Selected Sixties Events for the 1940s

Selected Sixties Events for the 1940s - 1950s
Year	Month	Day	Event	Related Resource
1945	April	12	President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of cerebral hemorrhage at the Little White House, his summer cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States four times: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944.	Link
	April	13	Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes President of the United States.	Link
	May	07	Unconditional surrender of German forces to the Allies.
	May	08	V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.
	June	26	The United Nations Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice are signed in San Francisco.
	August	06	First atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
	August	09	Second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
	September	02	V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.
1946	June	21	The United Nations Economic and Social Council establishes the Commission on Human Rights and the Commission on the Status of Women.
1948	July	26	President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. Order 9981 states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." The order also establishes the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services.	Link
1948	December	10	The General Assembly of the United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1950	June	24	The Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea with 135,000 men. On June 29 the first US ground forces arrive in Korea.	Link
1951			J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye is published.
1952			Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is published. The novel chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the levels of American racial intolerance and cultural bigotry.
1953	January	22	The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials written by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway. Miller's work was inspired by irrational fears of communist infiltration and the investigatory techniques of the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1953	July	27	Koren War is over. Armistice signed at Panmunjom.
1954	May	17	In the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court ends federally sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools by ruling unanimously that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Brown overturned the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had declared "separate but equal facilities" constitutional, and provided the legal foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.	Link
1955	August	28	Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago is murdered in Money, Mississippi while visiting relatives. He allegedly whistled at and said "Bye, baby" to a white woman. The case attracts national attention. In September, an all-white jury finds his alleged killers not guilty of murder.	Link
	December	01	Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for violating municipal laws when she does not relinquish her seat on a city bus to a white man. At her trial she is convicted and ordered to pay a fine of $10. She is jailed when she refuses to pay.	Link
	December	05	Martin Luther King, Jr. begins the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It continues through 1956. The boycott gives King a position of leadership within the national civil rights movement and demonstrates that nonviolent methods of protest can be effective.
1956	February	22	Heartbreak Hotel enters the charts. The song becomes Elvis Presley's first number 1 Billboard single.	Link

Selected Sixties Events for the 1940s - 1950s