Hello pasof~
First, I want to acknowledge that any list of “most special events”
in U.S. history is going to be subjective; different people may give
entirely different lists. So I tried pick varying areas of history:
the labor movement, women’s rights, civil rights, war, and economics.
Here they are, in no particular order.
1. THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE
The Homsestead Strike took place in 1892, holds historians’ attention
by being the first time organized labor fought a “modern” corporation.
U.S. steel, that vast industry, sets the stage for the event. The
beginnings of the labor movement create the plot.
The Homestead Works steel plant of Pittsburgh, PA had union workers
from the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the
largest craft union in the U.S.). Homestead was then owned by Andrew
Carnegie, one of the richest men in the U.S., and a business man who
focused on reducing costs.
Carnegie did not consider himself an enemy of unions, encouraging his
workers to call him “Andy, and his workers had typical hours and wages
for the time period. Still, the union had a strike in 1889; they
settled, but when their contract came up for renewal, Carnegie felt he
had to fire some workers and lower wages. In addition, the Industrial
Revolution was seeing to it that labor-saving machinery was slowly
taking away jobs. On June 29, 1892, a lockout of the union workers
began at the Homestead.
A stockade three miles long was installed around the factory,
“complete with barbed wire and slots for rifles.” In the middle of the
night of July 6th, the police planned to bust the strike. But unionist
were armed and waiting for them. It isn’t known whether the police or
the unionist fired first, but a gun fight (punctuated by some unionist
dynamite) took place that night and into the day. The police finally
gave up. The result was the deadliest labor dispute ever seen in the
U.S. Hundreds were wounded and about 13 people died.
The unionists were now in charge of the plant, so the governor of
Pennsylvania sent in 8,000 militiamen to ensure that they got back to
work. On July 23rd, anarchist Alexander Berkman, who’d had nothing to
do with the strike, entered Homestead and attempted to kill the
president of the company. At this point, public support for the union
died.
The strike continued until November, but Carnegie lowered the wages
and made working hours longer, anyway. “The Homestead strike of 1892
represented a reversal for the labor movement that lasted until the
days of the New Deal.”
For more about the Homestead Strike, check out this article by PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html
and this article at “Buy and Hold:”
http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/2001/homestead.html
This article discusses the militia involvement:
http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/projects/HomesteadStrike1892/PennMilitiaInField/pennmilitiainfield.htm
This article offers more details on the strike, along with interesting
illustrations:
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/carnegie/strike.html
Also check out Ohio State’s page on the strike:
http://www.history.ohio-state.edu/projects/HomesteadStrike1892/
Keywords Used:
"Homestead Strike"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Homestead+Strike%22+&btnG=Google+Search
2. THE ATOMIC BOMB
For better of for worse, the atomic bomb is a major part of U.S.
history.
Just before WWII, in August of 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt to explain that the Nazis were trying
to build an atomic bomb. (You can read a copy of his letter here:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_einstein_letter.htm )
With this in mind, the U.S. government began actively pursuing the
creation of it’s own atomic bomb, under the name “The Manhattan
Project.” In six years, from 1939 to 1945, about $2 billion was spent
in this pursuit.
Then, as an About.com article describes it: “At 5:29:45 (Mountain War
Time) on July 16, 1945, in a white blaze that stretched from the basin
of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico to the still-dark skies,
"The Gadget" ushered in the Atomic Age. The light of the explosion
then turned orange as the atomic fireball began shooting upwards at
360 feet per second, reddening and pulsing as it cooled. The
characteristic mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor materialized at
30,000 feet. Beneath the cloud, all that remained of the soil at the
blast site were fragments of jade green radioactive glass created by
the heat of the reaction.” (“The History of the Atomic Bomb,”
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050300a.htm )
The atomic bomb, created in fear of the Nazis, was used twice during
WWII. First was on August 6, 1945, on Hiroshima. 66,000 people were
killed and 69,000 injured. “The area of total vaporization from the
atomic bomb blast measured one half mile in diameter; total
destruction one mile in diameter; severe blast damage as much as two
miles in diameter. Within a diameter of two and a half miles,
everything flammable burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was
riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a
little over three miles in diameter.” Then, on August 9, 1945, another
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, whose population dropped from 422,000 to
383,000. Over 25,000 people were injured.
On August 10, 1945, Japan surrendered and WWII was effectively over.
Although countless were killed and new, terrible weapons were created
that caused moments of great stress during The Cold War, (and still
plague the world today), it’s difficult to imagine just how WWII would
have ended without American atomic bombs. Certainly far more people
would have died during the war, and it’s even possible Hitler would
have won.
For more information about the creation of the first atomic bombs,
visit About.com:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050300a.htm
Also be sure to check out the Hiroshima Archive:
http://www.lclark.edu/~history/HIROSHIMA/
This article, on the Japan bombings is also helpful:
http://www.blackmask.com/books31c/abombdex.htm
Keywords Used:
"Atomic Bomb" history
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Atomic+Bomb%22+history
3. THE ’29 CRASH
This was the beginning of America’s “Great Depression.” After WWI, the
U.S. had an economic boom that fed the frenzy that was the 1920s. An
increased use of credit, as well as new technologies, did much to
create this boom. On September 3, the market reached 381.(As
comparison, in 1926, the peak had only been 100.)
As one writer puts it, “The post-war world was rebuilding in early
20s. The application of electricity in our lives really began to grow
during this exciting decade. Imagine the open frontier there was for
electric appliances as more homes were becoming 'electric'.
Consumerism is always a major contributor to boom, and in the Jazz Age
it stayed true to form. At the same time, many people were caught up
in the stock market. In the years from 1925 to 1929 it was almost a
craze to play the market. The little guy could speculate with the
seasoned pros in the pit. It was fun; it was the heyday of the Jazz
Age.” (R. Richard Savill, “The Crash of 1929,”
http://mypage.direct.ca/r/rsavill/Thecrash.html )
On September 5, 1929 Roger Babson addressed the National Business
Conference and predicted that a sharp recession was in the offering.
His were not the first words of caution; in fact, rumors of a
declining economy had been around for at least a year. Yet, Babson’s
remarks were shortly followed by panic selling, especially on October
28th: “Black Monday.” The stock market crashed, and stock prices fell
to 124 in November (-62%). In June of 1932, the market reached a low
of 34 (-91%).
A large number of stock holders had purchased stocks on margin (this
means they paid a small down and the rest was on credit), with
borrowed money using stocks as collateral, making the financial
devastation far more vast than it might otherwise have been.
The crash and subsequent Great Depression had a massive impact on the
poverty level in the United States and brought about the first
socialist federal programs to be seen in America.
For more information on the crash, check out BBC’s history:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/england/ear20_wall_street_crash.shtml
and “Famous First Bubbles:”
http://www.few.eur.nl/few/people/smant/m-economics/crash1929.htm
Keywords Used:
crash 1929
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=crash+1929
4. FEMININE SUFFRAGE
Women gained the right to vote nationally on August 26th, 1920. It had
been a long battle, whose beginning is generally recognized to be the
1845 Seneca Falls Convention. One person who attended that Convention
was Charlotte Woodward; then, she was nineteen years old. In 1920, she
was 81 years old and the only Convention participant who was still
alive.
Women began the movement for suffrage at the state level, slowly
winning the right to vote locally. But The National Women's Party
began a “dirtier” fight for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution by
picketing the White House and holding large marches and demonstrations
(which often got participants sent to jail). In 1913, on President
Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration day, Alice Paul led a march of eight
thousand. (Half a million spectators watched; two hundred were injured
in the riot that resulted.) During Wilson's second inaugural in 1917,
Paul led a march around the White House.
WWI was really the turning point. For the first time, women left home
in droves and began working doing what had traditionally been “men’s
work.” But the men were away at war, so now only women were left
behind to keep the factories so vital to war production going. With
this new-found independence, and perhaps a new respect from the men in
society, the federal government began seriously considering that women
ought to vote. Since 1920, women have had a major influence on
politics throughout the nation.
For more information about the Constitutional Amendment that gave
women the right to vote, check out About.com:
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa081700a.htm
Here you’ll find a copy of the proposed amendment:
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/graphics/19amend.gif
And here you’ll find wonderful suffrage-related illustrations:
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/pic/1913/bl_p_191301.htm
Keywords Used:
women* suffrage
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=women*+suffrage
5. CRISIS AT LITTLE ROCK
On May 17th, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Topeka
Board of Education that segregated schools were “inherently unequal.”
As a result of that ruling, nine African–American students enrolled at
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Governor called the
National Guard to surround the school, trying to keep nine black
students from entering.
Several days later, after the National Guard had left, the children
entered the school. A riot followed. The Governor did nothing to
prevent or end the riots, prompting the mayor of Little Rock to plead
with President Eisenhower for help. Eisenhower acted quickly, placing
the Guard under federal control, and sending in the 101st Airborne
Division to restore order. The students were enrolled, and the Federal
law was upheld. Eisenhower was criticized both by those who felt he
had not done enough to ensure civil rights for African Americans and
those who believed he had gone too far. However, this was the first
important step toward a healthy, segregated society.
Take a look at the Arkansas History site for great photographs and
more information:
http://www.ark-ives.org/photo/gallery/central.php
The High School in question is now a historic landmark. Their website
offers some insights, too:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ak1.htm
About.com offers a Java slide show of Crisis at Little Rock photos:
http://littlerock.about.com/library/bls/blslideshow.htm
Keywords Used:
Crisis “little rock”
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=crisis+%22little+rock%22
Good luck with your interesting project!
Kriswrite |
