1955
A treaty between the former WW II Allies and Austria treats Austria as a liberated nation and not a defeated one. Austria receives independence, and the four-power occupation is terminated.
1955
U.S. Supreme Court orders school boards to draw up desegregation procedures "with all deliberate speed." In accordance with Supreme Court edicts, the Interstate Commerce Commission outlaw segregated buses and waiting rooms for interstate passengers, but many communities ignore the order.
1955
While such states as Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and parts of Texas desegregate schools with minimal fuss, states in the Deep South dig in to fight. Georgia's Board of Education adopts a resolution revoking the license of any teacher who teaches integrated classes. Mississippi repeals its compulsory school attendance law and establishes a branch of government for the sole purpose of maintaining segregation. White Citizens Councils in
Mississippi initiate economic pressures against blacks who try to register to vote, while more extreme groups resort to direct terror.
1955
The Eisenhower administration continues to discourage civil rights legislation. The House of Representatives defeats attempts by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. to deny funds to segregated schools.
1955
The Metcalf-Baker Law is passed in New York State. It forbids discrimination in housing assisted by FHA or Veterans Administration funds. Robert Weaver is appointed State Rent Commissioner.
1955
Walter White, head of the NAACP since 1931, dies in New York City and is succeeded by Roy Wilkins. Marian Anderson becomes the first black to sing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, appearing in Verdi's The Masked Ball.
1955
Saddam Hussein enrolls at secondary school in Baghdad.
1955 April 12
The Salk vaccine against polio is declared safe and effective.
1955 April 18
Albert Einstein, the German-born American theoretical physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, dies at the age of 76. His specific and general theories of relativity revolutionized modern thought on the nature of space and time and formed a theoretical base for the exploitation of atomic energy.
1955 May 5
The Allies lift controls on Germany’s political and economic development almost ten years to the day after the end of WWII in Europe.
1955 May 14
The Warsaw Pact is signed by representatives of the Soviet Union and seven other Communist bloc countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
1955 June 16
Pope Pius XII excommunicates Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, a ban that will be lifted eight years later.
1955 August 28
Emmett Till, a black teen-ager from Chicago, is abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he supposedly whistled at a white woman. He is found murdered three days later.
1955 November 9
The UN disapproves of South Africa's policy of apartheid politics.
1955 December
Martin Luther King is chosen to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, an organization formed by the black community to lead a boycott of segregated city buses. Earlier that year he had received his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University.
1955 December 1
ROSA PARKS: In Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Rosa Parks takes a seat in the front of a Cleveland Avenue bus, refuses to surrender it to a white man, and is arrested. She quickly become a symbol for all the injustices blacks are forced to live with on a daily basis.
1955 December 5
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. urges Montgomery's black community to boycott the buses as a response to the arrest of Rosa Parks. Thus begins the Montgomery Bus Boycott which was to end with desegregation the following year and start the era of passive resistance that culminated in the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.
