The Progressive Era, World Wars, and the New Deal (1890-1945) Glossary

President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 peace plan emphasizing self-determination, free trade, open diplomacy, and the creation of a League of Nations. The U.S. Senate ultimately rejected the Treaty of Versailles and League membership.

A 1920s-1930s cultural and intellectual movement centered in Harlem, New York, in which African American artists, writers, and musicians produced works celebrating Black identity and achieving mainstream recognition.

The forced relocation and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII under Executive Order 9066, driven by racial prejudice and wartime hysteria rather than evidence of disloyalty.

The secret U.S. government research program (1942-1945) that developed the atomic bomb, culminating in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Progressive Era investigative journalists who exposed corruption, unsafe conditions, and social injustice through magazine articles and books, building public support for reform legislation.

President Franklin Roosevelt's series of federal programs, public works projects, financial reforms, and regulations (1933-1939) designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform during the Great Depression.

A U.S. foreign policy (1899-1900) calling for equal trading rights for all nations in China, aimed at preventing any single power from monopolizing Chinese trade and protecting American commercial access.

A period of intense anti-communist and anti-radical hysteria (1919-1920) following the Russian Revolution, marked by the Palmer Raids, mass arrests, deportations, and severe restrictions on civil liberties.

A 1904 addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting the U.S. right to intervene in Latin American nations as an 'international police power' to maintain stability and protect American interests.

A 1935 second New Deal law establishing a federal system of old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to dependent children, creating the foundation of the American welfare state.