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the great migration
The Great Migration, or the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, had a huge impact on urban life in the United States. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. -
Sussex Pledge
e Sussex Pledge was a promise made in 1916 during World War I by Germany to the United States prior to the latter's entry into the war. Early in 1915, Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, allowing armed merchant ships, but not passenger ships, to be torpedoed without warning. Despite this avowed restriction, a French cross-channel passenger ferry, the Sussex, was torpedoed without warning on March 24, 1916; the ship was severely damaged and about 50 lives were ta -
John J. Pershing
he commanded the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson selected Pershing to command the American troops being sent to Europe. Although Pershing aimed to maintain the independence of the AEF, his willingness to integrate into Allied ope -
Battle of the Argonne Forest
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the Armistice on November 11, a total of 47 days. The battle was the largest in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers, and was one of a series of Allied attacks known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brough -
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. -
Red Scare
A Red Scare is the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism or radical leftism, used by anti-leftist proponents. In the United States, the First Red Scare was about worker (socialist) revolution and political radicalism -
Charles Lindbergh
) rose to fame by piloting his monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, on the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. After the kidnap and murder of his infant son, he moved to Europe in the 1930s and became involved with German aviation developments. Despite objecting to American involvement in World War II, Lindbergh eventually flew 50 combat missions. Appointed a reserve brigadier general by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, Lindbergh assisted in selecting sites for air bases o -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression (1929-39) was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers -
jazz music
Jazz is a genre of music that originated in African-American communities during the late 19th and early 20th century. Jazz emerged in many parts of the United States of independent popular musical styles; linked by the common bonds of European American and African-American musical -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. -
Dorothea Lange
as an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration . Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. -
The New Deal
a series of economic measures designed to alleviate the worst effects of the depression, reinvigorate the economy, and restore the confidence of the American people in their banks and other key institutions. The New Deal was orchestrated by a core group of FDR advisors brought in from academia and industry known as the "Brains Trust" who, in their first "hundred days" in office, helped FDR enact fifteen major laws. One of the most significant of these was the Banking Act of 1933, -
the dust bowl
The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937 o the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the reg -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
was the 32nd President of the United States and the only chief executive to be elected to more than two terms in office. Roosevelt held the presidency from 1934-1945, leading the United States through the Great Depression and World War II. His legislative program, the New Deal, greatly expanded the role of the federal government in American society.
