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George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer, a U.S. cavalry officer who served with distinction in the American Civil War, is better known for leading more than 200 of his men to their deaths in the notorious Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. The battle, also known as “Custer’s Last Stand,” was part of the Black Hills War against a confederation of Plains Indians, including the Cheyenne and Dakota Sioux. It remains one of the most controversial battles in U.S. history. -
Homestead Act
Signed into law in May 1862, the Homestead Act opened up settlement in the western United States, allowing any American, including freed slaves, to put in a claim for up to 160 free acres of federal land. By the end of the Civil War, 15,000 homestead claims had been established, and more followed in the postwar years. Eventually, 1.6 million individual claims would be approved; nearly ten percent of all government held property for a total of 420,000 square miles of territory. -
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Transforming The West
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Becoming an Industrial Power
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Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor began as a secret society of tailors in Philadelphia in 1869. The organization grew slowly during the hard years of the 1870s, but worker militancy rose toward the end of the decade, especially after the great railroad strike of 1877, and the Knights’ membership rose with it. Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly took office in 1879 and committed the organization to seeking the eight-hour day, abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work. -
Promontory Point, Utah
Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah, 32 mi (51 km) west of Brigham City and 66 mi (106 km) northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet (1,494 m) above sea level, it lies to the north of the Promontory Mountains and the Great Salt Lake.[1] It is notable as the location of Promontory Summit, where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869. -
Standard Oil Trust
The Standard Oil Trust was formed in 1863 by John D. Rockefeller. He built up the company through 1868 to become the largest oil refinery firm in the world. In 1870, the company was renamed Standard Oil Company, after which Rockefeller decided to buy up all the other competition and form them into one large company.The Standard Oil Trust had quickly become an industrial monster. The trust had established a strong foothold in the U.S. -
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Imperialism
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Progressive Era
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Tenements
In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America’s cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City–where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880–buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings -
Red River War
During the summer of 1874, the U. S. Army launched a campaign to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indian tribes from the Southern Plains and enforce their relocation to reservations in Indian Territory. The actions of 1874 were unlike any prior attempts by the Army to pacify this area of the western frontier. The Red River War led to the end of an entire way of life for the Southern Plains tribes and brought about a new chapter in Texas history. -
Battle of Little Big Horn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought on June 25, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, pitted federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors.When a number of tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army, including Custer and his 7th Calvary, was dispatched to confront them -
Queen Liliuonkalani
Queen Liliuokalani was the last sovereign of the Kamehameha dynasty, which had ruled a unified Hawaiian kingdom since 1810. Born Lydia Kamakaeha, she became crown princess in 1877, after the death of her youngest brother made her the heir apparent to her elder brother, King Kalakaua. By the time she took the throne herself in 1891, a new Hawaiian constitution had removed much of the monarchy’s powers in favor of an elite class of businessmen and wealthy landowners. -
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The Gilded Age
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Cornelius Vanderbilt
Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century. Vanderbilt went into business for himself in the late 1820s, and eventually became one of the country’s largest steamship operators. In the 1860s, he shifted his focus to the railroad industry, where he built another empire and helped make railroad transportation more efficient. When Vanderbilt died, he was worth more than $100 million. -
Great Upheaval of 1886
It started with a 10% pay cut. When leaders of the BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY ordered this second reduction in less than eight months, railroad workers in MARTINS-BURG, WEST VIRGINIA decided they had had enough. On July 16, 1886, workers in that town drove all the engines into the roundhouse and boldly declared that no train would leave until the owners restored their pay. The local townspeople gathered at the rail-yard to show their support for the STRIKERS. -
Farmers Alliance
The Farmers Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished in 1875. The movement included several parallel but independent political organizations the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union among the white farmers of the South, and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, consisting of the African American farmers of the South. -
Assassination of Garfield
initiated upon his being shot at 9:30 am on July 2, 1881, less than four months into his term as President, and ended in his death 79 days later on September 19, 1881. He was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., and died in Elberon, New Jersey. Guiteau's motive was revenge against Garfield for an imagined political debt. Garfield was the second of four Presidents to be assassinated. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.” -
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
In 1883, Buffalo Bill's Wild West was founded in North Platte, Nebraska when Buffalo Bill Cody turned his real life adventure into the first outdoor western show. The show's publicist Arizona John Burke employed innovating techniques at the time, such as celebrity endorsements, press kits, publicity stunts, op-ed articles, billboards and product licensing, that contributed to the success and popularity of the show. -
Pendleton Act
A United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation. This provided selection of government employees by competitive exams. It also made it illegal to fire or demote government officials for political reasons and prohibited soliciting campaign donations on Federal government property. To enforce the merit system and the judicial system, -
Haymarket Riot
On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. -
John Deere
John Deere was an American blacksmith and manufacturer who founded Deere & Company, one of the largest and leading agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. Born in Rutland, Vermont, Deere moved to Illinois and invented the first commercially successful steel plow in 1837. -
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers' International Union was elected president at its founding convention and reelected every year, except one, until his death in 1924. -
Phonograph
The phonograph is a device, invented in 1877, for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms, it is also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910), or, since the 1940s, a record player. The sound vibration wave forms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887),adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. -
Ghost Dances
the Ghost Dance of 1890 was a new religious movement incorporated into numerous American Indian belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka, proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Indian peoples throughout the region. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act, is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. It allowed certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be competitive, and recommended the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. -
Silver Act
Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 1890, passed by the U.S. Congress to supplant the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. It not only required the U.S. government to purchase nearly twice as much silver as before, but also added substantially to the amount of money already in circulation. -
Wounded Knee
Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota,was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation. -
World's Columbian Exposition 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair and Chicago Columbian Exposition) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. -
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894, and a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The conflict began in Pullman, Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. -
Temperance
The Temperance movement to prohibit alcohol was wanted mostly by women. They wanted to get rid of alcohol because it kept the men drunk, took their family's wages, and energized the violence at home.The Woman's Christian Temperance Union created in 1874 led by Francis E. Willard and Carrie A. Nation who were very aggressive, they walked into a bar and chopped it up with a hatchet. Few states banned alcohol and in 1819 the 18th Amendment was passed and it banned alcohol in the U.S. -
Election of 1896
The United States presidential election of 1896 was the 28th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1896. Former Governor William McKinley, the Republican candidate, defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. -
Rough Riders
The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish–American War and the only one of the three to see action. The United States Army was small and understaffed in comparison to its status during the American Civil War roughly thirty years prior. As a measure towards rectifying this situation President William McKinley called 125,000 volunteers to assist in the war efforts. -
Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism and the yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion -
U.S.S. Maine
The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. -
Battle of Manila Bay
On May 1, 1898, at Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first major battle of the Spanish-American War (April-August 1898). The United States went on to win the war, which ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America. -
Treaty of Paris 1898
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 was an agreement made in 1898 that involved Spain give up nearly all of the remaining Spanish Empire, especially Cuba, and ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. The cession of the Philippines involved a payment of $20 million from the United States to Spain. The treaty was signed on December 10, 1898, ending the Spanish–American War. The Treaty of Paris came into effect on April 11, 1899. -
Political Machine
A political machine is a political group in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses (usually campaign workers), who receive rewards for their efforts. The machine's power is based on the ability of the workers to get out the vote for their candidates on election day. -
Carrie A. Nation
Carrie Amelia Nation (forename sometimes spelled Carry;[1] November 25, 1846 – January 13, 1911) was an American woman who was a radical member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol before the advent of Prohibition. She is particularly noteworthy for attacking alcohol-serving establishments (most often taverns) with a hatchet. -
Muckrackers
The term muckraker was used in the Progressive Era to characterize reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt. They typically had large audiences in some popular magazines. In the US, the modern term is investigative journalism — it has different and more pejorative connotations in British English — and investigative journalists in the USA today are often informally called 'muckrakers'. -
Platt Amendment
The Platt Amendment, an amendment to a U.S. army appropriations bill, established the terms under which the United States would end its military occupation of Cuba and "leave the government and control of the island of Cuba to its people." It was drafted largely by Secretary of War Elihu Root. The Platt Amendment laid down eight conditions to which the Cuban Government had to agree before the withdrawal of U.S. forces. -
Big Stick Policy
Big stick ideology, big stick diplomacy, or big stick policy refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: "speak softly, and carry a big stick." Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis -
Theodore Roosevelt
The rising young Republican politician Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became the 26th president of the United States in September 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley. Young and physically robust, he brought a new energy to the White House, and won a second term on his own merits in 1904.Roosevelt confronted the bitter struggle between management and labor head-on and became known as the great “trust buster”. -
Cuba's Independence
The Cuban War of Independence was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Ten Years' War (1868–1878) and the Little War (1879–1880). The final three months of the conflict escalated to become the Spanish–American War, with United States forces being deployed in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands against Spain. -
Russo-Japanese War
Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for its navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year. Since the end of the First Sino–Japanese War in 1895, Japan feared Russian encroachment on its plans to create a sphere of influence in Korea and Manchuria. -
Meat Inspection Act
Meat Inspection Act of 1906, U.S. legislation, signed by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt on June 30, 1906, that prohibited the sale of adulterated livestock and derived products as food and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. The law reformed the meatpacking industry, mandating that the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspect all cattle, swine, sheep, goats, and horses both before and after they were slaughtered and processed for human consumption. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of consumer protection laws which was enacted by Congress in the 20th century and led to the making of the Food and Drug Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It needed active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug’s packaging -
Muller v. Oregon
Muller v. Oregon (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate, lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. There was no such thing as sex discrimination in 1908, because gender based discrimination had not been recognized until the case of Reed v. Reed, in 1971 -
Model T
The Model T, also known as the “Tin Lizzie,” changed the way Americans live, work and travel. Henry Ford’s revolutionary advancements in assembly-line automobile manufacturing made the Model T the first car to be affordable for a majority of Americans. For the first time car ownership became a reality for average American workers, not just the wealthy. More than 15 million Model Ts were built in Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan. -
W.E.B. BuBois
William Edward Burghardt “W. E. B.” DuBois (1868-1963) was was a leading African-American sociologist, writer and activist. Educated at Harvard University and other top schools, DuBois studied with some of the most important social thinkers of his time. He earned fame for the publication of such works as Souls of Black Folk (1903), and was a founding officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and editor of its magazine. -
Square Deal
Square Deal , description by U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt of his personal approach to current social problems and the individual. It embraced Roosevelt’s idealistic view of labor, citizenship, parenthood, and Christian ethics. Roosevelt first used the term following the settlement of a mining strike in 1902 to describe the ideal of peaceful coexistence between big business and labor unions. -
Election of 1912
Held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey Unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and defeated Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") nominee. Roosevelt remains the only third party presidential candidate in U.S. history to finish better than third in the popular or electoral vote. -
Robber Barons
"Robber baron" is a derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally applied to certain late 19th-century American businessmen who used unscrupulous methods to get rich. -
Western Front
The Western Front was the main theatre of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918. -
Eastern Front
The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater of World War I, sometimes called the "Second Fatherland War" was a theatre of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between the Russian Empire and Romania on one side and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and the German Empire on the other.Which stretched deep into Central Europe as well. The term contrasts with "Western Front", which was being fought in Belgium and France. -
Universal Negro Improvement Association
The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey. The UNIA was "unquestionably, the most influential anticolonal organization in Jamaica prior to 1938" (Honor Ford-Smith) The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1920s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its prestige and influence declined. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
On this day in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. On June 28, 1919, five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand’s death, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially marking the end of World War I. -
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War World I
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Great Migration
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by Jim Crow, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. Actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges. -
Sussex Pledge
The Sussex Pledge was a promise made by Germany to the United States in 1916. Early in 1915, Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, allowing armed merchant ships, but not passenger ships, to be torpedoed without warning. Despite this avowed restriction, a French cross-channel passenger ferry, the Sussex, was torpedoed without warning on March 24, 1916; the ship was severely damaged and about 50 people died. -
Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmerman Telegram was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion, especially after the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3. -
Russian Revolutiion
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, seized power and destroyed the tradition of czarist rule. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. -
Spanish Flu
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected 500 million people worldwide about one-third of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues. -
Henry Cabot Lodge
An American Republican Congressman and historian from Massachusetts. A member of the prominent Lodge family, he received his PhD in history from Harvard University. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles. The failure of that treaty ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. -
Sedition Act
The Sedition Act of 1918 (enacted May 16, 1918) was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. -
Andrew Carnegie
Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie was an American industrialist who amassed a fortune in the steel industry then became a major philanthropist. Carnegie worked in a Pittsburgh cotton factory as a boy before rising to the position of division superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859. While working for the railroad, he invested in iron and oil companies In the early 1870s, he entered the steel business, and over the next two decades became a dominant force in the industry. -
First Red Scare
As World War I was ending a fear-driven, anti-communist movement known as the First Red Scare began to spread across the United States of America. In 1917 Russia had undergone the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks established a communist government that withdrew Russian troops from the war effort. Americans believed that Russia had let down its allies, including the United States, by pulling out of the war. It suggested that the working class would overthrow the middle class. -
Darwinism
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor: the birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers -- all related. Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) "descent with modification". -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art. -
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo, Satch, and Pops, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. -
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1920s
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18th Amendment
the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” but not the consumption, private possession, or production for one’s own consumption. In contrast to earlier amendments to the Constitution, the Amendment set a one-year time delay before it would be operative, and set a time limit (seven years) for its ratification by the states. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919, and the Amendment took effect on January 16, 1920. -
Volstead Act
The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the 18th Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation. -
19th Amendment
The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest. In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger & the 1920s Birth Control Movement. In 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, now known as Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She is also known as the founder of modern day birth control and lead several roles in the 1920's Birth Control and Reproductive Rights Movements -
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey became a leader in the black nationalist movement by applying the economic ideas of Pan-Africanists to the immense resources available in urban centers. After arriving in New York in 1916, he founded the Negro World newspaper, an international shipping company called Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. During the 1920s, his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the largest secular organization in African-American history. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act, was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census, which used the Census of 1910. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Europeans, especially Italians. -
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK or simply the Klan), is three distinct movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration and especially in later iterations Nordicism, anti-Catholicism and antisemitism. Historically, the KKK used terrorism both physical assault and murder against groups or individuals whom they opposed. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society -
Charles Lindbergh
American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974) rose to fame by piloting his monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, on the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. After the kidnap and murder of his infant son, he moved to Europe in the 1930s and became involved with German aviation developments. Despite objecting to American involvement in World War II, Lindbergh eventually flew 50 combat missions. -
Henry Ford
While working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford (1863-1947) built his first gasoline-powered horseless carriage, the Quadricycle, in the shed behind his home. In 1903, he established the Ford Motor Company, and five years later the company rolled out the first Model T. -
Al Capone
Born in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, to poor immigrant parents, Al Capone went on to become the most infamous gangster in American history. In 1920 during the height of Prohibition, Capone’s multi-million dollar Chicago operation in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling dominated the organized crime scene. Capone was responsible for many brutal acts of violence, mainly against other gangsters. The most famous of these was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. -
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover, America’s 31st president, took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Although his predecessors’ policies undoubtedly contributed to the crisis, which lasted over a decade, Hoover bore much of the blame in the minds of the American people. As the Depression deepened, Hoover failed to recognize the severity of the situation or leverage the power of the federal government to squarely address it. -
Hoovervilles
During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance.When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions. -
Teapot Done Scandal
The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government. The scandal involved ornery oil tycoons, poker-playing politicians, illegal liquor sales, a murder-suicide, a womanizing president and a bagful of bribery cash delivered on the sly. In the end, the scandal would empower the Senate to conduct rigorous investigations into government corruption. -
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Gang warfare ruled the streets of Chicago during the late 1920s, as chief gangster Al Capone sought to consolidate control by eliminating his rivals in the illegal trades of bootlegging, gambling and prostitution. This rash of gang violence reached its bloody climax in a garage on the city’s North Side on February 14, 1929, when seven men associated with the Irish gangster George “Bugs” Moran, one of Capone’s longtime enemies, were shot to death by several men dressed as policemen. -
Stock Market Crash
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression, the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
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The Great Depression
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Black Tuesday
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29), the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great Depression), when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after effects. -
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
Nazi Party
In 1929, Germany entered a period of severe economic depression and widespread unemployment. The Nazis capitalized on the situation by criticizing the ruling government and began to win elections. In the July 1932 elections, they captured 230 out of 608 seats in the “Reichstag,” or German parliament. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed German chancellor and his Nazi government soon came to control every aspect of German life. -
The Brain Trust
Brain Trust, also called Brains Trust, in U.S. history, group of advisers to Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first campaign for the presidency (1932). The term was coined by journalist John F. Kieran and gained national currency at once. Raymond Moley, Rexford G. Tugwell, and Adolph A. Berle, Jr., all professors at Columbia University, were the three principal members, although others served with them from time to time. -
Bonus March
Although the United States had little history of massive social upheaval or coup attempts against the government, hunger has a way of stirring those passions among any population. As bread riots and shantytowns grew in number, many began to seek alternatives to the status quo. Demonstrations in the nation's capital increased, as Americans grew increasingly weary with President Hoover's perceived inaction. The demonstration that drew the most national attention was the Bonus March -
Election of 1932
The United States presidential election of 1932 was the thirty-seventh quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election took place against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York. The election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation’s 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or “fireside chats.” His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. -
The New Deal
The New Deal was a series of federal programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations enacted in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Some of these federal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). -
The Holocaust
The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of in Poland. -
First 100 Days
Roosevelt coined the term "first 100 days" during a July 24, 1933, radio. Fifteen major laws were enacted during this period. Since then, the first 100 days of a presidential term has taken on symbolic significance, and the period is considered a benchmark to measure the early success of a president. -
Neutrality Acts
On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act, or Senate Joint Resolution No. 173, which he calls an “expression of the desire…to avoid any action which might involve [the U.S.] in war.” The signing came at a time when newly installed fascist governments in Europe were beginning to beat the drums of war. -
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful dictators of the 20th century. Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take power in Germany beginning in 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the start of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had took much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, Called the Holocaust. -
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World War II
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The Battle of Britain
In the summer and fall of 1940, German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. -
Capture of France
In 1939, as World War Two loomed, the British and French planned to fight an updated version of what happened in 1914-18 during World War One, but with some essential differences. The French had suffered massive casualties in frontal attacks in 1914. This time they were going to remain on the defensive in western Europe, while mobilising their military forces and industrial base to fight a total war. -
Axis Powers
Axis powers, the coalition headed by Germany, Italy, and Japan that opposed the Allied powers in World War II. The alliance originated in a series of agreements between Germany and Italy, followed by the proclamation of an “axis” binding Rome and Berlin , with the two powers claiming that the world would henceforth rotate on the Rome-Berlin axis. This was followed by the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union. -
Lend Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries received weapons under this law. -
Pearl Harbor
Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. -
U.S. Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other forms of media, the OWI was the connection between the battlefront and civilian communities. The office also established several overseas branches, which launched a large-scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. -
D-Day
During World War II, the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history -
Atomic Bomb
On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90% of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor announced his country’s surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15.
