Key History Era's and Terms/Figures

Pre-Colonial & Indigenous America

Before 1492

Age of Exploration & Colonization

1492-1763

Revolutionary Era

1763-1789

Early Republic

1789-1820s

Antebellum Period

1820s-1861

Civil War & Reconstruction

1861-1877

Gilded Age

1877-1900

Progressive Era

1900-1917

World War I & Interwar Period

1917-1939

World War II

1939-1945

Cold War Era

1945-1991

Postwar America & Civil Rights

1950s-1970s

Late 20th Century

1970s-2000

Mound-building cultures flourish

Complex Indigenous civilizations in North America

Jamestown founded in 1607

First permanent English settlement

1776: Declaration of Independence

Colonies declare independence from Britain

1803: Louisiana Purchase

Doubled U.S. territory

Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

U.S. gains Southwest territory

1863: Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln frees slaves in Confederate states

Labor strikes and monopolies rise

Gilded Age industrialization

Trust-busting begins

Progressive reforms target big business

1929: Stock Market Crash

Begins the Great Depression

1941: Pearl Harbor attack

U.S. enters WWII

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

Nuclear tension with USSR peaks

1964: Civil Rights Act

End of segregation

1991: Fall of the Soviet Union

End of the Cold War

Hiawatha

Co-founder of the Iroquois Confederacy

Christopher Columbus

Initiated European colonization

George Washington

First U.S. President, Revolutionary War general

Thomas Jefferson

Third president, Louisiana Purchase

Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist and former enslaved person

Abraham Lincoln

Led U.S. during Civil War, ended slavery

Andrew Carnegie

Industrial steel magnate

Theodore Roosevelt

Progressive president, trust-buster

Woodrow Wilson

WWI leadership, League of Nations

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Great Depression & WWII president

Martin Luther King Jr.

Leader of civil rights movement

Betty Friedan

Feminist author, The Feminine Mystique

Ronald Reagan

Conservative president of the 1980s