Is there some kind of special importance in the centuries and their turning points? Certainly we all think about the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth as distinct entities, while to look no further than the United Kingdom, , and are all dates of significance in its unification.
And when we come to consider the years around , the broader case is overwhelming. For the race for empire had brought about a division of virtually the whole world between the leading powers. To his way of thinking, a more powerful, activist, and regulatory national government was needed to address the economic, social, and political problems associated with industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. E Urbanization. The bulk of the "new immigration" flowed into cities.
These cities grew not only as a result of foreign immigration but also as a result of an internal migration of rural Americans into the cities. But those services came at the cost of political and financial corruption. Tweed's machine controlled voting -- "As long as I can count the votes, what are ya going to do about it? But after a brief interlude of a reform government, the machine was back in office, swept in on the votes of recent immigrants.
Thomas Nast Cartoons of Tweed. Physically, big cities featured "d umb-bell tenements"; cloud scrappers; sky scrappers; Louis J. Sullivan and the Chicago school. F Race : n , Frederick Douglass died. The s witnessed the systematic disfranchisement, segregation Jim Crow laws , and lynching of African Americans throughout the South.
Race relations reached their nadir low point between and Disenfranchisement: Grandfather clause, poll taxes, literacy tests, violence, intimidation. Segregation: P lessy v. Lynching: In the decade of the 90s, an average of lynchings in the South per year — most of the victims were black.
Homer A. African American response -- Accommodation vs. Protest :. Booker T. He adopted a policy of accommodation regarding the racial situation, meaning that he urged African Americans to focus on self-help: gaining a skill, buying land, saving money, rather than protesting for the right to vote or against segregation.
See Atlanta Exposition speech of He became the most powerful man in black America until his death in Secretly, he gave money to support court challenges against segregation.
DuBois challenged Washington's publicly proclaimed policy of accommodation. He also urged protest against segregation and disfranchisement. He would go on to found the Niagara Movement , and, with a number of white and black liberals, the NAACP in to combat discrimination. Ida B.
Wells-Barnett led a publicity campaign against lynching and in favor of a federal anti-lynching law. Washington W. DuBois Ida B. In a paper published by the American Historical Association, Turner argued that American democracy had originated on the frontier and had been consistently rejuvenated there. He contended that the frontier had also acted as a "social safety-valve" -- the discontented could always move West and that reduced social conflict.
The closing of the frontier, however, raised questions about what would happen to American society as a result. This was the last confrontation between the Plains Indians in this case the Sioux and the U. Massacre at Wounded Knee and an Eyewitness Account. Sitting Bull Ghost dance. Seventh Cavalry with Hotchkiss guns. Big Foot's frozen body.
The Depression of H Farmers: Beginning in the mids, prices for farmers, especially wheat and cotton farmers plunged, leading to political activism. Farmer organizations known as "Alliances" grew up on the Plains and in the South and demanded economic and political reforms. These were included in the Ocala Platform.
Ocala was a Florida town where the Alliances met in The Ocala Platform called for 1 direct election of senators, 2 lower tariff rates, 3 a graduated income tax people with higher incomes would pay a higher rate of tax 4 and a new banking system regulated by the federal government.
In addition, the Ocala Platform demanded that silver be used to increase the amount of money in circulation, which farmers hoped would create inflation and raise crop prices. The platform also proposed federal storage for farmers' crops and federal loans, which would free farmers from dependency on middlemen and creditors. Alliances put forth candidates in a number of western states. In , the Alliances met in Omaha to.
The convention drafted a political platform and nominated candidates for president and vice president. Populists were determined to do something about the concentration of power in the hands of trusts and bankers. The Omaha platform called for both political and economic reforms. Politically, it demanded an increase in the power of the common voters through 1 direct popular election of U.
Economically, the Populists called for unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold to increase the money supply, 2 a graduated income tax, public government ownership of railroads, telegraphs and telephone systems, 3 loans and federal warehouses for farmers to enable them to stabilize prices for their crops and 4 an eight hour day for industrial workers. The Party seemed radical not only in its attacks on laissez-faire capitalism but in its attempt to form an alliance between poor whites and blacks in the South.
Tom Watson appealed to poor farmers of both races to unite against their wealthy exploiters. The Populists ran their own presidential candidate in and heavily influenced many western and southern Democrats. That rural wing won control of the Democratic Party as a result of the depression that began in Western and southern Democrats were disillusioned with their party's conservative Democratic president Grover Cleveland and embraced many Populist positions.
He is also currently writing, on Twitter , the history of the United States in haiku. In the wake of the civil rights movement, the old restrictive quotas from the s, which favored northern Europeans over southern Europeans, struck many Americans as anachronistic. President John F. Fifty years later, its impact can be seen at all levels of society. Today over 40 million foreign-born individuals live in the United States, about three-quarters of whom have legal status.
Vicki L. While organizing for self-determination within Native Americans communities and nations had proceeded throughout the s, few in the general public were aware until the November seizure and month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
The occupation grabbed world-wide media attention. They built a thriving village on the island, which drew Indigenous pilgrimages from all over the continent and radicalized thousands, especially the youth. Treaties, self-determination, and land restitution returned to the national agenda, as the occupiers demanded implementation of international law.
Negotiations ended the occupation when the Nixon administration agreed to amnesty for those involved. For much of the 20th century, unions, private employers and government agencies affirmatively discriminated based on race—until, through workplace protests, public demonstrations and political negotiation, African Americans compelled Congress and President Richard Nixon to adopt affirmative action policies.
Though the idea was challenged, in the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, thus allowing the policy to stand and encouraging the growth of affirmative action. Every sphere of American life transformed as a result. From college classrooms to corporate boardrooms, African Americans entered the middle-class in record numbers. White women and immigrants of color from around the globe also moved from the margins to the center of U. He previously taught history at Indiana University and was an associate editor at the Journal of American History.
In June of the voters of California overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, limiting local property taxes and making it harder for communities to raise them in the future.
This 20th-century tax revolt opened the floodgates to other anti-tax ballot measures at the state level and initiated a general shift in popular opinion. This anti-tax reorientation has decreased the amount and quality of public services; led to increases in alternative, regressive sources of taxation such as the sales tax; and encouraged new kinds of inequalities such as between old and new homeowners, between residents able to afford privatized services and those not, and between communities with other sources of revenue to support schools and services and those without.
On a broader scale, Proposition 13 represented a new unwillingness to view government as a provider of positive benefits to all members of a community and an embrace of more consumerist and individualized ways of securing services. The takeover of the U. Iranian militants held Americans hostage for days while decrying the U.
The crisis cemented Iran, a former ally, as our greatest foe in the region. It bound us more closely to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni regimes. He is currently the vice president of the Society of American Historians. June 5, It described Pneumocystis carinii , a rare protozoan infection that exploits weak immune systems, as it had developed in five gay men. The years that followed brought untold suffering. But AIDS also ushered in a revolution in attitudes that has allowed us to talk about sexuality more frankly than ever before.
In the end, ironically, this helped open the door to gay marriage. Elizabeth Fenn is department chair and associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The Americans With Disabilities Act formally recognized the fact that people who are disabled, physically as well as mentally, are part of society. Toward the end of the 20th century, the United States came face to face with the fact these people cannot simply be ignored. This is a very personal observation, because we have a daughter who was born with some brain damage.
In the midterm elections, Republicans—led by Newt Gingrich—took control of Congress for the first time since Their victory opened up the Republican Party to more conservative elements, and shaped the generations of Republicans who have dominated Capitol Hill since that time, even during the period of Democratic control.
But the outcome of that election was not just important in terms of who controlled the majority of Congress, but also because it launched an era when conservatism would make the legislative branch, rather than the White House, the base of their power.
Through legislative control and partisan tactics that had once been considered impermissible, the post congressional Republicans made it much more difficult for liberal ideas to succeed in the United States.
Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, is the author and editor of numerous books on American political history. History 25 Moments That Changed America. The Great Migration Begins The Prophet Is Published Sept. Thomas Dorsey Invents the Gospel Blues Harry Hopkins Starts Work May 22, By Linda Gordon About two months after he took office, Franklin Roosevelt appointed a former social worker to head an emergency program of aid to the unemployed.
Truman Replaces Wallace July 21, By Richard Stewart The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty meant that, after intervening twice in the previous 32 years to restore peace in Europe, the U. Barbara Johns Walks Out April 23, By Clayborne Carson On April 23, , sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns led a walkout by four hundred black students to protest inadequate facilities at segregated Robert R.
Emmett Till Is Murdered Aug. By Annette Gordon-Reed The birth control pill was one of the most significant achievements of the 20th century. The Children March in Birmingham May 2,
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