Empire, Progressivism, and total war.
Imperial expansion, Progressive reform, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the war that finally pulled the U.S. to global power.
The 1898 Spanish-American War made the U.S. an overseas power (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines). At home, Progressives — Jane Addams, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette — pushed antitrust, regulation, women’s suffrage (19th Amendment, 1920), prohibition (18th, 1919), and the income tax (16th, 1913). World War I ended European hegemony and triggered the Great Migration of African Americans north. The 1920s: cars, radio, jazz, the KKK’s revival, the Scopes Trial, immigration restriction (1924), and a stock market that crashed in 1929. FDR’s New Deal redefined the federal government’s role in the economy. World War II finished the Depression, mobilized the entire society, ended in nuclear weapons, and left the U.S. as one of two superpowers in a wrecked world.
Read Unit 7 alongside this period.
Pages 438–578 (141 pp.) cover topics 7.1–7.15 — all 15 CED topics for the 1890–1945 window.
The site’s topic accordions match AMSCO’s numbering (1.1, 1.2…). Read AMSCO’s overview for each topic, then expand the matching accordion below for the site’s study notes, key terms, and exam-focus tips.
The CED, topic by topic.
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7.1
Imperialism, World War I, and the 1920s
The U.S. becomes a global power — and tries to retreat from being one.WOR · NAT · WXT
What to studyThe Spanish-American War (1898) made the U.S. an overseas empire — Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines (suppressing the Philippine insurrection until 1902), Hawaii. The Roosevelt Corollary, Panama Canal, and dollar diplomacy projected U.S. power across the Caribbean and Pacific. WWI (U.S. entry 1917) shifted the global financial center to New York and gave Wilson a seat at Versailles — though the Senate rejected the League of Nations. The 1920s brought the Red Scare, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance, the Scopes Trial (1925), the second-wave KKK, immigration restriction (1924), and the auto-and-radio consumer economy that crashed in October 1929.
Key termsSpanish-American War · Roosevelt Corollary · Panama Canal · Treaty of Versailles · League of Nations · Red Scare · Prohibition · Harlem Renaissance · Scopes Trial · Immigration Act of 1924Exam focusWhen asked about U.S. global engagement, contrast the imperial reach (real) with the official isolationism (mostly rhetorical) — that tension defines the period.Primary sourceWoodrow Wilson, The Fourteen Points, 1918 — Yale Avalon Project
Wilson’s peace framework — self-determination, open diplomacy, and the League of Nations — whose Senate rejection shaped U.S. isolationism through WWII.Whose story is missing?“We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.” — W.E.B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis, May 1919
Du Bois wrote this editorial as Black veterans came home from World War I to find Jim Crow laws, race riots, and lynching unchanged. The issue was flagged by postal authorities who considered it seditious. He challenged Black Americans to demand at home the democracy they had defended abroad. Read the source →
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7.2
The Great Depression and the New Deal
The federal government rewrites its relationship to the economy.WXT · ARC · PCE
What to studyThe 1929 stock market crash triggered a four-year economic collapse — GDP fell 25%, unemployment hit 25%, banks failed by the thousands, and Hoover’s response (Smoot-Hawley Tariff, RFC) was too small. FDR’s election (1932) brought the New Deal: bank holiday, FDIC, Glass-Steagall, Civilian Conservation Corps, AAA (farm price supports), NRA (National Recovery Administration; industrial codes struck down 1935 in Schechter v. U.S.), Social Security (1935), Wagner Act (collective bargaining), WPA. The Court-packing fight (1937) failed but the New Deal constitutional revolution succeeded — the federal government’s role expanded permanently. Critics (Father Coughlin, Huey Long, the Liberty League) argued from both left and right; FDR’s coalition (urban workers, Black voters, white South, Jews and Catholics) reshaped the Democratic Party.
Key termsStock Market Crash · Hoovervilles · Bank holiday · FDIC · Glass-Steagall · CCC · AAA · WPA · Social Security · Wagner Act · Court-packingExam focusStrong essays distinguish what the New Deal DID (regulatory state, social safety net) from what it didn’t end (the Depression itself — WWII did that). Both points score.Primary sourceFranklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933 — Yale Avalon Project
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — FDR reframes the Depression as a moral crisis requiring active federal intervention.Whose story is missing?“The Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him, The Great American Depression, as you call it. There was no such thing. The best he could be is a janitor or a porter or shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man.” — Clifford Burke, interviewed in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, 1970
Burke, a Black laborer in Chicago, told oral historian Studs Terkel how the Depression looked from outside the mainstream economy. For Black workers systematically excluded from skilled trades, union membership, and homeownership, the “crash” was simply a continuation of conditions that had always existed. Read the source →
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7.3
World War II and Its Home Front
Total war remakes the United States — economically, demographically, and globally.WOR · MIG · SOC
What to studyPearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941) ended U.S. isolation. The U.S. fought a two-front war — D-Day (1944), the Pacific island campaign culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Aug 1945). At home: war production ended the Depression overnight (unemployment dropped from 14% to 1.2%); women entered industrial work (Rosie the Riveter); ~1.5 million African Americans moved to Northern cities (Second Great Migration); Japanese Americans were forcibly interned (Executive Order 9066, *Korematsu*). The U.S. emerged as the dominant economic and military power on Earth, with the only intact industrial base and a nuclear monopoly.
Key termsPearl Harbor · Lend-Lease · D-Day · Battle of Midway · Manhattan Project · Hiroshima and Nagasaki · Japanese Internment · Korematsu v. United States · Bracero ProgramExam focusDBQs on WWII often pivot on the home-front contradictions: fighting fascism abroad while interning Japanese Americans, segregating Black soldiers, and excluding Jewish refugees. Be specific.Primary sourceFranklin D. Roosevelt, Day of Infamy Address, 1941 — Yale Avalon Project
FDR’s war message to Congress following Pearl Harbor — the speech that formally brought the U.S. into World War II.Whose story is missing?“I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color.” — Fred Korematsu, U.S. District Court, San Francisco, November 10, 1983
Korematsu was arrested in 1942 for refusing to report to a Japanese American internment camp and convicted of violating military orders. Forty years later, a federal court vacated his conviction after researchers uncovered evidence that the government had concealed contradicting intelligence from the Supreme Court. His statement called for accountability, not just legal relief. Read the source →
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7.4
The Progressive Era
Muckrakers, regulators, suffragists — and four constitutional amendments in a decade.PCE · WXT · ARC
What to studyProgressives believed expert-led government could fix industrial-age problems. Muckrakers (Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, 1906; Lincoln Steffens’s The Shame of the Cities, 1904; Ida Tarbell’s exposé of Standard Oil) drove regulatory legislation: the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), Meat Inspection Act (1906), Federal Reserve Act (1913), Clayton Antitrust Act (1914). Constitutional amendments: 16th (1913, income tax), 17th (1913, direct election of senators), 18th (1919, Prohibition), 19th (1920, women’s suffrage). Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09) split with Taft and ran as the Progressive (Bull Moose) candidate in 1912; Wilson won the three-way race. The movement had blind spots: most progressive reformers were silent or worse on race (Wilson re-segregated the federal civil service in 1913).
Key termsMuckrakers · Upton Sinclair · The Jungle · Pure Food and Drug Act · 16th–19th Amendments · Theodore Roosevelt · Square Deal · Bull Moose Party · Federal Reserve Act · Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (1911)Exam focusWhen asked about Progressive achievements, name SPECIFIC reforms tied to SPECIFIC problems they solved. Generalizations about ‘expanded government power’ lose evidence points.Primary sourceUpton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906 — Project Gutenberg
Sinclair’s exposé of Chicago meatpacking conditions drove public outrage — the Progressive Era’s most effective argument for federal consumer and labor regulation.Whose story is missing?“The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.” — Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909
The Progressive Era is taught through legislative reforms—antitrust, food safety, direct democracy—but progressive reformers included settlement house workers like Jane Addams who built from the neighborhood up rather than the legislature down. Women led the Progressive movement’s social reform wing without the vote, using consumer leagues, settlement houses, and investigative journalism to produce the documentation that made regulation politically possible. The era’s “democracy” was expanded by people who were legally excluded from it. Read the source →
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7.5
The Roaring Twenties & Cultural Conflict
Jazz, automobiles, and Klan-revival prohibition all in the same decade.SOC · CDI · ARC
What to studyThe 1920s combined consumer-economy boom (Ford’s Model T, radio, refrigerators, electricity reaching most urban households) with cultural backlash. The Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith) flourished in Black urban communities swelled by the Great Migration (~6 million African Americans moved north 1916–1970). Simultaneously: the second-wave KKK (peak ~4 million members c. 1924) targeted Catholics, Jews, and immigrants as well as Black Americans. The Scopes Trial (1925) pitted fundamentalist Christianity against Darwinian science. Prohibition (18th Amendment, 1919; repealed by 21st, 1933) spawned organized crime (Al Capone’s Chicago). The National Origins Act (1924) cut immigration to 150,000/year and effectively banned Asian immigration. The decade ended with the Oct 1929 stock market crash.
Key termsHarlem Renaissance · Langston Hughes · Great Migration · Second-wave KKK · Scopes Trial (1925) · Prohibition · Al Capone · National Origins Act (1924) · Sacco & Vanzetti · Lost GenerationExam focusStrong essays hold the 1920s’ CONTRADICTIONS together: consumer boom alongside cultural backlash, jazz culture alongside KKK revival. Cite both.Primary sourceLangston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, 1921 — Poetry Foundation
Hughes’s debut poem — connecting Black identity to ancient civilizations — announces the Harlem Renaissance’s challenge to 1920s cultural norms.Whose story is missing?“My aim is to make the Negro see himself not through the eyes of the White man, but through his own eyes.” — Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, 1923
The Roaring Twenties is taught through jazz, flappers, and Prohibition, but the decade was also the peak of the Ku Klux Klan (4–5 million members by 1924) and the beginning of the Great Migration’s cultural transformation of Northern cities. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association—the largest Black mass movement in U.S. history to that point—built a pan-African political vision in direct response to the era’s racial violence. The cultural conflict AP emphasizes (fundamentalism vs. modernism) ran alongside a racial conflict the standard narrative often treats as peripheral. Read the source →
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7.6
World War II — The U.S. Home Front
Total war remade the U.S. economy, demographics, and global standing in four years.WXT · SOC · MIG
What to studyWar mobilization ended the Depression: federal spending tripled, GDP doubled, unemployment fell from 14% in 1940 to 1.2% in 1944. The War Production Board converted auto plants to tanks, aircraft, and ships. Women entered industrial work at scale (“Rosie the Riveter”); 350,000 served in uniform via WACs and WAVES. The Second Great Migration moved another ~1.5 million African Americans north and west; A. Philip Randolph’s threatened 1941 March on Washington forced FDR’s Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defense industries. The Bracero Program (1942–64) brought ~4.6 million Mexican workers north. Japanese Americans were forcibly interned (Executive Order 9066, ~120,000 interned; Korematsu v. U.S. 1944 upheld it). Anti-Japanese internment + acceptance of Jewish refugees the U.S. mostly REFUSED (the SS St. Louis, 1939) are the war’s enduring home-front shame.
Key termsWar Production Board · Rosie the Riveter · Second Great Migration · Executive Order 8802 · Bracero Program · Executive Order 9066 · Korematsu v. U.S. · GI Bill (1944) · Manhattan ProjectExam focusDBQs love the WWII home front because of the contradictions: fighting fascism abroad while interning Japanese Americans, segregating Black soldiers, and refusing Jewish refugees. Be specific.Primary sourceExecutive Order 9066, 1942 — National Archives
FDR’s order authorizing the forced relocation of Japanese Americans — the home front’s most significant civil liberties violation of World War II.Whose story is missing?“I could not tell where the Japanese city ended and where the United States government began.” — Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar, 1973 (memoir of 1942 internment)
WWII’s home front is taught through industrial mobilization, women in the workforce, and rationing—stories of sacrifice that built national unity. But 120,000 Japanese Americans—two-thirds of them U.S. citizens—were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated without charge. Wakatsuki Houston’s memoir documents what the same period of “democracy vs. fascism” meant for families who lost businesses, property, and years of their lives to a policy the Supreme Court upheld in Korematsu v. United States (1944). The home front had a home front. Read the source →
Connect to the bigger picture
Era: The Modern World
APWH cross-links: 7.1 Shifting Power After 1900; 7.4 Economy in the Interwar Period; 7.6 WWII
Next: Period 8 — Cold War, Civil Rights, Great Society
