U.S. History: 1877-2008

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    Early American History

  • Declaration of Independence signed

    signing the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
  • Constitution written

    The Constitution was written during the Philadelphia Convention—now known as the Constitutional Convention
  • 16th Amendment

    established the federal income tax
  • 17th Amendment

    direct election of U.S. Senators
  • 20th Amendment

    adjusted the dates of the presidential terms
  • 19th Amendment

    women are given the right to vote
  • 18th Amendment

    prohibition is enacted and alcohol is illegal
  • 21st Amendment

    repeals the 18th Amendment and prohibition ends
  • Bill of Rights ratified

    The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution
  • Jane Addams

    Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States and advocated for world peace
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    Civil War/Reconstruction

  • Homestead Act

    provided 160 acres to anyone willing to settle on land in the west
  • Rockefeller/Carnegie (Captains of Industry vs. Robber Barons)

    The term “robber baron” was applied to powerful nineteenth-century industrialists who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth.
  • 13th Amendment

    abolished slavery
  • Transcontinental Railroad Completed

    university founder Leland Stanford drove the last spike that marked the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.May 8, 2019
  • 15th Amendment

    voting for all male citizens
  • Monopoly

    A monopoly refers to when a company and its product offerings dominate one sector or industry.
  • Social Darwinism

    the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.
  • Telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell

    Alexander Graham Bell was an American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph
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    The Gilded Age

  • Chinese Exclusion Act

    The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.
  • pendleton Civil Service Act

    awarded government jobs based on merit
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    Chester William Nimitz

    Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was a fleet admiral of the United States Navy. He played a major role in the naval history of World War II as Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, commanding Allied air, land, and sea forces during World War II
  • Dawes Act

    gave individual ownership of land to Native Americans instead of the tribe owning things collectively
  • nterstate Commerce Act

    ensure railroad set “reasonable and just” rate and the first time government stepped in to regulate business
  • Alvin York

    Alvin C. York reportedly kills over 20 German soldiers and captures an additional 132 at the head of a small detachment in the Argonne Forest near the Meuse River in France. The exploits later earned York the Medal of Honor.
  • Hull House

    Hull House founded, first of many settlement houses
  • Sherman Antitrust Act

    outlawed business monopolies
  • Sherman Anti-Trust Act

    outlawed trusts to promote economic fairness
  • Immigration Issues (Assimilation and Nativism)

    Immigrant assimilation is one of the most common forms of assimilation. It is a complex process through which an immigrant integrates themselves into a new country.
  • Sherman Antitrust Act

    outlawed business monopolies
  • Muckrakers

    The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists in the Progressive Era in the United States who exposed established institutions and leaders as corrupt.
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    The Progressive Era

  • Yellow Journalism

    journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    legalized segregation, established “separate but
  • Hawaii annexed

    Hawaii is annexed as a territory of the United States
  • Rough Riders

    The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish–American War and the only one to see combat.
  • USS Maine

    USS Maine explodes off the coast of Cuba, starting the Spanish American War
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    Imperialism

  • Open Door Policy

    initiated free trade with China
  • Klondike Gold Rush (Alaska)

    The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon, in north-western Canada,
  • Roosevelt Corollary

    an addition to the Monroe Doctrine
  • The Jungle

    The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is published
  • Pure Food and Drug Act

    regulation of the preparation of foods and the sale of medicines
  • Meat Inspection Act

    law that makes it illegal to adulterate or misbrand meat
  • NAACP

    The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells
  • Theodore Roosevelt

    an American statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer, who was the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.
  • Dollar Diplomacy

    Taft’s policy of paying for peace in Latin America
  • NAACP

    NAACP Founded
  • Immigration Quotas

    Dillingham introduced a measure to create immigration quotas, which he set at three percent of the total population of the foreign-born of each nationality in the United States as recorded in the 1910 census.
  • Initiative, Referendum, Recall

    California voters approved the constitutional processes of the initiative, referendum, and recall.
  • Assembly Line

    An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequence until the final assembly is produced
  • Federal Reserve Act

    established the Federal Reserve, which helped stabilize the banking industry
  • M.A.I.N. (Causes of WWI)

    The major causes of “The Great War” or WWI (1914-1918) consist of four long-term causes and one short-term cause. I use the acronym M.A.N.I.A to help my students remember the 5 major causes of WWI; they are Militarism, Alliances, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Assassination
  • Panama Canal

    The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama.
  • Archduke Franz Ferdinand

    Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated, starting World War I
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    World War I

  • Sussex Pledge

    The Sussex Pledge was a promise made by Germany to the United States in 1916, during World War I before the latter entered the war
  • Sinking of the Lusitania

    1915: Sinking of the Lusitania
  • National Parks System

    1916 National Parks System created
  • The Great Migration

    The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.
  • : Bolshevik Revolution

    : Bolshevik Revolution in Russia begins, causing Russian troops to exit the war
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    Communism

    Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public.
  • Zimmerman Telegram

    Zimmerman Telegram intercepted by the British warned the U.S. of a proposed ally between Mexico and Germany
  • American Expeditionary Forces

    The American Expeditionary Forces was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I.
  • WWI

    The United States enters WWI on the Allied side
  • Bolshevik Revolution

    Bolshevik Revolution in Russia begins, causing Russian troops to exit the war
  • Battle of Argonne Forest

    1918: Battle of Argonne Forest, considered the turning point of the war
  • The Armistice

    Germany surrenders to the Allied Powers
  • President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points

    President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918): statement of principles for peace after World War I, included no colonialism, freedom of the seas, and a League of Nations
  • Treaty of Versailles

    Treaty of Versailles (1919): peace treaty that ended World War I, required Germany to accept full blame and pay war reparations as well as demilitarize
  • The Red Scare

    A Red Scare is the promotion of widespread fear of a potential rise of communism or anarchism by a society or state
  • Return to Normalcy

    Return to normalcy, referring to a return to the way of life before World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920
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    Roaring Twenties

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    The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

    USSR is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation
  • Teapot Dome Scandal

    Teapot Dome Scandal uncovered by the Wall Street Journal
  • American Indian Citizenship Act

    granted citizenship to any Native Americans born within the United States
  • Scopes Monkey Trial

    Scopes Monkey Trial was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a 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
  • Charles Lindbergh

    Charles Lindbergh makes history by making a nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris
  • Stock Market Crash

    A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth
  • Causes of the Great Depression

    The gold standard. , Decreased international lending and tariffs, Banking panics, and monetary contraction.
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    Great Depression

  • Hoovervilles

    A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. They were named after Herbert Hoover
  • Douglas MacArthur

    Douglas MacArthur was an American five-star general and Field Marshal of the Philippine Army
  • Harlem Renaissance

    The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, and politics centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s
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    The Dust Bowl

    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 the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon.
  • Civilian Conservation Corps

    Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt elected

    Franklin D. Roosevelt elected
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

    Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) established
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    Eleanor Roosevelt

    Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She served as the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving First Lady of the United States.
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    The New Deal

    The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939.
  • : Securities and Exchange Commission

    Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) established
  • Social Security Act

    established the Social Security Administration, which provides unemployment insurance, aid to the disabled, old-age pensions, and insurance for families
  • Works Progress Administration

    Works Progress Administration (WPA) established
  • Court Packing

    The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called the "court-packing plan", was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S.
  • Adolf Hitler invades Poland

    Adolf Hitler invades Poland, starting WWII
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    World War II

  • Homefront

    the people who stay in a country and work while that country's soldiers are fighting in a war in a foreign country During the war we had to keep up morale on the home front.
  • Tuskegee Airmen

    The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African-American military pilots and airmen who fought in World War II.
  • Attack on Pearl Harbor

    The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 08:00, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941
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    Flying Tigers

    Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), recruited under President Franklin Roosevelt's authority before Pearl Harbo
  • Executive Order 9066

    the incarceration of Japanese Americans for the duration of WWII
  • Navajo Code Talkers

    A code talker was a person employed by the military during wartime to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication. The term is now usually associated with United States service members during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages.
  • Bataan Death March

    The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino 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.
  • Battle of Midway

    The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea
  • Rosie the Riveter

    Rosie the Riveter was an allegorical cultural icon of World War II, representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military
  • G.I. Bill

    gives military veterans financial and educational benefits
  • Normandy landings

    “D-Day” - Invasion of Normandy
  • Island Hopping

    Island hopping is the crossing of an ocean by a series of shorter journeys between islands, as opposed to a single journey directly to the destination.
  • The atomic bomb,

    The atomic bomb, “Fat Man” is dropped in Nagasaki, Japan, ending World War II (August 9)
  • Liberation of Concentration Camps

    iberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp. O
  • United Nations formed

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    Early Cold War

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    The Manhattan Project

    The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada.
  • truman Doctrine

    U.S. policy that gave military and economic aid to countries threatened by communism
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    Containment

    Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad.
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    U.S. policy that gave military and economic aid to countries threatened by communism

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    22nd Amendment

    prohibits anyone who has been elected president twice from being elected again
  • Berlin Airlift

  • Marshall Plan

    program to help European countries rebuild after World War II
  • NATO established

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    Civil Rights Era

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    Korean War

  • Sweatt v. Painter

    ruled the separate law school at the University of Texas failed to qualify as “separate but equal”
  • Rosenbergs trial

  • First H-Bomb detonated by the United States

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    Domino Theory

    adopted in U.S. foreign policy after World War II according to which the “fall” of a noncommunist state to communism would precipitate the fall of noncommunist governments in neighboring states
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    Dwight Eisenhower

    Dwight David "Ike" was a commissioned officer in the United States Army and later, a politician who was the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
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    Vietnam War

  • Hernandez v. Texas:

    Mexican Americans and all other races provided equal protection under the 14th Amendment
  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

    overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and mandated desegregation
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    Arms Race/Space Race

    The Space Race was an informal 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States, to achieve firsts in spaceflight capability
  • Jonas Salk invents the Polio Vaccine

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    1955-1956: Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks’ arrest

    1955-1956: Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks’ arrest
  • Interstate Highway Act

    authorized the building of a national highway system
  • USSR launches Sputnik

  • Little Rock Nine

    Little Rock Nine integrated into an all-white school in Little
  • Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba

    Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
  • Berlin Wall

    Berlin Wall built to prevent people from leaving communist East Berlin
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 1 month, 4 days confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union
  • John F. Kennedy

    John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, TX
  • Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”

    Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March on Washington
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    begins the undeclared war in Vietnam
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Civil Rights Act of 1964: Made discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin in public places illegal and required employers to hire on an equal opportunity basis
  • Medicare and Medicaid

    Medicare and Medicaid established
  • Martin Luther King

    Martin Luther King is assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TN
  • Tet Offensive

    The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1968

    Civil Rights Act of 1968: prohibited discrimination in the sale or rental of housing
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    Tinker v. Des Moines

    Tinker v. Des Moines: defined the First Amendment rights for students in the United States Public Schools
  • Neil Armstrong

    First Man on the Moon
  • Kent State University shooting

    The Kent State shootings were the killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland.
  • Foreign Policy

    Foreign Policy is an American news publication, founded in 1970 and focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy.
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    End of the Cold War

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    26th Amendment

    26th Amendment: moved the voting age from 21 years old to 18 years old
  • Pentagon Papers leaked

    Pentagon Papers leaked
  • Title IX

    Title IX: protects people from discrimination based on gender in education programs
  • War Powers Act

    law limited the President’s right to send troops to battle without Congressional approval
  • Watergate Scandal,

    which leads to Nixon’s Resignation
  • The fall of Saigon

    The fall of Saigon marks the end of the Vietnam War
  • Camp David accords

    Camp David Accords were a pair of political agreements signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978
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    Iran Hostage Crisis

    The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between the United States and Iran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students.
  • Three Mile Island Disaster

  • Laissez-Faire

    a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering.
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    Iran Contra Affair

    The Iran-Contra Affair involved senior administration officials in the Reagan administration secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo
  • 18th Amendment

    18th Amendment: prohibition is enacted and alcohol is illegal
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    1990s-21st Century

  • 24th Amendment

    24th Amendment: Abolishes the poll tax