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Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
Tuskegee Institute
Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. -
Interstate Commerce Act
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. -
Jane Addams-Hull House
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had expanded to 13 buildings. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
Approved on July 2, 1890, The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts. Several states had passed similar laws, but they were limited to intrastate businesses. -
Plessy V. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal" -
McKinley Assassinated
William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, six months into his second term.
He was assassinated to advance anarchism. -
Coal Miner Strike - 1902
The Coal strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners striked for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union. -
Ida Tarbell-“The History of Standard Oil”
The History of the Standard Oil Company is a 1904 book by journalist Ida Tarbell. It is an expose about the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history. -
Niagara Movement
The Niagara Movement was a civil-rights group founded in 1905 near Niagara Falls. Scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois gathered with supporters on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to form an organization dedicated to social and political change for African Americans. -
The Jungle Published
The Jungle is a 1906 novel by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities -
Roosevelt-Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act was the first U.S. law to provide general legal protection of cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on Federal lands. After a generation-long effort, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act on June 8, 1906 -
Federal Meat Inspection Act
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) is an American law that makes it illegal to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under strictly regulated sanitary conditions. -
Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of significant consumer protection laws which was enacted by Congress in the 20th century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. -
Muller v. Oregon
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 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. -
Taft Wins
Taft won 51.6% of the popular vote and carried most states outside of the Solid South. Taft's triumph gave Republicans their fourth straight presidential election victory. Two third-party candidates, Eugene V. -
Teddy Roosevelt’s- Square Deal
The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program, which reflected his three major goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. These three demands are often referred to as the "three Cs" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. -
NAACP formed
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. -
16th Amendment
The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co -
Urban League
The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. -
Triangle Shirtwaist fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. -
Federal Reserve Act
Federal Reserve Act. Long title. An Act to provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes. -
Underwood-Simmons Tariff
This act was passed with the aim of reducing taxes that applied to manufactured goods, and to grant duty-free raw materials. -
Department of Labor Established
The United States Department of Labor is a cabinet-level department of the U.S. federal government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, reemployment services, and some economic statistics; many U.S. states also have such departments. -
17th Amendment
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the direct election of United States senators in each state. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures. -
Federal trade Commission Act
The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 established the Federal Trade Commission. The Act, signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, outlaws unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that affect commerce. -
Clayton Antitrust Act
The Clayton Antitrust Act is a piece of legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1914. The act defines unethical business practices, such as price-fixing and monopolies, and upholds various rights of labor. -
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil U.S. antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The Commission is headed by five Commissioners, each serving a seven-year term. -
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stone-mans and Southern landowners the Cameron's, intertwine in director D.W. Griffith's controversial Civil War epic. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stone-man petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the KKK, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American prodigy, Silas Lynch. -
Lusitania sunk
The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany. -
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. -
Wilson Elected
The 1916 United States presidential election was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeated former Governor of New York Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. -
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. If the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. -
Wilson Asks for War
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Four days later, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of a war declaration. Since the start of World War I in 1914, the United States sought to stay out of the conflict -
Trench Warfare
resorted to when the superior firepower of the defense compels the opposing forces to “dig in” so extensively as to sacrifice their mobility in order to gain protection. A British soldier inside a trench on the Western Front during World War I, 1914–18. -
Espionage Act
An Act to punish acts of interference with the foreign relations, and the foreign commerce of the United States, to punish espionage, and better to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for other purposes. -
Hammer v. Dagenhart
Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court struck down a federal law regulating child labor. The decision was overruled by United States v. Darby Lumber Co. -
Wilson-Fourteen Points
Open diplomacy without secret treaties.
Economic free trade on the seas during war and peace.
Equal trade conditions.
Decrease armaments among all nations.
Adjust colonial claims.
Evacuation of all Central Powers from Russia and allow it to define its own independence. -
Sedition Act
The Sedition Act of 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. -
Armistice Say
Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiegne, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven in the morning, the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. -
18th Amendment
Prohibition of alcohol -
Treaty of Versailles to Senate
On July 10, 1919, the president of the United States, for the first time since 1789, personally delivered a treaty to the Senate. This was no ordinary treaty; it was the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. -
Wilson Stroke
During his tour of 8000 miles in 22 days cost him his health. He had suffered constant headaches until he finally collapsed from exhaustion. He manage to suffer a near-fatal stroke. -
League of Nations
International diplomatic group developed after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before they erupted into open warfare. -
Versailles Peace Conference
The Versailles Treaty forced Germany to give up territory to Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Poland, return Alsace and Lorraine to France and cede all of its overseas colonies in China, Pacific and Africa to the Allied nations -
Muckrakers
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who exposed established institutions and leaders as corrupt. They typically had large audiences in popular magazines. -
Rise of KKK (early 20th century)
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers and other Southerners opposed to Reconstruction after the Civil War. In the waning years of Reconstruction the Klan disbanded. Nearly 50 years later, in 1915, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan after seeing D. W. Griffith's film Birth of A Nation, which portrayed the Klansmen as great heroes. -
19th Amendment
Prohibits the states and federal governments from denying the right to vote to citizens based on the gender. -
W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor (1868-1963)
