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John J. Pershing
U.S. Army general John J. Pershing, commanded the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in Europe during World War I. John J. Pershing was president and first captain of the West Point class of 1886. He served in the Spanish- and Philippine-American Wars and his task was to lead a punitive raid against the Mexican revolutionary in Pancho Villa. -
Glenn Hammond Curtiss
Glenn Curtiss, with three employees, was manufacturing his own motorcycles under the trade name, "Hercules". In a measured-mile run at Ormond Beach, Florida, on Jan. 23, 1907, Curtiss's V8 powered motorcycle was officially clocked at 136.3 mph. On that day, and for years afterward, Glenn Curtiss carried the title, "Fastest Man on Earth". -
Marcus Garvey
In 1914 Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In 1916, Garvey moved to Harlem in New York where UNIA thrived. He created a 'Back to Africa' movement which urged African-Americans to be proud of their race and return to Africa,. -
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The Great Migration
The Great Migration, or the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, had a huge impact on urban life in the United States. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. -
Sussex Pledge
On May 6, the German government signed the so-called Sussex Pledge, promising to stop the indiscriminate sinking of non-military ships. According to the pledge, merchant ships would be searched, and sunk only if they were found to be carrying contraband materials. Furthermore, no ship would be sunk before safe passage had been provided for the ship's crew and its passengers. -
Battle of Aragonne Forest
The Battle of the Argonne Forest , also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive, was a part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the Armistice on November 11. -
Alvin York
United States Corporal Alvin C. York reportedly killed over 20 German soldiers and captured an additional 132 at the head of a small detachment in the Argonne Forest near the Meuse River in France. The exploits later earned York the Congressional Medal of Honor -
Treaty of Versallies
World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. Negotiated among the Allied powers with little participation by Germany, its 15 parts and 440 articles reassigned German boundaries and assigned liability for reparations. After strict enforcement for five years, the French assented to the modification of important provisions. Germany agreed to pay reparations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. -
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Harlem Renaissance
Spanning the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity. Its essence was summed up by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926 when he declared that through art, “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self determination.” Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.” Chiefly literary, -
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Jazz Music
Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor. -
Warren G Harding's "Return to Normalcy"
"Return to Normalcy" was a speech given by President Warren Harding. The speech described the political and social order Harding wanted to return the United States to after the idealism of president Woodrow Wilson. -
Franklin D Roosevelt
The election of 1920 was a disaster for the Democratic Party as a whole, but in many ways it was a triumph for Franklin D Roosevelt.Roosevelt first acquired a national following through the 1920 campaign. It also provided FDR with the opportunity to show his political skills. -
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Langston Hughs
In 1925, Langston Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. While studying at Lincoln,Hughes poetry came to the attention Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published by Knopf in 1926. The book had established both his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage. -
Charles Lindbergh
In the 1920s, a hotel owner was offering a prize of $25,000 to the first pilot to make the journey from New York to Paris without making any stops. Charles Lindbergh wanted to win this challenge and enlisted the support of some St. Louis businessmen. Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on May 20, 1927. Flying a monoplane named Spirit of St Louis, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. -
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The Great Depression
The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers. -
Dorothea Lange
A look at the work of Dorothea Lange who captured the Great Depression through her lens and created some of the iconographic images of that era.The Great Depression of the 1930s is best remembered, photographically, by the work of the FSA, were Dorothea worked. She travelled the USA recording the deprivations caused by the failure of the economy as well as taking many uplifting images that showed that, despite the hard times, life and love went on. -
The New Deal
When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. More than that, Roosevelt’s New Deal permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to the U.S. populace. -
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The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America.When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the region. -
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Red Scare
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. (Communists were often referred to as “Reds” for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society.