If the Russians began the space age with the Sputnik satellite, the United States scores a major first with the first manned moon landing in 1969 of the Apollo spacecraft. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963. He is succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson. Under Johnson's term, American involvement in the Vietnam War grows. The Democrat Party looses power in 1969 to the Republicans led by Richard Nixon. Nixon is forced to resign in disgrace in 1973 as a result of the Watergate Scandal.

Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, marks a major turning point in the struggle of women for equal rights, what becomes commonly called "feminism".

The 1964 Civil Rights Bill was aimed to bring about equality for African-Americans, but racial discrimination and intolerance continued. Malcolm X, a former leader of the Nation of Islam, a militant Islamic Black rights movement, renounces violence and is assassinated by former supporters in February 1965. In 1965 and '66 racial unrest leads to huge riots in many American cities. The worst are the Watts Riots in Los Angeles lasting five days , August 15-20, 1965. Civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, is assassinated in 1968. King advocated non-violent action to end racial discrimination.

The Hippie movement is a loosely organized protest movement of the children of the Baby Boom Generation against the values of their parents. Hippies popularized long hair for men, advocated free love, use of narcotics and communal living. This time period also saw the rise of mass protests by young people against American involvement in the Vietnam War, although most were not true "hippies". Mass movements to save the environment from industrial and chemical pollution also grew in importance. It is said that in the 20th century, the world has not seen as many animal and plant species go extinct since the end of the dinosaur age.

Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in the Sioux Pine Ridge reservation, site of a terrible massacre almost 100 years before, is the scene of another conflict between the American government and native peoples in 1975, putting the Indian rights movement into focus. Complaints of police harassment by the Pine Ridge Sioux are ignored and lead to a shoot out between less than 30 natives (men, women and children) and more than 100 FBI, leading to the death of one native and two FBI agents. Indian rights leader Leonard Peltier is arrested in connection with the shooting, but even after it is admitted that it is unknown who shot the FBI agents, Peltier is still held in jail to this day.

The Russian Kasimir Malevich and the Dutchman Piet Mondrian are among the most important pioneers in geometric abstract art. Mondrian was among many artists who fled Europe to the USA to escape the Nazi threat. These included fellow Dutchman De Kooning and the German Max Ernst. With these influences, American art saw the rise of what was called Abstract Expressionism. It is impossible to estimate how much they affected American art, but the fact remains that in the 1940s and '50s, for the first time, American artists became internationally important with their new vision. Jackson Pollock became one of the most important American painters after 1940. A new generation of artists in the 1960s, led by Andy Warhol, was called the Pop Art movement.

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