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Diversity in the United States and Other Nations: A Chronology of Key Events and Publications

Date(s)Event(s)/Publication
50,000 BCEThe estimated age of first fossil records of Indigenous occupation of Australia.
606–1905 CEThe China civil service examination system administered lengthy written tests of classical Chinese philosophical texts and other topics to tens of millions of aspiring government officials.
750–1258Islamic Golden Age. Scientists, philosophers, and engineers—both Muslim and Jewish—made great contributions in various fields including medicine, astronomy, philosophy, agriculture, art, and architecture. They revived old traditions, including translations of ancient Greek texts, and added their own contributions.
1258Siege and destruction of Baghdad. In 1258, the Mongol forces led by Hulagu Khan destroyed the city of Baghdad—capital of the Abbassid Caliphate and home to the House of Wisdom, great libraries and bookshops, and two universities. Along with the fall of the Andalus (Muslim Spain), a period of impressive intellectual contribution came to an end and an unenlightened period enveloped the region for centuries.
1300sMuslim Sankore University at Timbuktu (modern Mali) was established by Mansa Musa in the Mali Empire.
1513Juan Ponce de León landed on the Florida peninsula while en route from Puerto Rico. The relationship between Europeans and Indians north of Mexico began.
1519The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortéz and a group of Spaniards arrived in the region that is now Mexico.
1565The Spaniards established the St. Augustine colony in Florida, the first settlement organized by Europeans in present-day United States.
1603Mathieu Da Costa was the first Black man in Canada, arriving as an interpreter as part of the exploring party of Samuel de Champlain, bridging between the Aboriginal peoples and the European colonizers.
1608The beginning of Black settlement in Canada coincided with the establishment of Port Royal, a French outpost in what is now Nova Scotia.
1619The first Africans arrived in the English North American colonies.
1620The Pilgrims came to America from England on the Mayflower and established a settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1628In Montréal, the first known person to be sold into slavery in Canada was a Black man from Madagascar. He was given the name Olivier Le Jeune.
1637More than 500 American Indians were killed by the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook in a massacre known as the Pequot War.
1644The Dutch established the first European-style school at Elmina Castle (modern Ghana).
1654The first Jewish immigrants to North America settled in New Amsterdam to escape persecution in Brazil.
1683German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania.
1690The first printing of The New-England Primer occurred. It was used as a primary text for the education of beginning readers for more than 200 years.
1709Slavery was declared legal in what is called New France in Canada. Black slaves could be bought and sold and the practice was codified in law.
1718The Scots-Irish began immigrating to North America in large numbers.
1742Bethlehem Female Seminary was established as a seminary for girls. It later merged with nearby schools to become the coeducational school now called Moravian College.
1754–1763The French and Indian War occurred.
1776Abigail Adams reminded her husband, John Adams, that women “will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice” if women are excluded from the Declaration of Independence.
1785Earliest record of Chinese in the continental United States shows that three seamen on the ship Pallas arrived in Baltimore.
1788Captain Arthur Phillip led the “first fleet” bringing British convicts to Australia.
1790A southbound Underground Railroad began operating between the United States and Canada, as Black people living in the Maritimes fled slavery and racism in Canada for the Northern United States. As many as 60% of the Black people in Ontario returned to the United States after the Civil War, and 1,200 free Blacks left for Sierra Leone, Africa.
1791The U.S. Bill of Rights, including the religious clauses of the First Amendment, went into effect after ratification by the states.
1798A Federalist-dominated Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts to crush the Republican Party and to harass aliens.
1798–1939Nahda or Awakening. The great historian Albert Hourani refers to this period of awakening as the liberal age. The Renaissance began in Egypt and quickly spread to Syria and Lebanon as well as to Tunisia in North Africa. Major contributions by Rifa'a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, Mohammed Abdu, and Jamal Eddine al-Afghani initiated a period of Islamic reform and modernistic liberalism.
1800s (early)The Common Schools Movement, begun by Horace Mann, was the precursor of today's public school system. Its design reflected a belief in public education as a tool for developing moral citizens, as defined and informed by Protestant Christianity.
1812The War of 1812, a war between the United States and Britain, caused deep factions among the Indian tribes because of their different allegiances.
1814Governor Macquarie established a boarding school “for the education of native children” in Parramatta, Sydney, Australia.
1815The first mass immigrations from Europe to North America began.
1817The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened in Hartford, Connecticut.
1819Native American boarding schools, with public funding established by the Civilization Act of 1819, were operated in the United States by Protestant Christian clergy and missionaries in order to “civilize” the Native American children.
1826–1827Fourah Bay College was established for African students in Sierra Leone and other British West African colonies.
1829South African College at Cape Town was established for English settlers only. It later became the University of Cape Town.
1830The U.S. Congress passed a Removal Act, which authorized the removal of Indians from east to west of the Mississippi River.
1830–1870During this period a small group of writers and officials became aware of the rising power of Europe. They saw it not as a menace but as a world that offered a new path for reform and development.
1831Nat Turner led a slave revolt in Virginia on November 11, 1831, in which 56 Whites and more than 55 Blacks were killed.
1832The Perkins Institution for the Blind was opened by Samuel Gridley Howe in Boston, Massachusetts.
1833Columbia Female Academy (now Stephens College) was founded. It is the second oldest female educational establishment in the United States that is still a women's college.
1835Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America, in which he wrote, “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”
1836Mexico's President Santa Anna and his troops defeated the Texans at the Alamo. Six weeks later Santa Anna was defeated by Sam Houston and his Texan troops at San Jacinto.
1837Cheney University in Pennsylvania, the first historically Black college and university (HBCU) in the United States, was founded. In Title III of the Higher Education Act of 1965, Congress officially defined HBCUs as institutions whose principal missions were, and are, the education of Black Americans, were accredited, and were established before 1964. There were 105 HBCUs in 2011.
1837Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) was founded in Massachusetts. It is the oldest (and first) of the Seven Sisters. It is also the oldest school (chartered in 1836) of higher education for women (teaching seminary) that is still a women's college.
1839Georgia Female College (now Wesleyan College) was founded. It is the oldest school originally created as a college for women.
1840–1920An influx of European immigrants to the United States from non-Protestant backgrounds occurred, including large numbers of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from central, eastern, and southern Europe.
1840sAfricville, a community built expressly for residence by Black Canadians, was established at the north end of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1845The United States annexed Texas, which had declared itself independent from Mexico in 1836. This was one key event that led to the Mexican-American War.
1846On May 13, 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico and the Mexican-American War began.
1846–1848A series of potato blights in Ireland caused thousands of its citizens to immigrate to the United States.
1848The Seneca Falls Convention produced the Declaration of Sentiments, which outlined grievances and set the agenda for the women's rights movement in the United States. A set of 12 resolutions was adopted, calling for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.
1848The United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War. Mexico lost nearly one third of its territory, and the United States acquired most of the territory that comprises its southwestern states.
1850The California legislature passed a discriminatory Foreign Miner's Tax that forced Chinese immigrants to pay a highly disproportionate share of state taxes.
1851Cherokee Female Seminary was founded. It is the first institute of higher learning exclusively for women west of the Mississippi River.
1851Isabella van Wagener, a former slave, took the name Sojourner Truth. She incorporated abolition and suffrage as she delivered her “Ain't I a Woman?” speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention.
1851Gold was discovered at Ophir, New South Wales (Australia), which brought a dramatic increase in immigration from across the globe, especially from Ireland and China.
1852Young Ladies Seminary (now Mills College, in Oakland, California) was established. It was the first women's college established in the United States west of the Rocky Mountains.
1854Yung Wing became the first Asian student to graduate from a U.S. university, graduating from Yale College. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1852 and also received an honorary Doctor of Laws at Yale's centennial commencement in 1876.
1855Castle Garden, an immigration station, opened in New York City. The antiforeign Know-Nothing Movement reached its zenith and had a number of political successes in the 1855 elections. The movement rapidly declined after 1855.
1859Juan N. Cortina, who became a U.S. citizen under the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, led a series of rebellions against Anglo-Americans in the Southwest.
1860sPockets of Puerto Ricans were already living in parts of the United States, particularly in Tampa, Florida, and in New York City.
1860The third edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman was published. It included the “Calamus” poems that “celebrate the need of comrades,” poems that launched the “homosexual tradition in American poetry.”
1863Thousands of Chinese workers were recruited to build the western section of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869, a year ahead of schedule. Anti-Chinese riots began to occur throughout the West and continued until the turn of the century.
1863On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in those states still fighting the Union.
1864Nearly 300 Cheyennes were killed in a surprise attack at Sand Creek, Colorado. This event is known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
1867The British North America Act established the Dominion of Canada, and the first federal parliament met.
1868The Burlingame Treaty was signed to facilitate trading and emigration between the United States and China to ensure a sufficient supply of Chinese labor for the railroads.
1869Francis Galton, an English polymath, applied the normal curve to the study of human intelligence.
1869Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to achieve voting rights for women by means of a congressional amendment to the Constitution. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others formed the American Woman Suffrage Association to gain voting rights for women through amendments to individual state constitutions.
1869The territory of Wyoming passed the first women's suffrage law. The following year, women begin serving on juries in the territory.
1869The transcontinental railroad, linking the United States west to east, was completed. Chinese laborers did most of the work on the Pacific portion of the railroad.
1869The unsuccessful Wakamatsu Colony, made up of Japanese immigrants, was established in California.
1870The Canadian government began to play a role in the development and administration of Indian residential schools to remove and isolate Aboriginal (native) children from their homes, families, traditions, and cultures in order to assimilate them into the dominant culture. In cooperation with existing churches, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were forcibly removed from their homes and prevented from speaking their home language or engaging in any Aboriginal cultural practices.
1870–1900By this time Europe had become a key adversary in addition to being a potential model to emulate. Its armies were in Egypt and North Africa and its influence expanded throughout the Ottoman Empire. Mohammed Abdu and Jamal Eddine al-Afghani called for the preservation of Islamic heritage while trying to reinterpret Islam so as to make it more compatible with the modern world.
1871A White mob in Los Angeles attacked a Chinese community. When the conflict ended, 19 Chinese had been killed and their community was in shambles.
1875The Page Act barred Asian women who were suspected of prostitution from entering the United States, and it also attempted to regulate contract labor from China.
1876In the disputed Hayes-Tilden election, the Democrats and Republicans made a political bargain that symbolized the extent to which northern Whites had abandoned southern Blacks.
1876Sioux tribes, under the leadership of Sitting Bull, wiped out Custer's Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. This was one of the last victories for American Indian tribes.
1882The Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress. Another congressional immigration act established a head tax of 50 cents and excluded lunatics, convicts, idiots, and those likely to become public charges.
1884–1885The partition of Africa by Europeans occurred, also known as the Scramble for Africa. This resulted in a division of Africa by Europeans without regard for African communities, political units, or perspectives.
1884Francis Galton devised and administered the first brief assessments intended to measure intelligence. These involved psychophysical and sensory tasks. Galton advocated using test results to promote eugenics, a term that he invented in 1883.
1884The “clean, clan and courteous” policy was introduced, which permitted Aboriginal students to attend public schools in New South Wales, Australia, provided they conformed to “appropriate” standards.
1885The Chinese Exclusion Act in Canada included a $50 head tax on each Chinese immigrant. The Chinese Head Tax increased to $100 in 1900, and to $500 in 1903.
1885In one of the worst cases of anti-Chinese violence in the United States, White, mostly immigrant, miners attacked Chinese immigrant miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, on September 2, killing at least 28 Chinese miners and burning 75 Chinese homes.
1886The Apache warrior Geronimo surrendered to U.S. forces in September 1886. His surrender marked the defeat of the Southwest tribes.
1886The Haymarket Affair in Chicago increased the fear of foreign “radicals” and stimulated the growth of nativistic sentiments in the United States.
1886The Statue of Liberty was dedicated as nativism soared in the United States.
1887Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, which was designed to terminate partially the American Indians' special relationship with the U.S. government.
1888The Scott Act prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers and permitted only officials, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers from China to enter the United States.
1890The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association and waged state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.
1890Three hundred Sioux were killed in a conflict at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.
1891Eleven Italian Americans were lynched in New Orleans during the height of American nativism, after being accused of murdering a police superintendent.
1892Ellis Island (in New York City) opened and replaced Castle Garden as the main port of entry for European immigrants.
1893Colorado became the first state to adopt an amendment granting women the right to vote. Utah and Idaho follow suit in 1896.
1893The Parliament of World Religions took place in Chicago. For the first time in the United States, people heard about different world religions from followers of the respective faiths.
1893Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii was overthrown in a bloodless revolution led by American planters. The Republic of Hawaii was established, with Stanford B. Dole as president.
1895W. E. B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois also earned a bachelor's degree cum laude from Harvard College in 1890.
1896The National Association of Colored Women was formed, bringing together more than 100 Black women's clubs. Leaders in the Black women's club movement included Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Mary Church Terrell, and Anna Julia Cooper.
1896The U.S. Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the constitutionality of the “separate but equal” doctrine. Although the case dealt with railway transportation, it had the effect of legitimating state-mandated segregation in the public schools.
1898Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War, the United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Cuba became independent of Spain but was placed under U.S. tutelage.
1898Hawaii was annexed to the United States.
1900With the Foraker Act, the United States established a government in Puerto Rico to which the president of the United States appointed the governor and the Executive Council.
1900–1939Two trends began to emerge in the Middle East: one oriented toward preserving Islamic heritage and that subsequently moved toward a new kind of fundamentalism; the other group argued that social life should be governed by secular principles and norms based on individual and group welfare.
1901The Australian Parliament introduced the racist Immigration Restriction Act (White Australia policy) in the first year of Federation.
1901–1910Almost 9 million immigrants entered the United States, most of whom came from southern and eastern Europe.
1903Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the intellectual roots of ethnic studies and multicultural education, was published.
1903New York police conducted the first recorded raid on a gay bathhouse.
1903The South African Transvaal Inspector of Native Education stated that the objective of Black schooling was to “teach the Native to work.”
1903The National Women's Trade Union League was established in the United States to advocate for improved wages and working conditions for women.
1904The French Ministry of Public Instruction asked Alfred Binet to devise an assessment for students who struggle to learn in ordinary classrooms. Binet developed tests of reasoning and judgment, with items ordered in an age-related sequence. He quantified the results by comparing chronological age to functional, mental age. He devised special interventions to help the students identified through his assessment. This can be considered the beginning of special education.
1908Edward L. Thorndike, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, began establishing norms for various school subjects, enabling the comparison of students' school performances.
1908H. H. Goddard had Binet's tests translated into English. He used them to screen immigrants at Ellis Island for possible return to their home countries and to segregate low-scoring Americans in institutions to limit them from reproducing.
1908The United States and Japan made the Gentlemen's Agreement, which was designed to reduce the number of Japanese immigrants entering the United States.
1910An Immigration Act allowed significant discretionary power in excluding certain groups of people from Canada, including immigrants “belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada, or of immigrants of any specified class, occupation or character.”
1910An immigration station was established at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay to process Chinese immigrants. It closed in 1940.
1910Separate classes in public schools, sometimes called ungraded classes, were established for students with intellectual disabilities in the United States.
1910A Mexican revolution caused many Mexican peasants to immigrate to the United States to look for jobs. Other immigrants came to escape political turmoil and persecution.
1910The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was organized.
1910s–1930sAfricans educated at missionary schools in South Africa resisted White rule; they were unsuccessful because of too few literate Africans, poor communications, and a lack of money.
1912William Stern, a German psychologist, invented the intelligence quotient (IQ) by transforming Binet's mental age and chronological age into a ratio.
1913Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union to work toward the passage of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to give women the vote. The group was later renamed the National Women's Party. Members picketed the White House and practiced other forms of civil disobedience.
1913The California legislature passed a land bill that made it difficult for Japanese immigrants to lease land.
1914–1920Under the War Measures Act during World War I, about 9,000 Ukrainian and Austro-Hungarian men, women, and children who were then considered “aliens of enemy nationality” were relocated to work camps, also known as concentration camps, in locations across Canada.
1914The Komagatu Maru sailed to Vancouver, British Columbia, having departed from Hong Kong with 376 Indians aboard, who were refused admittance to Canada. After 2 months in the harbor, and following an unsuccessful appeal to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, the ship was forced to sail back to India.
1914The phrase birth control entered the English language and was popularized by Margaret Sanger as an alternative to the then-fashionable terms family limitation and voluntary motherhood.
1916Margaret Sanger opened the first U.S. birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Although the clinic was shut down 10 days later and Sanger was arrested, she eventually won support through the courts and opened another clinic in New York City in 1923.
1916Randolph Bourne wrote “Trans-National America,” an article published in the Atlantic Monthly that challenged the idea of Americanization.
1916South African Inter-State Native College was established (it later became the University of Fort Hare in 1951). Black South African students attended it. Its famous graduates include Nelson Mandela and Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana.
1917U.S. Army psychologists, among them leading psychology professors from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, rapidly developed the first intelligence tests for mass administration. They were taken by 1.75 million U.S. soldiers.
1917The United States entered World War I. Anti-German sentiment prompted many schools to end German–English instruction.
1917A comprehensive immigration bill was enacted that established a literacy test for entering immigrants.
1917The Jones Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens and subject to the draft.
1917Thirty-nine African Americans were killed in a bloody riot in East St. Louis, Missouri.
1918South Africa established Stellenbosch University for Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch immigrants) only.
1919The federal woman suffrage amendment, originally written by Susan B. Anthony and introduced in Congress in 1878, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. It was then sent to the states for ratification.
1919The Rockefeller Foundation provided a grant to former army psychologists to develop the National Intelligence Test for large-scale assessment and classification of elementary age students. Throughout the 1920s, new tests were developed and administered to organize students within U.S. schools.
1920sThe intercultural education movement, a precursor to multicultural education in the United States, was established and existed until the 1950s. It is documented in a 2004 book, Improving Multicultural Education: Lessons From the Intergroup Education Movement, by Cherry A. McGee Banks.
1920sThe Ku Klux Klan entered Canada and established chapters across the country.
1920s–1940sThe Canadian government practiced routine deportation of thousands of “undesirables” over these decades, including Jews, left-wing activists, communists, and non-British Europeans.
1920Democracy and Assimilation: The Blending of Immigrant Heritages in America, by Julius Drachsler, was published.
1920The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, was signed into law by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.
1920The Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor was formed to collect information about women in the U.S. workforce and safeguard good working conditions for women.
1920The Hawaiian Homes Commission was started to benefit the native Hawaiians, but little of the land involved was used for its stated purpose.
1920The number of people born in Puerto Rico and living in the United States was 11,811. That number increased to 58,200 in 1935.
1921The National Academy of Sciences yearbook was devoted to an analysis of results from the World War I Army intelligence tests. Its editor, an army psychologist and Harvard professor Robert Yerkes, argued that there are innate racial and ethnic differences in intelligence.
1922The Phelps-Stokes Fund in the United States produced the Education in Africa report, which was critical of British colonial education in West Africa. Led by academics from Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, it equated African education with that of African Americans in the southern United States. A similar report was published on East African education in 1925.
1922Takao Ozawa v. United States declared Japanese in the United States ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
1922The Council for Exceptional Children—the leading U.S. organization that addresses the needs of students with exceptionalities, their families, and the professionals who educate them—was founded by Elizabeth Farrell.
1923Meyer v. Nebraska, a U.S. Supreme Court decision, declared that a 1919 law restricting instruction in foreign languages violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1923A Princeton professor, Carl Brigham, used the Army intelligence test data to publish A Study of American Intelligence, in which he argued that the United States was threatened by an influx of low-intelligence immigrants. This work has been credited with providing evidence for the U.S. Congress to pass restrictive immigration policies in 1924.
1923South African curricula for “Coloured children” were “adapted to their needs” despite parents' request that their children have the same education as White children.
1923The Chinese Immigration Act in Canada prohibited all Chinese immigrants except diplomats, students, children of Canadians, and an investor class.
1923United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, a U.S. Supreme Court case, declared Asian Indians ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
1924The U.S. Congress passed the National Origins Immigration Act (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act), which limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890 according to the Census of 1890. The law was aimed at further restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which contained large numbers of European Jews and Catholics.
1924The American Orthopsychiatric Association was founded to study childhood mental illness, breaking with the traditional belief that only adults could have mental disorders.
1924The Society for Human Rights in Chicago became the earliest known gay rights organization in the United States.
1924The term cultural pluralism first appeared in a revised version of “Democracy Versus the Mel ting-Pot: A Study of American Nationality: Part I and Part II,” an article by Horace Kallen published in The Nation in 1915.
1925American Academy of Speech Correction (now called the American Speech Language Hearing Association) was founded.
1925State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, a Tennessee criminal court decision, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the first major U.S. court case in which the teaching of evolution became a flashpoint. A county court upheld the state's anti-evolutionary teaching and barred John Scopes from teaching Darwin's theories. The Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned the decision on a technicality.
1925The Education Policy in British Tropical Africa Act called for the expansion of schools in the Gold Coast and elsewhere in British colonial Africa.
1925A large number of Filipinos began to immigrate to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland to work as field laborers.
1927The U.S. Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell upheld the rights of states to forcibly sterilize individuals who were determined to have low intelligence.
1927The Filipino Federation of Labor was organized in Los Angeles.
1928“Human Migration and the Marginal Man” by Robert E. Park was published in the American Journal of Sociology.
1928The League of United Latin American Citizens was formed in Harlingen, Texas.
1929A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf was published. It offered an early feminist critique of society and was based on a long essay about the history of women in writing. Woolf assails the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day.
1929The Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression.
1929An anti-Filipino riot occurred in Exeter, California, in which more than 200 Filipinos were assaulted.
1930Independent School District v. Salvatierra, one of the legal precedents to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, was issued by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals.
1930The Japanese American Citizenship League was organized.
1931Alvarez v. Owen, another legal precedent to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, was issued by the California Superior Court.
1933–1936President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the massive impact of the Great Depression and provided relief, recovery, and reform through a series of economic programs.
1933The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson, an intellectual precursor of multicultural education, was published.
1934“Thirty Million New Americans,” an article by Louis Adamic, a prominent writer who advocated cultural pluralism, was published in Harper's magazine.
1934Benjamin Franklin High School, a community-based school, began operation in East Harlem, New York. The school moved into a new building on the East River in 1942.
1934The Service Bureau for Human Relations, a precursor of the Service Bureau for Intercultural Education, began operations in New York City.
1934The U.S. Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which promised the Philippines independence and limited Filipino immigration to the United States to 50 per year.
1935Aid to Families with Dependent Children was a federal assistance program in effect from 1935 to 1996 that was administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This program provided financial assistance to children whose families had low or no income.
1935Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, a coalition of Black women's groups that lobbies against job discrimination, racism, and sexism in the United States.
1935The Progressive Education Association established the Commission on Intercultural Education and coined the term intercultural education.
1935President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Repatriation Act. The act offered free transportation to Filipinos who would return to the Philippines. Those who left were unable to return to the United States except under a severe quota system.
1936The U.S. federal law prohibiting the dissemination of contraceptive information through the mail was modified and birth control information was no longer classified as obscene.
1938–1950The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched its attack on the “separate but equal” doctrine in a series of cases involving segregated public colleges and universities. The lawsuits focused on the fact that Black institutions of higher education were not equal to their White counterparts based on facilities, resources, teachers, and other measures of tangible support.
1938The first national workshop on intercultural education was held for classroom teachers at Sarah Lawrence College.
1938The New York City Board of Education mandated intercultural assemblies and workshops in all of its schools.
1939–1949 (WWII)This period witnessed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Nationalism began to acquire a social reformist content often expressed in the language of socialism; the concept of nationalism broadened to include all Arabic-speaking countries. A critical moment is represented by the defeat of Arab armies by the newly established state of Israel.
1939Americans All—Immigrants All, a series of 26 weekly, 30-minute radio programs, aired on CBS.
1939The Intercultural Education Workshop in New York City published Adventures in Intercultural Education: A Manual for Secondary School Teachers by Rachel Davis DuBois.
1939The Springfield Plan, a city wide initiative designed to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations, was implemented in Springfield, Massachusetts.
1939The St. Louis sailed from Germany with 930 Jewish refugees on board. No country in the Americas allowed them to land. Forty-four prominent Canadians from Toronto sent a telegram to the Prime Minister urging sanctuary for the refugees, but he refused. The ship was forced to return to Europe where three quarters of the refugees died at the hands of Nazis.
1940–1970More Puerto Ricans (835,000) migrated to the United States than at any other time, primarily to New York City.
1941The United States declared war against Japan. Beginning in 1942, Chinese Americans volunteered and were drafted into the U.S. armed forces to serve in Europe and the Pacific, including in China at the Burma–Kunming front.
1942On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which forced Japanese American university students into internment camps. Since then, several universities have addressed this injustice by issuing honorary degrees. For example, the University of California (UC) system voted in July 2009 to grant special degrees to the 700 Japanese Americans enrolled at the four UC campuses (Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Davis) during the war who were sent to the camps.
1942The National Education Association published Americans All: Studies in Intercultural Education.
1942Twenty-two thousand Japanese Canadians were expelled from within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean; many were sent to detention camps in the interior of British Columbia, others farther east. Internment continued to the end of World War II, when the Canadian government encouraged many to “repatriate” to Japan. About 4,000 people left, of which more than half were Canadian-born and two thirds were Canadian citizens.
1942When People Meet, a pathbreaking book in intercultural education edited by Alain Locke and Bernhard J. Stern, was published.
1942The United States and Mexico made an agreement that authorized Mexican immigrants to work temporarily in the United States. This project is known as the Bracero Program.
1943Leo Kanner first identified the characteristics of children who later are known as having autism.
1943The Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States was repealed for military, political, and economic reasons, but immigration quotas remained in effect.
1943The anti-Mexican zoot suit riots occurred in Los Angeles during the summer.
1943White violence directed at African Americans led to a serious riot in Detroit, in which 34 people were killed.
1944The Servicemen's Readjustment Act (GI Bill) was passed. One provision of this bill provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans. The success of the 1944 G.I. Bill prompted the government to offer similar measures to later generations of veterans. These opportunities dramatically changed the overall student composition in higher education and would have lasting effects on access to and the internal operations of colleges and universities.
1945–1949Arthur Calwell, the first Minister for Immigration in Australia, was appointed to administer a policy of large-scale postwar immigration and assimilation.
1945Hilda Taba established the Project in Intergroup Education in Cooperating Schools at the University of Chicago.
1945The College Study in Intergroup Relations was implemented by Lloyd Allen Cook at Wayne University, now Wayne State University.
1945The South African government spent more than 13 times as much on each White student's education as it did for each Black African student's education.
1946–1947The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) consulted on a lawsuit that successfully challenged the segregation of Mexican-origin children in the Orange County school system in California.
1946On July 4, 1946, the Philippines became independent.
1947–1951Britain established multiple post–World War II higher education institutions that later became universities in Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda. The return of World War II African soldiers from Europe intensified dissatisfaction with colonization.
1947Following independence in 1947, states in India were allowed to retain their own language as the medium of instruction in government-funded schools. Article 46 of the Constitution of India declares, “The State shall promote, with special care, the education and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and in particular of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of social exploitation.”
1947Méndez v. Westminster School District in Orange County, California, a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California, found the segregation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in public schools to be illegal. This ruling served as an important precedent for the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
1947The Service Bureau for Intercultural Education cooperated with the John Dewey Society in the publication of the society's ninth yearbook, Intercultural Attitudes in the Making, edited by William H. Kilpatrick and William Van Til.
1947The Educational Testing Service was established to develop and administer the SAT college admissions tests and other educational tests. In 2011, it administered more than 50 million tests in more than 180 countries.
1948Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, revealing to the public that homosexuality was far more widespread than commonly believed.
1948The Center for Intergroup Education was established by Hilda Taba at the University of Chicago.
1948The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
1949Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex. She weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to show how women's place in the world is defined in relation to men. This was a time before feminism was even a word. It was released in English in 1953.
1949The Council of Europe was founded by the Treaty of London. The Treaty of London was signed in London by Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
1950s–1960sLiberation theology helped drive and sustain the civil rights movement, as African Americans took the lead in harnessing the power of religion to fight for social justice.
1950s–1970sLarge groups of migrants from (former) colonies and other territories settled in Great Britain (e.g., from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean), in France (e.g., from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), and in the Netherlands (e.g., from Indonesia and Surinam). Many of these workers have citizenship rights today.
1950s–1980sMany refugees from communist states of Eastern and Central Europe left for neighboring European states. Due to the invasion by Soviet troops, about 200,000 Hungarians left their country in 1956, and more than 150,000 Czechs and Slovaks fled from Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1980–1981, about 250,000 people fled to the West due to martial law and political repression in Poland.
1950An Order in Council replaced previous measures on immigration selection in Canada. A preference was maintained for British, Irish, French, and U.S. immigrants. The categories of admissible European immigrants were expanded to include healthy applicants of good character with skills and who could readily integrate. The Order gave wide discretion for refusals, and many non-White people continued to be excluded.
1950A Senate report, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, was distributed to members of Congress after the federal government had covertly investigated employees' sexual orientation at the beginning of the Cold War. The report stated that homosexuality is a mental illness and that homosexuals “constitute security risks” to the United States because “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.”
1950Mattachine Society, founded by Henry Hay and Frank Kameny, was the first modern gay men's rights organization in the United States. The group's goals included helping other gay men find one another, advocating for gay rights, and working against police harassment.
1950McCarthyism and conflicts between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the Korean War (1950–1953) led to Chinese Americans being viewed as disloyal to the United States and a threat to national security. Many Chinese Americans cut contact with the PRC.
1950The Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific began. It brought many non-White students into Australia's elite universities.
1950The European Convention on Human Rights was drafted by the Council of Europe.
1950The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established by the United Nations General Assembly.
1950–1967This era was characterized by the dominance of the charismatic Arab nationalist Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser and the opening of the oil-rich countries for employment, followed by massive migration from poor countries to oil-rich countries. The region witnessed the entrenchment of autocratic regimes and the rise of oppressive national security states in the Middle East.
1951In September, the Ministry of Education in China convened the first national work meeting on ethnic minority education in Beijing.
1951The Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees established the principle of asylum, whereby an individual with a “well founded fear of persecution” cannot be arbitrarily expelled or sent back to his or her country.
1951The Homosexual in America by Donald Webster Cory (Edward Sagarin) was published. Cory's classic was the result of a quarter of a century of participation in American life as a homosexual that encouraged expression from gays and lesbians, rather than from “experts.”
1952A new Immigration Act was passed in Canada that gave government officials substantial powers over selection, admission, and deportation. It provided for the refusal of admission on the grounds of nationality; ethnic group; geographical area of origin; peculiar customs, habits, and modes of life; unsuitability with regard to the climate; and probable inability to become readily assimilated. Homosexuals, drug addicts, and drug traffickers were added to the prohibited classes. The act also provided for Immigration Appeal Boards, made up of department officials, to hear appeals from deportation.
1952The Ministry of Education of China established a Department of Ethnic Minority Region Education.
1952Christine Jorgensen's transsexual operation made headlines in U.S. newspapers.
1952Intergroup Education in Public Schools by Hilda Taba, Elizabeth H. Brady, and John T. Robinson was published.
1952The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance in its first publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, despite the lack of empirical and scientific data.
1952They Learn What They Live: Prejudice in Young Children, by Helen G. Trager and Marian R. Yarrow, was published during the time that Helen G. Trager was director of Age Level Studies at the Bureau for Intercultural Education in the United States.
1952The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. It eliminated race as a factor in immigration. However, the national origins quota system remained but was liberalized.
1953U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy began investigating the Army Signal Corps with the intent to locate an alleged espionage ring. He continued his investigations, which have been characterized as witch hunts, to uncover subversives in the government, media, and other aspects of American life, through the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
1953President Dwight Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which banned homosexuals from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors. The order lists homosexuals as security risks, along with alcoholics and neurotics.
1953The Bantu Act made education for Blacks an integral part of “separate development” in South Africa. Schools taught educated Blacks to accept White domination. Non-Whites could not attend White universities.
1953The European Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg were created by the Council of Europe.
1954Intergroup Education by Lloyd A. Cook and Elaine Cook was published.
1954The legal campaign against officially mandated segregation culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in which the justices unanimously concluded, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
1954The Nature of Prejudice, by Gordon W. Allport, was published. It became a classic in intergroup education and ethnic studies.
1954The Service Bureau for Intercultural Education ceased operations.
1954Will Herberg's Protestant–Catholic–Jew was published.
1954The Refugee Relief Act permitted 5,000 Hungarian refugees to enter the United States.
1954The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service began Operation Wetback, a massive program to deport illegal Mexican immigrants.
1955Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization, was founded by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first couple to be married when gay marriage was briefly legalized in 2004 in San Francisco. The DOB's publication, The Ladder, edited by Barbara Gittings, helped organize, educate, and advocate for lesbians.
1955The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that remedies for the harms of state-mandated school segregation specified in Brown v. Board of Education can be pursued “with all deliberate speed.”
1956The American psychologist Evelyn Hooker presented her paper, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” at the American Psychological Association Convention in Chicago. She concluded that homosexuality is not a clinical entity and that heterosexuals and homosexuals do not differ significantly. Hooker's research became very influential and challenged clinical perceptions of homosexuality.
1956Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt, occupying the Suez Canal area and Sinai Peninsula. President Eisenhower pressured the British, French, and Israelis to withdraw. Leading Arab universities in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus and American University in Beirut played a leading role in training generations of skilled workers, many of whom began to find employment in the oil-rich countries and sent back remittances to their countries. Military spending increased substantially, and the region became the biggest importer of American, European, and Russian weapons in the world.
1957Ghana became the first Black African nation to become independent. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, stated at the independence ceremony on March 6, 1957, that “Ghana's independence is meaningless unless it is tied to the independence of the African continent.” His statement was a powerful precursor to Pan-Africanism.
1957The treaty establishing the European Economic Community (EEC Treaty) was signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany.
1958The Heart Is the Teacher by Leonard Covello and Guido D'Agostino, a book in which Covello—the well-known principal of Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem, New York—described his commitment to community-based schooling, was published.
1958The Puerto Rican Study, 1953–1957, by James C. Morrison, was the first publication of the New York City Board of Education on the education of Puerto Ricans.
1958The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Education in Hamburg hosted an international meeting of social scientists to explore the development of comparative assessments of students and schools. This meeting spurred the development of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in 1967.
1959South Africa's Extension of the University Education Act provided for the establishment of racially exclusive universities for Africans, Indians, and Coloureds.
1959Fidel Castro took over the reins of power in Cuba from the government of Fulgencio Batista. After this revolution, many Cuban refugees entered the United States.
1959Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states of the United States.
1959–1962The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement administered the Pilot Twelve-Country Study, which examined the academic achievement of 13-year-old students. This study marked the beginning of cross-national studies of academic achievements.
1960sPicketing occurred by a coalition of homophile organizations—including the Mattachine Society and DOB, at the White House, United Nations, Civil Service Commission, Pentagon, and the State Department—to protest against imprisonment of gay people under Castro in Cuba, restrictions against hiring homosexuals in government positions, and prohibition of homosexuals from serving in the military.
1960sThe Puerto Rican community was engaged in numerous civil rights struggles, including demands for bilingual education, ethnic studies programs in higher education, community control of public schools, and open enrollment in the City University of New York. These struggles were especially evident in New York City and the Northeast, areas with the largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the nation, where numerous grassroots and community organizations were developed.
1960s–1970sSpecial pedagogies for the children of migrant workers in Central and Western Europe—such as the German Ausländerpädagogik (“pedagogy for foreigners”)—followed a “dual approach,” that is, to preserve students' original languages and cultures to allow repatriation at any given time while at the same time offering measures to learn the host country's language and culture.
1960s–1980sLarge groups of migrant workers (so-called guest workers) from Southern Europe and Turkey were systematically recruited by countries in Central, Western, and Northern Europe. The initial plan for a guest worker system based on a rotation principle by which temporary low-skilled workers were hired for poor wages for limited periods of time eventually broke down. After the 1970s “oil crisis,” governments stopped new recruitments and some migrants returned to their countries of origin. However, many guest workers settled and the migrant communities grew due to family reunification. Germany, for example, became a country of immigration and by 2010 was inhabited by 2.5 million people with a Turkish background.
1960In India, a list identifying 405 Scheduled Castes and 225 Scheduled Tribes was published by the central government. An amendment was made to the list in 1975, which identified 841 Scheduled Castes and 510 Scheduled Tribes. The total percentage of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes combined was found to be 22.5%, with the Scheduled Castes accounting for 15% and the Scheduled Tribes accounting for the remaining 7.5%. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are provided for in many of India's educational programs. Special reservations are also provided for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India, for example, a reservation of 15% of admission in Kendriya Vidyalaya (Central Schools) for Scheduled Castes and another reservation of 7.5% in Kendriya Vidyalaya for Scheduled Tribes. These groups also enjoy reservations in higher education institutions like medical and engineering colleges.
1960Prime Minister John Diefenbaker introduced the first Canadian Bill of Rights.
1960The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved birth control pills.
1960On February 1, 1960, the sit-in movement, which desegregated public accommodation facilities throughout the South, began in Greensboro, North Carolina.
1961Aspira, an education and leadership organization that promotes higher education through advising, college and financial aid information, and mentoring, was formed. A prime mover of Aspira was Antonia Pantoja, a Puerto Rican community activist and educator.
1961Charles Perkins, the first Indigenous university student, was admitted to university in New South Wales in Australia.
1961President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which included a provision that government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” The intent of this executive order was to affirm the government's commitment to equal opportunity for all qualified persons, and to take positive action to strengthen efforts to realize true equal opportunity for all.
1961President John Kennedy established the President's Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman. The commission's 1963 report documents substantial discrimination against women in the workplace and makes specific recommendations for improvement, including fair hiring practices, paid maternity leave, and affordable child care.
1961The National Indian Youth Council was organized in the United States.
1962Illinois became the first U.S. state to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.
1962Commercial air flights between the United States and Cuba ended. Immigration from Cuba to the United States became strictly clandestine.
1963Bayard Rustin, a civil rights and later a gay rights activist, was the chief organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which more than 200,000 people participated. Rustin was also central in organizing early Freedom Rides, advocated for desegregation of the military, and helped the organizers of the Congress on Racial Equality, as well as advocated for nonviolent protest techniques. At this march, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
1963In Abington School District v. Schempp, the U.S. Supreme Court voided a state statute requiring the public readings of 10 verses from the Bible and recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the school day. The Court found that the Bible reading and prayer recitation in public schools violated the Establishment Clause.
1963The Equal Pay Act is a U.S. federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by President John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.
1963The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published. Friedan called it “the problem that has no name” (later to be termed sexism) when she explored the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s. She argued that material comfort, being happily married, and conforming to society's expectations left many women unfulfilled.
1963The term learning disability was coined by Samuel Kirk.
1964–1966President Lyndon B. Johnson began the implementation of a series of domestic programs known as the Great Society. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
1964Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins, by Milton Gordon was published. It became a classic in race relations theory and research.
1964The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs, was a centerpiece of the War on Poverty.
1964The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most comprehensive civil rights bill in American history, was enacted by Congress and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin by federal and state governments as well as some public places. The act included funding for a study that explored the bases of disparities in school achievement. The resulting 1966 Coleman Report concluded that student achievement is more closely associated with variables outside of school than with school variables.
1964Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was enacted. It bars discrimination in employment on the basis of race and sex. This act also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate complaints and impose penalties.
1965A provision in Title III of the Higher Education Act established funding to assist U.S. colleges and universities that attempt to assist first-generation, majority low-income Hispanic students. The federal designation “Hispanic-serving institution” was developed to identify institutions that would qualify to receive this funding.
1965Head Start was established. Its programs emphasize the participation of parents in their children's education. A major goal of Head Start is to give children from low-income communities equal educational opportunities.
1965In Griswold v. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the one remaining state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives by married couples.
1965La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty, San Juan and New York, by Oscar Lewis, was published. It added to the deficit orientation of much of the research concerning Puerto Ricans in the United States.
1965President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which required federal contractors, including institutions of higher education, to take affirmative action to promote the full realization of equal opportunity for women and minorities. Compliance with these regulations included disseminating and enforcing a nondiscrimination policy, establishing a written affirmative action plan, placement goals for women and minorities, and implementing action-oriented programs for accomplishing these goals.
1965Student Action for Aborigines conducted a “freedom ride” around northwest New South Wales, Australia, led by Charles Perkins. Participants protested discrimination against Aborigines.
1965The Council on Interracial Books for Children was founded in New York City.
1965The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), designed by Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel, was the most important educational component of the Great Society. It was enacted by Congress and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It ended a long-standing political taboo by providing significant federal aid to public education, initially allotting more than $1 billion to help schools purchase materials and start special education programs in schools with a high concentration of low-income children. The act established Head Start, which had originally been started by the Office of Economic Opportunity as an 8-week summer program, as a permanent program.
1965The Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was passed by the U.S. Congress. This act, which became effective in 1968, abolished the national origins quota system and liberalized American immigration policy. It allowed for increased immigration from Asia, Africa, and other regions with predominantly non-Christian populations, and began an unprecedented increase in U.S. religious and ethnic diversity. This act also allowed for large-scale “family reunification” immigration and skilled labor migration to the United States.
1965The Social Security Act of 1965 authorized Medicare and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans.
1965A grape strike led by César Chávez and the National Farm Workers Association began in Delano, California, a town in the San Joaquin Valley.
1965Rodolfo “Corkey” Gonzales formed the Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. This important civil rights organization epitomized the Chicano Movement that emerged in the 1960s.
1965The Cuban Refugee Airlift program began. Flights from Cuba to Miami, Florida, were sponsored by the U.S. government. The program was terminated in 1973.
1965With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, Puerto Ricans were no longer required to pass an English literacy test to vote in New York State.
1965–1968A series of race riots occurred in U.S. cities in which African Americans expressed their frustrations and discontent.
1966Burton Blatt's explosive book, a photographic essay titled Christmas in Purgatory, exposed the dire conditions in institutions for individuals with intellectual disabilities and was instrumental in the trend to close these facilities in the United States.
1966The Compton Cafeteria Riots in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco was one of the first riots by transgender people, leading to the development of a network of transgender-related support services.
1966Eliot Wigginton, a high school teacher, began Foxfire magazine, which focuses on the cultures of the Appalachian region in which he was teaching.
1966The Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, was published. It concluded that the social-class composition of the students was a more important factor in student achievement than other school factors. It evoked acid debate and controversy.
1966The first major college basketball team to include five Black players, Texas Western, beat an all-White Kentucky team for the national championship as Kentucky fans waved the Confederate flag during the game.
1966The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded by a group of feminists, including Betty Friedan. The largest women's rights group in the United States, it tries to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, by means of legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations.
1966U.S. welfare recipients of all ages received medical care through the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965, under Title XIX of the Social Security Act of 1965.
1966Stokely Carmichael issued a call for Black Power during a civil rights demonstration in Greenwood, Mississippi.
1967A federal referendum in Australia overwhelmingly approved changes to the federal constitution, giving the federal government responsibility for Aboriginal affairs and including Indigenous Australians in the census.
1967Executive Order 11375 expanded President Lyndon Johnson's affirmative action policy of 1965 to cover discrimination based on gender. It required federal agencies and contractors to take active measures to ensure that women as well as minorities enjoy the same educational and employment opportunities as White males.
1967In June 1967, Israel launched a massive attack against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, destroying their armies and air forces and occupying large areas of their land including the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This major event symbolized the defeat of the Arab nationalism current at the time.
1968–1970In Canada, Africville was destroyed, as the land was appropriated by the city of Halifax, and the Black residents were relocated, mostly to low-cost housing.
1968The U.S. Congress enacted the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, a grant-in-aid program designed to foster innovation and experimentation in the instruction of children for whom English is not a first language.
1968In Green v. County School Board, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects a “freedom of choice” plan that perpetuates segregation in a Southern school district, instead insisting on a plan that “promises realistically to work now.”
1968Intergroup Education: Methods and Materials by Jean D. Grams was published.
1968Intergroup Relations for the Classroom Teacher by Charlotte Epstein was published. It is an example of scholarship on intergroup education during the 1960s.
1968Lloyd Dunn's watershed article, “Special Education for the Mildly Retarded—Is Much of It Justifiable?” published in Exceptional Children, argued that separate classes for students with intellectual disabilities were often unjustified and indefensible.
1968The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that sex-segregated help-wanted ads in newspapers are illegal. This ruling was upheld in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court, opening the way for women to apply for higher-paying jobs that were previously opened only to men.
1968The Losers: A Report on Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools, commissioned by Aspira and written by R. J. Margolis, was a significant publication in the beginning years of attention to this topic.
1968The Navajo Nation established Diné College, the first tribal college in the United States. Since then, the number of tribal colleges and universities has grown to more than 30 in the United States and 1 in Canada.
1968The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin.
1968The United States' longest student strike in history was staged at San Francisco State University to protest against racial discrimination, the Vietnam War, the draft, and “irrelevant” curriculum. The strike resulted in the establishment of the first ethnic studies program in the United States.
1968Title I regulations were enacted that require parents to be involved in decision-making about Title I projects.
1969Arthur Jensen published “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement” in the prestigious Harvard Educational Review. Jensen argued that innate deficiencies in intelligence prevented lasting intellectual gains for students enrolled in Head Start, an early intervention program for low-income children.
1969California became the first state to adopt a no-fault divorce law, which allows couples to divorce by mutual consent. By 1985, every state in the United States had adopted a similar law. Laws were also passed regarding the equal division of common property.
1969Malaysia's “New Economic Policy” created after the 1969 riots identified Bumiputras [= sons of the soil = people of Malay-Muslim origin] as a unique class of people requiring special consideration in all aspects of development, including education, health, housing, and commerce
1969The Stonewall riots, credited as the beginning of the organized gay liberation movement, began when young gays, lesbians, drag queens, and transpeople—many of whom were people of color—refused to be arrested by police harassing a gay bar in the Village (New York City). The uprising, inspired by the civil rights movement, lasted for days and led to the organization of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance. Later, citing racism and sexism within those groups, the Third World Gay Revolution and lesbian feminist groups were formed. The Stonewall riots transformed the gay rights movement from one limited to a small number of activists into a widespread protest for equal rights and acceptance.
1969The National Assessment of Education Progress was administered for the first time in the United States. The NAEP results are publicized as The Nation's Report Card.
1970sThe antiracist educational movement developed in the United Kingdom. It aimed for educational justice and equity by targeting institutional racism and educational disadvantage of visible minorities. Antiracist educators criticized practices and power relationships that perpetuated and legitimized educational systems and societies hierarchically structured by race and ethnicity. They sought to target inequities through a politicized curriculum and teaching about structural, economic, and social conditions that reinforced inequalities.
1970sThe inception of the field of multicultural education as we know it today took place.
1970Eye of the Storm, a film featuring Jane Elliott, was produced. It taught powerful lessons about discrimination and was highly influential.
1970In Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that jobs held by men and women needed to be “substantially equal” but not “identical” to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men.
1970Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, was published. It made more accurate health and medical information accessible to women, empowering them to become engaged in the political aspects of sustaining good health for themselves and their communities.
1970The Child Migrant Education Program was launched in Australia. It provided federal financial assistance to schools for ESL withdrawal classes, ESL teacher training, and language laboratories.
1970The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer was published and became an international bestseller. She argued that the nuclear family is a negative environment for women and that women's sexuality is demeaned by Western society. Girls are feminized from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate and isolate them.
1970Herman Badillo was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress.
1970–1990During this period, the rise of American influence in the Middle East, known as Pax Americana, took place. President Sadat of Egypt and the Saudi royal family served as key allies of the United States. Wars continued to plague the region: In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in an attempt to liberate land they had lost in 1967. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and occupied the south of the country. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again and laid siege to the city of Beirut. Iraq attacked Iran following the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the fall of the Shah's regime.
1971Ms. Magazine was first published as a sample insert in New York magazine; 300,000 copies sold out in 8 days. The first regular issue was published in July 1972. The magazine became the major forum for feminist voices, including the voice of cofounder and editor Gloria Steinem.
1971Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced the Canadian federal Multiculturalism Policy, making Canada the first national government to establish such a policy.
1971The first magnet school in the United States was established in Houston, Texas.
1971The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a busing plan in a major metropolitan school district in the South in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
1971The U.S. Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Company ruled that it is illegal to use intelligence test results to exclude from employment otherwise-satisfactory workers.
1972Districtwide parent advisory councils were required in each LEA (Local Education Agency or District) in the United Kingdom.
1972Expulsion on demand, a policy allowing non-Indigenous parents to veto the enrollment of Aboriginal children in their children's schools, was removed from the Teacher's Handbook in New South Wales, Australia.
1972In Eisenstadt v. Baird the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy includes an unmarried person's right to use contraceptives.
1972Jean Martin's Migrants: Equality and Ideology was published in Australia. It described contemporary attitudes toward migration and was a highly influential publication.
1972Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 by John Higham was published and was widely cited and highly influential.
1972The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. Originally drafted by Alice Paul in 1923, the amendment reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The amendment died in 1982 when it failed to achieve ratification by a minimum of 38 states.
1972The policy statement “No One Model American” was released by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, a watershed moment because it was the first statement to encourage schools and colleges of education to address issues of race and ethnicity in preparing teachers.
1972The Puerto Rican Community and Its Children on the Mainland: A Sourcebook, edited by Francesco Cordasco and Eugene Bucchioni, was among the first book-length treatments concerning Puerto Rican children in U.S. schools.
1972Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. It states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In 2002, it was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in honor of its principal author, Congresswoman Mink.
1972Title XV amended Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to expand coverage of all educational activities and complaints under Title IX alleging sex discrimination. In 1994, the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act was passed to better monitor Title IX compliance in college sports.
1973“Multicultural Training for Student Teachers” by Gloria C. Baker, published in The Journal of Teacher Education, was one of the first journal articles on this topic published in the United States.
1973Al Grassby, newly appointed Minister of Immigration, introduced the policy of multiculturalism in Australia. “Multicultural education” was to replace “migrant” education.
1973As a result of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court established a woman's right to safe and legal abortion, overriding the antiabortion laws of many states.
1973Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1 was the first U.S. Supreme Court decision to recognize the right Latinos had to attend desegregated educational settings. Latinos were placed in the same category as African Americans: “both groups suffer from the same educational inequities when compared with the treatment afforded Anglo students.”
1973Sexism in School and Society by Nancy Frasier and Myra Sadker was published. It was one of the first books to describe how gender bias is manifested at all levels of education.
1973Teaching Ethnic Studies: Concepts and Strategies, edited by James A. Banks and published by the National Council for the Social Studies as its 43rd yearbook, was among the first book-length publications in the teaching of ethnic studies in schools.
1973The Aboriginal Child at School was first published. The journal changed its name to Australian Journal of Indigenous Education in 1996.
1973The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders after years of protest and advocacy by members of the Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis, and the Gay Liberation Front.
1973The Whitlam government removed the last vestiges of the White Australia policy.
1973African Americans were elected mayors in Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and other cities.
1974A special Integrated Education for Disabled Children program was started in 1974 in India, with a focus on primary education.
1974Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly gay American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council.
1974The Aspira Consent Decree, adopted by the New York City Board of Education as the result of a lawsuit initiated by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, mandated transitional bilingual education programs for Spanish-surnamed students with limited proficiency in English.
1974The Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) of the City University of New York was established. A research center that focuses on the study and interpretation of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States, the Centro is dedicated to making this research available and accessible to community organizations, academics, the press, the government, and other stakeholders.
1974The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was enacted in the United States. It prohibits discrimination in consumer credit practices on the basis of sex, race, marital status, religion, national origin, age, or receipt of public assistance.
1974The first edition of Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies by James A. Banks was published. It was the first textbook published in the United States that dealt with teaching ethnic studies in elementary and secondary schools. It was widely used and highly influential and was published in its eighth edition in 2009.
1974Multicultural Education Through Competency-Based Teacher Education was published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. This significant book, which includes a chapter by Asa G. Hilliard—a leading multicultural education theorist at the time—blended the popular notion of competency-based teacher education with multicultural education.
1974The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols that schools should provide students with instruction in their native language. This ruling gave bilingual–bicultural education in the United States a tremendous boost. The ruling recognized that English-language learners have a right to meaningful access to the instructional process under federal civil rights law. Congress responded to the Lau decision by codifying it in the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974.
1974The U.S. Supreme Court handed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) a defeat in the Milliken v. Bradley school desegregation case, concluding that there is no basis for enlisting White suburban districts in a court-ordered plan to desegregate the Detroit school system. Because these suburban districts were not involved in any intentional discrimination, they cannot be forced to participate in a remedial effort.
1975The first radio broadcast of Special Broadcasting Service in community languages began in Australia. SBS TV transmission began in 1980.
1975P.L. 94–142, amendments to the 1974 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, was enacted by the U.S. Congress. This law is the basis for all contemporary special education programs and services.
1975U.S. participation in the Vietnam War had ended (1973), and communist governments took control of Vietnam and Cambodia (Kampuchea). Many Indochinese refugees settled in the United States. Between 1971 and 1978, 110,200 Vietnamese refugees immigrated to the United States.
1976Curriculum Guidelines for Multiethnic Education by James A. Banks, Carlos E. Cortés, Geneva Gay, Ricardo L. Garcia, and Anna S. Ochoa was published by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) as a position statement of the NCSS Board of Directors. A revised edition of the Guidelines was published in 1991.
1976The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality was published. Women spoke about their own sexuality in this unprecedented publication.
1976Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and was responsible for introducing a gay rights ordinance protecting gays and lesbians from being fired from their jobs. Milk also led a successful campaign against Proposition 6, an initiative forbidding homosexual teachers. In 1978, a former city supervisor, Dan White, assassinated Milk.
1976In France, Centres for Training and Information on the Schooling of Children of Migrants were set up and aimed to equip school professionals with the necessary knowledge and pedagogical tools to respond to the specific challenges of schooling the children of migrants.
1976In the United Kingdom, the Race Relations Act 1976 was established to prevent discrimination on the grounds of race, color, nationality, ethnicity, and national origin in the fields of employment, the provision of goods and services, education, and public functions. The act also established the Commission for Racial Equality. It was amended by the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000, which places a positive duty on the local education authorities and on schools to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination.
1976Mass protest of 6,000 schoolchildren in Soweto, South Africa, against discrimination and instruction in Afrikaans (the language of White Dutch descendants) occurred. This became the stimulus for nationwide rioting and unrest, which led to the end of apartheid in 1994.
1976Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future was published by the U.S. Office on Civil Rights.
1976The first marital rape law in the United States was enacted in Nebraska; it made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife.
1977Multicultural Education: Commitments, Issues, and Applications, edited by Carl A. Grant, was published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
1977Pluralism and the American Teacher: Issues and Case Studies, a volume on pluralism and teaching edited by Frank H. Klassen and Donna M. Gollnick, was published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
1977The National Aboriginal Education Committee, a body of Indigenous educators established to advise the Federal Minister for Education of Australia, was established.
1977The U.S. Supreme Court found that due to obstacles in desegregating the schools, the federal court in Detroit could focus on compensatory education remedies as a way to compensate for past discrimination.
1978The new Immigration Act in Canada came into effect. Immigrants were divided into four categories: independents, family, assisted relatives, and humanitarian. A Refugee Status Advisory Committee was created.
1978–1984The Mathematics Workshop Program created by Philip Uri Treisman at the University of California, Berkeley, was designed to help ethnic minority college and university students achieve well in math.
1978A report of the review of post-arrival programs and services for migrants (Galbally report) for the Fraser government resulted in the establishment of a range of adult and child migrant education services, including the Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs and the Multicultural Education Program.
1978The U.S. Congress passed a joint congressional resolution to commemorate Asian American Heritage Week during the first week of May.
1978In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, a closely divided U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a state medical school can consider race as one factor in the admissions process but may not use quotas or set-asides to increase racial diversity in the entering class.
1978New South Wales, a state in Australia, released a Multicultural Education Policy statement.
1978The autobiography My Place by Sally Morgan raised awareness in Australia of the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families and communities.
1978The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education proposed that multicultural education be added to its standards, requiring that institutions in the United States seeking accreditation show evidence that multicultural education was planned for (by 1979) and then provided (by 1981) in all programs of teacher preparation.
1978The Pregnancy Discrimination Act in the United States banned employment discrimination against pregnant women. Under the act, a woman cannot be fired or denied a job or a promotion because she is or may become pregnant, nor can she be forced to take a pregnancy leave if she is willing and able to work.
1978Title I legislation added educational amendments to ensure the participation of parents in the governance of Title I programs.
1979An estimated 75,000 people participated in the National March on Washington, D.C., for Lesbian and Gay Rights. LGBT people and straight allies demanded equal civil rights and urged the passage of protective civil rights legislation.
1979The Ann Arbor Decision settled the case of Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children, et al. v. Ann Arbor School District. The decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan required the school district to identify speakers of African American Varieties of English and to use knowledge of students' language in reading instruction.
1979The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted. The United Nations General Assembly offered an international bill of rights for women, which was passed on September 3, 1981. The United States is the only developed nation that has not ratified the CEDAW.
1980sThe National Educational Association Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus was established in the United States.
1980sAssimilatory and compensatory measures aimed at incorporating migrant children into mainstream society's culture were introduced in several European countries when it became clear that many migrants would remain in the host countries. Eventually these deficit-oriented approaches were critiqued, and the discourse changed from perceiving only migrants as being different to a mutual recognition of difference. As a result of this paradigm shift, intercultural education was aimed at targeting all students rather than just minority students and theories about intercultural learning or intercultural communication and dialogue began to evolve and be applied.
1980Multicultural Teacher Education: Preparing Teacher Educators to Provide Educational Equity, the Report of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Commission on Multicultural Education, edited by Marian Baptiste and Donna Gollnick, was published.
1980The National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education was founded in the United States.
1980The term attention deficit disorder, with or without hyperactivity, was introduced to describe children with what is today called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
1980The 1980 U.S. Census indicated that the population of some ethnic groups in the United States increased dramatically in the decade between 1970 and 1980. Mexicans, Koreans, and Chinese were among the groups whose population increased the most. While the White population increased only 6% between 1970 and 1980, the population of Asian and Pacific Islanders more than doubled (from 1.5 million to 3.5 million), and the Hispanic population increased more than 60%.
1980The Refugee Relief Act of 1980 was enacted. It enabled more refugees to enter the United States.
1981Education in the 80's: Multiethnic Education, edited by James A. Banks, was published by the National Educational Association (NEA) in Washington, D.C. Classroom teachers, who make up the bulk of the membership of NEA, were the primary audience for this publication.
1981Most parental involvement provisions in Title I were eliminated by the Reagan administration.
1981President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1981The first of 16 bills to be offered over the next 3 decades supporting the establishment of English as the official language of the United States was introduced in the U.S. Congress.
1981Asa G. Hilliard, III developed and introduced the African American Baseline Essays in the Portland, Oregon, Public Schools. The essays, written by six different scholars, present Afrocentric perspectives on African history and society.
1982By 1982, 1,045 ethnic (“Saturday”) schools enrolling more than 85,000 students, most of whom were receiving some government assistance, had been established in Australia.
1982In Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court by a 5–4 vote upheld the right of undocumented children to attend public elementary and secondary schools.
1982In New South Wales, Australia, the Aboriginal Education Policy was introduced. It required schools to promote antiracism, implement Aboriginal studies across the curriculum, and to encourage Aboriginal community involvement.
1982The federal government established the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which stated that all Canadian citizens had equal rights to freedom of thought, belief, and religion as well as equal treatment before and under the law.
1982Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was killed in Detroit by two unemployed White men. They mistook him for Japanese and blamed him for the competition that had taken their auto-industry jobs.
1982Wisconsin became the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
1984Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (formerly, Black Issues in Higher Education) launched publication. It is the only source of critical news, information, and insightful commentary on the full range of issues concerning diversity in U.S. higher education.
1984EMILY's List (Early Money Is Like Yeast) was established as a financial network for pro-choice Democratic women running for national political office, and it contributed to an increased number of women elected to Congress.
1984The International Association for Intercultural Education was officially established in London.
1984The National Council for Social Studies in the United States issued a position statement, “Study About Religions in the Social Studies Curriculum.”
1985The policy of sending elite students from Tibet to cities across China for their secondary school education began.
1985James W. S. Walker published the booklet Racial Discrimination in Canada: The Black Experience.
1986The first edition of Comprehensive Multicultural Education: Theory and Practice by Christine C. Bennett was published.
1986English was established as the official language of the State of California when voters approved Proposition 63.
1986In Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that sexual harassment is a form of illegal job discrimination.
1986Multicultural Education in Western Societies, edited by James A. Banks and James Lynch, was published in London. This was one of the first publications to describe the development of multicultural education in a number of Western nations.
1986The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities was founded to champion Hispanic success in U.S. higher education.
1986The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed by the United States Congress and became law. The act imposed severe penalties on employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants, and it gave amnesty to many undocumented immigrants who had been living in the United States since January 1, 1982.
1987“An Analysis of Multicultural Education in the United States,” by Christine E. Sleeter and Carl A. Grant, was published in the Harvard Educational Review. This article described a typology of multicultural education that was widely cited and influential.
1987Hundreds of thousands of activists took part in the National March on Washington to demand that President Ronald Reagan address the AIDS crisis. Although AIDS had been reported first in 1981, it was not until the end of his presidency that Reagan spoke publicly about the epidemic.
1987The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education standards required that professional studies, clinical and field-based experiences, student admissions, and faculty qualifications address issues of diversity in the United States.
1988Arizona established English as the official language of the state.
1988Canada's Multiculturalism Act was passed, legally establishing the multicultural policy and officially recognizing Canada's multicultural heritage. The act recognizes the rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, states that cultural heritage must be preserved and promoted, and English and French remain the only official languages of Canada but other languages can be spoken. It states that all Canadian citizens have equal rights—regardless of any differences they might have and regardless of skin color, religion, country of birth, and ethnic background. It also recognizes the right of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities to keep their cultures, languages, and religious practices.
1988Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally apologized and offered compensation for the wrongful incarceration, seizure of property, and disenfranchisement of Japanese Canadians during World War II.
1988The Safe Schools Coalition was formed to work on behalf of LGBT students in Seattle, Washington. It now extends to national and international advocacy for LGBT students.
1988The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan. The act provided compensation for the Japanese Americans and the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands and the Aleutian Islands for the losses they incurred for being forcibly relocated during World War II.
1989J. J. Fletcher's Clean, Clad & Courteous: A History of Aboriginal Education in New South Wales, was published in Australia.
1989Many changes were made to immigration law in Canada, including a new refugee determination system and the founding of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
1989The first edition of Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks, was published. This widely used textbook in college and university teacher education courses in the United States as well as in other nations was published in its seventh edition in 2010 by John Wiley.
1989The World Wide Web began.
1990sDiscourses on dominance in Europe highlighted the negative impacts of institutional discrimination in schools that were now seen as part of the problem rather than the solution in regard to migrant students' academic underachievement. While theoretical conceptions of intercultural education have changed over time, it appeared that school practices continued to focus on fostering migrant students' integration and second-language acquisition.
1990sIn Europe, there was a steady increase of refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union. The European Union still lacks a common system for asylum and the likelihood that refugees will be granted asylum varies widely from country to country (from less than 5% to more than 70% acceptance rate).
1990sIn South Korea, the government developed programs to integrate North Korean refugee youths into South Korean schools and society. While historically North and South Korea have been unified with a shared culture and language, 60 years of ideological separation has necessitated an integration policy.
1990sIn the wake of increasing immigration, far-right-wing parties gained momentum in many European countries. They tried to cap immigration and stir sentiments against immigrants, asylum seekers, and religious minorities. Among these parties were the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), the Belgian Flemish Block (VB), the Danish People's Party (DPP), the French National Front (FN), the Republican Party (REP), the German People's Union (DVU) and the National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany, the Italian Northern League, National Alliance, the Pim Fortuyn's List (LPF), Liveable Netherlands, the Norway Progress Party, the Portuguese Popular Party, and the Swiss People's Party (SVP).
1990s–presentWith the increasing number of Puerto Rican academics and scholars, the deficit orientation of much of the research on the education of Puerto Ricans began to be challenged.
1990A major review of the literature related to teacher education and diversity by Carl Grant and Walter Secada, “Preparing Teachers for Diversity,” was published in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, a book edited by W. Robert Houston, Martin Harberman, and John Sikula.
1990The U.S. Congress voted to expand the Asian American Heritage Week to the Asian American Heritage Month.
1990The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted by Congress. It is recognized as the world's most comprehensive law regarding the rights of individuals with disabilities.
1990The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network (GLSEN) was founded (initially as GLSTN) by Kevin Jennings and has since supported the growth of LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination policies in schools, gay-straight alliances, and antibullying campaigns. GLSEN regularly surveys students about their experiences with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and gender as well as sponsors the National Day of Silence and No Name-Calling Week.
1990The National Association for Multicultural Education was founded in the United States.
1990The Native American Languages Act was passed by the United States Congress. Congress enacted Public Law 101–477, which recognized the right of Native Americans and tribal councils to promote their languages and to use them in their own affairs. The act repudiated past policies that supported eradicating Native American languages.
1990The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced its findings from research into charges that Harvard University discriminated against Asian American applicants in the admissions process. OCR cleared Harvard of these charges and concluded that although the Asian and White applicants who applied for admissions between the years of 1979 and 1988 were similarly qualified, the lower admission rate for Asian applicants was due to plus factors (legacy and athletics) that tipped in favor of Whites.
1990The Immigration Act of 1990 made some significant changes in immigration law in the United States. It set immigration at 675,000 annually (beginning in 1995) to consist of 480,000 family-sponsored, 140,000 employment-based, and 55,000 “diversity” immigrants. It revised political and ideological grounds for exclusion and deportation.
1990The Religious Harmony Act of 1990 was passed in Singapore. In addition, the constitution protects the rights of the Malay minority as the Indigenous people of Singapore.
1990The state of Texas instituted the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). TAAS is a criterion-referenced test of mathematics and English for elementary, middle, and high school students that carries high-stakes consequences. It was a model for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
1991–1992The U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases—Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Robert L. Dowell and Freeman v. Pitts—that permit federal courts to begin to withdraw from oversight of school desegregation orders by declaring that school districts are unitary, that is, they have remedied the harms of past discrimination, in whole or in part.
1991Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi was published. Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, exposed the anti-feminist propaganda disseminated by conservative think tanks and media. The book earned the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.
1991Created by the New York–based Visual AIDS, the red ribbon is adopted as a symbol of awareness and compassion for those living with HIV/AIDS.
1991James A. Banks's “Dimensions of Multicultural Education” were first published in Multicultural Leader. They were subsequently included in several publications and are available in the 2004 edition of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education.
1991Minnesota became the first state in the United States to permit charter schools.
1991Reg Whitaker authored the booklet Canadian Immigration Policy Since Confederation, published in Ottawa, Ontario, by the Canadian Historical Association.
1991The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, by Naomi Wolf, was published. The author argues that “beauty” is socially constructed and that an often unattainable standard of beauty serves as a continuing punishment of women both physically and psychologically.
1991The breakdown of the Soviet Union and former socialist satellite states ended the Cold War and led to political turmoil and a restructuring of Europe including the reunification of Germany. Ethnic conflicts arose in Yugoslavia, and between 1991 and 1995 a series of wars eventually resulted in new sovereign territories in the Balkans. Aside from many casualties, the wars caused large numbers of refugees to leave their homelands to seek asylum in other European countries.
1991The National Association for Multicultural Education held its first conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1991The Pluralism Project was established at Harvard University to map the locations of diverse religious communities in the United States.
1991The Teaching Tolerance project was established by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
1992The Center for Multicultural Education was established at the University of Washington, Seattle, by James A. Banks, who became its director. It was one of the first centers established at a major research university that focused on diversity issues in schools, colleges, and universities. The center focuses on research projects and activities designed to improve practice related to equity issues, intergroup relations, and the academic achievement of all students.
1992India's minorities, especially the ones considered “educationally backward” by the government, are provided for in the 1992 amendment of the Indian National Policy on Education. The government initiated the Scheme of Area Intensive Programme for Educationally Backward Minorities and Scheme of Financial Assistance or Modernisation of Madrasa Education as part of its revised Programme of Action (1992).
1992Asian American Heritage Month in the United States was permanently designated as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.
1992Augie Fleras and Jean L. Elliott published The Challenge of Diversity: Multiculturalism in Canada.
1992In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the validity of a woman's right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. The case successfully challenged Pennsylvania's 1989 Abortion Control Act, which sought to reinstate restrictions previously ruled unconstitutional.
1992Joyce Epstein's “Framework of Six Types of Family Involvement in School” was published. It was widely disseminated and become highly influential.
1992Australian Prime Minister Keating's Redfern address introduced the International Year of Indigenous People. On behalf of “White” Australia, Keating accepted responsibility for much of the disadvantage encountered by Indigenous Australians. “It was we who did the dispossessing,” he said.
1992Research and Multicultural Education: From Margins to the Mainstream, edited by Carl A. Grant, was published. It was widely disseminated and cited.
1992The Asia Education Foundation was established to help young Australians in the 21st century to gain the knowledge, skills, and understandings of the countries and cultures of Asia through their schooling.
1992The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was adopted under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe (25 ratifications/accessions as of 2011).
1992The first edition of Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Education by Sonia Nieto was published. It defined multicultural education with seven characteristics and within a sociopolitical context. The sixth edition of this book was published in2012.
1992The High Court of Australia recognized the legal validity of Native title in the Mabo case, overturning 2 centuries of terra nullius, which is territory not annexed to any recognized nation.
1992The Keating government introduced mandatory detention for asylum seekers in Australia.
1992The Treaty on European Union (TEU) (also referred to as Treaty of Maastricht) was signed by 12 member countries of the European Community. It comprises the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU) and fosters European economic, political, social, and monetary integration. The treaty states that “Every person holding the nationality of a Member State of the European Union is, as a result, a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union supplements national citizenship without replacing it. It is made up of a set of fundamental rights and obligations enshrined in the EC Treaty among which it is worth underlining the right not to be discriminated on the basis of the nationality.”
1993A highly influential article that reviewed research related to his dimensions of multicultural education was published by James A. Banks in an AERA publication edited by Linda Darling-Hammond: “Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice,” Review of Research in Education (Vol. 19, pp. 3–49). Banks received the AERA Research Review Award for this article. He revised it for publication as the first chapter in the first edition of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, published in 1995.
1993Multicultural Education: The State of the Art National Study, edited by Keith A. McLeod, was published by the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers.
1993The “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy was instituted for the U.S. military, permitting gays to serve in the military but banning homosexual activity. President Clinton's original intention to revoke the prohibition against gays in the military was met with stiff opposition. This compromise, which led to the discharge of thousands of men and women in the armed forces, was the result.
1993The European Journal of Inter cultural Studies, published by Trentham Books, became the official journal of the Intercultural Association for Multicultural Education.
1994A major edited volume on knowledge for teaching diverse populations, Teaching Diverse Populations: Formulating a Knowledge Base edited by Etta R. Hollins, Joyce E. King, and Warren C. Hayman, was published.
1994Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls, by Myra Sadker and David Sadker, was published. It was the first mass market book detailing schools' subtle and not-so-subtle practices and policies that promote gender bias and limit the futures of both girls and boys.
1994The first edition of Making Choices for Multicultural Education: Five Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender, by Christine E. Sleeter and Carl A. Grant, was published.
1994The Dreamkeepers by Gloria Ladson-Billings was published. It was highly influential in disseminating the theory of culturally responsive pedagogy, which she called “culturally relevant pedagogy.”
1994The Improving America's Schools Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It expanded attention to the need for research-based programs of family involvement in schools.
1994The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education standards required that professional studies, clinical and field-based experiences, student admissions, and faculty qualifications address issues of diversity.
1994Nativistic sentiments throughout the United States were epitomized by the passage of Proposition 197 in California. This proposition denied undocumented workers and their children schooling and nonemergency medical care.
1994The Violence Against Women Act tightened federal penalties for sex offenders, funded services for victims of rape and domestic violence, and provided for special training of police officers.
1995Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture by Carl E. James was published in Ontario, Canada.
1995Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GPAC) was founded in the United States by Riki Wilchins to organize groups working to support gender-diverse people in schools, employment, and law. GPAC linked sexuality, gender identity, race, and class together in its analysis of how bias operated, as well as organized lobbying days for transgender rights.
1995The first edition of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks, was published by Macmillan in New York. A revised second edition of the handbook was published in 2004 by Jossey-Bass in San Francisco. The handbook became the definitive source for understanding the history, parameters, theories, and policies in the field of multicultural education.
1995Kogila A. Moodley published the chapter “Multicultural Education in Canada: Historical Development and Current Status” in the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.
1995Publication of “An Analysis of the Critiques of Multicultural Education” by Christine A. Sleeter in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.
1995A major review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education by Donna M. Gollnick, “National and State Initiatives for Multicultural Education,” was published in the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.
1995Another major review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education by Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Multicultural Teacher Education: Research, Practice, and Policy,” was published in the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.
1995The Council of Europe ran a European Youth Campaign titled “All Different—All Equal” to reinforce the fight against racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and intolerance. A new Campaign for Diversity, Human Rights and Participation, based upon the same slogan and using the same successful logo, ran in the period2006–2007.
1995The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities was signed in February 1995 by 22 member-states of the Council of Europe (39 ratifications/accessions as of 2011).
1995The U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts by a federal judge to address past segregation in the Kansas City, Missouri, schools by ordering a magnet program that would attract students from nearby suburbs and would incur substantial costs to improve teacher quality and capital facilities. The Court also rejected the judge's efforts to rely on achievement scores in determining whether the past harms of discrimination persist.
1995The World Bank established the African Virtual University (satellite-based distance education program for sub-Saharan Africa). It is now based in Nairobi, Kenya.
1996California citizens voted 54% to 46% to amend the California Constitution through Proposition 209. The proposition prohibits public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, which effectively ended affirmative action practices of admissions, tutoring, mentoring, outreach, and recruitment of women and minorities in California universities.
1996The Free Compulsory and Universal Basic Education Programme developed by the Ghanaian Ministry of Education was designed to provide all Ghanaian children with 9 years of free compulsory education.
1996George J. Sefa Dei published the book Anti-Racism Education: Theory and Practice in Halifax, Canada.
1996In United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that the all-male Virginia Military School had to admit women in order to continue receiving public funding. It stated that creating a separate, all-female school would not suffice.
1996Multicultural Education: Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by James A. Banks, was published by Teachers College Press. It is a landmark publication in the history of multicultural education and was the first book published in the Multicultural Education Series edited by James A. Banks.
1996Pauline Hanson's maiden speech in the Australian Federal Parliament (“we are being overrun with Asians”) set the tone for a reaction against multicultural policies and began to challenge the political consensus on refugees in Canada and Australia.
1996President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law. The law defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and that no state is required to recognize an out-of-state same-sex marriage.
1996A major review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education by Kenneth M. Zeichner and Karen Hoeft, “Teacher Socialization for Cultural Diversity,” was published in the second edition of the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, edited by John P. Sikula, Thomas Buttery, and Edith Guyton.
1996South Africa spent two and one-half times more on a White student's education than on a Black student's education. This was a move toward, but not yet the achievement of, racial parity in education.
1996The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) was set up as a statutory body to implement antidiscrimination legislation in Hong Kong. The EOC is responsible for the implementation of the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, the Disability Discrimination Ordinance, the Family Status Discrimination Ordinance, and the Race Discrimination Ordinance (“the Legislation”). The EOC's stated mission is “to create a pluralistic and inclusive society free of discrimination where there is no barrier to equal opportunities.”
1996The National Network of Partnership Schools was established at Johns Hopkins University to help districts and schools develop research-based programs related to family and community involvement.
1996The Oakland, California, school board passed a resolution establishing Ebonics (African American English) as a language distinct from standard English and the primary dialect of Black children. The resolution advocated the use of Ebonics as a bridge to standard English in instruction and provoked a national debate on the parallels between Ebonics and nonstandard varieties of English, the status of Ebonics as a dialect of English, and the legitimacy of its use in instruction.
1996The Teachers College Press “Multicultural Education Series” began, edited by James A. Banks. Forty-six books were published in the series between 1996 and 2011. The series continues with books in various stages of development.
1996The U.S. Department of Education, under President Bill Clinton, issued “Federal Guidelines for Religious Expression in Public Schools.”
1996Welfare reform legislation was passed during President Clinton's administration. It is known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The law ended federal entitlement to assistance.
1997The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) was established, with its seat in Vienna, Austria. The establishment of the Centre was a decision of the Representatives of the Governments of the EU member-states of June 2, 1997. Since its establishment, the EUMC has released annual reports on racism and xenophobia in the EU member-states and a number of special publications related to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and discrimination against Roma and Travellers.
1997An important volume on knowledge for teaching diverse populations was published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and edited by Jacqueline Jordan Irvine: Critical Knowledge for Diverse Teachers and Learners.
1997Articles 25 and 39 of the Basic Law were enacted. The Hong Kong Basic Law was the constitutional document for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and came into effect on July 1, 1997. It includes provisions setting out the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents, including provisions related to diversity in Hong Kong.
1997A widely disseminated edited volume on teacher education and cultural diversity was published by Teachers College Press: Joyce Elaine King, Etta R. Hollins, and Warren C. Hayman (Editors), Preparing Teachers for Cultural Diversity.
1997The Children's Empowerment Zone in a 24-block area of Harlem, New York, was established. It is generally known as the Harlem Children's Zone; Geoffrey Canada was the president and CEO in 2011.
1997The Coalition for Community Schools was established in the United States at the Institute for Educational Leadership to improve student learning and to work for the development of stronger families and healthier communities by offering a diverse range of support and opportunities.
1997The European Commission announced 1997 as the European Year Against Racism.
1997The European Network Against Racism, a network of European NGOs working to combat racism in all EU member-states, held its constitutive conference. As of 2011 the network consisted of more than 700 NGOs.
1997The Runnymede Trust, the United Kingdom's leading independent race equality think tank, founded in 1968, published the report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All and defined Islamophobia as the “dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, the fear and dislike of all Muslims.”
1997In the United States, under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) replaced the welfare programs known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. TANF is administered as a block grant that provides states, territories, and tribes federal funds each year. These funds cover benefits, administrative expenses, and services targeted to needy families.
1998Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., called on the civil rights community to join the struggle against homophobia. She was criticized by some members of the Black civil rights movement for comparing civil rights to gay rights.
1998Proposition 227, an antibilingual education ballot initiative, was passed by voters in California by a 61%-to-31% margin. The act required all instruction in the state to be carried out in English.
1998The Arizona English-only amendment to the state constitution was declared unconstitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court, which stated that it interfered with non-English speakers' access to government.
1998The European Commission funded a 2-year comparative research project with the title “Immigration as a Challenge for Settlement Policies and Education: Evaluation Studies for Cross-Cultural Teacher Training,” which concluded with two main recommendations relevant across the European Community: (1) “A concerted effort needs to be made to ensure that the regulations governing the training of all teachers should be amended to include knowledge and skills in multicultural teaching” and (2) “Concerted efforts need to be made within the European Community to search for commonly acceptable standards for teacher training in order to equip teachers with the multicultural competencies required to function effectively in culturally diverse environments.”
1999Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty (EC Treaty) became effective on May 1, 1999. It provides the European Union with a legal basis to take action to combat discrimination on grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, or sexual orientation. Two draft directives propose a minimum standard of legal protection against discrimination throughout the European Union and an Action Programme to combat discrimination.
1999An important review of the literature related to teacher education and diversity/multicultural education was published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA): Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Preparing Teachers for Diverse Student Populations: A Critical Race Theory Perspective.” In Ashgar Iran-Nejad and David Pearson (Editors), Review of Research in Education (Vol. 24, pp. 211–248).
1999The Black Alliance for Educational Options in the United States had its first organizational meeting.
1999The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kolstad v. American Dental Association that a woman can sue for punitive damages for sex discrimination if the antidiscrimination law was violated with malice or indifference to the law, even if that conduct was not especially severe.
2000Executive Order 13166 was signed by President Bill Clinton. It requires any entity receiving federal monies (e.g., physicians, hospitals) to provide services in languages other than English.
2000Modesto City Schools in Modesto, California, was the first school district in the United States to require that all ninth-grade students take a world religion course.
2000Proposition 203, an antibilingual education initiative act, was passed by 63% of the voters in Arizona on November 7.
2000A major review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education was published in an AERA journal: Gretchen McAllister and Jacqueline J. Irvine, “Cultural Competency and Multicultural Teacher Education,” Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 3–24.
2000An important review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education was published in an AERA journal: Lois Weiner, “Research in the 90s: Implications for Urban Teacher Preparation,” Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 369–406.
2000An influential book by Geneva Gay was published by Teachers College Press: Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. A second edition of this book was published in 2010.
2000The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union proclaimed on December 7, 2000, by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, and the European Commission enshrined political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law.
2000The European Journal of Inter cultural Studies was renamed Inter cultural Education. The journal was published by Carfax, now a part of Taylor and Francis.
2000The Family Involvement Network of Educators was established by the Harvard Family Research Group.
2000The UN Millennium Development Goals/Education for All (Dakar Forum) was established. The goal was to achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015. As a benchmark, in 1999 58% of sub-Saharan primary-age children were enrolled in school.
2000Vermont became the first state in the United States to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples. The law states that these “couples would be entitled to the same benefits, privileges, and responsibilities as spouses.” It stops short of referring to same-sex unions as marriage, which the state defines as heterosexual.
2000The 2000 U.S. Census indicated that ethnic groups of color made up about 29.4% of the U.S. population.
2000–2002The September 11, 2001, attacks led to a new focus on the Middle East region. The United Nations Development Programme issued a number of important reports on the status of education and knowledge in the Arab world. Headed by well-known Egyptian sociologist Nader Fergany, a team of Arab scholars dissected their own societies and concluded that they lagged far behind the rest of the world according to all indicators. The reports highlighted lack of basic freedoms, poor investment in education, gender discrimination, and widespread corruption as the main culprits.
2001A textbook, School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools by Joyce L. Epstein, was published. Its aim was to increase the preservice and advanced education of teachers, principals, and other educational professionals concerning their responsibility for developing partnership programs. A second edition of this book was published in 2011.
2001A comprehensive review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education was published in an AERA publication: Christine E. Sleeter, “Epistemological Diversity in Research on Preservice Teacher Preparation for Historically Underserved Children.” In Walter Secada (Editor), Review of Research in Education (Vol. 25, pp. 209–250).
2001An influential research report developed by a consensus panel was published by the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle: Diversity Within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society, by James A. Banks, Peter Cookson, Geneva Gay, Willis D. Hawley, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Sonia Nieto, Janet Ward Schofield, and Walter G. Stephen.
2001The attacks of September 11, 2001, in which almost 3,000 people were killed by terrorists claiming to be motivated by Islam, increased the “backlash” attacks and other incidents of religious discrimination against Arab Americans, South Asian Americans, and other groups, regardless of actual religious affiliation. President George W. Bush spoke out against these attacks and appealed to Americans to treat fellow citizens fairly.
2001The First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tennessee, published Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Schools. The authors of this publication are Charles C. Haynes and Oliver Thomas. John Ferguson is its associate editor.
2001The Howard government launched the controversial “Pacific solution” to discourage “illegal” refugees arriving in boats from seeking sanctuary in Australia. More than 1,000 asylum seekers were incarcerated in Nauru or Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
2001The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education included diversity as one of six major standards, adding attention to sexual orientation and exceptionalities; social justice was used as an example in the definition of dispositions. Standard 4 states, “The unit designs, implements, and evaluates curriculum and experiences for candidates to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. These experiences include working with diverse higher education and school faculty, diverse candidates, and diverse students in P–12 schools.”
2001Title I in the No Child Left Behind Act added requirements for states, districts, and schools to develop research-based leadership and programs that would facilitate the involvement of parents.
2002A significant book on the education of teachers for diversity was published by the State University of New York Press in Albany: Anna Maria Villegas and Tamara Lucas, Educating Culturally Responsive Teachers: A Coherent Approach.
2002The American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education's Committee on Multicultural Education published Educators' Preparation for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: A Call to Action (March 2002).
2002The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed by the U.S. Congress in 2001 and enacted in 2002. NCLB requires annual testing in mathematics, English-language arts, and science of U.S. public school students; the reporting of test results disaggregated by race, poverty, disability, and English-language learner status; and the use of test results to sanction schools and districts.
2003In Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can be sued in federal court for violations of the Family Leave Medical Act, the federal law that allows covered employees to take extended time away from work to handle certain family or medical matters.
2003In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of race as a factor in holistic review of applicants to a public law school. In a companion case, the justices rejected mechanistic approaches that attach a fixed weight to race when evaluating applicants for admission to a public university's undergraduate program.
2003In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court found sodomy laws between consenting adults unconstitutional. According to Justice Kennedy's decision for the majority, “It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.”
2003Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage, becoming the first state to take this action.
2003The Dublin Regulation (previously the Dublin Convention) was adopted. This European Union law determines responsibility for asylum claims and provides for the transfer of asylum seekers to that member-state through which they first entered the EU. The law came into effect in 2008.
2003The Treaty of Nice became effective on February 1, 2003. It reinforces article 13 of the European Community Treaty that now provides for the adoption of incentive measures countering discrimination to be adopted by the EU Council of Ministers by qualified majority voting.
2004The Indian parliament allowed an act that enabled minority education establishments to seek university affiliations if they passed the required norms.
2004Improving Multicultural Education: Lessons From the Intercultural Education Movement by Cherry A. McGee Banks, was published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
2004In Supplementary Education: The Hidden Curriculum of High Academic Achievement, edited by Edmund W. Gordon, Beatrice L. Bridglall, and Aundra Saa Meroe, the editors and contributors introduced the concept of “supplementary education” as a vehicle that can be used to improve the academic achievement of learners from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups.
2004A comprehensive review of the literature related to teacher education and multicultural education, “Multicultural Teacher Education: Research, Practice and Policy” by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Danne Davis, and Kim Fries, was published in the second edition of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks.
2004A significant book on teacher education and race, diversity, and social justice was published in the Multicultural Education Series by Teachers College Press in New York: Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Walking the Road: Race, Diversity, and Social Justice in Teacher Education.
2004The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act and its regulations preserved and extended the rights of children and youth with disabilities (birth–22) established in earlier legislation, aligned key rights with the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and created an option for using funds for early intervening services for students at risk for school failure.
2004The report Migrants, Minorities and Education, by Mikael Luciak, was published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which is located in Vienna, Austria. This reports documents discrimination and integration in 15 member-states of the European Union.
2005An influential and widely disseminated research consensus report was published by the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle: Democracy and Diversity: Principles and Concepts for Educating Citizens in a Global Age. The report was written by James A. Banks, Cherry A. McGee Banks, Carlos E. Cortés, Carole H. Hahn, Merry M. Merryfield, Kogila A. Moodley, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Audrey Osler, Caryn Park, and Walter C. Parker.
2005In Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title IX—which prohibits discrimination based on sex—also inherently prohibits disciplining an individual for complaining about sex-based discrimination. It further held that this is the case even when the person complaining is not among those being discriminated against.
2005Canada became the fourth nation in the world to officially recognize same-sex marriage.
2005An important chapter on teacher education and disability was published in a book edited by Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Kenneth M. Zeichner, Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education: Marleen C. Pugach's “Research on Preparing General Education Teachers to Work With Students With Disabilities.”
2005Michaëlle Jean became the first Black Governor General of Canada.
2005A review of the literature related to teacher education and diversity was published in the AERA–edited volume on teacher education: Etta R. Hollins and Maria Torres Guzman, “Research on Preparing Teachers for Diverse Populations,” in Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education, edited by Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Kenneth M. Zeichner.
2005The Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005–2015, an initiative adopted by eight countries (12 countries as of 2011) in Central and Southeast Europe, and supported by the international community, represented the first cooperative effort to improve the socioeconomic status and social inclusion of Roma. The Roma Education Fund, a central component of the initiative, aims to expand educational opportunities for Romani communities.
2005The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at External Borders (Frontex) was established with headquarters in Warsaw. It aims to ensure the security of the European Union and to coordinate activities of border guards on Europe's external frontiers. The term Fortress Europe became a pejorative description of the political efforts to make (illegal) immigration into the European Union more difficult.
2005The Harvard Family Research Project introduced the concept of “complementary learning” to focus on extended learning opportunities in after-school programs.
2005UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (from Ghana) encouraged six U.S.-based foundations to commit $200 million to support universities in seven African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda).
2006Of the Australian population, 1.7% were Muslim, and they operated more than 27 Islamic schools and colleges.
2006Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized for the Canadian government's imposing a head tax on Chinese immigrants in the early 1900s.
2006The report Where Immigrant Students Succeed: A Comparative Review of Performance and Engagement in PISA 2003 was published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The authors of the report are Petra Stanat and Gayle Christensen. OECD was established in 1961; it is headquartered in Paris, France.
2006The U.S. Supreme Court, with a 5–4 ruling, upheld the ban on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law passed in 2003 that was the first to ban a specific type of abortion procedure.
2006The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Guidelines on Intercultural Education were published. They address key issues and concepts concerning intercultural education and aim to guide future intercultural activities and policy making.
2006The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established the Basic Education for Africa Program. This program focused on lower secondary and post-primary vocational programs and more equitable and inclusive education at early childhood and primary school levels. (Goal: to guarantee 8–10 years of education for each child in Africa.)
2007An influential research consensus report, Learning In and Out of School in Diverse Environments: Life-Long, Life-Wide, and Life-Deep, was published jointly by the LIFE Center and the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. The report was written by James A. Banks, Kathryn H. Au, Arnetha F. Ball, Philip Bell, Edmund W. Gordon, Kris Gutiérrez, Shirley Brice Heath, Carol D. Lee, Yuhshi Lee, Jabari Mahiri, Na'ilah Nasir, Guadalupe Valdés, and Min Zhou.
2007A major edited volume on language and culture issues in teacher education was published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Committee on Multicultural Education: Language, Culture and Community in Teacher Education, edited by Maria Estela Brisk.
2007Folded into the College Cost Reduction and Access Act was a provision that created a federal designation for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)–serving institutions. This provision made modest funds available for more than 2 years for eligible institutions to serve AAPI students.
2007Paul R. Carr and Darren E. Lund authored the first book about White privilege in Canada, The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education.
2007The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), an advisory body of the European Union, was established by a legal act of the European Union and is based in Vienna, Austria. It is the successor of the former European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.
2007The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education Standards added attention to linguistic diversity; social justice was removed from the definition of dispositions.
2007The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill ensuring equal rights in the workplace for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals.
2007Through the accession of new countries, the European Union (EU) grew to 27 member-states.
2007Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching About Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools was published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
2008Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized for Indian Residential Schools, recognizing that the consequences of these schools were profoundly negative, and the policy that supported them has had a lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage, and language.
2008Prime Minister Rudd apologizes to the “stolen generations” on behalf of the Australian people. The “stolen generations” refer to the Australian Aborigines who were taken from their homes and forced to live in White families or in state institutions.
2008According to Eurostat, about 31 million non-nationals lived on the territory of the European Union member-states, representing 6.2% of the total EU population, including 11.3 million citizens of another EU member-state, 6 million people from non-EU European countries, 4.7 million from African countries, and 3.7 million from the Asian continent.
2008Progress was made toward UN Millennium and Education for All goals. By 2008, 76% of sub-Saharan primary-age children were enrolled in school.
2008An entire section on diversity was published in the third edition of the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts, edited by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Sharon Feiman Nemser, D. John McIntyre, and Kelly Demers.
2008The Council of Europe issued the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, which promotes respect for cultural diversity.
2008The European Commission announced 2008 as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
2008The European Commission issued a Green Paper, Migration and Mobility: Challenges and Opportunities for EU Education Systems. It noted the leading role of schools in creating an inclusive society. The paper's recommendations, based on its consultation process, were supported by the Council of Ministers in November 2009.
2008The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education Standards (2008 edition) Standard 4, defined diversity as “the unit designs, implements, and evaluates curriculum and provides experiences for candidates to acquire and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions necessary to help all students learn. Assessments indicate that candidates can demonstrate and apply proficiencies related to diversity. Experiences provided for candidates include working with diverse populations, including higher education and P–12 school faculty, candidates, and students in P–12 schools.”
2008The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Thematic Reviews on Migrant Education were launched in January 2008 to support policy development by providing in-depth analysis of successful approaches to migrant education. Full country background reports are provided by the six countries participating in the policy review: Austria, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. They outline national approaches to migrant education, providing information on school policies and practices, government policies and approaches, the role of the community, and recent national data and research evidence.
2009The Handbook of Social Justice in Education, edited by William Ayers, Theresa Quinn, and David Stoval, was published.
2009The Matthew Shepard Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama. The measure expands the 1969 U.S. Federal Hate Crime Law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
2009The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks, heralded the recognition of multicultural education as a global movement. This volume is the first authoritative reference work to provide a truly comprehensive international description and analysis of multicultural education around the world. It is organized around key concepts and uses case studies from various nations in different parts of the world to exemplify and illustrate the concepts.
2009The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. It amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not at the date of the most recent paycheck, as a lower court had ruled.
2010According to the American Community Survey, an estimated 4.2 million Puerto Ricans resided in the United States, surpassing the population of 3.8 million on the island.
2010President Barack Obama signed Rosa's Law, federal legislation that changes all federal references from the term mental retardation, a phrase that often carries a derogatory connotation, to the term intellectual disability.
2010The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published the report Educating Teachers for Diversity: Meeting the Challenge. It explores concepts underlying diversity in various contexts, how to attract and retain more diverse student teachers, how best to educate teacher educators, and it examines classroom practices and principles in a number of national contexts.
2010The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lower court's efforts to address funding concerns under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act as a means to ensure that “appropriate action” is taken to meet the needs of English-language learners. The Court concluded that the act “does not necessarily require any particular level of funding.”
2010–2012A wave of rebellions, dubbed Arab Spring, swept the Middle East region beginning with the toppling of the dictatorship in Tunisia, followed by the ousting of the Egyptian and Libyan dictators. The young rebels called for basic freedoms and a move toward democracy and accountability.
2011The “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” law was repealed by the U.S. Congress. The policy had allowed gays and lesbians to serve in the military only if they kept their sexual orientation a secret.
2011Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, released a letter supporting gay-straight alliances and encouraging school districts to go beyond the “bare minimum” in supporting LGBT and gender nonconforming students.
2011HR 997, the English Language Unity Act of 2011, was introduced in the 112th Congress in March 2011 by Representative Steven King. The introduction of this bill continued the ongoing efforts of U.S. English supporters to declare English as the official language of the United States. It seeks to establish a uniform English-language rule for naturalization and to avoid “misconstructions of the English language texts of the laws of the United States.” The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution.
2011President Barack Obama stated that his administration will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans the recognition of same-sex marriage.
2011Results from the National Assessment of Education Progress civics examination revealed that few American students understand the structure, laws, or influence of the U.S. government.
2011Studying Diversity in Teacher Education, edited by Arnetha F. Ball and Cynthia A. Tyson, was published by the American Educational Research Association.
2012The Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education, edited by James A. Banks, was published by SAGE. With about 700 signed entries with cross-references and recommended readings, the Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (four volumes, in both print and electronic formats) presents research and statistics, case studies, and best practices, policies, and programs at pre- and postsecondary levels. Diversity is a worldwide phenomenon, and while most of the entries in the encyclopedia focus on the United States, diversity issues and developments in nations around the world, including the United States, are intricately connected. Consequently, to illuminate the many aspects of diversity, the volumes contain entries from different nations in the world in order to illuminate the myriad aspects of diversity.
Note: Some of the items in this chronology were adapted with the permission of the author and publisher from James A. Banks, Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies (8th edition). Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2009, pages 477–484. Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
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