MXA US History II Timeline II 1900 - 1920 (Descriptions taken from "The American Yawp" Ch. 18-22)

By megxanderson
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    Industrial Capitalism

    Industrial capitalism was the most important factor that drew immigrants to the United States between 1880 and 1920. Immigrant workers labored in large industrial complexes producing goods such as steel, textiles, and food products, replacing smaller and more local workshops.
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    Black Americans denied Fifteenth Amendment Rights

    ..from roughly 1890 to 1908, southern states implemented de jure, or legal, disfranchisement. They passed laws requiring voters to pass literacy tests (which could be judged arbitrarily) and pay poll taxes (which hit poor white and poor Black Americans alike), effectively denying Black men the franchise that was supposed to have been guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment.

  • 1901 President McKinley Assasinated

    Roosevelt, after winning headlines in the war, ran as vice president under McKinley and rose to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901.

  • 1903 WIlliam Riordan published "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall"

    In 1903, journalist William Riordon published a book, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, which chronicled the activities of ward heeler George Washington Plunkitt. Plunkitt elaborately explained to Riordon the difference between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft”...While exposing corruption, Riordon also revealed the hard work Plunkitt undertook on behalf of his largely immigrant constituency.

  • 1903 Immigration Restrictions

    In 1903, those who would pose ideological threats to American republican democracy, such as anarchists and socialists, also became the subject of new immigration restrictions.

  • 1903 Du Bois publishes "The Souls of Black Folk"

    ...The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Darkwater (1920). In these books, Du Bois combined incisive historical analysis with engaging literary drama to validate Black personhood and attack the inhumanity of white supremacy, particularly in the lead-up to and during World War I.

  • 1904 The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

    Roosevelt pronounced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, proclaiming U.S. police power in the Caribbean.
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    President Roosevelt expands the US Navy

    Roosevelt acted with vigor to expand the military, bolstering naval power especially, to protect and promote American interests abroad. This included the construction of eleven battleships between 1904 and 1907. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories, described in his The Influence of Sea Power upon History, influenced Roosevelt a great deal.
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    The Great White Fleet demonstrates America's New Power

    The mission of the Great White Fleet, sixteen all-white battleships that sailed around the world between 1907 and 1909, exemplified America’s new power.

  • 1908 "The Melting Pot" A play by Israel Zangwill wins acclaim

    The idea of America as a “melting pot,” a metaphor common in today’s parlance, was a way of arguing for the ethnic assimilation of all immigrants into a nebulous “American” identity at the turn of the 20th century. A play of the same name premiered in 1908 to great acclaim, causing even the former president Theodore Roosevelt to tell the playwright, “That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that’s a great play.” Cover of Theater Programme for Israel Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot”, 1916.
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    W.E.B DuBois works with the NAACP

    In addition to publications and teaching, Du Bois set his sights on political organizing for civil rights, first with the Niagara Movement and later with its offspring, the NAACP. Du Bois’s main work with the NAACP lasted from 1909 to 1934 as editor of The Crisis, one of America’s leading Black publications.

  • 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

    1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan caught fire. The doors of the factory had been chained shut to prevent employees from taking unauthorized breaks (the managers who held the keys saved themselves, but left over two hundred women behind). By the time the fire burned itself out, 71 workers were injured and 146 had died.2

  • 1912 Jane Addams 1st woman to give presidential candidate nominating speech

    In 1912, she [Jane Addams] became the first woman to give a nominating speech at a major party convention when she seconded the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt as the Progressive Party’s candidate for president. Her campaigns for social reform and women’s rights won headlines and her voice became ubiquitous in progressive politics.

  • 1913 Woodrow Wilson becomes President of the US

  • 1914 Archduke Ferdinand and Grand Duchess Sophie assassinated.

    On June 28, 1914, after Serbian Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austrian-Hungarian heirs to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Grand Duchess Sophie, vengeful nationalist leaders believed the time had arrived to eliminate the rebellious ethnic Serbian threat.1

  • 1917 The United States Enters WW I

    World War I (“The Great War”) toppled empires, created new nations, and sparked tensions that would explode across future years. On the battlefield, gruesome modern weaponry wrecked an entire generation of young men. The United States entered the conflict in 1917 and was never again the same.
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    President Wilson signs Espionage and Sedition Acts

    Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918, stripping dissenters and protesters of their rights to publicly resist the war. Critics and protesters were imprisoned.

  • 1918 Spanish Flu

    In the spring of 1918, a strain of the flu virus appeared in the farm country of Haskell County, Kansas, and hit nearby Camp Funston, one of the largest army training camps in the nation. The virus spread like wildfire...The second wave of the virus, a mutated strain, was even deadlier than the first. It struck down those in the prime of their lives: a disproportionate amount of influenza victims were between ages eighteen and thirty-five.

  • 1920 Du Bois publishes "Darkwater"

    The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Darkwater (1920). In these books, Du Bois combined incisive historical analysis with engaging literary drama to validate Black personhood and attack the inhumanity of white supremacy, particularly in the lead-up to and during World War I.

  • 1920 The American Red Scare

    The fates of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists who were convicted of robbery and murder in 1920 epitomized a sudden American Red Scare...The Sacco-Vanzetti case demonstrated an exacerbated nervousness about immigrants and the potential spread of radical ideas, especially those related to international communism.