February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor
Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party,
Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,77.
March
March 9 –
Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old
African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
March 5 –
WBBJ signs on the air in the
Jackson, Tennessee as WDXI, to expanded U.S. commercial television in rural areas.
March 7 – The 1954
Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, starring
Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by
NBC (also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage). The program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time and becomes one of the first great television classics.
July 18 – Illinois Governor
William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath to the State of Illinois and the U.S. or lose their jobs.
July 18–23 –
Geneva Summit between the U.S., Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France.
August 19 –
Hurricane Diane hits the northeast, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage.
August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in
Spring City, Tennessee.[3]
August 28 – Black 14-year-old
Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman in
Money, Mississippi; his white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.
September
September 3 – African American rock singer
Little Richard records "
Tutti Frutti" in New Orleans; it is released in October.
September 10 –
Western series Gunsmoke debuts on the
CBS television network.
October 7 – At the Six Gallery in San Francisco,
Allen Ginsberg gives a spirited reading of his poem
Howl.
Jack Kerouac and other Beat writers chant and shout along. The event is often seen as the birth of the
counterculture.
October 11 – 70-mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece Oklahoma!.
February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor
Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party,
Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,77.
March
March 9 –
Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old
African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
March 5 –
WBBJ signs on the air in the
Jackson, Tennessee as WDXI, to expanded U.S. commercial television in rural areas.
March 7 – The 1954
Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, starring
Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by
NBC (also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage). The program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time and becomes one of the first great television classics.
July 18 – Illinois Governor
William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath to the State of Illinois and the U.S. or lose their jobs.
July 18–23 –
Geneva Summit between the U.S., Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France.
August 19 –
Hurricane Diane hits the northeast, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage.
August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in
Spring City, Tennessee.[3]
August 28 – Black 14-year-old
Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman in
Money, Mississippi; his white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.
September
September 3 – African American rock singer
Little Richard records "
Tutti Frutti" in New Orleans; it is released in October.
September 10 –
Western series Gunsmoke debuts on the
CBS television network.
October 7 – At the Six Gallery in San Francisco,
Allen Ginsberg gives a spirited reading of his poem
Howl.
Jack Kerouac and other Beat writers chant and shout along. The event is often seen as the birth of the
counterculture.
October 11 – 70-mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece Oklahoma!.