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Assassination of William McKinley
President William McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist son of Polish immigrants. McKinley died eight days later on September 14, 1901. He was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. -
Souls of the Black folk
W. E. B. Du Bois’s landmark book of essays, Souls of Black Folk, combined history and sociology with commentary on the experiences of African Americans in the United States. In 1905, Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement as an organized response to Booker T. Washington’s policies of accommodation and conciliation. The Niagara Movement aimed to counteract Washington’s influence over the black community and in its manifesto declared its intention. -
Child Labor
One of the main issues addressed by the Progressive Movement was labor conditions, especially for children. Muckracking journalism and action from social and labor activists led to the formation of the National Labor Committee in 1904. As part of their charge, the committee investigated labor conditions around the nation. Photos of the investigation by the famed photographer Lewis W. Hine are in the collection of the Library of Congress. -
Start to the Panama Canal
American construction began on the Panama Canal. It took ten years and $352 million dollars to complete. The canal opened in 1914. During the building of the canal, begun under the French in 1879, more than 26,000 workers, many West Indians, died from construction accidents and yellow fever and other diseases. -
President Roosevelt's Corollary
President Roosevelt announced the Roosevelt Corollary, which extended the Monroe Doctrine and asserted the right of the United States to police the Caribbean. -
Start of the Great Migration
In the first decades of the twentieth century, African Americans left, in greater and greater numbers, the southern states where they had been subject to economic abuses and outright intimidation. The Great Migration, in which about half a million African Americans moved to the urban North from the rural South, began about 1905 and ended around 1930. -
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the most famous work of muckraking fiction, exposed terrible health and labor conditions in meat-packing plants. In June of 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act were signed into law. -
Nicaragua
Nicaragua became a protectorate of the United States when, to protect American interests in the country, President Taft approved sending a contingent of American marines to the country to deter revolution.