Selected Sixties Events for 1965 |
| Month | Day | Event | Related Resource |
| January | 25 | President Johnson sends Congress a budget containing the biggest expansion of domestic welfare programs since the New Deal. | |
| February | 01 | Alabama official arrest 700 blacks as they demonstrate against the state's voter registration requirements in Selma. Protests and arrests continue the next day. On the 6th President Johnson pledges to seek legislation eliminating voting barriers. | |
21 | Malcom X is murdered in New York City. | Link | | March | 07 | Civil Rights demonstrators are brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies on march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on a date now known as 'Bloody Sunday.' | Link |
08 | In U.S. v. Seeger the Supreme Court extended conscientious objector status to those who do not necessarily believe in a supreme being, but who oppose war based on sincere beliefs that are equivalent to religious faith. | Link | 08 | President Johnson sends the first U.S. ground troops into action, a crucial turning point in the American involvement in the Vietnam War. At the beginning of the year there are 25,000 American troops; by the end of that year there are 185,000. | | 20 | President Johnson mobilizes the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights marchers in Selma. | | 21 | Over 3,000 civil rights marchers leave Selma for a march to Montgomery, Alabama protected by federal troops. 25,000 marchers join along the way. Upon reaching the capitol, Martin Luther King, Jr. hands a petition to Governor George Wallace, demanding voting rights for blacks and gives an address. | Link | 24 | The first antiwar teach-in is held at the University of Michigan. At first, both supporters and opponents of the war attend the teach-ins. Before long, the campus teach-ins become anti-war rallies. | | 25 | Viola Liuzzo, wife of a Detroit Teamsters Union business agent, is shot and killed while driving a carload of civil rights workers to the Montgomery Airport. A member of the NAACP, Viola had decided to take part in the Selma to Montgomery March. | Link | | April | 17 | 15,000 students march in Washigton during a VietNam War protest sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) | |
| June | 07 | In Griswold v. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives on the ground that a right of "marital privacy," is implicitly protected by the Bill of Rights. | Link |
| September | 15 | The Watts Riots erupts in Los Angeles | Link |
