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Alpha Suffrage Club
Ida B. Wells and Belle Squire organized the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, whose goal was to pass an act in Congress that would allow women to vote. The club not only helped get voting rights for women, but it also taught black women how to engage in civic matters and worked towards electing African Americans into city offices. -
Wilson’s Presidency Term
Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1913 and his presidency ended in 1921. He led the US into WW1 and established an activist foreign policy known as Wilsonianism. He helped create the League of Nations. -
WW1 Timeline
WW1 starts when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. The United States enters the war on April 6th, 1917. The war ends November 11th, 1918. -
Lusitana
Lusitania was a U-boat built in 1906, and later got hit with a torpedo during WW1. It sank and killed 1,198 people and indirectly helped spur the USA into joining the war. -
Great Migration Timeframe
The Great Migration, a relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the South to the North, started in 1916 and continued all the way to 1970. They left due to little economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws. -
Lenin Leads Russian Revolution
Lenin rallied together many poor and tired workers, peasants, and soldiers to protest the current Russian government, asking for a second revolution. Eventually, the man snuck into an official Bolshevik Central Committee meeting in disguise, and ended up convincing them after ten hours to gather armed forces and take over. -
First Woman Elected to Congress
Jeanette Rankin was a politician from Montana who happened to be the first female elected to Congress. She campaigned as a progressive and believed in women's suffrage, emphasized social welfare issues, and committed herself to being a pacifist. -
Selective Service Act
Six weeks after the US entered WW1, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which gave the president the power to draft soldiers. -
Espionage Act
The Espionage Act prohibited obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of anything relating to the national defense. They worried that people with information on national defense could use it against the country. It also gave penalties to those obstructing enlistment and those who caused insubordination or disloyalty in the military. -
Influenza (flu) Epidemic
Starting in 1918 and ending in 1920, the influenza epidemic infected 500 million people in four waves. The death toll was around 20 million and 50 million. -
Wilson’s 14 Points
The fourteen points written by Wilson included a bunch of principles for peace and peace negotiations that could be used to help end WW1. -
Sedition Act
The Sedition Act of 1918 was a continuation of the Espionage Act of 1917, and it forbade any disloyal, profane, or abusive language about the US government, flag, or armed forces. -
Schneck vs. US
Schneck vs. US was a legal case where the general secretary of the US Socialist Party argued that the Espionage Act was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ended up disagreeing and ruled that the first amendment could be restricted if words spoken or printed presented some kind of danger. -
US Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles
The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, which was the first time in history they had ever rejected a peace treaty. They did this because President Wilson repeatedly ignored their concerns during the negotiation of the treaty, which offended the senate and caused them to reject it as they felt their voices on the matter had not been heard. -
First Black Women to Receive PhDs
Georgiana Simpson is the first black woman to receive a PhD. She attended the University of Chicago. The very next day, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander also received a PhD, and becomes the second black woman to have one. -
19th Amendment
The 19th amendment finally stopped the government from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. -
Anti-lynching Bill Rejected by the Senate
An anti-lynching bill gets passed by the house but doesn’t make it past the Senate. This is one of about 200 similar bills introduced to Congress, and today Congress has not managed to get the president to sign this important bill. -
Teapot Dome Scandal
The President at the time transferred supervision of the naval oil-reserve lands from the navy to the Department of Interior. The secretary of that department (Albert Bacon Fall) ended up secretly granting Harry F. Sinclair from the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome reserves. -
The Cotton Club
The prominent bootlegger and gangster Owney Madden took over Jack Johnson’s Club Deluxe and renamed it the Cotton Club. Here Madden sold illegal beer. It subjected black women to the “paper bag test,” where women’s skin would be compared to a brown paper bag. If their skin was lighter than the bag, they could be hired. The people at the Cotton Club often ridiculed the black employees and saw them as exotic savages instead of people.
