Desegregation and the Vietnam war (mar 5, 1954 – apr 12, 1979)
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1954 - Racial segregation in schools becomes unconstitutional; start of campaign of civil disobedience to secure civil rights for Americans of African descent.
1960 - Democratic Party candidate John F Kennedy elected president, narrowly defeating his rival Richard Nixon.
1961 - Bay of Pigs invasion: an unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba by Cuban exiles, organised and financed by Washington.
1962 - US compels Soviet Union to withdraw nuclear weapons from Cuba in what has become known as the Cuban missile crisis.
1963 - President John F Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes president.
1964 - US steps up its military intervention in Vietnam. Civil Rights Act signed into law; it aims to halt discrimination on grounds of race, colour, religion, nationality.
1968 - Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated.
1969 - Republican Party candidate Richard Nixon elected president amid growing public opposition to Vietnam war. US military presence in Vietnam exceeds 500,000 personnel.
US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon.
1972 - Nixon re-elected and makes historic visit to China.
1973 - Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed. The campaign had claimed some 58,000 American lives.
1974 - In a TV address, Nixon announces his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, over a 1972 break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters. Gerald Ford is sworn-in as his successor.
1976 - Democratic Party candidate Jimmy Carter elected president.
1979 - US embassy in Tehran, Iran, seized by radical students. The 444-day hostage crisis - including a failed rescue attempt in 1980 - impacts on Carter's popularity and dominates the 1980 presidential election campaign.
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