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Wilson’s Presidency Term
Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States. He’s the man who led America into war in order to “make the world safe for democracy” after a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I. -
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World War I
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The Great Migration
The Great Migration was a exodus of around six million African Americans from the South to the North in an attempt to escape racist ideologies and practices, and to create new lives as American citizens. -
Lusitania
This giant German boat torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner en route from New York to Liverpool, England. -
Jeanette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin was a Montana politician who made history in 1916 as the first woman ever to be elected to the United States Congress. She was also the only member of Congress to cast a vote against participation in both world wars. -
Selective Service Act
After the United States entered the First World War, the U.S, Congress passes the Selective Service Act, giving the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers. -
Espionage Act
In June 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act. The piece of legislation gave postal officials the authority to ban newspapers and magazines from the mails and threatened individuals convicted of obstructing the draft with $10,000 fines and 20 years in jail. -
Lenin led a Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and a group of revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks. The new communist government created the country of the Soviet Union. -
Wilson’s 14 points
Wilson’s 14 points speech was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on this date, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I. -
Sedition Act
United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I. -
Schenk vs. US
During World War I, socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer distributed leaflets declaring that the draft violated the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude. The leaflets urged the public to disobey the draft, but advised only peaceful action. Schenck and Baer were convicted of violating this law and appealed on the grounds that the statute violated the First Amendment. -
US Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles
On this date, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles based primarily on objections to the League of Nations. The U.S. would never ratify the treaty or join the League of Nations. -
The Birth Of Mass Culture
During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and they spent it on consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothes and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios. -
The League of Nations
The League of Nations was an international diplomatic group developed after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before they erupted into open warfare. -
19th Amendment
On this date, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It granted all American women the right to vote. -
America sustained worst terrorist attack.
A horse-drawn cart carrying a massive, improvised explosive was detonated on the busiest corner on Wall Street. One eyewitness described “two sheets of flame that seemed to envelop the whole width of Wall Street and as high as the tenth story of the tall buildings.” -
Teapot Dome Scandal
It marked the first time a U.S. cabinet official served jail time for a felony. -
The Soviet Union
The world’s first Marxist-Communist state would become one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth’s land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991. -
J. Edgar Hoover begins his legacy with the FBI
J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on this day in 1924. By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century.
