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Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States.
Lyndon B. Johnson approved the Civil-rights bills; that he signed into law banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing; the Voting Rights Act prohibited certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. -
Calvin Coolidge
(August 2, 1923—March 4, 1929). Republican. Calvin Coolidge succeeded President Warren G. Harding when the latter passed away while still in office. Coolidge restored the public’s confidence of the White House and its drop because of the scandals from Harding’s administration. Coolidge was highly popular when he left office and was elected to serve again in 1924 after finishing Harding’s term. -
Herbert Hoover
(March 4, 1929—March 4, 1933). Republican. Hoover was a professional mining engineer. His training and technical expertise led him to believe in the Efficiency Movement, which asserted that the economy and government were inefficient and wasteful and could therefore be improved by expert knowledge. Less than eight months in office Hoover had to face the Great Depression. By the end of his term his administration had yet to find a solution to the economic disaster. -
Franklin D. Roosvelt
(March 4, 1933—April 12, 1945). Democratic. A.k.a. FDR. FDR is consistently regarded by scholars as the top three U.S. Presidents. He was the only president to serve three terms, after which an amendment was drafted to officially declare the two-term limit. During his time as president, FDR juggled with a great depression and a world war. Over the course of his presidency he drafted many projects which re-stimulated the economy and reduced unemployment from 20% to as low as 2%. -
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World War 2
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman end of the world war 2 -
Harry S. Truman
(April 12, 1945—January 20, 1953). Democratic. Truman served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third vice president and succeeded him on April 12, 1945 when he died less than three months of his fourth term. During his presidency Truman had to deal with many challenges in domestic affairs. He established the Truman Doctrine to contain communism and spoke out against racial discrimination in the armed forces. -
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Cold War
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states) and powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others). President Gerald Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, easing relations during the Cold War. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
(January 20, 1953—January 20, 1961). Republican. Before his service as the 34th U.S. President, Eisenhower was a five-star general in the U.S. Army. During WW2 he served as Supreme Commander of Allied forces with responsibility for leading the victorious invasion of France and Germany in 1944 to 1945. His focus as President was to reverse end U.S. neutrality and challenge Communism and corruption. He drafted NASA to compete with the Soviet Union in the space race. -
John F. Kennedy
(January 20, 1961—November 22, 1963). Democratic. Also known as JFK. At age 43 Kennedy was the second youngest president ever when elected, after Theodore Roosevelt. JFK was the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize and the only Catholic president. Events that happened during Kennedy’s presidency included the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the early Vietnam War, the Space Race, and the African American Civil Rights Movement. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
(November 22, 1963—January 20, 1969). Democratic. President Lyndon Johnson was one in four presidents to have served in all four federal offices of the U.S. government (President, Vice President, Representative, and Senator). He was well known for his domestic policies, including civil rights, Medicaid, Medicare, Public Broadcasting, the “War on Poverty,” educational aids, and environmental protection. However, his foreign strategy with the Vietnam War dragged his popularity. -
Richard Nixon
(January 20, 1969—August 9, 1974). Republican. President Nixon was the only president to resign from office. His presidency involved improvement of relations with the People’s Republic of China, the ending of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and the achievement of détente with the Soviet Union. Nixon’s second term was riddled with controversy of the Watergate scandal. -
Gerald Ford
(August 9, 1974—January 20, 1977). Republican. Ford was assigned vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned during Richard Nixon’s administration. When Nixon resigned, Ford became president. While in office Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, easing relations during the Cold War.The economy was the worst since the Great Depression while he was in office. He also granted a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal, which drew controversy towards his name. -
Jimmy Carter
(January 20, 1977—January 20, 1981). Democratic. Carter was the 39th President of the U.S. and the only to receive a Nobel Peace Prize (in 2002) after leaving office. As president, he created two new cabinet departments: the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. The end of his term saw the Iran hostage crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet, the 1979 energy crisis, and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. -
Ronald Reagan
(January 20, 1981—January 20, 1989). Republican. Prior to becoming a politician Ronald Reagan had been a radio broadcaster and actor. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and economics. As president, Reagan implemented new economic policies that became known as “Reaganomics.” -
George H. W. Bush
(January 20, 1989—January 20, 1993). Republican. Before becoming the 41st President of the U.S., George H. W. Bush served as the 43rd Vice President, an ambassador, a congressman, and Director of Central Intelligence. He served as a U.S. Navy aviator during World War II. After the war he attended and graduated from Yale in 1948. He went into the oil business and became a millionaire by age 40. -
Bill Clinton
(January 20, 1993—January 20, 2001). Democratic. Clinton was elected into office at 46, making him the 3rd youngest president. He was the first president of the baby boomer generation. He graduated from Yale Law School. Clinton was involved in a scandal with a White House intern, which nearly got him impeached. Despite that, his work as president earned him the highest approval rating of any president -
George W. Bush
(January 20, 2001—January 20, 2009). Republican. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, working in oil businesses after. Bush advocated policies on health care, the economy, social security reform, and education. In 2005 Bush was criticized for his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. With the combination of dissatisfaction with the Iraq War and the longest post-World War II recession in December 2007, Bush’s popularity declined sharply. -
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September 11
The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11)[a] were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
This occurred eight months into Bush's first term as president. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine: launching a "War on Terror", an international military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003. -
Barack Obama
(January 20, 2009—2016). Democratic. Current President Obama is the first African American U.S. president. He was previously a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. In foreign policy, Obama increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the United States–Russia New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War.
