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Period: to
Becoming An Industrial Power
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John Deere
In 1837, John Deere created such a plow, using a broken saw blade. In 1843, he entered a partnership with Leonard Andrus to produce more plows to meet increasing demand. By 1848, Deere dissolved his partnership with Andrus and moved the business to Moline, Illinois, which offered advantages of water power, coal and cheaper transportation than to be found in Grand Detour. In 1850, approximately 1600 plows were made, and the company was soon producing other tools to complement its steel plow. -
Child Labor
A child with a factory job might work 12 to 18 hours a day, 6 days a week, to earn a dollar. Many children began working before the age of 7, tending machines in spinning mills or hauling heavy loads. The factories were often damp, dark, and dirty. Some children worked underground, in coal mines. 2 million school-age children were working 50- to 70-hour weeks. Most came from poor families. When parents could not support their children, they sometimes turned them over to a mill or factory owner. -
Bessemer Process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. The modern process is named after its inventor, the Englishman Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1856. -
John Rockefeller
An American oil industry business magnate, industrialist, and philanthropist. His brother and Samuel Andrews bought out a partnership. In 1867, Henry Flagler entered the partnership. The Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler company grew by taking-over local refineries. Rockefeller formally founded his most famous company, the Standard Oil Company, Inc., in 1870 as an Ohio partnership with William, Flagler, Andrews, Jabez A. Bostwick, and a silent partner, Stephen V. Harkness. He ran it until 1897. -
Robber Barons
"Robber baron" is a derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally applied to certain late 19th-century American businessmen who used unscrupulous methods to get rich. The metaphor appeared as early as February 9, 1859, when The New York Times used it to characterize the unethical business practices by Cornelius Vanderbilt. The term combines the pejorative senses of criminal ("robber") and aristocrat ("barons" having no legitimate role in a republic). -
Period: to
Transforming the West
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Homestead Act
The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, stated that any adult or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to “improve” the plot by building a dwelling and cultivating land. After 5 years on the land, the original filer was entitled to the property for a small registration fee. Titles to the land could be acquired after a 6-month residency if claimant paid 1.25 per acre. -
Morrill Land Grant College Act
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds of federal land sales. The Morrill Act of 1862 was enacted during the American Civil War. Aided by the secession of many states that did not support the plans, this reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862. The previous day Lincoln signed a bill financing the transcontinental railroad with land grants. -
Labor Unions
The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades. The National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor. These reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all “producers” rather than strictly to wage workers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. -
Ghost Dance
The Ghost Dance religion was an answer to the subjugation of Native Americans by the U.S. government. It was an attempt to revitalize traditional culture and to find a way to face increasing poverty, hunger, and disease.. Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse in 1889. In this vision he saw the second coming of Christ and received warning about the evils of white man. The vision promised an apocalypse that would destroy the earth and the white man.The earth would be given to Native Americans. -
Tenements
A tenement is a multi-occupancy building of any sort. However, in the United States it has come to mean a run-down apartment building, a slum. The Tenement House Act of 1879, known as the Old Law, which required lot coverage of no more than 65 percent. As of 1870, New York State law defined a “tenement house” as “any house or building, which is rented, leased let or hired out, to be occupied, or is occupied as the home or residence of three families or more living independently of each other. -
Period: to
Gilded Age
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Women's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an active temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." The WCTU was originally organized on December 23, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio, and officially declared at a national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1874. -
Red River War
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874 to remove the Native American tribes from the Southern Plains and forcibly relocate them to reservations in Indian Territory. The war had several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass, and capture highly mobile Indian bands. Though the last significantly sized group did not surrender until mid-1875, the war marked the end of Indian populations on the southern Great Plains. -
Battle of Little Big Horn
An armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory. The fight was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho. -
Social Darwinism
The term social Darwinism is used to refer to various ways of thinking and theories that emerged in the second half of the 19th century and tried to apply the evolutionary concept of natural selection to human society. The term itself emerged in the 1880s, and it gained widespread currency when used after 1944 by opponents of these ways of thinking. The majority of those who have been categorized as social Darwinists did not identify themselves by such a label. Rich will rise; poor will fall. -
Social Gospel Movement
The Social Gospel Movement was a religious movement that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ministers, especially ones belonging to the Protestant branch of Christianity, began to tie salvation and good works together.They argued that people must emulate the life of Jesus Christ. To honor God, people must put aside their own earthly desires and help other people, especially the needy. The purpose of wealth was not to hoard it but to share it with other, less fortunate people -
Assassination of President Garfield
The assassination of James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States, began when he was shot at 9:30 am on July 2, 1881, less than four months into his term as President, and ended in his death 79 days later on September 19, 1881. He was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., and died in Elberon, New Jersey. Guiteau's motive was revenge against Garfield for an imagined political debt. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. It required the few non-laborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate. The Chinese found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers, because the act defined them as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law. -
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
In 1883, Buffalo Bill's Wild West was founded in North Platte, Nebraska when Buffalo Bill Cody turned his real life adventure into the first outdoor western show. The show had celebrity endorsements, press kits, publicity stunts, op-ed articles, billboards and product licensing, that contributed to the success and popularity of the show. The shows consisted of reenactments of history combined with displays of showmanship, sharp-shooting, hunts, racing, or rodeo style events. -
Pendleton Act
The Pendleton Act is a United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation.The act provided selection of government employees by competitive exams,rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. Made it illegal to fire or demote government officials for political reasons and prohibited soliciting campaign donations on Federal government property. -
Haymarket Riot
On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. The men convicted were viewed as martyrs. -
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded in Columbus, Ohio, by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association.The Federation was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout its first fifty years, after which many craft union affiliates turned to organizing on an industrial union basis to meet the challenge from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1940s. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act of 1887, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. Set up individuals as family heads with 160 acres, tried to make rugged individualists out of the Indians, attempt to assimilate Native American population into American culture. -
Temperance
Temperance is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint.It is typically described in terms of what an individual voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from retaliation in the form of non-violence and forgiveness, restraint from arrogance in the form of humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as splurging now in the form of prudence, and restraint from excessive anger or craving for something in the form of calmness and self-control. -
Period: to
Imperialism
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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. It allowed certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be competitive, and recommended the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. The law attempted to prevent the artificial raising of prices by the restriction of trade or supply. -
Depression of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the realigning election of 1896 and the presidency of William McKinley. One of the causes for the Panic of 1893 can be traced back to Argentina. Investment was encouraged by the Argentine agent bank. However, the 1890 wheat crop failure and a coup in Buenos Aires ended further investments. -
World's Columbian Exposition 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St. Louis for the honor of hosting the fair. The Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, sanitation, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and American industrial optimism. -
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit. The conflict began in Pullman, Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. -
Anti-Saloon League
The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. It was a key component of the Progressive Era, and was strongest in the South and rural North, drawing heavy support from pietistic Protestant ministers and their congregations, especially Methodists, Baptists, Disciples and Congregationalists. It concentrated on legislation, and cared about how legislators voted, not whether they drank or not. -
Period: to
Progressive Era
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Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 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". The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1, with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the lone dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. -
Klondike Gold Rush
A migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896, and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors.With mountainous terrain and cold climate, this meant that those who persisted did not arrive until summer 1898. Once there, they found few opportunities, and many left disappointed. -
Election of 1896
The United States presidential election of 1896 was the 28th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1896. Former Governor William McKinley, the Republican candidate, defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. -
Battle of Manila Bay
The Battle of Manila Bay took place on 1 May 1898, during the Spanish–American War. The American Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey engaged and destroyed the Spanish Pacific Squadron under Contraalmirante Patricio Montojo. The battle took place in Manila Bay in the Philippines, and was the first major engagement of the Spanish–American War. The battle was one of the most decisive naval battles in history and marked the end of the Spanish colonial period in Philippine history. -
Siege of Santiago
The Siege of Santiago also known as the Siege of Santiago de Cuba was the last major operation of the Spanish–American War on the island of Cuba. On July 3, 1898, the same day as the naval battle, Major General William "Pecos Bill" Shafter began the siege of Santiago. Shafter fortified his position on San Juan Heights. General Henry W. Lawton's division moved up from El Caney extending the U.S. right flank to the north. All Spanish ships were destroyed bringing forth the reason for surrender. -
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 cession of the Philippines involved a payment of $20 million from the United States to Spain. The treaty was signed on December 10, 1898, and ended the Spanish–American War. The Treaty of Paris came into effect on April 11, 1899. -
Philippine-American War
The Philippine–American War was an armed conflict between the First Philippine Republic and the United States that lasted from February 4, 1899 to July 2, 1902. The Filipinos saw the conflict as a continuation of the Filipino struggle for independence that began in 1896 with the Philippine Revolution.The conflict arose when the First Philippine Republic objected to the terms of the Treaty of Paris under which the United States took possession of the Philippines from Spain. -
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, dated September 6, 1899 and dispatched to the major European powers. The policy proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, and to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbor dues or railroad charges. -
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion 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. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness, for many of their members had been practitioners of martial arts that included boxing. They were motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments, and by opposition to Western colonialism and the Christian missionary activity that was associated with it. -
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. McKinley's victory made him the first president to win consecutive re-election since Ulysses S. Grant had accomplished the same feat in 1872. -
Big Stick Policy
Big stick policy refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: "speak softly, and carry a big stick." Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis." The idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies a pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals. -
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo–Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operatins were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan and the Yellow Sea. Russia suffered multiple defeats by Japan, but Tsar Nicholas II was convinced that Russia would win and chose to remain engaged in the 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 misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.These requirements also apply to imported meat products, which must be inspected under equivalent foreign standards. USDA inspection of poultry was added by the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of significant consumer protection laws which was enacted by Congress in the 20th century & led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug’s packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels -
Gentlemen's agreement
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigration, and Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two powerful Pacific nations. The agreement was never ratified by Congress and was ended by the Immigration Act of 1924. -
Muller v. Oregon
Muller v. Oregon, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate, lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The law did not recognize sex-based discrimination in 1908; it was unrecognized until the case of Reed v. Reed in 1971. The case describes women as having dependency upon men in a manner that women needed their rights to be preserved by the state; their "rights" were to have maternal gender roles. -
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle radically transforming Mexican culture and government. Although recent research has focused on local and regional aspects of the Revolution, it was a "genuinely national revolution". Its outbreak in 1910 resulted from the failure of the 35-year-long regime of Porfirio Díaz to find a managed solution to the presidential succession.This meant there was a political crisis among competing elites and the opportunity for agrarian insurrection. -
Election of 1912
he United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and defeated Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") nominee. Roosevelt remains the only third party presidential candidate in U.S. history to finish better than third in the popular or electoral vote. -
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 (commonly known as the US Dollar) as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The Federal Reserve Act created a system of private and public entities. There were to be at least eight and no more than twelve private regional Federal Reserve banks. -
17th Amendment
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures. It also alters the procedure for filling vacancies in the Senate, allowing for state legislatures to permit their governors to make temporary appointments until a special election can be held. -
Marcus Garvey
Was a proponent of Black nationalism in Jamaica and especially the United States. He was a leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. The Black Star Line went bankrupt and Garvey was imprisoned for mail fraud in the selling of its stock. -
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. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. It has become a by word for stalemate, attrition, sieges and futility in conflict. Trench warfare occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility. -
Period: to
World War 1
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia and, from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne.His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against SerbiaThis caused the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and Serbia's allies to declare war on each other, starting World War I. -
Schlieffen Plan
The Schlieffen Plan was the name given after World War I to the thinking behind the German invasion of France and Belgium on 4 August 1914. Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, the Chief of the Imperial Army German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, devised a deployment plan for a war-winning offensive, in a one-front war against the French Third Republic from 1905–06.After the war, the German official historians of the Reichsarchiv and other writers, described the plan as a blueprint for victory. -
The Great Migration
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1916 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90% of the African-American population lived in the American South. In 1900, only 1/5 of African-Americans living in the South were living in urban areas. By the end of the Great Migration, 53% of the African-American population remained in the South, while 40% lived in the North, and 7% in the West. -
National Park System
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties. It was created on August 25, 1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act. The NPS is charged with a dual role of preserving the ecological and historical integrity of the places entrusted to its management, while also making them available and accessible for public use and enjoyment. -
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 in the prior event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion, especially after the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3. -
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and the old regime was replaced by a provisional government during the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time). -
American Expeditionary Force (AEF)
The American Expeditionary Forces 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 United States campaigns in World War I it fought alongside the French Army, British Army, Canadian Army and Australian Army on the Western Front, against the German Empire. A minority of the AEF troops also fought alongside the Italian Army in that same year, against the Austro-Hungarian Army. -
Sedition Act
The Sedition of 1918 was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader 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.It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces. -
Murder of the Romanovs
The Russian Imperial Romanov family and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment – notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov – were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16-17 July 1918.The Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet and according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. -
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties. -
Volstead Act
The Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the 18th Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, who managed the legislation. It granted both the federal government and the states the power to enforce the ban by "appropriate legislation". A bill to do so was introduced in Congress in 1919. Later this act was voided by the Twenty-first amendment. -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. It was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the African-American Great Migration, of which Harlem was the largest. Considered the rebirth of African-American arts. -
Period: to
1920s
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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. It was adopted on August 18, 1920. Until the 1910s, most states did not give women the right to vote. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. -
Tea Pot Dome Scandal
The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies and became the first Cabinet member to go to prison. -
Louis Armstrong
Was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. He wasn't recognized for his skin color, but his music. -
Immigration Act of 1924
A United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census, down from the 3% cap set by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which used the Census of 1910. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians, Slavs and Eastern European Jews. -
American Indian Citizenship Act
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, was proposed by Representative Homer P. Snyder and granted full U.S. citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States, called "Indians". The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. It was enacted partially in recognition of the thousands of Indians who served in the armed forces during World War I. Indigenous people did not have to apply, nor did they have to give up tribal citizenship to become a U.S. citizen. -
Scopes Monkey Trial
An American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.The trial was staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. -
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator. At age 25 in 1927, he went from an U.S. Air Mail pilot to world fame by winning the Orteig Prize–making a nonstop flight from Roosevelt Field to France. He covered the 33 1⁄2-hour, 3,600 miles alone in a single-engine, Ryan monoplane. This was the first solo transatlantic flight and non-stop flight between North America and mainland Europe. Lindbergh was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve, and he received Medal of Honor, for the feat. -
Herbert Hoover
Was an American engineer, businessman and politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. A Republican, as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s he introduced themes of efficiency in the business community and provided government support for standardization, efficiency and international trade. As president from 1929 to 1933, his domestic programs were overshadowed by the onset of the Great Depression. -
Period: to
The Great Depression
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Valentine's Day Massacre
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is the 1929 murder in Chicago of seven men of the North Side gang. It happened on February 14, and resulted from the struggle between the Irish American gang and the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone to take control of organized crime in the city.They were shot by four men using weapons that included two Thompson submachine guns. Two of the shooters were dressed as uniformed policemen, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats and hats. -
October 29,1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29), began on October 24, 1929. The most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great Depression), when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after effects.The crash signaled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. -
The Dust Bowl
Was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. -
Great Depression in Germany
The Great Depression hit Germany hard. The impact of the Wall Street Crash forced American banks to end the new loans that had been funding the repayments under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. The financial crisis escalated out of control and mid-1931, starting with the collapse of the Credit Anstalt in Vienna in May. This put heavy pressure on Germany. With the rise in violence of Nazi and communist movements, as well as investor nervousness at harsh government financial policies. -
Election of 1932
The thirty-seventh quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election took place against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York. The election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans. Roosevelt won by a landslide in both the electoral and popular vote. -
Glass-Steagall Act
The Glass–Steagall legislation separated commercial and investment banking. The separation of commercial and investment banking prevented securities firms and investment banks from taking deposits, and commercial Federal Reserve member banks from: dealing in non-governmental securities for customers, investing in non-investment grade securities for themselves, underwriting or distributing non-governmental securities, affiliating (or sharing employees) with companies involved in such activities. -
National Socialist-German Worker's Party (NAZI)
The National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party, was a far-right political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945 and practiced the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. Nazis wanted a "people's community". -
Emergency Relief Act
The new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the Emergency Relief Administration which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had created in 1933. FERA was established as the Federal Emergency Relief Act. Roosevelt asked Congress to set up FERA, which gave grants to the states for the same purpose in May 1933, and appointed Hopkins to head it. Along with the Civilian Conservation Corps it was the first relief operation under the New Deal. -
20th Amendment
The Twentieth Amendment (Amendment XX) to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3. It also has provisions that determine what is to be done when there is no president-elect. The Twentieth Amendment was adopted on January 23, 1933. The Constitution set a duration for the terms, but not the specific dates on which those terms would begin or end. -
21st Amendment
The Twenty-first Amendment (Amendment XXI) to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol on January 16, 1919. The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933. Being the only one to repeal a prior amendment and to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions. The manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal. -
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government. The SEC holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws, proposing securities rules, and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other activities and organizations, including the electronic securities markets in the United States.The SEC was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. -
Neutrality Acts
The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts. The acts repealed in 1941, from German submarine attacks on U.S. vessels and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -
Social Security Act
The Social Security Act of 1935 created Social Security in the United States, and is relevant for US labor law. It created a basic right to a pension in old age, and insurance against unemployment. In the Second New Deal, the Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. The act laid the groundwork for the modern welfare system in the United States, with its primary focus to provide aid for the elderly, the unemployed, and children. -
Benjamin Davis
was an American United States Air Force general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first African-American general officer in the United States Air Force. On December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers. -
Munich Confrence
A settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation, the "Sudetenland", was coined. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. The agreement was signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. -
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German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
Was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, respectively. The pact was followed by the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement in February 1940. It remained in force for nearly two years, until the German government of Adolf Hitler ended the pact by launching an attack on the Soviet positions in Eastern Poland during Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. -
The Holocaust
Was a genocide during World War II in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945. Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event involving the persecution and murder of other groups, such as "incurably sick", as well as political opponents, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, ethnic Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. -
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor,led to the United States' entry into World War II. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning. After the attack America joined World War II. -
Bataan Death March
Was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The transfer began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II.The march was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime. -
Battle of the Bulge
Was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, towards the end of World War II. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle depleted Germany's armored forces.
