American Studies Key Dates

Vocabulary flashcards covering the course overview and the major key dates in U.S. history.

American Studies

An interdisciplinary class that uses storytelling as a lens for examining U.S. history.

Earliest signs of settlement in Western Alaska and California

Approx. 30,000 yrs ago

Portuguese begin exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa

1415

Columbus sails from Spain to the Americas

1492

Virginia Colony founded

1607

First enslaved Africans sold in Jamestown, Virginia

1619

Massachusetts Bay Colony founded

1630

Bacon’s Rebellion

1676

Stamp Act

1765

American Revolution begins

1775

Declaration of Independence

1776

Shay’s Rebellion

1786-1787

United States Constitution signed

1787

Bill of Rights Ratified

1791

Louisiana Purchase

1803

Missouri Compromise

1820

Civil War

1861-1865

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 (constitutional foundation for Jim Crow)

U.S. fighting in World War I

1917-1918

Beginning of the Great Depression

1929

U.S. fighting in World War II

1941-1945

U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945

Brown v. Board of Education

1954 (beg. of the legal end of Jim Crow)

Voting Rights Act passed

1965

Fall of Berlin Wall

1989 (beginning of the end of the Cold War)