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Anti-Tax Movement
In the mid-1700s, the British Empire needed money to pay off its debt. Parliament tried to raise the funds by taxing Americans. Since the right to pay taxes was pretty much the only liberty the colonists enjoyed as British subjects, they organized to protest the unfair picking of their pockets. As successful as the colonists were, it's been more than 235 years since the Boston Tea Party and Americans are still demanding tax reform. While we have representation, the concept of "fair" taxation i -
Temperance Movement
The temperance movement was an attempt to eliminate the evils of alcohol. Mostly the same women involved in the women's rights movement . Led by the American Christian Temperance Union they sought to save the American family by trying to get alcohol declared illegal. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party is something of a misnomer, as while it did indeed feature tea, it was definitely not a party. On a cold evening of December 1773, protesters gathered in Boston Harbor to reject the latest shipment of tea from the East India Company. They were speaking out against the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell its tea at reduced cost, thus giving the British government-controlled company an effective monopoly. As the story goes, the colonists stormed the ships as -
Westward expansion
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land -
Railroads
Baltimore, the third largest city in the nation in 1827, had not invested in a canal. Yet, Baltimore was 200 miles closer to the frontier than New York and soon recognized that the development of a railway could make the city more competitive with New York and the Erie Canal in transporting people and goods to the West. The result was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first railroad chartered in the United States. There were great parades on the day the construction started. On July 4, 1828, -
Prison and Asylum Reform
One day in 1841, a Boston woman named Dorothea Dix agreed to teach Sunday school at a jail. What she witnessed that day changed her life forever. She was horrified to see that many inmates were bound in chains and locked in cages. Children accused of minor thefts were jailed with adult criminals. She wanted to find out if the conditions were this bad everywhere else. To find out, she visited hundreds of jails and prisons throughout Massachusetts. She also visited debtors' prisons, or jails for -
Women's rights movement
Women's rights movement — Founded by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and published a Declaration of Sentiments calling for the social and legal equality of women. Carried forward by Lucy Stone who began speaking out for women's rights in 1847, and organized a series of national conventions. Susan B. Anthony joined the cause in 1851 and worked ceaselessly for women's suffrage. -
Abolition Movement
he addition of Mexico's former territories in 1848 at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War reopened the possibility of the expansion of race-based chattel slavery; the adaptation of the slave system to industrial-style cotton production resulted in increasing dehumanization of black workers and a backlash against slavery in the northern states; key figures included William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. -
Klu Kulx Klan (KKK)
Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal–the reestablis -
Jim Crow Laws
In legal theory, blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law — in actuality, public facilities for blacks were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated criteria.
The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by Vigilantes -
Progressive Movement
Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large corporations and railroads, and fears of corruption in American politics. In the 21st century, progressives continue to embrace concepts such as environmentalism and social justice. -
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club gains national recognition for protesting construction of the Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. After effective lobbying, Congress removed the Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River project. The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became its first president.
Traditionally associated with the progressive movement. -
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush was an event of migration by an estimated 100,000 people prospecting to the Klondike region of north-western Canada in the Yukon region between 1896 and 1899. It’s also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Last Great Gold Rush and the Alaska Gold Rush.
Gold was discovered in many rich deposits along the Klondike River in 1896, but due to the remoteness of the region and the harsh winter climate the news of gold couldn’t travel fast enough to reach the outside world before the f -
Theodore Roosavelt: Domestic Policy
When Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in September 1901, he presided over a country that had changed significantly in recent decades. The population of the United States had almost doubled from 1870 to 1900 as immigrants came to U.S. cities to work in the country's burgeoning factories. As the United States became increasingly urban and industrial, it acquired many of the attributes common to industrial nations—overcrowded cities, poor working conditions, great economic disparity. -
Child Labour
This refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organisations. Legislations across the world prohibit child labour. These laws do not consider all work by children as child labour; exceptions include work by child artists, supervised training. -
Great migration
The Great Migration, or the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, had a huge impact on urban life in the United States. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. As Chicago, New York and other cities saw their black -
Red Summer
In 1919, Twenty-six documented race riots occur, where black communities across the country are attacked. Hundreds of blacks are killed and even more are injured in these attacks. There is widespread property damage in black neighborhoods. Whites also use lynching as a means to intimidate blacks. In some communities, like the District of Columbia, blacks stand their ground. In the 1920's, riots in Florida and Tulsa destroy the black communities. In September 1919, in response to the Red Summer, -
Women get the right to vote
The Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor is formed to collect information about women in the workforce and safeguard good working conditions for women. Aug. 26
The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, is signed into law by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. -
The Labor Movement
The Mission: Fair workplace practices and protections
The Labor movement has seen many waves. The policies that shaped the workplaces we know and sometimes love to hate were largely put in place during the Depression. In 1933, President Roosevelt implemented recovery legislation designed to improve the prospects of workers; the Supreme Court overturned it. It wasn't until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act created a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week and other familiar practices. -
Red Scare
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. (Communists were often referred to as “Reds” for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society. Federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the -
Cold War
Growing out of post-World War II tensions between the two nations, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted for much of the second half of the 20th century resulted in mutual suspicions, heightened tensions and a series of international incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower Economic Policy
Eisenhower’s budget for 1954 reduced former president Truman’s proposed expenditures by $5 billion and he cut the $10 billion deficit nearly in half. Throughout the rest of the 1950’s the average lifestyle of the American increased. One reason for this was the transition of more people from urban areas to the suburbs. Over the decade, the housing supply increased 27%. -
Brown v. Board of Education
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is one of the most pivotal opinions ever rendered by that body. This landmark decision highlights the U.S. Supreme Court’s role in affecting changes in national and social policy. Often when people think of the case, they remember a little girl whose parents sued so that she could attend an all-white school in her neighborhood. In reality, the story of Brown v. Board of Education is far more complex.
In December, 1952, the U.S -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating, took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the U.S. On December 1, 1955, four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by bla -
The Beginning of The Enviormental Movement
The Mission: To preserve our natural resources and the sanctity of our planet
Thanks to nuclear proliferation and the increasing use of pesticides, the environmental movement was off to a strong start in the 1950s. In 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act was signed, and it's been full steam ahead ever since.
Although it's taken some time, Americans have warmed to the idea of saving the planet. We just can't seem to figure out a way to do it that's business friendly. ex. BP oil spill -
Interstate Highway Act
On June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The bill created a 41,000-mile “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” that would, according to Eisenhower, eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” At the same time, highway advocates argued, “in case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road net [would] permit quick evacuation of targ -
Satelite Communications
After the 1957 launch of Sputnik I, many considered the benefits, profits, and prestige associated with satellite communications. Because of Congressional fears of "duplication," NASA confined itself to experiments with "mirrors" or "passive" communications satellites (ECHO), while the Department of Defense was responsible for "repeater" or "active" satellites which amplify the received signal at the satellite--providing much higher quality communications. In 1960 AT&T filed with the Federal Com -
JFK Economic Policy
ohn F. Kennedy beat Ike's vice president (Richard Nixon) in 1960. JFK's pitch in that legendary campaign was to “get this country moving again.” He was talking about economic growth. And that growth would get unleashed via tax policy, namely two big tax cuts, one on business and the other on personal income. -
Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “anti fascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King, both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1 -
Beginning of Civil rights Movements
The more than 200,000 people who descended on Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963, proved that protests don't need to be violent to be powerful. In addition to meeting with President John F. Kennedy and members of Congress, the groups' leaders led a march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. The gathered masses stood peaceably for hours in the stifling August heat as musicians and orators appealed for equal rights for African Americans and, really, all minorities. Thanks to power -
Black Panthers
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation — a party whose agenda was the revolutionary -
United Farmers
United Farm Workers of America (UFW), U.S. labour union founded in 1962 as the National Farm Workers Association by Cesar Chavez, a migrant farm labourer. The union merged with the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1966 and was re-formed under its current name in 1971 to achieve collective bargaining rights for farmworkers in the United States. In 2006 the UFW disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO and joined the labour federation Change to Win. The UFW seeks -
Gerald Ford Domestic Policy
The rapid growth of inflation, attributable to the aforementioned macro-economic issues as well as to the escalation in federal outlays since 1965, was exacerbated by the rising price of oil. American consumption of oil grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s—a need the country met by importing oil from the Middle East. By 1974, 35 percent of the oil Americans consumed came from overseas. But in 1973, the consortium of oil-exporting nations called OPEC embargoed its shipments of oil. -
Carter Economic Policy
In mid-1979, in the wake of widespread shortages of gasoline, Carter advanced a long-term program designed to solve the energy problem. He proposed a limit on imported oil, gradual price decontrol on domestically produced oil, a stringent program of conservation, and development of alternative sources of energy such as solar, nuclear, and geothermal power, oil and gas from shale and coal, and synthetic fuels. In what was probably his most significant domestic legislative accomplishment. -
Enviormental Justice
Environmental justice emerged as a concept in the United States in the early 1980s. The term has two distinct uses. The first and more common usage describes a social movement in the United States whose focus is on the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Second, it is an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes (but is not limited to) theories of the environment, theories of justice, environmental law and governance, environmental policy and planning -
Sustainable Living
Sustainable living is a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources and personal resources. Practitioners of sustainable living often attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by altering methods of transportation, energy consumption, and diet.Proponents of sustainable living aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, in natural balance and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth -
Reagan Economic Policy
Program for Economic Recovery had four major policy objectives:
(1) reduce the growth of government spending
(2) reduce the marginal tax rates on income from both labor and capital
(3) reduce regulation
(4) reduce inflation by controlling the growth of the money supply.
These major policy changes, in turn, were expected to increase saving and investment, increase economic growth, balance the budget, restore healthy financial markets, and reduce inflation and interest rates. -
Navdanya Movement
Whether it’s about empowering women or anti-globalisation campaigns,environmental activist Vandana Shiva has always had an upper hand in her fights against the authorities. Her ecofeminist movement reinstated a farming system centred on engaging women,changing the current system.She founded Navdanya in 1982, an organisation promoting biodiversity conservation and organic farming.The organisation has not only helped create markets for farmers, but also promoted quality food for consumers. -
George H. W. Bush : Foreign Policy
In June 1989, the Chinese military suppressed a pro-democracy movement demonstrating in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Using tanks and armored cars, the military crushed the demonstrations and fired into the crowd, killing hundreds of protesters. Although Bush abhorred the Chinese government's violent crackdown in Tiananmen Square, he did not want to jettison improved U.S.-Sino relations by overreacting to events. Many in Congress cried out for a harsh, punitive response to the Chinese government. -
World Trade Center Bombing
At 12:18 p.m., a terrorist bomb explodes in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, leaving a crater 60 feet wide and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast. Although the terrorist bomb failed to critically damage the main structure of the skyscrapers, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The World Trade Center itself suffered more than $500 million in damage. After the attack, authorities evacuated 5 -
Bill Clinton: Foreign policy
Weeks before Clinton took office, outgoing-President George H. W. Bush had sent American troops into Somalia. What started out as a humanitarian mission to combat famine grew into a bloody military struggle, with the bodies of dead American soldiers dragged through the streets of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu in October 1993. Public support for the American mission waned, and Clinton announced a full withdrawal of U.S. forces, which took place in March 1994; United Nations (UN) peacekeeping. -
War on Terror
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration declared a worldwide "war on terror," involving open and covert military operations, new security legislation, efforts to block the financing of terrorism, and more. Washington called on other states to join in the fight against terrorism asserting that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Many governments joined this campaign, often adopting harsh new laws, lifting long-standing legal protections and -
George W Bush Foreign Policy
As it turned out, Iraq was a war of choice rather than a war of necessity. The Bush administration had been considering how to address Iraq since the President’s first meeting of the National Security Council, months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In light of intelligence reports describing an Iraqi plant that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) -
9/11
On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Often referred to as 9/11, the attacks resulted in extensive death and destruction, triggering major U.S. ini -
Truman Domestic Policy
Truman supported civil rights actions and for the first time, increased the political status of African American citizens. Truman's various other reforms were much like the proposals of Roosevelt, but the mood of the nation due to its affluence and that of Congress opposed his efforts and the changing times proved that Truman's Fair Deal was not as necessary as FDR's New Deal.
