Mid-term Exam Review -- U.S History

Collective Bargaining

• the negotiation process where employees, usually through a union, bargain with employers as a group to set terms of employment like pay, benefits, hours, and working conditions, resulting in a legally binding contract.

• Its purpose is to give workers a unified voice for better conditions, fostering a more balanced power dynamic and solving workplace issues

Rise of the Gilded Age

• driven by the Second Industrial Revolution, rapid railroad expansion, and massive immigration, creating unprecedented economic growth and industrial fortunes for tycoons

• but also severe wealth inequality, political corruption, and harsh conditions for the working class, a period satirized by Mark Twain as a thin "gilding" over societal problems. 

Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall

• was the infamous leader of New York City's Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall, in the 1860s and 1870s, using the organization to control city politics through voter fraud, bribery, and massive embezzlement from public projects, most famously the County Courthouse

• But got exposed through journalism and cartoon and he ends up imprisoned

Social Darwinism

• Belief that certain status & races were superior to others and therefore destined to rule over them

• Justifying laissez-faire capitalism, imperialism, racism, and eugenics by claiming government intervention or aid to the poor interfered with natural selection

Ellis and Angel Island

• Ellis Island was an island in New York that served as an immigration station for millions of immigrants arriving to the U.S. (Europeans)

• Angel Island is immigrant processing station that opened in San Francisco Bay in 1910 (Asians)

Jane Addams (1860-1935)

• Cofounded Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago in 1889

• A pacifist and determined advocate for women’s suffrage, and wrote many books

Interstate Commerce Act

First federal regulatory agency in the U.S. in 1886 by the Interstate Commerce Act to regulate railroad rates and practices

Impact of Immigration in the early 1900s

• Fueled industrial growth with cheap labor, rapidly urbanizing cities, and intense nativism leading to restrictive laws like literacy tests

• Enriching American culture with new communities but creating social tensions and exploitation for newcomers from Southern/Eastern Europe, facing discrimination and poor working conditions. 

Carrie Chapman Catt

• An American Women’s Suffrage leader who campaigned for the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920

• Served a president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1900-1904 and 1915-1920

NAACP

Interracial organization founded in 1909 to abolish segregation and discrimination and to achieve political and civil rights to African Americans

Impact of Urbanization

• spurred massive city growth, creating economic opportunities

• but also severe overcrowding, poverty, disease, and social tensions

• leading to significant urban challenges and the rise of reform movements (like Progressivism) that shaped modern cities, infrastructure (like mass transit), and public service

Woodrow Wilson

• leading the U.S. through World War I, his idealistic push for a new world order with the League of Nations

• and significant domestic Progressive Era reforms like the Federal Reserve and women's suffrage (19th Amendment)

• controversy due to his implementation of racial segregation in the federal government and suppression of civil liberties during the war

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as “separate but equal”

Progressive Movement Ideas

• Ending poverty and income inequality

• securing a living wage for all people.

• Protecting the fundamental right to organize.

• Ending mass incarceration and advancing equal justice under the law.

• Taking urgent, inclusive, and transformative action on climate change.

• limiting the political influence of large corporations.

Sacco and Vanzetti

• Italian immigrant anarchists controversially convicted and executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for a 1920 armed robbery and murder

• sparking global protests highlighting anti-immigrant prejudice and judicial bias, with many believing their anarchist beliefs, not evidence, led to their condemnation despite doubts about the fairness of their trial

Jim Crow Laws

• American South from the 1880s to the 1960s, that enforced racial segregation and systematically disenfranchised African Americans

• mandating separate and unequal public facilities (schools, restrooms, transport)

• restricting voting, jobs, and social interaction under the "separate but equal" doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), ultimately creating a system of apartheid until overturned by Civil Rights legislation.

• prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote, these violations effectively denied Black citizens the right to political participation, despite the 15th Amendment's promise of voting rights for all men regardless of race. 

African Americans impact on the Progressive Movement

• leading movements for civil rights, voting, and economic justice, challenging the era's pervasive racism

• founding critical organizations like the NAACP, despite the broader movement often excluding them and upholding segregation

John T Scopes

• John Thomas Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925, with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools

• He was tried in a case known as the Scopes trial, and was found guilty and fined $100

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Exposes brutal working and sanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry

Spanish American War and the impact of Yellow Journalism

• Exaggerated stories used to grab attention rather than tell the truth

• pushing the U.S. toward the Spanish-American War (1898) by highlighting Spanish atrocities in Cuba and blaming Spain for the sinking of the USS Maine,

• effectively making it a "media war" and demonstrating the press's power to shape policy and war sentiment

Herbert Hoover

• famous for his humanitarian efforts as "The Great Humanitarian" for feeding Europe during WWI,

• his efforts toward cooperation and public-private partnerships to fight the crisis were seen as insufficient by many, leading to his defeat in 1932.

• He later chaired commissions to reorganize the government, leaving a legacy of both crisis management and administrative reform. 

• stock market crashed while he was president

Literacy Tests

US Entrance into WWI

• April 6, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, ending a policy of neutrality.

• Key triggers included Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, which sank American ships, and the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram proposing a German-Mexican alliance, shifting American public opinion and leading to the formal declaration. 

FDR-Legacy of New Deal and WWII

• redefined government's role in the economy and society (Social Security, financial regulation, jobs) and his wartime leadership guiding the US to victory in WWII,

• establishing America as a global superpower, though the war fully ended the Depression the New Deal programs initiated lasting changes in American governance, finance, and social welfare. 

17, 18, 19 Amendment

• 17 - Mandates the direct election of U.S. Senators by the people of each state, rather than by state legislatures.

• 18 - Banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages, leading to Prohibition.

• 19 - Guaranteed women the right to vote, prohibiting states and the federal government from denying the right to vote based on sex (women's suffrage). 

Buying on Credit

Booker T Washington-Progressivism Ideas

Panama Canal

Harlem Renaissance

WEB DuBois-Progressivism Ideas

Open-Door Policy*

Causes of the Great Depression

Flappers

“Great Migration”

Impact of FDR on the Great Depression

Muckrakers

Selective Service Act

New Deal Programs and Impacts

• CCC

• CWA

• TVA

• AAA

• PWA

• WPA

Robber Barons

• Vanderbilt

• Carnegie

• Rockefeller

Nativism

Justification for the Holocaust

Direct Relief

Cause and Impact of Pearl Harbor

Rugged Individualism

Justification for the Japanese Internment Camps

Bonus Army

“Germany First” idea in WWII

Speculation

Total War and it’s impact on the American Economy (WWI & WWII)

FDIC

Women in wartime economies (WWI & WWII)

Neutrality Acts

Nuremberg Trials

Lend-Lease Act

Objectives of dropping the atomic bombs

Manhattan project

D-Day (5W’s)

Hoover Dam

Impact of the Treaty of Versailles

Fascism

Changing Women’s Roles

League of Nations

Impact of new inventions during Progressiveness