combat the insurgency. It was not well adapted to fighting in the swamps and jungles. Many of its leaders were incompetent or corrupt. As the Viet Cong grew stronger, the U.S. government expanded its involvement in South Vietnam, starting in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. By that time, about 16,000 U.S. troops had been sent to Vietnam as military advisers.

Popular opposition to Diem continued to grow. Buddhist monks and nuns held many demonstrations, and a few burned themselves to death in protest. Images of the Buddhists on fire were widely publicized and became a source of embarrassment to the United States. In November 1963, a few weeks before Kennedy was killed, Diem's army overthrew and assassinated him. The United States did not oppose the coup. Diem's replacement, however, was ineffective. South Vietnam's military seized control in 1965 and installed another oppressive regime under Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu.

Meanwhile, the Viet Cong insurgency seemed increasingly likely to succeed. Believing that victory was near, North Vietnam began sending army troops to fight in the South in April 1964. China and the Soviet Union decided to send military and economic aid to the North. U.S. military advisers had begun to assume a more active role in helping the South that included sabotage, espionage, and orchestrating Southern Vietnamese attacks on the North.

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a U.S. ship, the destroyer USS Maddox. The destroyer was in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam, on an intelligence mission. It suffered no damage from the attack. Two days later North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attacked the Maddox and another U.S. destroyer, though evidence for the attacks was inconclusive. Nevertheless, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered retaliatory air attacks against North Vietnamese naval bases. He also asked Congress to pass a broad resolution authorizing him to take whatever actions he deemed necessary to prevent or respond to future attacks on U.S. forces or allies in Southeast Asia. Congress quickly passed the measure, which became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It allowed Johnson to send U.S. forces to fight in Vietnam without having to ask Congress to officially declare war.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident strengthened American public support for military intervention in Vietnam. Johnson and his advisers took advantage of this support to adopt new, aggressive strategies. In February 1965, after a Viet Cong attack on U.S. troops at Pleiku, Johnson ordered the first in a series of sustained bombings of North Vietnam. The bombings, called Operation Rolling Thunder, were initially intended to end the traffic of North Vietnamese soldiers and weapons along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The missions were later expanded throughout the North. Large numbers of civilians were killed by the strikes, which included the use of cluster bombs and napalm. The North fought the U.S. bombers with the aid of radar, antiaircraft guns, missiles, and jet fighters supplied by the Soviets and Chinese. By the end of the war the United States had dropped nearly 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam. The bombing seemed to have little impact, however, on the ability of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong to carry on the war.

Gen. William Westmoreland was the U.S. Army commander in Vietnam. After the launch of the bombing campaign in the North, he asked Johnson to send U.S. troops to fight a ground war in the South. Johnson did send ground forces, but without a declaration of war. The first troops landed in Da Nang in March 1965. By 1968 the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam had surpassed 500,000. Fighting alongside them were about 600,000 South Vietnamese troops, about 50,000 South Korean troops, and smaller contingents from Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand.

The U.S. forces had enormous and superior firepower. Westmoreland employed his troops in the jungles and mountains where the strongest enemy units were based. His goal was not to capture and occupy territory. Instead, he sought to fight a "war of attrition," inflicting such enormous losses on the communists that they would no longer be able or willing to fight. One way the United States tracked its progress in the war was the "body count"-a tally of the number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers killed. These estimates, however, were widely viewed as inaccurate.

A major tactic was the "search-and-destroy" mission, in which U.S. forces would patrol for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units and then obliterate their bases and personnel. The part-time guerrillas wore no uniforms, however, and they blended in with the civilian population. U.S. troops burned entire villages and captured or killed villagers suspected of collaborating with the communists. One of the most notorious search-and-destroy missions took place in March 1968 in the village of My Lai. In that incident, U.S. troops massacred as many as 500 unarmed civilians, including women and children.

A guerrilla war, the struggle in Vietnam was never concentrated along a single front. Most of the battles were small and brief, involving fewer than 200 fighters and lasting a few hours or less. There were also some large engagements-for example, in 1965 south of Da Nang and in the Ia Drang valley. In early 1967 Operations Cedar Falls and Junction City each involved some 30,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. The operations' ground forces were supported by hundreds of sorties by helicopters and fighter-bombers.

Although the communists suffered heavy casualties, the guerrillas could always retreat to sanctuaries in nearby Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. They also established a large network of underground tunnels. When U.S. forces withdrew, the guerrillas would return. The dense forests hid the guerrillas' movements as well as their supply lines and bases. To eliminate the forest cover, the U.S. Air Force sprayed millions of gallons of an herbicide called Agent Orange over large areas of South Vietnam. Agent Orange was also sprayed to kill crops that might supply the communists with food. Although the herbicide effectively killed vegetation, it caused major ecological damage. It also destroyed the civilians' food crops. In addition, the use of Agent Orange exposed thousands of Vietnamese and U.S., Australian, and New Zealand servicemen to potentially toxic chemicals. This exposure later caused serious health problems.

Americans were deeply divided about the war. The antiwar movement that developed to protest the Vietnam War was the largest and most influential in U.S. history. Some Americans were opposed to the war from early on. Many of them objected to the war on moral grounds, often because of the large number of civilian casualties. They also wanted their government to stop supporting South Vietnam's repressive dictatorship.

As U.S. casualties began to mount and with no end to the war in sight, more Americans began to oppose the country's involvement. Many began to think that the war was unwinnable and too costly. By the end of 1967 nearly 500 U.S. servicemen were dying every week. At the time, more than half of all Americans were dissatisfied with the war. However, this statistic also includes people who thought that the United States needed to lift restraints on the military in order to win the war.

Antiwar demonstrations first became common on college campuses. By 1967 a wide variety of protests were being held all over the country. The movement ultimately attracted Americans from all parts of society, but especially students, liberal Democrats, intellectuals, religious leaders, civil rights activists, pacifists, women's groups, prominent artists and musicians, and later many politicians. Thousands of returned Vietnam veterans also opposed the war.

The vast majority of the antiwar protests were nonviolent. They included mass demonstrations, peace vigils, letter-writing campaigns, political organizing, acts of civil disobedience, and campus educational meetings known as "teach-ins." Protests occasionally turned or were designed to be violent-a few, for example, involved the bombing of government buildings. Antiwar demonstrations sometimes provoked violent reactions from the authorities-notably at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970. At Kent State, the National Guard fired into a crowd of protestors, killing four students.

Protests also involved resistance to the draft. The U.S. forces fighting the war included large numbers of men who had been drafted, or called up for compulsory military service. Over the course of the long conflict, more than 1.8 million men were drafted. As the war progressed, increasing numbers of men burned their draft registration cards in protest. Some activists raided and otherwise tried to disrupt the draft boards. In addition, about a half million people evaded, or "dodged," the draft. Many of them, famously including heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, simply refused to report for service when called. Other draft dodgers fled the country, in many cases to Canada.

Journalism played an important role in shaping American opinion about the war. Opposition to the war was strengthened, for example, by newspaper excerpts of the top-secret defense department reports known as the Pentagon Papers in 1971. These articles exposed lies told by the U.S. government to the American people concerning its intentions in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was the first conflict to be extensively televised, and the coverage was daily and graphic. Images and reports from the battlefield often seemed to call into question the official U.S. position on how well the war was progressing. Much of what the public could see of the war on television appeared confusing if not futile-notably during the 1968 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attacks known as the Tet Offensive.

In early 1968 the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a large-scale offensive throughout the South. It occurred during Tet, a Vietnamese holiday celebrating the lunar new year, while an informal cease-fire was in place. Some 84,000 communist troops simultaneously attacked more than 100 cities and military bases on January 31. They even assaulted the U.S. embassy and General Westmoreland's headquarters in Saigon. Before the offensive, the communists had mounted a number of diversionary attacks to attract U.S. forces away from the big cities. When the Tet Offensive began, some 50,000 U.S. troops were thus already busy defending bases in other areas-notably Khe Sanh, near the border with Laos.

The Tet Offensive ended in a military victory for the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Although taken by surprise, they recaptured all the bases and cities except Hue within a few days. The offensive turned out to be a major psychological victory for the communists, however. The U.S. government had been claiming that victory was near. The American public was shocked to see that, on the contrary, the North showed no signs of weakening or losing resolve. Many began to believe that the United States was locked in a stalemate.

After the Tet Offensive, Johnson was faced with increased antiwar sentiment and political pressure to pull out of the conflict. In March 1968 he ordered an end to the bombing of North Vietnam, except near the border with the South. Peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam began in May but were quickly deadlocked. The ground war intensified, leading to the conflict's fiercest fighting. In November the United States halted the bombing over all of the North. South Vietnam and the Viet Cong joined the peace talks in January 1969.

Meanwhile, a new U.S. president, Richard M. Nixon, had been elected. Henry Kissinger was one of Nixon's chief foreign-policy advisers. Nixon and Kissinger recognized that the United States could not win the war. They insisted, however, on an "honorable" peace settlement that would give South Vietnam a reasonable chance for survival. A hasty withdrawal, they contended, would damage U.S. credibility internationally.

Nixon began to gradually withdraw U.S. ground troops in 1969. Through a program called Vietnamization, the United States began transferring control of the ground war to the South Vietnamese forces. The troop withdrawals were popular among the American public. To many U.S. soldiers still in Vietnam, however, the withdrawals seemed to emphasize the apparent pointlessness of the war. Morale among the troops was already low. Major problems included drug abuse, desertion, and even violence against officers.

Although Nixon reduced the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, he resumed the bombing of North Vietnam. He also expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos. Nixon ordered secret bombing missions of the communists' sanctuaries and supply lines in Cambodia in 1969-70 and in Laos in 1970. He also authorized an incursion across the Cambodian border by a U.S. and South Vietnamese force of 20,000 men. News of this invasion increased American public opposition to the war. Meanwhile, the peace talks continued to stagnate.

In 1972 the North mounted a large invasion of the South. In response, the United States bombed North Vietnam as well as the invasion forces in the South. U.S. forces also mined the harbor at Haiphong, where the North received Soviet supplies. The North's invasion soon failed.

After this defeat, the leaders of North Vietnam signaled that they were ready to compromise in the peace talks. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam secretly began to negotiate a peace treaty. Later in the year, however, a setback in the talks led Nixon to order an intensive 11-day bombing mission of Hanoi and other northern cities.

Finally, on January 27, 1973, a peace treaty was signed by the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Viet Cong. A cease-fire began the following day. According to the treaty, the South Vietnamese were to have the right to determine their own future. North Vietnamese soldiers who were already in the South were allowed to remain there but could receive no reinforcements. An international force was established keep the peace.

U.S. troops left Vietnam by the end of March 1973. Fighting continued, however, as the North and the South accused each other of truce violations. The fighting was less intense, though, than it had been before the cease-fire. The United States began cutting military and economic aid to the South.

The ultimate fall of South Vietnam began with the North's capture of Phuoc Long Province in January 1975. In March the North Vietnamese launched a major invasion to capture the South, which they expected to take two years. Within two months, however, additional inland provinces and several coastal cities had fallen, with little resistance from Southern troops. South Vietnam surrendered on April 30, 1975, as Northern troops entered Saigon. A military government was set up in the South until Vietnam was officially reunited on July 2, 1976. The country became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with its capital at Hanoi. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Decades of war had devastated Vietnam. Entire villages and rice paddies had been destroyed. Vast areas of the countryside were left barren and unusable because of the effects of bombings, land mines, and Agent Orange. Millions of Vietnamese had been made homeless. The government of Vietnam has estimated that as many as 2 million North and South Vietnamese civilians were killed, along with 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. According to U.S. estimates, between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. More than 58,000 U.S. troops were killed or missing as a result of the war. Their names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Among the countries that had smaller forces in Vietnam, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Australia more than 500, Thailand about 350, and New Zealand some three dozen.

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Vietnam was wracked by war for much of the mid-20th century. After winning its independence from France in 1954, Vietnam was temporarily divided into two parts, North Vietnam...

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Kids learn about the Geography of Vietnam. The history, capital, flag, climate, terrain, people, economy, and population.

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Kids learn about the history and timeline of the country of Vietnam including early civilizations, dynasties, French rule, Vietname War, Ho Chi Minh, communism, and current events.

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Introduction
The Great Depression was the longest and most serious downturn ever experienced by the world economy. It began in the United States in 1929 but spread quickly throughout the world, lasting for about 10 years. The depression caused drastic declines in economic production and severe unemployment in almost every country. In the United States, it was the gravest crisis since the Civil War.

The Great Depression shook capitalism to its foundations. The shock was so great because it contradicted long-held beliefs in the unlimited possibilities of economic expansion.

United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address, made an attempt to assess the enormous damage: "The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return." But his words were inadequate. This economic catastrophe and its impact defied description.

What Happened
The 1920s had been a prosperous decade in the United States. The stock market expanded rapidly, and stock values soared. Americans from all walks of life rushed to invest their money in stocks, expecting to sell them and make a profit. Many people took out risky loans and even mortgaged their houses, to buy stocks. This flurry of activity caused stock prices to rise to levels that were far beyond what the stocks were really worth.

Stock prices began to fall in September 1929. As the decline continued into October, investors worried that their money was at risk. The wild rush to buy stocks gave way to an equally wild rush to sell them. On October 24, 1929, the stock market began to collapse as panicked investors sold a record 13 million shares of stock. The day has been known ever since as Black Thursday. Tuesday, October 29-Black Tuesday-extended the damage. On that day more than 16 million shares were sold. The value of most shares fell dramatically. By late 1932 stocks sold for only about 20 percent of their previous value.

There had been financial panics before, and there have been some since, but never did a collapse in the market have such a devastating and long-term effect. Like a snowball rolling downhill, it gathered momentum and swept away the whole economy before it. The stock market crash led to a sharp decline in spending. People who had lost money, and others who were worried about the future of the economy, put off purchases and saved their money instead.

The economy was further disrupted by a rash of bank failures. Crowds of people tried to take out all their money at once, and banks did not have enough cash on hand to handle the rush. Another strain on banks was that people who had taken out loans were unable to pay them back. By 1933 one-fifth of the country's banks had failed. As people lost confidence in the banks, they became even more likely to hold onto whatever savings they had left.

Reductions in spending caused demand for goods to decline. Falling demand, in turn, forced many manufacturing companies to shut down. At the lowest point of the depression, factories in the United States produced barely more than half their 1929 output. As businesses closed, unemployment soared to 25 percent. Those still fortunate enough to have jobs were paid only about half of what they had earned before.

The agricultural segment of the economy had been in serious trouble for years. Many American farmers had been struggling with heavy debts at a time of low prices for farm products. The arrival of the depression made their situation even worse. The drought that turned the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl compounded the damage. The devastation forced some 2.5 million people to flee the Plains states, many bound for California. The West offered the promise of sunshine and a better life. In reality, however, the displaced families struggled to find poorly paid work as migrant farm laborers.

The economic crisis spread from the United States to the rest of the world. The industrialized countries of Europe had borrowed heavily from the United States for reconstruction after World War I. The United States was also linked to Europe and the rest of the world through international trade. The United States had become the world's leading trading country, and other countries depended on the money the United States paid for their goods. Reductions in U.S. foreign lending and trade contributed to economic failures in many countries. Struggling countries tried to protect their industries by setting high tariffs on imported goods. This only made matters worse by causing trade to decline even more.

Germany and Great Britain were especially hard hit by the depression. In Germany, stock prices plunged, foreign trade stalled, and business failures multiplied. The decline in German industrial production was roughly equal to that in the United States. In Britain, unemployment climbed to 25 percent by the spring of 1931. Britain's decline in industrial production was roughly one-third that of the United States.

Social Impact
Economic statistics, as staggering as they are, cannot tell the story of the extraordinary hardships most Americans endured during the Great Depression. For nearly every unemployed person, there were dependents who needed to be fed and housed. Such massive poverty and hunger had never been known in the United States before. Former millionaires stood on street corners trying to sell apples at five cents apiece. Hundreds of pitiful shantytowns sprang up all over the country to shelter the homeless. They were called Hoovervilles in honor of Herbert Hoover, the unfortunate Republican president who presided over the disaster. People slept outdoors under "Hoover blankets"-old newspapers. People waited in bread lines in every city, hoping for something to eat. In 1931 alone more than 20,000 Americans committed suicide. The theme song of the period was "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

For anyone with a few dimes, depression America was a shopper's paradise. A new home could be bought for less than $3,000. A man's suit cost about $10, a shirt less than 50 cents, and a pair of shoes about $4. Milk was 10 cents a quart, a pound of steak only 29 cents, and a loaf of bread a nickel. For a dime one could go to the movies, buy a nickel bag of popcorn, and even win prizes given away by the theater. That was for those who had dimes. Not many lucky enough to be working had much change to spend after paying rent and buying food. To turn to the government, at least during the Hoover years, was useless. There was no federally financed "safety net" of welfare programs to keep the working class from falling into poverty.

Government Response and Recovery
During the Great Depression, governments at all levels in the United States were sorely pressed for income as tax revenues fell. State governments were in no position to do much to aid citizens. The response of the federal government was, at least in the early years, too little and too late. President Hoover and his aides were convinced that prosperity was "just around the corner." The administration did take some steps to combat the downturn. Hoover urged business leaders not to lay off workers or cut wages. He asked Congress to approve money for public-works projects to create jobs. However, he dismissed the idea of providing direct aid to citizens in distress. He believed that was the responsibility of local governments and private charities.

Hoover's efforts failed to halt the economic decline. In 1932 angry voters ousted Hoover and brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House. The new president acted swiftly. Upon taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt declared a national "bank holiday." All banks were closed, and they were allowed to reopen only when government inspectors said they were financially sound. The bank holiday helped to end the banking crisis. Roosevelt also introduced an ambitious economic relief and reform program called the New Deal. It included emergency measures aimed at creating jobs and stabilizing the economy. It also created new agencies to regulate the economy. The goal was to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again.

The U.S. economy began to recover during the New Deal years. Economic production grew rapidly in the mid-1930s, and millions of people found work in government programs. Unemployment remained high, however, and in 1937-38 the United States suffered another severe downturn. The economic crisis was not solved until after the United States entered World War II in 1941. War-related manufacturing finally brought on a full economic recovery.

Recovery in the rest of the world varied greatly. The economies of a number of Latin American countries began to strengthen in late 1931 and early 1932. The economies of Great Britain, Germany, and Japan began to recover in late 1932. Canada and many smaller European countries started to revive at about the same time as the United States, early in 1933. On the other hand, France did not firmly enter the recovery phase until 1938.

The Great Depression strengthened extremist political forces in Europe. In Germany, widespread frustration over the struggling economy allowed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power in 1933. Nazi public-works projects and military spending helped end the depression in Germany.

Cultural Legacy
The Great Depression had a profound influence on American arts and literature. Novelists, playwrights, photographers, and songwriters turned their attention to the plight of the poor. The Federal Art Project, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Federal Theater Project were created as part of the New Deal to give jobs to artists, writers, and actors. Many of the artists of the era felt a responsibility to educate their audience about social issues.

The work that has become most closely linked to the depression is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Published in 1939, the novel depicts the Joad family's struggle to escape the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. It enlightened many people about the circumstances of migrant farmers. The victims of the Dust Bowl were captured visually by photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Lange's photograph of a desperate woman with two of her children, titled Migrant Mother, is an iconic image of the time. Later, Evans and the writer James Agee documented the lives of Alabama sharecroppers in the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). The folk songs of Woody Guthrie gave voice to suffering Dust Bowl farmers. His song "Tom Joad" was inspired by Steinbeck's novel. Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty (1935) argued in favor of labor unions.

Many artists shifted their focus after the start of World War II. They left behind a body of work, however, that vividly portrays the state of American life during the Great Depression.

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The Great Depression was the longest and most serious downturn ever experienced by the world economy. It began in the United States in 1929 but spread quickly throughout the...

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Lasting from 1929 to 1939, the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world. While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans. Said to be "last hired, first fired," African Americans were the first to see hours and jobs cut, and they experienced the highest unemployment rate during the 1930s. Since they were already relegated to lower-paying professions, African Americans had less of a financial cushion to fall back on when the economy collapsed.

The Great Depression impacted African Americans for decades to come. It spurred the rise of African-American activism, which laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal program also saw African Americans switch their political allegiances to become a core part of the Democratic Party's voting bloc.

African-American unemployment rates doubled or tripled those of whites.

Prior to the Great Depression, African Americans worked primarily in unskilled jobs. After the stock market crash of 1929, those entry-level, low-paying jobs either disappeared or were filled by whites in need of employment. According to the Library of Congress, the African-American unemployment rate in 1932 climbed to approximately 50 percent.

As historian Cheryl Lynn Greenberg writes in To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression, black unemployment rates in the South were double or even triple that of the white population. In Atlanta, nearly 70 percent of black workers were jobless in 1934. In cities across the North, approximately 25 percent of white workers were unemployed in 1932, while the jobless rates among African Americans topped 50 percent in Chicago and Pittsburgh and 60 percent in Philadelphia and Detroit.

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of African-American sharecroppers who fell into debt joined the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North. According to Greenberg, by 1940 1.75 million African Americans had moved from the South to cities in the North and West.

African Americans formed grassroots organizations, uniting for economic and political progress.

From the Great Depression's earliest days, African Americans mobilized to protest for greater economic, social and political rights. In 1929, Chicago Whip editor Joseph Bibb organized boycotts of city department stores that refused to hire African Americans. The grassroots protests against racially discriminatory hiring practices worked, resulting in the employment of 2,000 African Americans. The "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" boycotts and pickets soon spread to other cities across the North.

The decade of the 1930s saw the growth of African American activism that presaged the Civil Rights Movement. In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, and the following year saw the first meeting of the National Negro Congress, an umbrella movement of diverse African-American organizations that fought for anti-lynching legislation, the elimination of the poll tax and the eligibility of agricultural and domestic workers for Social Security. Young African Americans in 1937 formed the Southern Negro Youth Congress registered voters and organized boycotts.

The African-American vote helped elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the first time switching to the Democratic Party.

For decades prior to the Great Depression, African Americans had traditionally voted for the Republican Party, which was still seen as the party of emancipation from the days of Abraham Lincoln. The presidential election of 1932, however, saw a sea-change as African Americans began to switch their political allegiance to the Democratic Party. "My friends, go turn Lincoln's picture to the wall," Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert Vann implored African Americans in 1932. "The debt has been paid in full."

In an oral interview, historian John Hope Franklin said African Americans were drawn to Franklin D. Roosevelt after years of inactivity under Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. "He had a purpose, had a message, had a program. And it seemed that was better than the inertia that preceded things," he said.

Franklin also said African Americans could identify with Roosevelt's personal struggles. "Roosevelt inspired large numbers of blacks, I think in part because he was handicapped himself. And although was not publicized as much as it might have been, blacks knew that he was a victim of polio, that he couldn't walk, and that he had overcome these handicaps."

Since Roosevelt needed the support of Southern Democrats to pass his New Deal agenda, he did not advocate for the passage of federal anti-lynching law or embrace efforts to ban the poll tax that prevented many African Americans from voting. Yet, the economic support received by African Americans under the New Deal solidified their newfound loyalty to the Democratic Party. By 1936, more than 70 percent of African Americans voted for Roosevelt, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

What was the 'Black Cabinet' during Roosevelt's presidency?

Roosevelt appointed far more African Americans to positions within his administration than his predecessors, and he was the first president to appoint an African American as a federal judge. According to the Roosevelt Institute, FDR tripled the number of African Americans working in the federal government.

New Deal officials appointed African Americans as special advisors. Although none actually filled Cabinet-level positions, these public policy advisors were referred to as the "Black Cabinet" and the "Black Brain Trust." Perhaps the best-known member of the Black Cabinet was its only woman, Bethune, a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and founder of Bethune-Cookman University.

New Deal programs, however, still discriminated against African Americans.

Although New Deal programs provided African Americans with badly needed economic assistance, they were administered at a state level where racial segregation was still widespread, and systemically, enforced. The New Deal did little to challenge existing racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws prevalent during the 1930s.

The Civilian Conservation Corps established racially segregated camps, while the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in African-American neighborhoods. The Agricultural Adjustment Association gave white landowners money for keeping their fields fallow, but they were not required to pass any money to African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers who farmed the land and were not eligible for Social Security benefits.

Fact Check

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Last Hired, First Fired: How the Great Depression Affected African Americans

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Lasting from 1929 to 1939, the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world. While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans. Said to be "last hired, first fired," African Americans were the first to see hours and jobs cut, and they experienced the highest unemployment rate during the 1930s.

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Kids learn about the history of Jim Crow Laws including segregation in the South, example laws, grandfather clauses, black codes, and how they got the name Jim Crow.

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Introduction
(1919-72). "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives," reads the tombstone of Jackie Robinson, the first African American athlete to play in baseball 's major leagues in the 20th century. By breaking the color barrier in 1947, Robinson made great strides not only for Black athletes but also for all concerned with racial justice.

Early Years
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, but grew up in Pasadena, California. Demonstrating exceptional athletic ability during high school and junior college, he excelled at baseball, football, basketball, and track at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He became the first student at the school to earn four letters (for playing on the varsity team in four different sports) in one year.

Robinson left UCLA in 1941 and briefly played professional football before being drafted into the U.S. Army. He wanted to become an officer, but at the time the army's officer training schools admitted very few African Americans. Robinson eventually got accepted to an officer candidate school, and he became a second lieutenant in 1943. During his service, a bus driver ordered him to move to the back of a military bus because he was Black. Robinson refused. He was arrested and court-martialed (tried in a military court). Some of the charges against him were dropped, and he was ultimately cleared of the others at trial. Robinson was given an honorable discharge in 1944.

Major League Career
In 1945 Robinson began playing baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro National League. He caught the eye of a scout for the Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) Dodgers and was brought to the attention of team president Branch Rickey. Major League Baseball was closed to Black players at the time. Rickey thought that this practice was wrong, and he was looking for the right player to help him change it. He thought that white fans and players would be more likely to accept a Black player in the major leagues if that player were exceptional in playing abilities, background, and character. That player would also have to be able to withstand racist treatment. Rickey met with Robinson and was impressed with his courage as well as his skills on the field. Rickey signed him on October 23, 1945, to play for the Dodgers' AAA team in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. During the 1946 season Robinson batted .349 with the farm club and led the team to victory in the Little World Series.

Robinson made his major league debut for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947. He was immediately successful as a player, but he faced continual racial slurs from the crowds and other ballplayers, including some of his own teammates. Robinson wanted to respond to the racist taunts, but he had promised Rickey that he would remain silent. Rickey thought that if Robinson were to respond in anger to the abuse, white people would be less likely to accept Black players in the major leagues. Robinson did not break his promise, though pitchers sometimes deliberately threw the ball at him, and hotels at away games often would not let him stay there. He and his family received death threats. Instead of responding with words, Robinson let his actions do the talking by batting .297 and leading the National League (NL) in stolen bases. He was chosen rookie of the year at season's end.

When later describing this period, Robinson said,

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

Robinson's .342 average made him the NL's batting champion and most valuable player in 1949. During his career, which he spent primarily as a second baseman, Robinson helped the Dodgers capture six National League pennants and one World Series title. He retired in 1956 with a .311 lifetime batting average and 197 total stolen bases. The Dodgers later retired his number 42 jersey (an honor meaning that no one else on the team could wear that number). When Robinson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 he was the first Black player to be so honored.

Later Years and Honors
After he left baseball Robinson pursued business interests while continuing to work on behalf of civil rights. He was a spokesperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and made appearances with Martin Luther King, Jr. Robinson's autobiography, I Never Had It Made, was published in 1972.

Diabetes and heart problems plagued Robinson's later life, and he died on October 24, 1972, in Stamford, Connecticut. His wife, Rachel Robinson, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation the following year to provide scholarships to minority students. In 1984 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor for an American civilian.

In 1997 Major League Baseball held a season-long celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Robinson's historic debut. As part of the celebration, it retired Robinson's jersey number, 42, for all baseball teams in the major leagues. It was the first time a player's number was retired for all the professional teams within a sport. In 2004 Major League Baseball announced that each April 15 would be celebrated as Jackie Robinson Day. Five years later, the organization decided that all players, coaches, and umpires should wear number 42 each year in games on April 15.

Additional Reading
Burgan, Michael. Daring Play: How a Courageous Jackie Robinson Transformed Baseball (Capstone Press, 2016). Doeden, Matt. More than a Game: Race, Gender, and Politics in Sports (Millbrook Press, 2020). Herman, Gail, and O'Brien, John. Who Was Jackie Robinson? (Grosset & Dunlap, 2011). Pinkney, Andrea Davis, and Pinkney, Brian. Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America (Jump at the Sun Books, 2013). Rappaport, Doreen. 42 Is Not Just a Number: The Odyssey of Jackie Robinson, American Hero (Candlewick Press, 2019). Robinson, Sharon. Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America (Scholastic, 2005).

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(1919-72). "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives," reads the tombstone of Jackie Robinson, the first African American athlete to play in...

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The Aftermath

Upon learning of the bombing at the Church, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a telegram to Alabama Governor George Wallace, a staunch and vocal segregationist, stating bluntly: 'The blood of our little children is on your hands." The brutal attack and the deaths of the four little girls shocked the nation and drew international attention to the violent struggle for civil rights in Birmingham. Many whites were as outraged by the incident as blacks and offered services and condolences to the families. Over, 8,000 people attended the girls' funeral service at Reverend John Porter's Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.

The deaths of the four girls was followed two months later by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, causing an outpouring of national grief, galvanizing the civil rights movement and ensuring the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Why This Church?

16th Street Baptist was a large and prominent church located downtown, just blocks from Birmingham's commercial district and City Hall. Since its construction in 1911, the church had served as the centerpiece of the city's African American community, functioning as a meeting place, social center, and lecture hall. Because of its size, location, and importance to the community, the church served as headquarters for civil rights mass meetings and rallies in the early 1960s.

Birmingham was the most segregated city in the United States and in April 1963, after an invitation by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth to come help desegregate Birmingham, the city became the focus of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The desegregation campaign conceived by Shuttleworth was known as "Project C" and was to be a series of nonviolent protests and boycotts.

Despite resistance from some of the church's leadership and members of the congregation, the 16th Street Baptist Church joined the SCLC in their campaign. The church became the departure point for many of the demonstrations that took place in the city. On May 2, 1963, students ranging in age from eight to eighteen gathered at the church to march downtown and talk to the new mayor about segregation. After leaving the church they were met by police and many were jailed. By the time the "Children's Crusade" and the ensuing demonstrations ended on May 10th, thousands of children and adults had been injured by fire hoses and attack dogs and incarcerated by order of"Bull" Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety.

The church came to be viewed by many as a symbol and a rallying place for civil rights activists; and it became the focal point for racial tensions and white hostility towards the civil rights movement in Birmingham.

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16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963) (U.S. National Park Service)

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16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963)

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Video:
Extended Interview: Chinese Immigration

Charlotte Brooks tells Gwen about life as a Chinese immigrant.
More from Elyse on Chinese immigration.
Today, Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian population in the U.S., totaling 2.5 million.

Chinese immigrants first flocked to the United States in the 1850s, eager to escape the economic chaos in China and to try their luck at the California gold rush.

When the Gold Rush ended, Chinese Americans were considered cheap labor.

They easily found employment as farmhands, gardeners, domestics, laundry workers, and most famously, railroad workers.

In the 1860s, it was the Chinese Americans who built the Transcontinental Railroad.

By the 1870s, there was widespread economic depression in America and jobs became scarce.

Hostility had been growing toward the Chinese American workers.

By 1882, things got so bad that Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, virtually banning all Chinese immigration into the United States.

It was only in 1943, when China became America's ally in World War II, that congress finally repealed the Exclusion Act.

Even then, Chinese immigration was still limited to a mere 105 people a year.

In 1965, all restrictions were lifted and the Chinese started to arrive in America in huge numbers.

The first Chinatowns started appearing in U.S. cities as far back as 1900.

Today, the largest Chinatown is in New York City, where almost 100,000 Chinese Americans live and work.

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Chinese Immigration | History Detectives | PBS

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Video: Extended Interview: Chinese Immigration Charlotte Brooks tells Gwen about life as a Chinese immigrant. More from Elyse on Chinese immigration. Today, Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian population in the U.S., totaling 2.5 million.

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During the 1830s the U.S. government forced some 100,000 American Indians to leave their homes in the East and move to new lands west of the Mississippi River. Most of the Indians had to make the grueling journey on foot. About 15,000 died during the trip, which is remembered as the Trail of Tears. The term is used most commonly to describe the experience of the Southeast Indians in general and the Cherokee people in particular.

For decades before the forced relocation of the Indians, white settlers had trespassed on Indian lands. In 1763 the British government had set aside the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River for the exclusive use of the Indians. Nevertheless, many Euro-American settlers soon entered the region. The British and, later, U.S. governments did little to stop them.

In 1829 gold was found on Cherokee land in Georgia. The discovery led to growing demands from white settlers that the U.S. government take action against the Indians, whom they considered to be an obstacle. President Andrew Jackson strongly agreed with the settlers. In 1830 the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the president to negotiate with the Indians to bring about their relocation to land west of the Mississippi River.

The Indians of the Southeast reacted to the Indian Removal Act in various ways. The Choctaw were the first tribe to agree to turn over their land and move west. The Creek and the Chickasaw finished their negotiations with the government in 1832 and eventually headed west in 1836 and 1837, respectively. The Seminole fiercely resisted removal, battling U.S. troops between 1835 and 1842 in what became known as the Second Seminole War. Although many Seminole were eventually captured and removed to the west, some managed to elude the authorities and remain in Florida.

The Cherokee chose to use legal action to resist removal. Their lawsuits reached the U.S. Supreme Court but ultimately were unsuccessful in preventing their removal. In 1838 the U.S. military began to force Cherokee people from their homes, often at gunpoint. Held in miserable prison camps for days or weeks before their journeys began, many Cherokee became ill, and most were poorly prepared for the very difficult trip. With inadequate food, shelter, and clothing, the Cherokee suffered terribly on the march, especially after cold weather arrived. About 4,000 of the estimated 15,000 Cherokee died on the 116-day journey, many because the escorting troops refused to slow or stop so that the ill and exhausted could recover.

In 1987 the U.S. Congress named the Trail of Tears a National Historic Trail in memory of those who suffered and died during removal. The trail includes some 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of routes over land and water.

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During the 1830s the U.S. government forced some 100,000 American Indians to leave their homes in the East and move to new lands west of the Mississippi River. Most of the...

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Kids learn about the history of Jim Crow Laws including segregation in the South, example laws, grandfather clauses, black codes, and how they got the name Jim Crow.

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Fresberg Cartoon – Learning & History for Students

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Trail of Tears for Kids Documentary: Watch our Cartoon for Kids on the Trail of Tears

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Trail of Tears Brainpop: Can stop after video

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Trail of Tears Brainpop: Can stop after video

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Kids learn about the Trail of Tears including when it took place, relocation of Native American tribes, the forced march of the Cherokee, the aftermath, and interesting facts.

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Infectious diseases are those which are caused by pathogenic (disease-causing) microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. Such diseases can spread directly or indirectly from one person to another. ¹

The Native American population were exposed to this with the arrival of the European settlers who brought with them amongst their new technologies and lifestyles; new diseases that the native population had never encountered previously.

Due to a lack of previous engagement with such European settlers and diseases from a far off continent, the Native Americans neither had the developed immune systems nor the appropriate availability or knowledge of medicine to combat these diseases which would eventually spread as epidemics with more often than not, tragic consequences. One such disease was smallpox; an infectious disease caused by the variola virus which would affect the skin, mouth and throats of infected individuals before progressing to the full body rash and eventually fluid-raised blisters which were the characteristic 'pox' associated with the disease (along with a high fever, malaise, muscle pain and headaches). The fatality rate of the disease was often just over 30%. ²

Smallpox was a scourge of the Native America populations and it was common for the disease to affect the same tribes repeatedly with its sweeping epidemics. One notable epidemic includes that of 1639 which struck the Huron tribes the Great Lakes and St Lawrence regions wiping out approximately 50% of the population. ³There were four major epidemics between the mid and late 19th Century which had a profound effect on the Plains tribes whilst the pandemic between 1837 and 1840 was estimated to have claimed the lives of between 100,000 and 300,000 Native Americans. ⁴ This particular epidemic was thought to have contributed to the near extinction of the Mandan tribe of North Dakota. ⁵

Effective vaccination policy to benefit the Native American population would not come into place until May 1900 through the passing of the Indian Legislation of the United States, which sanctioned the spending of $50,000 (or more as deemed appropriate) to combat smallpox in Native American territories. By 1907, the effect of smallpox had become virtually insignificant with the compulsory vaccination of school-attending Native American children and by 1938, only death from smallpox was reported from a total of 5,078 deaths amongst Native Americans. ⁶

Other notable infectious diseases to have affected the Native America populations include diphtheria, measles, typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera and also sexually transmitted diseases. The references below offer opportunities for further reading in this subject.

1. World Health Organization (WHO). 'Infectious Diseases'. http://www.who.int/topics/infectious_diseases/en/

2. Ryan, K.J., Ray, C.G. (2004). 'Sherris Medical Microbiology', Fourth Edition, pp525-8, McGraw Hill.

3. Bruce T. (1985). Natives and Newcomers: 'Canada's "Heroic Age" Reconsidered'. First Edition, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 588-589.

4. Waldman, Carl (2009). 'Atlas of the North American Indian'. New York: Checkmark Books. p. 206.

5. Stearn E. W. (1945). 'The effect of smallpox on the destiny of the Amerindian'. First Edition, Boston: Bruce Humphries Inc.

6. Patterson K. B., and Runge T. (2002). 'Smallpox and the Native American'. American Journal of the Medical Sciences 2002 Apr;323(4):216-22

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Infectious diseases are those which are caused by pathogenic (disease-causing) microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. Such diseases can spread directly or indirectly from one person to another. 1 The Native American population were exposed to this with the arrival of the European settlers who brought with them amongst their new technologies and lifestyles; new diseases that the native population had never encountered previously.

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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

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The history of the Cuban Missile Crisis - Matthew A. Jordan

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The Cold War for Kids: Cuban Missile Crisis

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Kids learn about the history of Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. The Soviet Union put nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba.

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The Cuban missile crisis was an event that occurred in October 1962. The crisis happened during the period known as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union placed missiles on the island of Cuba, the two major countries came to the brink of nuclear war.

In 1959 communists, led by Fidel Castro, had taken control of Cuba. In 1960 the Soviet Union promised to support the communists and to defend Cuba with Soviet weapons. As part of this agreement, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev installed nuclear missiles on Cuba. Those missiles could hit much of the eastern United States within minutes if launched from Cuba. The United States cut off supplies to the island and demanded that the missiles be removed.

From October 22 until October 28, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged messages about the event. They both made promises to ensure nuclear war could be avoided. Khrushchev agreed to removed the missiles, and Kennedy agreed that the United States would never invade Cuba. Kennedy also promised to withdraw the missiles the United States had stationed in Turkey in previous years. Both powers began fulfilling their promises, and the crisis was over by late November 1962.

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The Cuban missile crisis was an event that occurred in October 1962. The crisis happened during the period known as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union placed missiles on the island of Cuba, the two major countries came to the brink of nuclear war.

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Animals Arts and Literature Earth and Geography History Life Processes Living Things (Other) Philosophy and Religion Plants Science and Mathematics Society Sports and Recreation Technology

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The Cuban Missile Crisis was among the scariest events of the Cold War. The 13-day showdown brought the world's two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war.

In the Fall of 1962 the United States demanded that the Soviets halt construction of newly-discovered missile bases in communist Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had pledged in 1960 to defend Cuba and had assumed that the United States would not try and prevent the installation of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the communist Caribbean country. But the weapons could potentially reach much of the United States.

What followed was a tense standoff played out almost exclusively at the highest levels.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev and a handful of their top aides did all the negotiating, with little input from the foreign policy bureaucracies of either country. The crisis was rife with miscommunications, threats and miscalculations, but was ultimately diffused.

Here is a chronology of key moments in the crisis.

October 14, 1962: A U.S. U-2 spy plane piloted by Maj. Richard Heyser takes hundreds of photos of newly-built installations in the Cuban countryside. As Heyser will recall years later in an Associated Press interview, he worries that he will be looked upon as the man who started a war.

October 15: CIA analysts spot launchers, missiles and transport trucks that indicate the Soviets are building sites to launch missiles capable of striking targets nearly across the United States, according to a 2013 article by Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst and Cuba expert at the National Security Archive in Washington.

October 16: President John F. Kennedy meets with a team of advisers known as Ex-Comm, to discuss how to respond to the missile threat. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presents JFK with three options: diplomacy with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a naval quarantine of Cuba, and an air attack to destroy the missile sites, which might kill thousands of Soviet personnel and trigger a Soviet counterattack on a target such as Berlin.

Kennedy rejects the attack, and favors a quarantine to buy time to negotiate a missile withdrawal. JFK and his advisers are careful to call it a quarantine because a blockade is considered an act of war.

October 22: In a dramatic 18-minute television speech, JFK shocks Americans by revealing "unmistakable evidence" of the missile threat, and announces that the United States will prevent ships carrying weapons to reach Cuba, while demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles.

Meanwhile. U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler delivers to a letter from JFK to Khrushchev. Kennedy writes: "the one thing that has most concerned me has been the possibility that your government would not correctly understand the will and determination of the United States in any given situation, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war which it is crystal clear no country could win and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor."

October 23: Khrushchev writes to JFK, rebuffing his demand that the Soviets remove the missiles, which the Soviet leader insists "are intended solely for defensive purposes." Kennedy writes back, bluntly reminding Khrushchev that he started the crisis by secretly sending missiles to Cuba.

As U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson explains the matter to the U.N. Security Council, U.S. ships already move into position in the waters around Cuba. Soviet submarines menacingly move into the Caribbean as well, posed as if they might try to break a blockade. But Soviet freighters bearing military supplies headed for Cuba stop in their tracks.

October 24: Khrushchev sends an indignant letter to Kennedy, accusing him of threatening the Soviet Union. "You are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate us," he writes.

October 25: The Soviet arms freighters turn back toward Europe, but the oil tanker Bucharest approaches the U.S. quarantine zone, directly headed for Cuba. Two American warships, the USS Essex and the USS Gearing, prepare to intercept it, which could have led to war. Instead, Kennedy decides to let the Bucharest through the quarantine, because it isn't carrying any contraband.

Bettmann/CORBIS

October 26: Castro sends a letter to Khrushchev, urging him to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States, which the Soviet leader disregards. Instead, Khrushchev sends a letter to President Kennedy, in which he appeals to the U.S. president to work with him to de-escalate the conflict and ensure that they didn't "doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war."

According to Katie Stallard-Blanchette, a fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan policy forum, "This letter was a significant moment in the crisis, and involved political risk on both sides-for Khrushchev to make this emotional appeal to the U.S. president, risking the appearance of weakness, and for Kennedy to accept the Soviet premier's sentiment as genuine, risking the appearance of naïveté."

October 27: U.S. U-2 pilot Maj. Rudolf Anderson is shot down and killed over Cuba. War appears imminent. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze says, "They've fired the first shot," and President John F. Kennedy remarks,"We are now in an entirely new ball game."

However, JFK correctly concludes that Khrushchev had not, himself, given the order to shoot down Anderson's plane. The incident prompts both leaders to realize the situation is spiraling dangerously out of control.
READ MORE: How the Death of a U.S. Air Force Pilot Prevented a Nuclear War
On the same day, Khrushchev sends another letter to Kennedy, in which he demands that the United States withdraw missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. JFK responds by offering to promise not to attack Cuba after the Russians withdraw.

That evening, JFK's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, meets with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, and says that the United States already planned to remove its missiles from Turkey, but could not say so publicly. (Here is the Soviet ambassador's account of the meeting.) Stallard-Blanchette sees this as the moment that both nations stepped back from the brink of war.

October 28: Khrushchev concedes, writing an open letter to Kennedy saying that the Soviet missiles will be dismantled and removed from Cuba.

The Kennedy White House portrayed the withdrawal as the result of the president's tough stance in the face of Soviet aggression. In reality, as Kornbluh says, "the resolution of the crisis owed to the president's commitment to negotiate and find common ground in a dangerous nuclear world."

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The Cuban Missile Crisis was among the scariest events of the Cold War. The 13-day showdown brought the world's two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. In the Fall of 1962 the United States demanded that the Soviets halt construction of newly-discovered missile bases in communist Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S.