(EVEN) American People

Cyrus McCormick

Credited as the Inventor of the Mechanical Reaper

Sitting Bull

Worked as a performer with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Feared the use of his influence would support the Ghost Dances

Indian service agents ordered his arrest

Crazy Horse

Lakota war leader of the Oglala band of Sioux

Chief Joseph

Leader of a band of the Nez Perce

“Buffalo Bill“ Cody

His shows toured the Eastern U.S. and Europe

Featuring “Cowboy and Indian” battles

Andrew Carnegie

Led the Expansion of the American Steel Industry

The “Gospel of Wealth“ in 1889

J.P. Morgan

Leading Financier of the Progressive Era

Mark Twain

American Author

Coined the term “Gilded Age”

Wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Thomas Edison

Developed the phonograph, Motion picture camera, and the long-lasting practical light bulb

“The Wizard of Menlo Park“

William McKinley

Led the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War

Raised protective tariffs to promote American Industry

Eugene Debs

American Union Leader

A founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies)

Candidate of the Socialist Party of America for president five times

Upton Sinclair

Famous for the classic Muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1906

Exposed Meat Packing Industry

Jane Adams

Founded the Hull House in Chicago, Illinois

Provided education, food, medical care, and employment training to the poor

Booker T. Washington

Gave a speech in Atlanta that became known as the Atlanta Compromise

Speech called for a black progress through education and entrepreneurship

John Muir

Founder of the conservation movement

“Father of National Parks“

Created parks such as Yosemite, Mt. Rainier, and the Grand Canyon

William Howard Taft

10th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Elected president in 1908

Defeated by Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election

Susan B. Anthony

Arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote, became the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Carrie Nation

Radical Member of the temperance movement

Opposed alcohol before Prohibition

Attacks establishments with a hatchet

Woodrow Wilson

Re-elected in 1916, using the quote “he kept us out of war“

The second term was dominated by America's joining World War I

Issued principles of peace: “The Fourteen Points“

Went to Paris to promote the formation of a League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles

Margaret Sanger

Popularized birth control

Opened the first birth control clinic in the United States

The Wright Brothers(Orville and Wilbur)

Invented and built the world’s first successful airplane

Made the first controlled, powered, and sustained human flight on December 17th, 1903

Langston Hughes

Poet and activist

Best Known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance

Helped to develop a unified African-American Culture

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

One of the most widely cited U.S. Supreme Court Justices in history

“Clear and present danger“ opinion in the 1919 case of Schenck V. United States

Louis Armstrong

Jazz trumpeter

One of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to “cross-over“

Skin color was second to his music in an America that was racially divided

Clarence Darrow

Leading attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union

Represented John T. Scopes in the Scopes “Monkey“ trial in 1925

Billy Sunday

Left baseball for the Christian ministry

Strong supporter of the Prohibition

Calvin Coolidge

President of the United States from 1923 to 1929

Advocate of smaller government and laissez-faire economics

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Instituted the New Deal

Major surviving programs include: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security

Declared war on Japan and Germany after Pearl Harbor

Ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese American Civilians

Eleanor Roosevelt

Served as the first chair of the ON Commission on Human Rights

Oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Huey Long

Opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal“ policies did not do enough to alleviate the issues of the poor or tackle the Depression

Developed his own solution called the “Share Our Wealth“ program

Harry S. Truman

Gave the order for the atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Douglas MacArthur

On 25 June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War

Was selected as commander of the UN forces

Critical of Truman’s Europe-first policy and limited-war strategy — Truman removed him from his command

Joseph McCarthy

Noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies inside the United States federal government

McCarthyism

Julius & Ethel Rosenberg

Accused, convicted, and executed for being spies who provided top secret information about nuclear weapon designs to the Soviet Union

Jackie Robinson

First African American to play in the major leagues in the Modern era

Martin Luther King Jr.

Leader of the Civil Rights Movement who fought for equality through nonviolent protest

John Glenn

First American to orbit the Earth on February 20th, 1962, aboard the Friendship 7

Elvis Presley

Known as the “King of rock and roll” (usually shortened to “The King”)

Helped popularize the genre in the 1950s

A major cultural icon that influenced music, fashion, and youth culture

Ruby Bridges

First African American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana

She was escorted to school by four federal Marshals who were sent by President Eisenhower to oversee her safety

Lyndon Johnson

He created the "Great Society” as a supporter of Civil Rights and waged the war on poverty

Little Rock Nine

Nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 after the Supreme Court had ordered Schools desegregated

Robert Kennedy

In 1968, he became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency

Shortly after winning the California primary, he was assassinated

Betty Friedan

Her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique sparked a renewal of American feminism in the 1960s

Rachel Carson

1962 book Silent Spring, which attributed decline in bird populations to the pesticide DDT

Jimmy Carter

The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

Ralph Nader

known for pioneering the modern consumer protection movement in the 1960s

He is best known for his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed

Walt Disney

co-founded the “The Walt Disney Company”. He helped pioneer the American animation industry

most known for building a global entertainment empire through animated films and theme parks, including the opening of Disneyland in 1955

Ronald Reagan

His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated reducing tax rates to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending

Sam Walton

best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam's Club

Jerry Falwell

Founded the Moral Majority