The 1620s were a time of political and religious turmoil in England. The protracted struggle for supremacy between monarch and Parliament reached new heights in 1629, when King Charles I disbanded the rival body and ruled alone for 11 years. Official pressure was also applied on religious dissenters, notably the the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Some were imprisoned for their nonconformist views and others lost lucrative official positions.  Time to find a New World in which to build a "City Upon a Hill."

The New World wasn't exactly new.  Native Americans, for thousands of years, prospered before European contact.  Spain possessed much of South America, while France acquired the central portions of North America.  On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 British members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought this Atlantic coastal colony to the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610. 

Something was terribly wrong in America in the 1970s. The United States was supposed to be a superpower, yet American forces proved powerless to stop a tiny guerrilla force in Vietnam. Support for Israel in the Middle East led to a rash of terrorism against American citizens traveling abroad, as well a punitive oil embargo that stifled the economy and forced American motorists to wait hours for their next tank of gasoline. At home, the news was no better. The worst political scandal in United States history forced a president to resign before facing certain impeachment. But all was saved - not by President Jimmy Carter, but by disco music, mood rings, and pet rocks.

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.  Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well.  In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protests outside the Pentagon.  Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.  Amid this turbulent time, a counterculture of flower power was also emerging, giving way to sex, drugs, and scores of unforgettable music.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

At the beginning of the 1960s, many Americans believed they were standing at the dawn of a golden age - Camelot if you will. On January 20, 1961, the handsome and charismatic John F. Kennedy became president of the United States. His New Frontier confidence would place a man on the moon, while pushing back Communism in Cuba. By 1968, one of the most turbulent years in American history, it seemed that the nation was falling apart under President Lyndon Johnson.  From JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis to that fateful day in Dallas, LBJ's Great Society to landing on the moon by decade's end - community and consensus lay in tatters.

Despite making some gains, blacks still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served. Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protestors launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they’d first stood their ground. From there, the 1960s saw the integration of the University of Mississippi, the March on Washington and Selma, Freedom Riders, and growth of two ideologies: Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. 

The American civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn’t end discrimination against blacks—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, African Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, along with many whites, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades. Using a bus boycott and integration of public schools by armed guard, the 1950s set the stage for the following decade of monumental change.

In the prosperous years after World War II, American society endured an era of unprecedented consumerism, conformity and artistic expression. The 1950s, an era of diners, television, and the inception of rock 'n' roll, also witnessed the beginnings of the civil rights movement. In addition, paranoia about the communist threat at home and abroad characterized the decade far beyond what was depicted in episodes of Happy Days or the musical Grease.

During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as American officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.