Congress adopted a policy of “termination” toward American Indians with the intention of “as rapidly as possible mak[ing] Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States.”
The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution sets a term limit for the presidency, declaring that “No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.”
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man and was arrested, sparking a year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
Martin Luther King Jr. and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. The SCLC remained active and influential in the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
The Mattachine Society was founded in Los Angeles in 1950 as the first major gay rights organization in the United States.
The Beats (beatniks) were a group of American writers and artists. In the 1950s they rejected conformity, materialism, and many traditional values in favor of expression and experimentation. Beats included writers and poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs.
The Little Rock Nine were nine African American students—Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo Beals—who integrated the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957 after the Supreme Court declared racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional.
Herbert Hoover (1874–1964), a Stanford-educated mining engineer, spearheaded relief and reconstruction efforts following World War I and proved an effective secretary of commerce (1921–1929) under Harding and Coolidge. He easily won the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, and defeated Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith in the election. His administration, however, was marred by the stock market crash of October 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. In 1932, when some 15,000 ex-...
Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973) ruled Cuba from 1934 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1958. After rising through the ranks of the army, Batista overthrew the Cuban government in 1933 with support from the United States. He installed an American-friendly government and ruled the country through a puppet government. He officially became president in 1940, and after his presidential term ended in 1944, Batista left Cuba and briefly lived in Florida. In 1952, he returned and deposed Cuban President Carlos Prio Socarras. Back in power, Batista ruled as a...