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Eugene V. Debs
An American union leader and leader of the Pullman Strike of 1894; several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States imprisoned for violating the Espionage Act during WWI. Debs organized the American Railway Union, which waged a strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago in 1894. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his opposition to the United States’ involvement in World War I. -
Transcontinental Railroad
Completed in 1869 at Promontory, Utah, linked the eastern railroad system with California's railroad system, revolutionizing transportation in the west.the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, and tasked them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. the two companies would race toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side and Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling against great risks. -
The Great Railway Strike
Railroad worker in Martinsburg, West Virginia, initiated a strike in 1877 to protest working conditions and wage cuts. -
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. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.” -
Roosevelts Collary
was an addition to the Monroe Doctorine. articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–03. -
Niagara Movement
W.E.B. Du Bois and other young activists, who did not believe in gradualism or accomodation, came together at Niagara Falls in 1905 to demand full equality for African Americans; demanded that African Americans get the right to vote in states where it had been taken away, segregation be abolished, and many discriminatory barriers be removed; declared commitment for freedom of speech, brotherhood of all peoples, and respect for workingman -
NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 to abolish segregation and discrimination, to oppose racism and to gain civil rights for African Americans, got Supreme Court to declare grandfather clause unconstitutional. -
World war I
World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, the Central Powers fought against the Allied Powers. Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people soldiers and civilians alike were dead. -
"Birth of a Nation"
silent film directed by D. W. Griffith; one of the most innovative of American motion pictures; set during and after the American Civil War; noted for its innovative technical and narrative achievements, and its status as the first Hollywood "blockbuster;" it has provoked great controversy for its treatment of white supremacy and sympathetic account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan -
Red Scare
After the Bolshevik Revolution during WWI, a fear of Communist and Socialism developed in the US.After they took over Russia, people in America feared that the communists were going to try and take over the US too. -
Buying on Margin
buying stocks and borrowing money from a bank or broker; if the money was not paid back, the bank would foreclose on possessions; allowed for average Americans to invest in the stock market; contributed to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 because of overinflated stock prices. -
Great Depression
The deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. Nine thousand banks during the months following the stock market crashof 1929. Herbert Hoover was blamed for the great depression. -
Dust Bowl
conditions forced thousands of farmers from the plains to migrate west in search of work. -
World War II
broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan. Hitler’s invasion of Poland drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun.the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. -
Lend-lease Act
March 11, 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor, Congress passed this act and amended the Neutrality Acts so the United States could lend military equipment and supplies to any nation the president said was vital to the defense of the United States. -
D-Day
Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe. -
Levittown
William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in surburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. Levittown became a symbol of the movement to the suburbs in the years after WWII. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
In 1949, the United States, Canada, and ten European nations formed this military mutual-defense pact. In 1955, the Soviet Union countered NATO with the formation of the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance among those nations within its own sphere of influence. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
International crisis in October 1962, the closest approach to nuclear war at any time between the US and the USSR; when the US discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy demanded their removal and announced a naval blockade of the island. the Soviet leader Khrushchev cooperated with US demands a week later. -
Civil Rights Of 1964
President Johnson supports the civil rights act of 1964 because of the March On Washington and the death of JFK. The civil rights Of 1964 ensure equality for African Americans in society such as: voting requirements, racial separation in public schools, government job sectors. -
Great Society
President Johnson called his version of the Democratic reform program the Great Society. In 1965, Congress passed many Great Society measures, including Medicare, civil rights legislation, and federal aid to education. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
invalidated the use of any test or device to deny the vote and authorized federal examiners to register voters in states that had disenfranchised blacks. As more blacks became politically active and elected black representatives, led to jobs, contracts, and facilities and services for the black community, encouraging greater social equality and decreasing the wealth and education gap. -
Kent State Killings
In April of 1970, police fired into an angry crowd of college students at Kent State University. Four students were killed and many others were wounded. The students were protesting against Nixon ordering US troops to seize Cambodia without consulting Congress. -
Spanish-American War
war fought between Spain and the United States that began after the sinking of the battleship USS Maine; the United States won the war in four months, gaining control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. -
2008 Election
Historic in nature due to high voter turn out of youth and minority groups as well as resulting in election of the first African American president, Barack Obama. Obama won most of the electoral votes and Cliton won the popular vote.
