The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring Suffrage in Southern states. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from oppression by white Americans.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon: King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King’s efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had re focused his efforts on ending poverty and the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

As a 1960′s era Conservative, who has become even more so in my elder years, the hoopla surrounding Ted Kennedy’s death this week simply has been too incredible to believe in both its scope, and also the coverage given by the mass media of his life and funeral.

Ted Kennedy was the patriarch of a truly controversial family, after all, in the history of Americafrom any real factual or logical perspective.  The Kennedy myth has been contrived and contributed to much over the years by the liberal leaning press most of all.  And they responded to his death true to form.

Space Race

On April 20, 1961, about one week after Gagarin’s flight, United States President John F. Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking Johnson to look into the status of America’s space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up. Johnson responded about one week later, concluding that the US needed to do much more to reach a position of leadership, and recommending that a manned moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first.

Everything that we do ought to really be tied into getting onto the Moon ahead of the Russians. …otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money …the policy ought to be that this is the top-priority program of the Agency, and one of the two things, except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. … But we’re talking about these fantastic expenditures …and the only justification for it, …to do it in this time [then estimated late 1967 or early 1968] or fashion, is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we passed them.