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Native Americans
Since the 1600's Catholic and Protestant missionaries have been persistent to convert tribes. And later in the 1800's there was assimilation of Native Americans to loose their culture and adopt the white American style of living. There were many tribes dispersed throughout the nations and each had their own religious practices. Some were monotheistic, polytheistic, animistic, or a combination. The plains Indians worshiped the Buffalo and used it in all parts of daily life. -
Period: to
Transforming the West
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Morrill Land Grant College Act
The Morrill Land Grant College Act funded new universities in sparsely populated areas, usually through the west, through taxes on the sale of public land. It was an act donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act was passed by the Congress. Settlers received 160 acres of land that was improved over the next five years by building houses and producing crops. However, this act was took advantage of by landless farmers, former slaves, and single women. not long after, farmers went bankrupt due to isolation and drought in harsh locations. Railroad and real estate companies paid people to buy land for them and others flipped it when the value rose causing this act to be partially successful. -
Department Stores
Department stores first opened in 1846, but started becoming popular in the mid-late 19th century. Goods were organized into different "departments" and had fixed prices, therefore, bartering wasn't allowed. When you purchased items, much like today, there was a money back guarantee and free delivery. In that time, people shopped for the experience and not because of the deals. Discounts were being made if you bought items in a bulk, and five and dime stores also gave out discounts to customers. -
Period: to
Becoming an Industrial Power
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Transcontinental Railroad
The Transcontinental railroad had two corporations: union pacific and central pacific. The union pacific built the tracks in the west, & the central pacific build the tracks in the east which met in promontory point, Utah. Although the railroad was a success, it also had some problems. It exploited Chinese and Irish causing many to die. The congress granted railroad companies 10 square miles of land for every mile built & railroads exploit settlers with high prices for shipping & land purchases. -
Union Pacific
The Union Pacific was one of the two companies created taking on the moneymaking opportunity in the railroad. The other was the Central Pacific that was based in California. The eastern-based union pacific begin in Omaha, Nebraska and built west. The Union Pacific worked faster due to natural geography that the central pacific had to overcome. The Union Pacific was made up of mostly Irish workers. These two lines eventually connected at Promontory point in Utah. -
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American oil industry business magnate, industrialist, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the wealthiest American of all time, and the richest person in modern history because he was the Carnegie of oil production. He did the same things as Carnegie and controlled 90% of domestic oil. He went from vertical to horizontal integrations and invented two important elements: trust and holding companies. -
Granges
The Grange Movement, also known as Patrons of Husbandry was a farmer society founded by Oliver Hudson Kelley. Granges were devoted to educational events and social gatherings. The Panic of 1873 helped transform the Grange into a political force because of the large amount of farmers being plagued by low prices for their products. The Grange had a particularly strong influence in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, where political pressure yielded a series of "Granger Laws", benefiting farm -
Little Big Horn
in 1876, the Battle of Little Big Horn, Also known as Custer's Last Stand was fought between the Native Americans and the United States. General George Custer led U.S. offensive before reinforcements arrive. He wanted to be a hero but underestimated the size of native forces. The Native Americans who were led by several major war leaders, including Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, and had been inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull. Custer was later slaughtered, but the media portrayed him as a hero -
Cornelius Vanderbuilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known informally as "Commodore Vanderbilt", was a self made, multi-millionaire, American business magnate, and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. He became one of the wealthiest men in the 19th century. He convinced his mom to loan him money therefore he could start his own business. -
Phonograph
Thomas Edison created many inventions, but thee phonograph was his favorite. 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, or, since the 1940's, a record player. While Edison worked on improvements to the telegraph and the telephone, he figured out a way to record sound on tinfoil-coated cylinders. In 1877, he created a machine with two needles: one for recording and one for playback. -
Tenements
Tenements (also called tenement houses), are urban dwellings occupied by multiple impoverished families. They are apartment houses that barely meet or fail to meet the minimum standards of safety, sanitation, and comfort. Many tenements were filled with diseases and were poorly ventilated. Housing was scarce, particularly for working-class families. Rents soared due to population and some people started to fall behind on rent and started to get evicted. -
Period: to
The Gilded Age
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Exodusters
Exodusters were African Americans who migrated from southern states to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado in the late 19th century. It was the first migration of black people following the Civil War. They were looking to escape the racial violence by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and also the repression of laws such as the Black Codes. These laws made black people second class citizens after Reconstruction. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
In this time period Chinese immigrants faced a lot of issues like racism and violence.The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigrants from going into the United States. This was the first law to prevent a specific ethnic group from entering into the U.S. They created this act because Americans did not want immigrants ( Chinese wage workers in this case), coming over to America and taking their jobs away. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was approved on May 6, 1882. It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. It banned all Chinese immigrants from the United States because Americans didn't want their jobs to be taken away by Chinese laborers. -
Times Zones
Before the creation of time zones many towns and cities set clocks based on sunsets and sunrises. Which obviously these two moment occur at different times in different areas. At first, because of long travel times and the lack of long-distant communications, these differences weren't very noticeable. After the introduction on railways and telecommunications, time zones were a compromise to schedule departures and arrivals. This created a organized way to keep track of dividing the regions. -
Pendleton Act
Following the assassination of President James A. Garfield by a disgruntled job seeker, Charles Guiteau. Congress passed the Pendleton Act in January of 1883. The Pendleton Act provided that Federal Government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation, and that Government employees be selected through competitive exams called Civil Service Exams. Changes were made against favors. -
Robber Barons
The term "Robber baron" is a derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally applied to certain late 19th-century American businessmen or capitalist,who used unscrupulous and shady business methods to get rich. For example, political manipulation and worker exploitation. Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt were some examples of robber barons who got rich through product innovation and business efficiency. -
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, business magnate, and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and is often identified as one of the richest people because of his invention. He pushed his production cost to the lowest levels possible through the Bessemer Process in which he invested in. Carnegie allowed for his company to control all phases of production, and bought all supply sources and competition. -
Haymarket Riot
Haymarket Riot, outbreak of violence in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Demanded for an eight-hour working day became increasingly widespread among American laborers in the 1880s. A demonstration, staged by a small group of anarchists, caused a crowd of some 1,500 people to gather at Haymarket Square. three hundred police came to break up the could and a bomb exploded near police. Angry police attack crowds with batons and guns, seven police ended up dead. this damages labor movement in 20th century. -
Telephone
The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by many individuals, and involved an array of lawsuits founded upon the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell reasoned by analogy with the mechanical phonautograph that a skin diaphragm would reproduce sounds like the human ear when connected to a steel or iron reed or hinged armature. The first long distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876. -
Jane Adams
Jane Addams, known as the "mother" of social work, was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Jane Addams. She traveled to Europe as a young woman and there she visited a settlement house, a center that helped the poor people of the community. This encouraged Jane to start a settlement house in America, called the Hull House in Chicago. . -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison after a widespread growth of trusts. The Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits agreements in restraint of trade--such as price-fixing, refusals to deal, bid-rigging, etc. -
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term coined in the late 19th century to describe the idea that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a struggle for existence in which natural selection results in "survival of the fittest." It relates to the controversial theory of evolution. Darwinist reasoning was to advocate against helping the poor because they were underlying (unfit), unlike the rich people who were intelligent, strong, and adaptable. -
The Great Migration
The Great Migration was a relocation of African Americans from the South to the North. They wanted to flee from the harsh Jim Crow laws taking place in the South. Rural African American Southerners believed that segregation and racism and prejudice against blacks - was significantly less intense in the North. Immigrants wanted to seek a better economic life, and others just wanted to escape because of war, persecution, starvation, etc. About seven million African Americans fled between 1890-1970 -
Farmer's Alliance
The Farmer's Alliance contain five million members (white only). Farmers overcharged on shipping crops using high interest loans and took reins from Granger movements. One of the goals of the organization was to end the adverse effects of the crop-lien system on farmers in the period following the American Civil War. The Grange tried to help farmers by providing educational and social events. The Grange and the farmers' alliances also worked to raise crop prices. -
Period: to
Imperialism
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The Depression of 1893
The Depression of 1893 began in 1893 and ended in 1897. This was one of the worst economic depressions in the United States history. Banks, railroads, and everyday businesses went under. Many people started to question the laissez-faire capitalism for the cause of this depression. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures throughout the country. -
World’s Columbian Exposition 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893. The 1893 World's Fair (officially known as the World's Columbian Exposition to honor the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in North America) was the fair to end all fairs. It was the fifteenth such exposition in the world, and only the second in the United States. It inaugurated an age of great fairs and expositions in the United States whose influence is felt to this day. -
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American Republican Congressman and historian from Massachusetts. A member of the prominent Lodge family, he received his PhD in history from Harvard University. Henry Cabot Lodge, (born May 12, 1850, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died November 9, 1924, Cambridge, Massachusetts), Republican U.S. senator for more than 31 years (1893–1924); he led the successful congressional opposition to his country's participation in the League of Nations following World War I. -
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. When the Pullman railroad car company laid off workers and slashed their wages, the American Railway Union led a national strike that shut down the country's railroad system. George Pullman called on the federal government to break the strike and get the trains running again. The strike ended through boycott when joining the American Railway Union. -
W.E.B. Dubois
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. -
Period: to
The Progressive Era
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Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It 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". It stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. -
Election of 1896
The United States presidential election of November 3, 1896, saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan because of corporate money, in a campaign considered by historians to be one of the most dramatic and complex in American history. This is later regarded as a realigning election, starting the Fourth Party System in which Republicans dominate politics until about 1932. The Populist party disintegrates and all ideas remain in the Progressive Era. -
Treaty of Paris 1898
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 was an agreement made in 1898 that involved Spain relinquishing nearly all of the remaining Spanish Empire, especially Cuba, and ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. The war officially ended four months later, when the U.S. and Spanish governments signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. Apart from guaranteeing the independence of Cuba, the treaty also forced Spain to cede Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States. -
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a term in foreign affairs initially used to refer to the United States policy established in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, as enunciated in Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Note, in September 1899 and dispatched to the major European powers. It was the statement of principles initiated by the United States for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity. -
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement was a violent anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising that took place in China between 1899 and 1901, toward the end of the Qing dynasty. Boxer Rebellion, officially supported peasant uprising of 1900 that attempted to drive all foreigners from China. “Boxers” was a name that foreigners gave to a Chinese secret society known as the Yihequan (“Righteous and Harmonious Fists”). -
Election of 1900
The United States presidential election of 1900 was the 29th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1900. In a re-match of the 1896 race, Republican President William McKinley defeated his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. On September 6, 1901, William McKinley, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. He was shaking hands with the public when Leon Czolgosz, shot him twice in the abdomen. -
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." The phrase came to be automatically associated with Roosevelt and was frequently used by the press, especially in cartoons, to refer particularly to his foreign policy; in Latin America and the Caribbean, he enacted the Big Stick policy (in foreign policy, also known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine) . -
Teddy Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman and writer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He also served as the 25th Vice President of the United States from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd Governor of New York from 1899 to 1900. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. -
Platt Amendment
On March 2, 1901, the Platt Amendment was passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill. It stipulated seven conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops remaining in Cuba at the end of the Spanish–American War, and an eighth condition that Cuba sign a treaty accepting these seven conditions. The Platt Amendment of 1901, essentially gave the United States permission to intervene in Cuban affairs. -
Roosevelt Corollary
The Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–03. The Roosevelt Corollary stated that the United States would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors, and did not violate the rights of the United States or invite "foreign aggression". -
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American captain of industry and a business magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line, he developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle-class Americans could afford. Ford converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into a practical conveyance that would profoundly impact the landscape of the 20th century. -
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is an artificial 77 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. Building the Panama Canal, 1903–1914. President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the realization of a long-term United States goal—a trans-isthmian canal. Throughout the 1800s, American and British leaders and businessmen wanted to ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. -
William Randolph Hurst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, politician, and newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company Hearst Communications and whose flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. he is best known for the Yellow Journalism, credited with leading America in to the Spanish- American War. -
Meat Inspection Act 1906
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) is an American law that makes it a crime to adulterate or mis-brand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. came about largely due to the conditions in the meat packing industry that were detailed in great depth in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, "The Jungle." -
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, ended dictatorship in Mexico and established a constitutional republic. A number of groups, led by revolutionaries including Francisco Madero, Pascual Orzoco, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, participated in the long and costly conflict. Though a constitution drafted in 1917 formalized many of the reforms sought by rebel groups, periodic violence continued into the 1930s. -
Bull Moose Party
Bull Moose Party, formally known as the Progressive Party, U.S. dissident political faction that nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate in the presidential election of 1912. The formal name and general objectives of the party were revived 12 years later. The platform of the Bull Moose Party reflected Roosevelt's New Nationalism. The party called for the direct election of U.S. senators, woman suffrage, reduction of the tariff, and many social reforms. -
Election of 1912
The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. United States presidential election of 1912, American presidential election, in which Democrat Woodrow Wilson defeated Bull Moose (Progressive) candidate and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and Republican incumbent president William Howard Taft. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act is an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System (the central banking system of the United States), and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes. It was created by the Congress to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. The Federal Reserve was created on December 23, 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. -
Trench Warfare
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied fighting lines consisting largely of military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. Trench warfare is 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. However, they usually caught trench foot and would have to amputate their feet. -
Allied Powers
Allied powers, also called Allies, those countries allied in opposition to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) in World War I or to the Axis powers(Germany Italy and Japan in World War II. The major Allied powers in World War I were Great Britain, France, and the Russian empire, formally linked by the Treaty of London of September 5, 1914. Other countries that had been allied by treaty to one or more of those powers were also called Allies -
Period: to
World War I
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Mustard Gas
The introduction of poison gas, however, would have great significance in World War I. Immediately after the German gas attack at Ypres, France and Britain began developing their own chemical weapons and gas masks.The U.S., which entered World War I in 1917, also developed and used chemical weapons. It was used to lethal effect during World War I, and early gas masks offered little protection. Mustard gas, is a chemical agent that causes severe burning of the skin, eyes and respiratory tract. -
American Expeditionary Force
The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were the fighting men of the United States Army during World War I. It was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of General John J. Pershing. During the US campaigns in WWI it fought alongside the French, British, Canadian and Australian Armies on the Western Front, against the German Empire. A minority of the troops also fought alongside the Italians against the Austro-Hungarian Army. -
PTSD
World War I. In WWI, the psychological distress of soldiers was attributed to concussions caused by the impact of shells; this impact was believed to disrupt the brain and cause “shell shock”. Thus, it was assumed that soldiers who experienced these symptoms were cowardly and weak. Early on in the War, it was thought that the illness was caused by being close to exploding shells. But men who had never fought in the Front Line or anywhere near shelling also suffered from the same symptoms. -
Zimmerman Telegraph
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 in the prior event of the United States entering WWI against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British Intelligence. The decryption was a triumph for Britain and supported US declaration of war on Germany. -
14 Points
The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. The Fourteen Points speech was a statement given to Congress by President Woodrow Wilson declaring that WW1 was being fought for a moral cause and calling for peace in Europe. -
Spanish Flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people around the world, including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (3-5 percent of the world's population), making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. In the first year of the pandemic, life expectancy in the United States dropped by about 12 years. -
Treaty of Versailles
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 arts and 440 articles reassigned German boundaries and assigned liablity for reparations. After strict enforcement for five years, the French assented to the modification of important provisions. Germany agreed to pay reparations, but those plans were cancelled in 1932 when Hitler came to power. -
The First Red Scare
The First Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included those such as the Russian Revolution and anarchist bombings at its height in 1919-1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread f communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern. -
Period: to
The 1920's
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18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal. The Volstead Act set down methods for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which intoxicating liquors were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition. The Amendment was in effect for the following 13 years. It was repealed in 1933 by ratification of the 21 Amendment. -
19th Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex (Women's suffrage). It was adopted on August 18, 1920. It provides men and women with equal voting rights. The amendment states that the right of citizens to vote "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." -
Vertical Integration
Vertical Integration is a terming meaning that the supply chain of a company in owned by that company. This means larges portions of the supply chain is not only under a common ownershipm but also into one corporation. It was pioneered by tycoon Andrew Carnegie. He combines all phases of the steel production and manufacturing into one organization in order to maje supplies more reliable and improved efficiency. It controlled the quality of the product at all stages of production. -
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) 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 in 1916, he founded the Negro World newspaper, and international shipping company called Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. During the 1920s the UNIA was the largest secular organization in African-American history. -
NAZI
The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-WWI Germany. The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into German nationalism. Initial Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big buisness and anti-capitalist. Founded in 1919 the group promoted anti semitism and expressed dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler became party leader in 1921. -
KKK
Founded in 1866, the KKK extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. It members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization's primary goal was white supremacy, -
Tea Pot Dome 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. -
The Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the generation that came of age during World War I. Demographer William Strauss and Neil Howe outlined their Strauss-Howe generational theory using 1883-1900 as birth year for this generation. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. -
Scopes Monkey Trail
In Dayton, Tennessee, the "Monkey Trial" begins with John Thomas Scopes, a high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law made it a misdemeanor ounishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught n the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals". -
Darwinism
The proponents of social Darwinism believed poverty and many other social ills were the result of bad genes. In the 1920s, eugenics movements were popular in many countries, including the United States and Germany. Eugenics is the study of human improvement by genetic means. Many eugenicists saw themselves as visionaries who would day create a world free of poverty, and physical and mental illness. Some American lawmakers cited eugenics in their efforts to limit immigration from Asia. -
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. Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with the Harlem Shadows and Crane. -
Charles Lindburg
Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator who rose to international fame in 1927 after becoming the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. Five years later, Lindbergh's toddler son was kidnapped and murdered in what many called "the crime of the century". In the lead-up to WWII, Lindbergh was an outspoken isolationist, opposing American aid to Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. Some accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer -
Unions
The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, US labor law, and more general history of working people, in the United States. Beginning in the 1930s, unions became important components of the Democratic Party. However, some historians have not understood why no labor Party emerged in the United States, in contrast to Western Europe. The nature and power of organized labor is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace laws -
Great Depression in the U.S.
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out million of investors. Over the next few years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933 the Great Depression reached its lowest point 15 million were unemployed. -
Bank Runs
The stock market crash of October 1929 left the American public highly nervous and extremely susceptible to rumors of impending financial disaster. Consumer spending and investment began to decrease, which would in turn lead to a decline in production and employment. Another phenomenon that compounded the nation's economic woes during the Great Depression was a wave of banking panics, or bank runs, during which large numbers of people withdrew their deposits forcing banks to liquidate loans. -
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover was America's 31st president, who took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Although his predecessors' policies undoubtedl 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. HE was defeated by FDR -
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not hand the tremendous colume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression -
Period: to
The Great Depression
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Hoovervilles
During the Great Depression, which lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S as employed 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. Then the government failed to provide relief, Hoover was blamed for the economic conditions and the town that cropped up across the nation became known as Hoovervilles. -
Glass Steegal
The Glass-Steagall legislation describes four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking. The article 1933 Banking Act describes the entire law, including the legislative history of the provisions covered here. The Glass-Steagall Act effectively separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, among other things. It was one of the most widely debated legislative initiatives before signage. -
First 100 Days
The first 100 days of FDR's presidency began on March 4, 1933. During this period, he presented a series of initiatives to Congress designed to counter the effects of the Great Depression. He had signaled his intention to move with unprecedented speed to address the problem facing the nation in his inaugural address. Roosevelt coined the term "first 100 days" during a July 24, 1933 radio. The first 100 days of a presidential term has taken a symbolic significance, measuring early success. -
Emergency Relief Act
The Federal Emergency Relief Act, passed at the outset of the New Deal by Congress on May 12, 1933, was the opening shot in the war against the Great Depression. It created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which was founded to help the needy and unemployed. Direct aid was given to the states which funneled funds through local agencies such as home relief bureaus an departments of welfare for poor relief. Within the first two hours, $5 million were distributed. -
20th Amendment
The 20th amendment is a simple amendment that sets the dates at which federal United States government elected offices end. In also defines who succeeds the president if the president dies. This amendment was ratified on January 23, 1933. " The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been..." -
Fiat currency
Fiat money is currency that a government has declared to be legal tender, but it is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold. The value of fiat money is derived from the relationship between supply and demand rather than the value of the material that the money is made of. FDR suspended the gold standard except for foreign exchanged, revoked it as the universal legal tender for debts and banned private ownership of significant amounts of gold coins. -
Axis Power
The Axis powers,also known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, were the nations that fought in World War II against the Allied forces. The axis powers agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity. The Axis grew out of the diplomatic efforts of Germany, Italy, and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the treaty signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936. -
Munich Congress
The Munich Conference was an agreement reached by German, Great Britain, France and Italy permitting Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia and was sign on September 29, 1938. Hitler had previously started rearming Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, reoccupied Rhineland in 1936 and annexed Austria in 1938. The German army was to complete the occupation of the Sudetenland by October 10. Czechoslovakia could either resist Germany alone or submit. -
Invasion of Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units broke trough Polish defenses along the border and advanced in a massive encirclement attack. -
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Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill is one of the best-kown statesmen of the 20th century. He was born into a life of privilege and dedicated himself to public service. He was an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist. Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his British countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again. Churchill took place as prime minister in May 1940. -
Executive Order 9066
Ten weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable." The military in turn defined the entire West Coast, home to majority of Japanese Americans. By June 110,000+ Japanese were relocated to remote interment camps built by the US military around the country, For two years Japanese Americans enduring difficult living conditions. -
Tuskegee Airman
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps, a percursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the US armed forces under President Harry Truman in 1948. -
D Day
During WWII, the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany's control. Code named 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 on of the largest amphibious military assaults in history, -
Battle of the Buldge
December 16, three German armies launched the deadliest and most desperate battle of the war in the west in the poorly roaded, rugged, heavily forested Ardennes. The once-quiet region became bedlam as American units were caught flat-footed and fought desperate battles to stem the German advance. German armies drove deeper into the Ardennes in a attempt to secure bridgeheads west of the River Meuse quickly. The line defining the Allied front took on the appearance of a large protrusion or bulge.
