-
Post-Civil War Era
the end of civil war marks the beginning of the Gilded Age, with rapid industrialization and westward expansion fueled by the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. -
Period: to
Gilded Age
-
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
A major labor unrest that highlighted the poor working conditions and power imbalances between laborers and industrialists. -
Compromise of 1877
considered the official start of the gilded age, marking the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal from the South, leading to a decline in protections for African Americans. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
A discriminatory law restricting Chinese immigration to the United States. -
Pendleton Act
Introduced civil service reform, aiming to reduce political patronage and corruption in government hiring. -
Haymarket Square Riot
A violent labor protest in Chicago that resulted in negative public perception of organized labor. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
An attempt to regulate monopolies and restrain anti-competitive business practices, though initially weakly enforced. -
the populist party
in 1891, a new political party gained support with the 'common man', it was the populist party -
Homestead Strike
A major labor dispute at Andrew Carnegie's steel mills in Pennsylvania, leading to a violent confrontation. -
Panic of 1893
A severe economic depression that further exposed the vulnerabilities of the Gilded Age system -
Period: to
progressive era
-
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 black folk
W.B.E.Du Bois landmark book of essays, souls of black folk, combined history and sociology with commentary on the experiences of African Americans in the United States. -
National Child labor committee formed
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. -
Start of Panama Canal construction
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 Indian, died from construction accidents and yellow fever and other diseases. -
Roosevelt Corollary
President Roosevelt announced the Roosevelt Corollary, which extended the Monroe Doctrine and asserted the right of the United States to police the Caribbean. -
Period: to
Start of 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. -
Muller v. Oregon
In Muller v. Oregon, the Supreme Court upheld a law limiting the workday to ten hours for women. Though popular progressives were happy with the outcome, equal-rights feminists were not. The decision reinforced gender roles and restricted women's financial independence. This labor law gave some white women more protection, but it excluded women of color, food processors, and agricultural workers. -
Georgia Disfranchisement Amendment
After Reconstruction states in the South used various tactics to disenfranchise African American voters. In 1901, the Virginia General Assembly authorized a constitutional convention to draft election reforms including poll taxes and literacy tests. -
Uprising of the 20,000
In 1909, 20,000 shirtwaist makers—80 to 85 percent of whom were women—began a successful labor strike in New York City with the support of the National Women“s Trade Union League of America (NWTUL). In 1912, the more radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) led the 1912 Lawrence “Bread and Roses” textile strike in Massachusetts and the 1913 Paterson silk strike in New Jersey. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
A devastating fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 people including many female employees. Outcry over the factory’s conditions led to factory safety reform. This booklet of sheet music features a song about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Written and printed in Yiddish, pointing to the largely immigrant Jewish heritage of the victims, the song commemorates the workers and laments their deaths. -
Nicaragua becomes US protectorate
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. -
Period: to
Sinking of the Titanic
The world’s largest passenger steamship, the RMS Titanic, sank in the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg during its maiden voyage, killing 1,517 aboard. This letter, written on Carpathia stationery by first-class passenger Doctor Washington Dodge. -
Woodrow Wilson elected president
Democratic Party nominee Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election, beating out three other candidates: Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, Progressive Party nominee Theodore Roosevelt, and Socialist Party nominee Eugene V. Debs. -
Major industry changes by Ford
The Ford Motor Company perfected the assembly line and introduced the $5 per day wage, double the industry standard. -
Sixteenth Amendment
The Sixteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1913, allowing the federal government to “lay and collect taxes on incomes.” In this political cartoon a man representing the “Idle Rich,” wearing an “Income Tax” yoke and chain around his neck, joins a man of “The Working Class” on a treadmill of “Governmental Expenses.” The worker appears relieved to have the additional aid. -
Suffrage parade in Washington, DC
Alice Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association organized a large parade in Washington, DC, for the day before Wilson’s inaguration. The movement continued with large-scale protests like the 1915 parade in New York City of 25,000. A handful of American activists took on the more radical civil disobedience methods of British suffragettes of the Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act created the Federal Reserve System to serve as the nation’s central bank. By mid-November 1914, twelve regional federal reserve banks were established and staffed. With their opening, the United States would set in motion a new currency system aimed at both strengthening and regulating the nation's currency and financial system. -
Major industry changes by Ford
The Ford Motor Company perfected the assembly line and introduced the $5 per day wage, double the industry standard. -
World War I begins
The Great War began when Austria, assured of Germany’s support, declared war against Serbia, and Russia mobilized on Serbia’s side. President Woodrow Wilson issued a declaration of American neutrality in the European war. -
Federal Trade Commission Act
Two major pieces of anti-trust legislation were enacted under President Wilson. The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibited unfair interstate commerce competition and created a commission to investigate illegal business practices. The Clayton Antitrust Act prohibited some monopolistic business practices and protected unions and farmers’ organizations from prosecution under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. -
Sinking of the Lusitania
A German U-boat torpedoed a British passenger ship, the Lusitania, killing more than 1,000 people, including 128 Americans. The death of innocent Americans influenced many in the US to support American involvement in the war, and recruiting materials in both Europe and later the United States invoked sinking of the Lusitania. -
Carrie Chapman Catt announces "Winning Plan"
In 1915 Carrie Chapman Catt resumed leadership of the National American Women's Suffrage Association and in 1916 she announced a change in tactics at a NAWSA conference in Atlantic City. What would come to be known as "The Winning Play" focused efforts on state suffrage ballots in order to create leverage in Congress for a national suffrage amendment. -
Harlem Renaissance begins
The New York City neighborhood of Harlem became a major cultural center for African Americans. Black artists, musicians, and writers based in Harlem created a social and artistic community, producing major works and challenging barriers created by Jim Crow. Prominent figures included Duke Ellington, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. -
Zimmermann telegram released
In March 1917, Wilson released a decoded telegram sent by German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German embassy in Mexico in January. Zimmermann had proposed that, if the US entered the war against Germany, Mexico go to war with the US as a German ally. Zimmermann promised that if Mexico allied with Germany, Germany would provide “financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” -
US enters World War I
The United States officially declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. On October 3, 1917, American troops experienced their first combat of World War I in the trenches of France. President Wilson described George M. Cohan’s song about the Yanks coming to the rescue “Over There” as “a genuine inspiration to all American manhood.” -
Willa Cather's My Ántonia
Willa Cather's novel of American midwester farmers' encounter with Czech settlers is published and becomes a perennial classic. It was the third of Cather's "prairie novels."
There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. -
Period: to
Influenza epidemic
The influenza (or Spanish influenza) epidemic of 1918 and 1919 killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. A quarter of all Americans were infected at some point, including President Woodrow Wilson, and approximately 675,000 people died of influenza in the United States. -
Fourteen Points
President Wilson delivered his “Fourteen Points” speech, outlining a plan for peace after World War I. The Fourteen Points program called for the reduction of arms, self-determination of nations, and a league of nations. -
Armistice in Europe
Demoralized and cornered by the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Germany agreed to a cease-fire and armistice that went into effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918. Major European empires disappeared with the end of the conflict, including the Russian Empire—now a year into the Bolshevik Revolution. -
Emma Goldman deported
Influential Russian-born anarchist activist Emma Goldman immigrated to Rochester, New York, from St. Petersburg in 1885. She spent her first years in the US working in clothing factories, where she began associating with socialist and anarchist worker. -
Period: to
Red Scare
Fears of Bolshevism manifested in the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which led to deportations of immigrants, vigilante violence against suspected radicals, and the ousting of Socialists from government. After radicals sent dozens of bombs to prominent government officials and American businessmen, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer initiated an anti-Red campaign. -
Eighteenth Amendment
After years of The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding the manufacture, sale, transportation, import, and export of “intoxicating liquors,” was ratified. The amendment was the culmination of decades of effort by organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. -
Period: to
Red Summer
Race riots erupted across the nation from late spring through the early fall of 1919. In dozens of incidents of racial violence, African Americans were beaten, terrorized, and murdered. The NAACP appealed to President Wilson to investigate the attacks, but federal and local governments did little to address the violence. The largest riot in 1919 was in Chicago. Two years later in Tulsa a race riot left 35 city blocks burned, over 800 injured and estimated deaths at 36. -
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I, imposing harsh surrender terms on Germany, creating territorial mandates, and arranging the creation of the League of Nations. The treaty would largely come to be seen as a failure for Wilson, however. Congress, concerned about conceding individual power in order to become a member of the League of Nations, refused to ratify it. -
Sacco and Vanzetti convicted
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty of the 1920 murders of a paymaster and payroll guard in Braintree, Massachusetts. There was little evidence of the two men’s guilt, and they were convicted based more on their political activities as anarchists than on physical evidence or testimony related to the murders. Sentenced to death, the two were executed on August 23, 1927. -
Nineteenth Amendment
the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920, granting suffrage to women. Wilson had entered office as an opponent of women's suffrage, but after women's contributions to the war effort his opinion and the opinions of many in Congress changed.