Susan B. Anthony

Until the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law in 1920, American women were not allowed to vote.   Susan B. Anthony’s 50-year fight for women’s suffrage, or the right to vote, made this amendment possible.

Susan B. Anthony grew up in a Quaker home.  Like her parents, she believed the men and women should be treated equally.  In 1851, she began working with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another suffragette.  Their first success was the passage of a law in 1860 in New York that gave women the right to own property and to keep their children if they divorced.

Anthony also fought for the abolition or end, of slavery, and for the right of former slaves to vote.  After the Civil War, she was disappointed when former slaves were given that right, but women were not.  

As a result, she formed suffrage associations and lectured all over the world.  She saw women get the right to vote in other countries, but not in the U.S.  But she remained hopeful, and in a month before her death in 1906, she said, “failure is impossible.”   She was right.   Fourteen years after Anthony’s death, the 19^th Amendment became law, amd people called it is the “Anthony Amendment”.

In 1979, the U.S. government minted $1 coins with Susan B. Anthony’s picture on them.  This made her the first woman to be pictured on an American coin in general circulation.

The Camp David Accords

The presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was the setting for a historic moment in September, 1978.  With the help of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the leaders of Egypt and Israel reached agreements that would end a 30-year state of war between their countries.

Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948 as a homeland for the Jewish people.  But Arab countries, including Egypt, denied its right to exist.  Arab armies attacked, but the outnumbered Israelis threw them back.   In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.  All peace efforts failed.

Then, in 1978, Carter invited Egyptian Premier Anwar Sadat and Israeli Premier Menachem Begin to Camp David to restart a stalled round of talks.  After 12 days, two accords were reached.  One was a plan for the return of the Sinai to Egypt and for peace between the countries.  The second called for self-rule for the Palestinian Arabs in other Israeli-occupied territories.

A treaty based on the first accord was signed in March, 1979.   Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize the first Arab country to recognize Israel.  Because the second accord involved Arabs who did not agree to it, it was not carried out at that time.

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan’s early life and career were far from revolutionary. She was a college-educated housewife, mother of three children, and writer for women’s magazines. For her 15th college reunion, Friedan sent a questionnaire to members of her class (all women), asking them to describe their lives after college. Their surprising answers inspired her to write The Feminine Mystique, a book that ignited the women’s-liberation movement in 1963.

Friedan’s research revealed that many American women were not as happy as people told them they should be. Contrary to popular belief some women did not find fulfillment as housewives and mothers. The Feminine Mystique was an instant best-seller.
In 1966, Friedan was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). As NOW’s president, she fought for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), legalization of abortions, and better job opportunities for women.

In 1971, she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus to encourage women to seek public office. A decade later, in 1981, Friedan looked at the progress of the women’s movement in her book The Second Stage. She stressed the important of family life for women and urged that more men be brought into the movement.

In 1993’s The Fountain of Age, Friedan wrote about discrimination against older people.

Roots

When Alex Haley was a child, his grandmother told him wondrous stories about his family. The stories had been passed down orally from generation to generation for almost 200 years. The “furtherest-back-person” in those stories was Toby, “the African,”, whose real name was “Kin-tay.”

Many years later, Haley began a quest to trace his family’s history back to its African beginnings. Roots, the 1976 book about what he found, was a best-seller. And the following first part of the book made television history. It was watched by more than half of all Americans, many of whom came to understand for the first time the heroic struggle of African-Americans to regain their freedom.

Roots begins in 1750 in Gambia in West Africa. There Haley’s ancestor, Kunta Kinte---Toby, the African, in Haley’s grandmother’s stories---is captured by slave traders and shipped to America in chains. The miniseries then follows seven generations of the Haley family through a century of slavery. It concludes with their emacipation after the Civil War.

Roots won nine Emmy Awards. Its final episode was the highest-rated television program up to that time. And it inspired many Americans of all ethnic backgrounds to search for their own roots.

A second miniseries, Roots, the Next Generation, was aired in 1979. Based on the second half of Haley’s book, it continued the Haley family saga through the 1960s.

Mark Spitz Wins Seven Gold Medals

The starter’s gun fired, and a 22-year-old American dived into the swimming pool. He plunged in and out of the water as he took a commanding lead in the 200-meter butterfly. Mark Spitz was on his way to his first gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Incredibly, he would win six more golds---more than anyone had ever won in a single Olympics.

This wasn’t Spitz’s first success. In 1967, at age 17, he had already set world records in butterfly and freestyle events. His coach predicted that he would win six gold medals at the 1968 Olympics, but he won only two. He continued to compete as a member of Indiana University’s national champion swim team, and was named outstanding amateur athelete in 1971.

At Munich in 1972, Spitz was at his peak. There he won four gold medals in individual races: the 100- and 200-meter freestyle and the 100- and 200-meter butterfly. He also won three other golds in team rely races. All seven events set new world records. Spitz retired from amateur athletics after the Olympics, having set world records 35 times during his sensational career.

During the 1972 Olympics, Palestinian terrorists killed two Isrraeli athletes and took nine others hostage. The tragic incident ended in a gun battle in which 15 people died.

A Chorus Line

In the words of one of its songs A Chorus Line caused "one singular sensation" when it opened on Broadway in 1975. Critics hailed it as one of the American musical theater's supreme achievements, and audiences agreed. The show ran for 15 years and 6,137 performances, making it the longest running show in Broadway history.


A Chorus Line was created by director and choreographer Michael Bennett, who was inspired by true-life stories told him by a group of Broadway dancers. Bennett developed the show at New York's nonprofit Public Theater, and then took it to Broadway.


A Chorus Line revolves around an audition at which 17 dancers compete for eight spots in the chorus line of a new musical. Through song and dance, the dancers tell about their lives, their dreams, and their deepest fears.


The show had no stars. The scenery consisted only of a mirrored rear wall, and the cast was dressed in work clothes for most of the show. Even though the production was simple, the emotional impact was tremendous. At the end of the show, eight dancers win jobs. They are overjoyed, as is the audience.


A Chorus Line earned more than $250 million during its 15-year run. It won the Pulitzer Prize and nine Tony Awards.

The U.S. Withdraws From Vietnam

In March, 1973, the last U.S. troops left the war-ravaged nation of South Vietnam. American soldiers had been there since the early 1960s, helping the South Vietnamese government defend itself against Communist rebels and North Vietnamese forces. At the height of the war, in 1968, about 540,000 U.S. soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. But Americans at home disagreed bitterly about the U.S. role there. Some said that the U.S. should fight the spread of Communism. And others said that the U.S. had no right to interfere in a civil war so far from home.


A four-year U.S. withdrawal began in 1969. America gradually transferred responsibility for the fighting to South Vietnamese soldiers. The last American soldiers left after the U.S. and North Vienam signed peace accords in January, 1973. But fierce fighting between North and South continued.


North Vietnam launched its sucessful final attack on South Vietnam early in 1975. In Saigon, the capital, American citizens and some frightened South Vietnamese who supported the U.S. made their way to the American embassy. There they crammed into helicopters that flew them to safety. On April 30, Saigon fell to the Communist. And the long, tragic war in Vietnam was over.


More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed or listed as missing in Vietnam.