• 1848 Seneca Falls Conference is held
• 1862 Morrrill Act is passed
• 1865 13 and 14 amendments are ratified
• 1877 Reconstruction ends
• 1878 Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) is established
  The CLSC was one of the first correspondence schools in the U.S., reaching 225,000 people by 1894. CLSC was one arm of the Chautauqua enterprise, a white, middle-class movement that was part religious, part philosophical, and part vocational.
• 1886 American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded
• 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr found Hull House
  Dedicated to community service, this center was influential in educating large numbers of poor Chicagoans
• 1889 First African-American woman principal in Massachusetts
• 1890 Morrill Act II is passed
• 1891 Brown University admits its first woman student
• 1891 University of Chicago is established
• 1892 Workers strike Homestead Steel Works
• 1893 "Report of the Committee of Ten" is published
• 1895 Booker T. Washington is at Tuskegee Institute
• 1895 Women's Era Club organized
• 1895 W.E.B. DuBois receives his Ph.D. from Harvard University
• 1896 Supreme Court rules on Plessy v. Ferguson

• 1900 International Ladies Garment Workers (ILGWU) is founded
• 1904 Mary McLeod Bethune founds school
• 1907 Home Economics becomes a university department
• 1909 CFAT defines a "college"
• 1909 National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls is founded
• 1911 Katherine Gibbs founds first the secretarial school
• 1913 National Association of Corporation Schools (NACS) is founded
• 1914 University of Delaware establishes a Women's College
• 1914 Smith-Lever Act passed
• 1914 World War I begins; ends 1918
• 1917 Smith-Hughes Act is passed
• 1918 "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education" is published
• 1919 New School for Social Research opens
• 1919 U.S. women get the right to vote
• 1920 John Dewey advocates a practical education
• 1920 Rise of efficiency educators
• 1920 Charlotte Woodward votes for the first time
• 1920 Union membership grows
• 1926 American Association for Adult Education is founded
  Assisted by the CFAT,the aim of the AAAE was to facilitate communication among adult educators
• 1926 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is administered for the first time
• 1929 Eduard Lindeman's Meaning of Adult Education is published
• 1929 October 24 stock market crash begins the Great Depression
• 1932 Highlander Folk School is established
  Founded by Myles Horton, the Highlander School in Tennessee was active in the civil rights and workers' movements, and today is active in Appalachian struggles
• 1935 National Labor Relations Act
• 1935 Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) is formed
• 1935 Works Project Administration (WPA) created
• 1940 Union membership rises again
• 1941 U.S. enters World War II (12/7/41)
• 1942 American Society for Training Directors (ASTD) is founded
• 1943 United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) is established
• 1944 Serviceman's Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill) is signed
• 1945 General Education Development (GED) test is first used
  At first used only for the military, after World War II the GED was also used for civilians, allowing high school drop-outs to continue their formal education.

• 1950 National Science Foundation is established by Congress
• 1951 AEA USA formed
  The Adult Education Association of the USA was formed on the philosophy that the purpose of adult education is social action.
• 1954 Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education
• 1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to sit in the back of the bus
• 1957 Nine Black students enroll in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
• 1957 Soviet Union launches Sputnik, a satellite
• 1960 Clark Kerr reveals master plan for California higher education
• 1960 Human capital theory is promoted at American Economic Association meeting
• 1964 University of California at Berkeley free speech protesters are arrested
• 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act is passed
• 1964 Adult Basic Education signed by President Johnson, 8-20-64
  Initial Federal program of adult education for persons 18 years of age and older who had not completed their secondary education and whose inability to read, write and compute was a substantial impairment of their ability to obtain or retain employment.
• 1965 Higher Education Act is passed
  Signed by Lyndon Johnson, it authorized separate funds (title) for adult students. This financial aid established the funds now called Pell Grants and Stafford Loans.
• 1965 Voting Rights Act is passed
1968 P.L. 90-247: Title IV of the Amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. $100,000 was provided as the base for the state allotment. Private non-profit agencies added as eligible local grant recipients.
• 1969 Black students protest at Cornell University

• 1970 Malcome Knowles publishes "The Modern Practice of Adult Education: Andragogy vs. Pedagogy"
• 1970 Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is published in English
• 1970 Four students are killed at Kent State massacre.
• 1970 P.L. 91-230; Title III of the Amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Amendments introduced by Congressman Carl Perkins and signed by President Nixon on April 13, 1970.
• 1972 Equal Rights Amendment sent to states for ratification
• 1972 Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade
• 1972 Title IX is passed by Congress
• 1972 P.L. 92-318; Title IV, Part C of the 1972 Amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the amendments to ESEA and the legislation was signed by President Nixon in June.
• 1978 P.L. 99-500 Long Term Continuing Resolution, signed October 18, 1986 continued provisions of the Adult Education Act (P.L. 89-750). On December 22, 1987 a permanent continuing resolution (P.L. 100-202) was passed.
• 1979 Department of Education created
• 1981 P.L. 97-35: Amendments to the Adult Education Act (AEA) , signed by President Reagan, August 13, 1981.
• 1986 Higher Education Act
• 1986 P.L. 99-500 Long Term Continuing Resolution, signed October 18, 1986 continued provisions of the Adult Education Act (P.L. 89-750). On December 22, 1987 a permanent continuing resolution (P.L. 100-202) was passed.
• 1987 Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" is published
• 1987 Stock market crash of October 1987
• 1988 P.L. 100-297 (Hawkins/Stafford Elementary/Secondary School Improvement Amendments of 1988); signed April 28, 1988 by President Ronald Reagan.
• 1991 P.L. 102-73 (The National Literacy Act of 1991; signed by President George Bush on July 25, 1991). Final rules and regulations were not approved until June 5,
• 1992 (34CFR Parts 425, 426 and 431). The National Literacy Act was incorporated in the Adult Education Act.
• 1997 Harvard University report on desegregation is published
• 1998 Adult Education Act is repealed and replaced by the Workforce Investment Act (PL105-220). See Legislation Archive for an analysis of this bill./

Bibliography:

Eyre, Gary (1999). History of the Adult Education Act. NAEPDC

Klonsky, Anne (1997). Milestones in the History of Adult Education: Learning as a way of Becoming Free.