History Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-07-2023

Cheat Sheets contain bite-sized text that lets you know some of the key points contained in British Politics For Dummies, but in an ultra-condensed form. Want to impress your friends with your political knowhow or simply want to grasp one or two key facts? Here, you'll find a list of prime ministers since 1945 and a list of some of the key events in Britain since 1900. Also, discover exactly what all those political ideologies mean.

Article / Updated 01-30-2023

February is Black History Month, a celebration of African American achievements and civil rights pioneers, such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Martin Luther King Jr. The month also celebrates the history of Black American leaders in politics, industry, science, culture, and more. Hundreds of sites around the country have important stories to tell about the history of Black people in America. If February is a good time for you to travel, you might consider visiting one or more of these places as a way to celebrate Black History Month. Reading or watching a documentary is a great way to learn about history, but actually being in a place where an event happened or a historic figure once walked can lend an even deeper significance to your experience. See the list of 10 Black American history sites below. Of course, there are many more, but these, hopefully, will give you some ideas, and spark your interest in exploring further. The origins of Black History Month Black History Month began in 1915, when thousands of African Americans traveled to Chicago to participate in a national 50th anniversary celebration of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. That year, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson — known as the “Father of Black History” — led the effort to form the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, today called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. In February 1926, that organization established Negro History Week — to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. During the following decades, mayors across the nation began issuing proclamations recognizing the special week, and by the 1960s, it had evolved into Black History Month. Woodson’s home in Washington, D.C., is a National Historic Site managed by the National Park Service. It’s scheduled to reopen in the spring of 2023 after a full renovation project. Another Woodson-related site in Washington is the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Park. Important sites in Black American history Frederick Douglass House National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.: This site preserves the last residence of Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped slavery and became a prominent activist, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. The house is expected to reopen in 2023 after being closed to the public in March 2022 for renovations. Harriet Tubman Byway and Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center in Church Creek, Maryland: You can go on a self-guided driving tour of more than 30 sites that tell the story of this amazing woman who, from 1849 to 1860, operated the Underground Railroad – a secret network of routes, places, and people who provided shelter and assistance to escaping slaves. Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American fighter pilots in the U.S. armed forces, and they earned three Distinguished Unit Citations During World War II for successful air strikes in Italy and Berlin. National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C.: Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is dedicated to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It opened in 2016 and has more than 40,000 artifacts and close to 100,000 members. Whitney Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana: The plantation opened to the public as a museum in 2014 and is dedicated to educating the public about slavery in America. Guided and self-guided tours cover the generations of Africans and their descendants who were enslaved there, the plantation owners, the buildings, and how the plantation operated. The King Center in Atlanta: Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., established the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) in 1968. The organization provides resources and education about the life, legacy, and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The campus includes the Kings’s burial site and the Freedom Hall exhibition building. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta: This National Historic Site is where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor between 1933 and 1975. Go to the church’s website to learn about visiting the church and other King-related sites in Atlanta. Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama: This museum tells the story of the Freedom Riders, groups of courageous Black and white college students who rode Greyhound buses through the segregated south in 1961. Their mission was to compel the U.S. government to enforce Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregated transportation seating and facilities. A group of these Freedom Riders was attacked by an angry White mob in the spring of 1961 in Montgomery. Selma, Alabama: There are several places to visit in Selma, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of a brutal attack by law enforcement on a group of civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965. Famous civil rights leader John Lewis (later, a congressman) led the march for voting rights. He suffered a skull fracture in the attack, an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri: The museum preserves and tells the story of African American baseball and how it impacted social advancement.

Article / Updated 01-24-2023

Black American directors became more and more visible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with Spike Lee at the forefront. This article identifies just some of the many Black American directors who made a name for themselves, and a sampling of their work. Spike Lee: Getting personal From the 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It to his later work on Netflix, Spike Lee truly helped inspire a generation of filmmakers. In 2006, Lee, whose career had always been marked by generating his own projects, helmed a rare studio film, Inside Man, starring Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen; it became the highest grossing film of his career at roughly $88 million in the U.S. and Canada and more than $95 million overseas. Lee hit high marks with critics for his 2002 movie 25th Hour, his rare film with White main leads (Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and not-so-high critical marks with his 2008 film Miracle at St. Anna, a film he specifically made reclaiming Black WWII history Hollywood films consistently erased. His 2018 film BlacKkKlansman, written by him, Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtel, became an Academy Award darling; it was adapted from Rob Stallworth’s 2014 memoir Black Klansman about his efforts as a Black man to thwart the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. BlacKkKlansman, which grossed more than $90 million worldwide, was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay — a first for Lee, who had received an honorary Oscar for his contribution to film in 2015. Over his prolific feature film career, Lee had only received one nomination, in 1990 for Best Original Screenplay for Do the Right Thing. He fared slightly better with documentaries, receiving a nomination for his provocative 4 Little Girls (1997), chronicling the murder of four girls in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963. In 2020, Lee released Da 5 Bloods via Netflix. This epic Vietnam veteran tale reteamed him with Delroy Lindo (from Crooklyn) and Clarke Peters (from his 2012 film Red Hook Summer) and marked his first time working with newcomer Jonathan Majors as well as with Chadwick Boseman. With Da 5 Bloods, Lee achieved the distinction of having released films in five different decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s. Lee, a long-time professor at his film school alma mater, helped produce films of several filmmakers, including Gina Prince-Bythewood’s feature debut Love & Basketball in 2000. 1990s and early 2000s: The music video launch The rise of hip-hop music gave Black directors opportunities to showcase their vision and skill in music videos. Both Spike Lee and John Singleton directed music videos, most notably Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” for Lee and Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” for Singleton. Hype Williams elevated music videos with his innovative “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” (1997) by Missy Elliott and “Big Pimpin’” (2000) by Jay-Z and UGK, among many greats. Williams’s debut 1998 film Belly helped introduce rapper DMX as a leading man. Music video directors, like F. Gary Gray, Tim Story, Antoine Fuqua, and Millicent Shelton, began transitioning primarily into film. Gray would hit with Friday (1995) and Set It Off (1996), starring rappers Ice Cube and Queen Latifah, respectively, on his way to later direct The Italian Job (2003), which made more than $175 million worldwide. Gray also directed Straight Outta Compton (2015), which made more than $160 million domestically and $200 million globally, and Fate of the Furious (2017) in the mighty The Fast and the Furious franchise. This made him the first Black American director to have a film reach $1 billion dollars in global box office receipts. Black directors without strong music video roots were also active at this time, including Carl Franklin with Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Rick Famuyiwa with The Wood (1999), Malcolm D. Lee with The Best Man (1999), and Gina Prince-Bythewood with Love & Basketball (2000). Lee Daniels, who produced the feature film Monster’s Ball (2001), for which Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, directed several films that made a huge impact. Daniels's influential films during this time period include Precious, in 2009, which was adapted from Sapphire’s 1996 book Push and introduced actress Gabourey Sidibe. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Mo’Nique won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Geoffrey Fletcher became the first Black screenwriter to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The 2010s: Drama, horror, heroes, and more The late 1990s and early 2000s gave only a glimpse into what was to come. The 2010s ushered in Black directors who experienced even more notable breakthroughs, most notably Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler. Ava DuVernay Ava DuVernay, a Los Angeles area native, began her Hollywood career as a film publicist specializing in outreach to Black audiences. She worked on a string of successful films, including The Brothers (2001), Shrek 2 (2004), and Dreamgirls (2006), which launched Jennifer Hudson’s career. She directed several small films prior to breaking through at Sundance, first with I Will Follow in 2011 and then with Middle of Nowhere in 2012, with which she became the first Black female director to win its U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic. As her career progressed, DuVernay became acclaimed for both her filmmaking and her bold advocacy for inclusion. Filming Selma (2014), the first Hollywood feature film directly centered on Martin Luther King Jr., brought together DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, who portrayed the real-life Annie Lee Cooper and her courageous struggle to vote in Jim Crow Alabama. That led to DuVernay’s spearheading the dramatic series Queen Sugar as its creator and visionary. Adapted from Natalie Baszile’s 2014 novel, the series revolves around three siblings from the Bordelon clan. With the launch of Queen Sugar in 2016, DuVernay committed to utilizing all female directors, which opened up additional opportunities for Black women directors, including Julie Dash, the first Black woman director to have a film distributed theatrically with her 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. Also directing for Queen Sugar were Tina Mabry, known for Mississippi Damned, Channing Godfrey Peoples, known for Miss Juneteenth, and Felicia Pride, known for the short Tender. With her 2018 film A Wrinkle in Time, adapted from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 novel and starring Storm Reid, along with Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling, DuVernay became the first Black woman director to have a film pass $100 million at the box office. Through the streaming platform Netflix, DuVernay was able to make profound social justice statements, particularly through her 2016 documentary 13th, exploring the constitutional amendment and its relation to the mass incarceration of Black people. This documentary won four Emmys and an NAACP Image Award and garnered an Oscar nomination. Her Netflix limited series When They See Us, about the Central Park Five (later known as the Exonerated Five), who were falsely imprisoned for the 1989 rape of the Central Park jogger, won several African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) and NAACP Image Awards. It also won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie for Jharrel Jerome, a first for an Afro-Latino actor. Barry Jenkins Director Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film Moonlight is a tender coming-of-age story based on playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished semiautobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, centered on a young man exploring his sexuality. It surprised critics and fans when it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017 over frontrunner La La Land after a dramatic mix-up initially announced La La Land as the winner. Jenkins’s 2018 film adaptation of James Baldwin’s celebrated 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, addressing mass incarceration, resulted in actress Regina King winning her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The Underground Railroad, Jenkins’s limited series for Amazon, a first for him, was adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Jordan Peele Jordan Peele surprised many when his 2017 feature film debut Get Out garnered him a Best Director and a Best Picture Oscar nomination, a first-time combo for a Black director. It was also a win for Black horror films and horror in general. Get Out, starring British actor Daniel Kaluuya, takes a turn when he and his white girlfriend visit her parents and he begins meeting Black people in a “sunken place” devoid of their essence or souls. He suspects it’s intentional and tries to escape the same fate. Made for less than $5 million, Get Out, also starring Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, and Betty Gabriel, grossed $255.5 million worldwide. Peele followed Get Out with Us (2019), starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as both the protagonist and the antagonist, grossing more than $255 million worldwide. Ryan Coogler California Bay Area native Ryan Coogler’s first feature film, Fruitvale Station — about the 2008 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III — was released in 2013 This came at the same time as the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Fruitvale Station starred Michael B. Jordan, who was just starting to make a real push toward the big screen. It was the rare film that humanized the victims of cop killings and not just the cop. From there, Coogler turned his attention to Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rocky franchise and created Creed, his 2015 film, shifting the focus to Adonis “Donnie” Creed. Creed starred Michael B. Jordan as an offspring of Apollo Creed and starred Sylvester Stallone as Rocky. That film grossed more than $170 million worldwide. None of Coogler’s previous achievements, as impressive as they were for a director, especially one younger than 30 and Black, foreshadowed how significantly he would change the film landscape as the co-writer and director of Black Panther, the first standalone Black-cast film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther starred Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, the would-be king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda and Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, a challenger to the throne. Released February 16, 2018, to critical and popular acclaim, Black Panther, with its African Diasporic casting of actors from the United States, England, various parts of the African Continent, and the Caribbean, proved to be a global sensation. In the United States and Canada alone, Black Panther grossed more than $700 million on its way to a worldwide gross of more than $1.3 billion. This made Coogler the highest-grossing Black director, just ahead of Gray’s The Fate of the Furious, which grossed more than $1.2 billion in 2017. The love and pride audiences have for Black Panther made the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman on August 28, 2020, at age 43, a cause of national and international mourning. 2020: A stream of Black women directors A high point of 2020 was the emergence of Black women directors, with a Black woman-directed feature-length film released almost every month. It began with Numa Perrier’s Jezebel on Netflix in January 2020, followed by Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version, which won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Competition Directing Award prior to being shown on Netflix that October. That February, Canadian-American director Stella Meghie released The Photograph, which she wrote and directed, starring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield on the big screen. Other films that followed include the high school mean-girl tale Selah and the Spades from writer/director Tayarisha Poe on Amazon Prime Video; writer/director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth, starring Nicole Beharie, on video-on-demand; and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action film The Old Guard for Netflix, starring white South African Charlize Theron and Black actress KiKi Layne. In the year prior, 2019, Melina Matsoukas, a music video master known for her collaborations with Beyoncé, Rihanna, and even Whitney Houston, had gotten the party started early with her feature film debut Queen & Slim, starring Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith. It generated considerable buzz. So did the announcement that Nia DaCosta, whose anticipated Candyman reboot was pushed to 2021, would direct the next Captain Marvel film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Article / Updated 12-02-2022

Japan's ambassadors delivered the first part of a final Japanese diplomatic note to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull on December 6, 1941. On the morning of December 7, the final portion of the note arrived from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassadors. The note broke diplomatic relations with the U.S. and provided instructions to destroy the code machines in the Japanese embassy. The ambassadors were to deliver the note in the early afternoon. While the Japanese ambassadors received this information, so too did American intelligence. Everyone understood the note's meaning: War was to be declared that afternoon. Soon after receiving the note, warnings were sent to American commanders in Hawaii, the Philippines, Panama, and San Francisco with the information that the ultimatum would be delivered at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Separate messages were sent to the United States army and navy. Somehow, the alert messages bound for Hawaii ended up being transmitted by commercial telegraph and radio. A bicycle messenger, on his way from Honolulu to deliver the coded messages, found himself in the middle of a war. The attack on Pearl Harbor War came to America at 7:55 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The base on Oahu Island was the home of the United States Pacific Fleet and about 50,000 American troops. At Pearl Harbor was the largest concentration of U.S. forces in the Pacific. A fleet of six Japanese aircraft carriers and escort ships stationed itself 230 miles off Oahu and launched its first wave of 183 fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes. They were to inflict as much damage on the fleet as they could. They were to especially target the eight U.S. battleships and two U.S. carriers. They also sought to destroy aircraft parked on the ground. The first wave of Japanese bombers found plenty to attack. About 200 American ships and smaller craft were anchored in the harbor, and hundreds of warplanes were parked wingtip to wingtip at the airfields (planes arranged this way are easier to protect from sabotage). A second wave of 170 Japanese aircraft followed up and found the harbor obscured by giant columns of black smoke and antiaircraft fire. During this wave, the Japanese lost 19 aircraft from ground fire and American fighters that had managed to get into the air. The entire attack lasted only about an hour and fifty minutes. The effect at Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,400 Americans and wounded another 1,200. Of those dead, 1,103 sailors and marines were killed when a Japanese bomb penetrated the forward magazine (the compartment where a ship's ammunition is stored) of the battleship USS Arizona, sinking the ship and the men aboard it. The USS Oklahoma, another battleship, was also sunk with heavy loss of life. The other six battleships were damaged, and so were a number of cruisers and destroyers. Over 340 of the 400 aircraft on Oahu were destroyed or damaged as well. In the short run, the Japanese accomplished their objective. They had knocked the United States Pacific Fleet out of action temporarily. But how temporarily was the most important issue. In the long run, the United States was able to overcome the damage at Pearl Harbor for the following reasons: The aircraft carriers weren't touched. The carrier would prove to be the decisive weapon of the naval war in the Pacific, not the battleship, which every naval strategist before 1941 thought would be the primary naval weapon. The submarines were not attacked. Submarines became one of America's most potent weapons in crippling Japan's vital supply lines. The repair dockyards and fuel-oil storage tanks were undamaged. Thus, Pearl Harbor was able to serve its important role in wartime as a repair and refitting base for the Pacific Fleet. In fact, most of the American ships damaged in the attack were repaired and entered action against the Japanese later in 1942 and 1943. Nevertheless, Pearl Harbor was a bitter defeat for the United States. American territory had been attacked, and American lives had been lost. Pearl Harbor unified the divided and uncertain American population as no earlier action could. The United States declares war on Japan Japan had underestimated the Americans, who they believed would prefer to negotiate rather than fight. To the contrary, America wanted revenge. Although deeply divided over war issues and neutrality before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress was now united in seeking a declaration of war. As outlined in the United States Constitution, the president must ask Congress for such a declaration, which Roosevelt willingly did. In his message to Congress, Roosevelt captured the emotions of the day: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. . . . Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no doubt what Roosevelt's words meant for the British. "So we had won after all!" he wrote. "After seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress. We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live."

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-21-2022

The British Isles have witnessed many great regal dynasties through the ages, but none more turbulent, exciting and controversial than the Tudors. This Cheat Sheet gives you the essential up-front information about this period in world history.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-08-2022

If you're interested in Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in British history, this Cheat Sheet is a useful reference to her life and family. It includes a timeline of important events in the queen's life, the line of succession to her throne, and the various movies and TV shows that have featured her.

Article / Updated 08-11-2022

America had gone through hard times before: a bank panic and depression in the early 1820s, other economic hard times in the late 1830s, the mid-1870s, and the early and mid-1890s. But never did it suffer an economic illness so deep and so long as the Great Whatever the causes, the consequences of the Great Depression were staggering. In the cities, thousands of jobless men roamed the streets, looking for work. It wasn't unusual for 2,000 or 3,000 applicants to show up for one or two job openings. If they weren't looking for work, they were looking for food. Bread lines were established to stop people from starving. And more than a million families lost their houses and took up residence in shantytowns made up of tents, packing crates, and the hulks of old cars. They were called "Hoovervilles," a mocking reference to President Hoover, whom many blamed (somewhat unfairly) for the mess the country was in. Thousands of farmers left their homes in states like Oklahoma and Arkansas and headed for the promise of better days in the West, especially California. What they found there, however, was most often a backbreaking existence as migrant laborers, living in squalid camps, and picking fruit for starvation wages. Americans weren't sure what to do. In the summer of 1932, about 20,000 desperate World War I veterans marched on Washington D.C. to claim $1,000 bonuses they had been promised they would get, starting in 1946. When Congress refused to move up the payment schedules, several thousand built a camp of tents and shacks on the banks of the Potomac River and refused to leave. Under orders of President Hoover, federal troops commanded by General Douglas MacArthur used bayonets and gas bombs to rout the squatters. The camp was burned. No one was killed, but the episode left a bad taste in the mouths of many Americans. Shoving aside African Americans, Mexicans, and Native American Indians More than half of African Americans still lived in the South, most as tenant farmers or "sharecroppers," meaning they farmed someone else's land. Almost all of those who worked and weren't farmers held menial jobs that whites hadn't wanted — until the Depression came along. When it did, the African Americans were shoved out of their jobs. As many as 400,000 left the South for cities in the North, which didn't help much. By 1932, it's estimated half of the black U.S. population was on some form of relief. Other minority groups suffered similarly. Mexico had been exempted from the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans came to the United States, mostly to the Southwest. Prior to the Depression, they were at least tolerated as a ready source of cheap labor. In the 1930s, however, they were pushed out of jobs by desperate whites. Many thousands were deported, even some who were legal U.S. citizens, and as many as 500,000 returned to Mexico. Those of Asian descent, mostly on the West Coast, were likewise pushed out of jobs or relegated to jobs only within their own communities. American Indians had been largely forgotten by the U.S. government since the 1880s, which was not a good thing. The general idea had been to gradually have Indians disappear into the American mainstream. In 1924, Congress made U.S. citizens of all Indians who weren't already citizens, whether they wanted to be or not. But preliminary studies done in the 1920s found that "assimilation" had failed. In 1934, Congress changed direction and passed laws that allowed Indians to retain their cultural identity. Although well meaning, it did little for their economic well-being, and they remained the worst-off of America's minority groups. Keeping women at home — or work With jobs scarce, a strong feeling prevailed that women should stay home and let men have the jobs. There was even a federal rule that two people in the same family could not both be on the government payroll. But two things occurred that actually increased the number of women in the workforce during the decade. The first was that many families simply could not survive without an extra income. The second was that many men abandoned their families to look for work or because they were ashamed they could not find work. Marriage rates dropped for the first time since the early 1800s. Developing organized labor If the sun peeked through the Depression's clouds on anyone, it might have been organized labor. The captains of industry and business lost much of their political clout during the 1930s, and new laws made organizing easier. All told there were more than 4,500 strikes in 1937, and labor won more than three-fourths of them. By 1940, more than eight million Americans were members of organized labor.

Article / Updated 08-11-2022

America had gone through hard times before: a bank panic and depression in the early 1820s, other economic hard times in the late 1830s, the mid-1870s, and the early and mid-1890s. But never did it suffer an economic illness so deep and so long as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economists have argued ever since as to just what caused it. But it's safe to say there were a bunch of intertwined things that contributed. Among them: The stock market crash. The stock market soared throughout most of the 1920s, and the more it grew, the more people were eager to pour money into it. Many people bought "on margin," which meant they paid only part of a stock's worth when they bought it, and the rest when they sold it. That worked fine as long as stock prices kept going up. But when the market crashed in late October 1929, they were forced to pay up on stocks that were no longer worth anything. Many more had borrowed money from banks to buy stock, and when the stock market went belly-up, they couldn't repay their loans and the banks were left holding the empty bag. Bank failures. Many small banks, particularly in rural areas, had overextended credit to farmers who, for the most part, had not shared in the prosperity of the 1920s and often could not repay the loans. Big banks, meanwhile, had foolishly made huge loans to foreign countries. Why? So the foreign countries could repay their earlier debts from World War I. When times got tough and the U.S. banks stopped lending, European nations simply defaulted on their outstanding loans. The result of all this was that many banks went bankrupt. Others were forced out of business when depositors panicked and withdrew their money. The closings and panics almost completely shut down the country's banking system. Too many poor people. That may sound goofy, but it's a real reason. While the overall economy had soared in the 1920s, most of the wealth was enjoyed by relatively few Americans. In 1929, half of the families in the country were still living at or below the poverty level. That made them too poor to buy goods and services and too poor to pay their debts. With no markets for their goods, manufacturers had to lay off tens of thousands of workers, which of course just created more poor people. Farm failures. Many American farmers were already having a hard time before the Depression, mostly because they were producing too much and farm product prices were too low. Things were so bad in some areas that farmers burned corn for fuel rather than sell it. Then one of the worst droughts in recorded history hit the Great Plains. The Midwest became known as the "Dust Bowl." Dry winds picked up tons of topsoil and blew it across the prairies, creating huge, suffocating clouds of dirt that buried towns and turned farms into abandoned deserts.

Article / Updated 06-28-2022

In a landmark decision on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The justices ruled 6-3, eliminating a woman's constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years of that right being guaranteed. At the time the decision was announced, about half of the states in the U.S. were poised to ban or severely restrict abortion following the Supreme Court's ruling. The decision had been expected because of a leaked draft of the court's deliberations in a related case titled Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. News outlet Politico obtained the draft on May 2, 2022. The history of Roe v. Wade Roe versus Wade, better known as Roe v. Wade, is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion within the first two months of pregnancy. Up until then, individual state laws regulated abortions, thereby forcing women to illegal clinics or untrained practitioners. The lack of proper medical supervision in these situations was dangerous for the women. The roots of this case lie in Dallas, Texas, in 1969. At the time, obtaining or attempting an abortion was illegal in Texas, except in cases where the woman could die. Twenty-one-year-old Norma McCorvey was single and pregnant. Thinking that abortions were legal in cases of rape and incest, she tried to get an abortion by falsely claiming she was raped. But because there was no police report to prove it, she sought the alternative, an illegal abortion. Once again, her efforts failed — police had shut down the illegal clinic. Norma's next step was to find a lawyer to sue for the right to get an abortion. Two young attorneys named Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, dedicated to women's advocacy, took Norma's case and dubbed their plaintiff "Jane Roe" to protect her identity. On March 3, 1970, Coffee filed a complaint, Roe v. Wade (later amended to a class-action suit), at the Dallas federal district courthouse, suing the State of Texas over the constitutionality over its abortion laws. Henry Wade was the defending district attorney. Roe won the case when the district court decided that the Texas laws were vague and infringed on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Ninth Amendment protects citizens' rights not listed in other parts of the Constitution, including the right to privacy. Norma's attorneys argued that this extended to a woman's right to decide to bear children or not. The Fourteenth Amendment ensures that no state can abridge a citizen's fundamental rights without due process. The case was appealed and landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 22, 1973, the Court handed down its decision in favor of Roe, declaring: [The] right to privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."[ The Supreme Court ruling didn't come in time for Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. She delivered a child even before the district court ruled in her favor in 1970; that child was immediately adopted. Roe v. Wade remains as polarizing as ever. Right-to-privacy proponents, anti-abortionists, religious groups, and women's rights advocates are just some of the organizations involved in this heated socio-political issue.

Article / Updated 06-28-2022

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, ending nearly 50 years of a woman's constitutional right to abortion. The decision allows individual states the ability to set their own abortion laws, banning or restricting the procedure as they see fit. The nation was expecting the landmark decision due to a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's deliberations in the related case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The leaked document, obtained by news outlet Politico on May 3, 2022, indicated the court's plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the time of the leak, about half of the states were poised to ban or severely restrict abortion, following the expected ruling. The history of Roe v. Wade Before the court's decision in 2022, Roe v. Wade had been the litmus test for confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court bench. No judge who came out openly against Roe v. Wade was likely to be confirmed. In the 1973 case, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that women have the right to an abortion, at least during the first trimester of pregnancy. The court characterized abortion as a “fundamental” constitutional right, which means that any law aiming to restrict it is subject to the standard of strict scrutiny. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1982), the high court modified Roe by giving the state the right to regulate an abortion, even in the first trimester, as long as that regulation doesn’t pose an “undue burden” on the woman’s fundamental right to an abortion. One such “undue burden” identified in Casey was any requirement for the woman to notify her husband. A Texas law that placed certain restrictions on abortion clinics in the state was struck down by the Supreme Court, in a 5–3 vote, as placing an “undue burden” on abortion rights in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). In Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman (2016), a five-justice majority on the court refused to hear a challenge to a Washington state law making it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptive drugs. In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote: “This case is an ominous sign … If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.”