APUSH Unit 7 Key Figures

Key figures for AP US History Unit 7: 1890-1945.

Hideki Tojo

General who became war minister of Japan in 1940 and concluded a formal military alliance with both Italy and Germany, supported by Emperor Hirohito – rose to prime minister and accelerated preparation for war against the US in Oct 1941

Huey Long

Democratic governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 who increased taxes on corporations, lowered utility bills of customers and built new highways, hospitals, and schools

Herbert Hoover

Republican nominee in 1928, “dedicated peoples’ servant”, who won fame in WWI for his work as the Secretary of Commerce under President Harding

Zora Neale Hurston

African American author who wrote short stories and novels about celebrating the humor and spiritual strength of average, ordinary black men and women

Adolph Zukor

Eastern European Jewish immigrant who arrived in the US from Hungary in the 1880s, the founder of Paramount Pictures

Alice Paul

Quaker who worked in the settlement movement, earned a PhD in political science, founded NWP (fought specifically for women’s suffrage), and began picketing the White House in 1917

Marcus Garvey

political activist, the influential black leader and founder of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

Porfirio Diaz

Mexican dictator who feared the power of foreign interests and began to back Francisco Madero, an advocate of constitutional government, and was friendly to the US

Woodrow Wilson

1913 Democratic president who pledged that the US would “never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest”

Alfred Mahan

a US naval officer who urged the US to strengthen the navy and invest in the latest weaponry in his book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1890)

Queen Liliuokalani

founder of the Kamehameha Dynasty, ruled the islands since the late 1700s and was overthrown by Pro-Americans in 1893

Benito Mussolini

Italian dictator who came to power in 1922, “Il Duce”, desired overseas colonies, invaded Ethiopia in 1935, completed conquest in 1936

Henry J. Kaiser

best-known war contractor, an industrialist who worked on navy shipbuilding and revolutionized naval construction, dubbed the “Miracle Man”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

General during WWII who supervised Operation Torch, an allied invasion of French North Africa, and defeated Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps

John Collier

Sociologist who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), helped to write and pass the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

Eleanor Roosevelt

Most prominent female figure in American politics, worked tirelessly to expand positions for women in political parties, labor unions, and education, the most influential First Lady in the nation’s history from 1933 to 1945

Mary McLeod Bethune

filled the post of director of Black Affairs in the National Youth Administration (NYA), founded Bethune-Cookman College and served during the 1920s as president of the National Association of Colored Women

Frances Perkins

Democrat workers-rights advocate who served as US Secretary of Labor from 1933-1945, first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet

Louis Armstrong

nicknamed “Satchmo”, a trumpeter and vocalist who helped shape jazz into an art form and introduce it to the world

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Italian immigrants and self-proclaimed anarchists who evaded the draft and were arrested in May of 1920 for alleged murder, both were sentenced to death and became a lasting symbol of the Red Scare’s hostilities and divisiveness

Theodore Roosevelt

26th US president who served 1901-1909, championed his “Square Deal” domestic policies and prioritized conservation