20th Century America

115 flashcards by MentisLibrary

The American century in order, from the Spanish-American War through the Progressive era, the Depression and New Deal, both world wars, the postwar boom, civil rights, Vietnam and the conservative turn, with a date on every card.

What did the United States gain from the Spanish-American War?
Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain, along with a protectorate over Cuba
What was the Philippine-American War?
A war between the United States and Filipino forces who had expected independence rather than a new colonial ruler
What was the Open Door policy?
American notes urging that all powers keep equal trading access to China rather than carve it into exclusive spheres
Who was Jacob Riis, and what did he document?
A photographer and journalist whose book How the Other Half Lives showed tenement conditions in New York to readers who had never seen them
How did Theodore Roosevelt become president?
He was vice president when an anarchist shot William McKinley, and at forty-two became the youngest president to that point
Who were the muckrakers?
Investigative journalists who exposed corporate abuses and political corruption in mass-circulation magazines
How did the Wright brothers change transport?
They made the first sustained, controlled, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine, solving control rather than just lift
What was the Roosevelt Corollary?
A claim that the United States would act as a police power in the Western Hemisphere to forestall European intervention
What did The Jungle lead to?
Upton Sinclair's novel about Chicago meatpacking caused an outcry that produced federal food and drug regulation
What was the significance of the Model T?
Ford built a car simple and cheap enough for ordinary families, then cut costs further with a moving assembly line
Why was the NAACP founded?
To fight segregation, disfranchisement and lynching through legal action, publicity and organising
What did the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire expose?
Locked exits and inadequate escapes in a garment loft, where 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women, died
What did the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments change?
One allowed a federal income tax without apportionment among the states, the other required senators to be elected by voters rather than state legislatures
Why was the Federal Reserve created?
To provide an elastic currency and a lender of last resort after repeated banking panics, above all the panic of 1907
What was the Great Migration?
The movement of Black Americans out of the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest and West
Why did the United States enter the First World War?
Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and was found offering Mexico an alliance in the Zimmermann Telegram
What did the Espionage and Sedition Acts do?
They criminalised interference with the war effort and, in 1918, speech deemed disloyal about the government, flag or armed forces
What were Wilson's Fourteen Points?
A statement of war aims including open diplomacy, self-determination and a general association of nations
How hard did the 1918 influenza pandemic hit the United States?
It killed roughly 675,000 Americans in three waves, with the deadliest in the autumn of 1918
What was the first Red Scare?
A wave of raids, deportations and prosecutions of radicals and immigrants after bombings and amid fear of Bolshevism
When did American women win the vote nationally?
With the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, after decades of state campaigns
How did Prohibition work in practice?
National prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol was widely evaded, and enforcement was underfunded and inconsistent
When did commercial radio broadcasting begin?
With station KDKA's coverage of the 1920 presidential election results from Pittsburgh
What was the Teapot Dome scandal?
The secret leasing of navy oil reserves to private companies in return for loans and gifts to the interior secretary
What did the Immigration Act of 1924 do?
It set quotas by national origin that sharply favoured northern and western Europe, and barred most Asian immigration entirely
What was the Harlem Renaissance?
A flourishing of Black literature, art, music and criticism centred in Harlem in the 1920s and early 1930s
What was at stake in the Scopes trial?
A Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution, in a case staged to test a new state law
How large was the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s?
It claimed millions of members and had real political influence in states far outside the South, including Indiana and Oregon
Why was Lindbergh's flight a sensation?
He flew alone from New York to Paris without stopping, a distance no one had crossed solo before
Why were Sacco and Vanzetti's convictions contested?
Two Italian anarchists were convicted of murder in a trial that critics said turned on their politics and origins rather than the evidence