President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged students by providing federal funding for public schools.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique looks at women’s roles, desires, and rights in American society and helped to spark the second-wave feminist movement.
Laborers from the National Farm Workers Association and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee initiated the Delano grape strike and boycott. The strike continued into 1966, when the NFWA and AWOC merged to become the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee. The UFOC was led by César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and others. The strike and boycott ended in 1970 when the UFOC secured three-year contracts with grape growers.
With the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Congress authorized the United States to “take all necessary measures to repel” attacks on American forces in Vietnam.
In a ceremony at the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished the national origins immigration quota system.
The United States, the USSR, and almost one hundred other nations signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, an agreement not to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, or underwater.
In Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court ruled that statements made by suspected criminals were only admissible for prosecution if suspects had been informed of their rights, leading to the establishment of “Miranda rights.”
The US Apollo 11 became the first manned space craft to land on the moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon’s surface were watched by hundreds of millions in a live television broadcast of the landing.
In the South Vietnam village of My Lai, American infantrymen murdered more than five hundred men, women, and children. The atrocities at My Lai came to light in the American media in early 1969, stunning the public and helping to turn national opinion against the war.