• Explain the growing concerns over U.S. national security policy in the late 1950s, as well as the differences between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations’ approaches to foreign policy.

• Describe the "culture of dissent" that emerged among both intellectuals and adolescents in the United States during the 1950s, and discuss conservative efforts to contain such dissent.

•Trace the development and progress of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement from the late 1950s through the late 1960s.

• Highlight the key stylistic and substantive issues in the presidential elections of 1960 and 1964, and account for the outcome of those elections.

• Discuss the domestic agendas and key legislative achievements of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and describe the differences in their political styles.

• Describe the role of the Supreme Court in the late 1950s and 1960s in promoting civil rights and civil liberties.

1948 Alfred Kinsey’s report on male sexuality published.

1950 David Riesman publishes The Lonely Crowd.

1955 Bill Haley and the Comets introduce rock to national audience.

1957 Sputnik launched.

Sony introduces the transistor radio.

Civil Rights Act of 1957.

1957–58 School desegregation battle in Little Rock, Arkansas.

1958 National Defense Education Act.

Establishment of NASA.

Quiz show scandals.

1959 Castro topples Batista in Cuba.

Nixon and Khrushchev engage in "kitchen debate."

1960 Greensboro sit-in and formation of SNCC.

U-2 incident.

DDE warns of the "military-industrial complex."

1961–63 John F. Kennedy’s presidency.

1961 United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Alliance for Progress announced.

Bay of Pigs fiasco.

CORE initiates Freedom Rides.

The Berlin Crisis.

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Michael Harrington publishes The Other America.

Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

1963 Nuclear test-ban treaty.

Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique.

Assassination of Medgar Evers.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birmingham Campaign.

March on Washington.

Assassination of President Kennedy.

1963–68 Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency.

1964 Passage of the Wilderness Act.

Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Executive order establishes affirmative action.

LBJ launches the War on Poverty.

"Freedom Summer" in Mississippi.

1965 Supreme Court allows use of contraceptives by married couples.

Immigration Act of 1965.

Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Passage of Medicare and Medicaid.

1966 Formation of NOW.

1970 The first Earth Day.