1) Japanese-American Internment
Internment is the compulsory detention, relocation or other restrictions of the freedom of movement, adjustable by one belligerent for the located on its territory nationals of the other belligerent, or to nationals of the other belligerent, located in the occupied territory of the first belligerent or neutral state for military belligerents. Japanese-American Internment had place during the Second World War from the side of the USA toward, mainly, the Japanese citizens, located in the US (Harth).
On February 19, 1942, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the decree №9066, which allowed the military authorities to move to the certain areas of the country of any person. As a result, all citizens of Japanese descent were deported to the Pacific coast, including California and most of Oregon and Washington, into the internment camps. In 1944, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the process of internment, arguing the fact that the restriction of the civil rights of a racial group is admissible if it is required by the social need.’ In January, 1945, these laws were repealed. In 1948, the internees were paid with the partial compensation for the loss of property, but most of them were unable to fully compensate for the losses (Harth).
2) Cold War
After the WWII, which became the largest and most brutal conflict in human history, there appeared a confrontation between the Communist bloc countries and the capitalist countries on the other, mostly between the two superpowers of the time: the USSR and the USA. It order to characterize the Cold War in short it can be described as the rivalry for the supremacy in the new post-war world.
The main reason for the Cold War became the intractable ideological differences between the two models of the socialist and capitalist society. The West feared the increasing powers of the USSR. The lack of a common enemy of the winners, as well as the ambitions of the political leaders, also contributed to the expansion of the Cold War (McMahon).
Permanent race in all things was also the part of the Cold War. The first was the arms race – the two countries have developed a variety of weapons: new military equipment, weapons (in most of the mass destruction), missiles, spy equipment, etc. There was also a propaganda race on television and in other sources, it was constantly waged the fierce propaganda against the enemy. The race was not only in the military sphere, but also in the science, culture and sports. Each country tried to overtake another.
3) Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott is a peaceful protest of American blacks of Montgomery Alabama, who advocated for the abolition of the discriminatory measures in public transport. The confrontation lasted from 1st of December 1955 to 20th of December 1956, culminating in the decision of the US Supreme Court, which declared the racial segregation in public transport to be illegal (Wright).
According to the laws of Montgomery, black citizens were not supposed to take in a bus the sits of ‘whites only.’ If all ‘whites only’ places were occupied, the sitting blacks had to give way to white passengers to their seats. Despite the appealing of the Prosecutor's Office of Montgomery, the Supreme Court, which proved the decision of the District Court and left it to be in force. The same night, the Ku Klux Klan, who arrived on 40 trucks, marched to intimidate the residents. This decision was responded by the racist terror: buses have been shot, the quarters with blacks were bombed, as well as black residents were beaten. Nevertheless, On December 20, 1956, the city bus segregation in Montgomery was canceled (Wright).
4) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is a joint resolution of the US Congress, adopted in 1964 and became the legal basis for the escalation of the US participation in the Vietnam War. After two incidents in Gulf of Tonkin, in which, according to the Johnson administration, American ships were attacked by North Vietnamese boats in international waters, the US Congress on August 7, 1964 adopted a joint resolution, known as Tonkin. In the House of Representatives, it was adopted unanimously (416 votes ‘for’), in the Senate - with two votes ‘against.’ The President signed a resolution on August 10, after which it entered into force (Moise).
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution granted the right to President Johnson to take all needed means, as well as the use of armed force, to preserve freedom for all countries of the Collective Security Treaty of Southeast Asia. This resolution was a legal basis to send to South Vietnam the major American divisions and the bombing of North Vietnam without a formal declaration of war.
In June, 1970, under the influence of protests against the invasion of Cambodia, the Senate overturned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. However, the Nixon administration responded to this by saying that the president continues to conduct the combat operations in Southeast Asia, based on his constitutional right (Moise).
5) Civil Rights Act of 1964
In July 1964, after the months of fierce debate in both houses of Congress, the bill finally became the law on civil rights, which at one time was proposed by the late President Kennedy. This law is one of the laws, which had and have high importance in the history of the country.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 approved the proposition that human rights - in particular, it was a matter of the right to offend people or fix their obstacles because of the skin color - are above property rights and that the Federal Government should protect the human rights and freedoms, if the individual States are not able to provide and ensure them. The law recognizes, however, that it is desirable to eliminate the racial injustice at the local level, and encourages such policies. But if it can not be solved the problem at the local level, the Federal Government is authorized to use the new law and all its power to protect the equal rights of all Americans. The law prohibited the discrimination in these cases, even if the discrimination or segregation is supported by the State and conducted on the basis of any law, statute, ordinance or regulation, or custom or habit of State or any of its administrative units (Wright).
Works Cited
Harth, Erica. Last witnesses : reflections on the wartime internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin's Press, 2001. Print.
McMahon, Robert J. The Cold War a very short introduction. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.
Moise, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Print.
Wright, Roberta. The birth of the Montgomery bus boycott. Southfield, Mich: Charro Press, 1991. Print.
Wright, Susan. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 : landmark antidiscrimination legislation. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2006. Print.
