1965
Selma to Montgomery march
On Bloody Sunday, Alabama state troopers attacked civil rights marchers with clubs and tear gas as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Television carried the pictures. Within five months Lyndon Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act. The South's last weapons against Black political power were being pried away.
Indonesian anti-communist massacres
After a murky failed coup in Jakarta, the army under General Suharto launched a campaign against suspected communists, encouraging village militias to join in. Over the next six months between five hundred thousand and a million Indonesians were killed, their bodies dumped in rivers. Suharto ruled for the next three decades.
Malcolm X assassinated
At the Audubon Ballroom in upper Manhattan, Malcolm X was shot sixteen times by members of the Nation of Islam, the organization he had recently left. He was thirty-nine. His memoir, finished with Alex Haley and published later that year, made him an enduring voice for Black self-determination and a critic of nonviolent gradualism.
Dylan goes electric at Newport
Bob Dylan, the darling of the folk revival, walked onstage at the Newport Folk Festival with a Fender Stratocaster and a rock band. Folk purists booed. The house was divided, then the country was, then generations were. Pop music had crossed a line; it was now allowed to be loud, strange, literary, electric, and Dylan.
US invades Dominican Republic
Lyndon Johnson sent twenty-three thousand American troops into the Dominican Republic to prevent what he called a second Cuba, intervening in a civil war between military factions. The invasion stained the Alliance for Progress and confirmed Latin American suspicions that the United States would never let a leftist government stand, even an elected one.
Northeast blackout
A single faulty relay in Ontario cascaded into a power failure that darkened thirty million homes across the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Eight hundred thousand New Yorkers were trapped in subways. The lights came back on the next morning. The event exposed how interconnected and fragile modern power grids had become.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1965?
Saeculum lists 6 curated events from 1965. The most significant is Selma to Montgomery march: On Bloody Sunday, Alabama state troopers attacked civil rights marchers with clubs and tear gas as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
What era was 1965 part of?
1965 falls within the Modern Era (1901-2000). World wars, cold war, and the splitting of the atom.
Which regions saw notable events in 1965?
The curated events from 1965 span North America and Southeast Asia.