Choosing a Topic

• Choose a topic that interests you.
• Topics are listed below or in the research packet.
• Make sure that there is enough information on the topic you have chosen. If you are not sure, ask a teacher for help or check the Web site.

Battle of Little Big Horn

Colonel George Custer's Last Stand: The U.S. Calvary fought the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians which would be the last major Native American victory.

Boss Tweed/political machines

Buffalo Cody's Wild West Show

Cattle drives

In the mid to late 1800's many cattle were driven from Texas to the railroads of Kansas and Missouri. Chisholm Trail was a main route.

Child Labor

When the U.S. experienced their industrial revolution, many children work for long hours and low pay.

Sweatshops

Factories in the U.S. where men, women, and children slaved for long hours and low pay.

Cowboys

Worked long hours for little pay driving cattle to the railroads of the Midwest

Department stores (Sears, Macy's, Montgomery Wards, Marshall Fields)

Ellis Island

The main immigration processing center in New York during the huge wave of Southern and Eastern European immigration in the late 1800's through mid 1900's

Angel Island

The main immigration processing center in San Francisco for Asian immigrants

First skyscrapers

Gold mining

Hull House/settlement houses

Settlement house in Chicago founded by Jan Addams for immigrants and the poor

Jim Crow Laws in the South

Early labor unions (Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor)

Law enforcement in West

Model T/assembly line

Monopolies of the late 1800's

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded in 1909 with W. E. B. DuBois as one of the founders

Oklahoma Land Rush

In 1889 the last major land rush in the U.S., giving plots of land according to the Homestead Act

Panama Canal

T. Roosevelt commissioned the building after others failed to shorten the trip from the U.S. East Coast to the West Coast. There were many obstacles.

Pioneers

Pony Express

Progressive Movement

The reform movement in the late 1800's and early 1900's to rid the U.S. of problems in society ... the need for reform and government intervention

Muckrakers

Progressive journalist that wrote about the problems in society in hopes of reform an example is Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle.

Spanish American War

A four month war in 1898 between the Cubans with the U.S.'s help against the Spanish for freedom. The U.S. emerged a world power.

Standard Oil monopoly

U.S. Imperialism

U.S. Industrial Revolution

In the late 1800's when the U.S. built factories and industrialized

Transcontinental railroads/Union Pacific & Central Pacific

Vaudeville theaters

Western outlaws

Women's suffrage

Wounded Knee Massacre

Harlem Hell Fighters

African American regiment in WWI that earned the French Croix De Guerre for bravery.

Lusitania

British ship sunk by German a U Boat with U.S. passengers while the U.S. was still neutral in WWI. Many U.S. citizens cried to join the war against Germany.

Poisonous gas (Battle of Ypres)

Russian Revolution

Trench warfare

History of baseball

Dust Bowl

The farmers living in the Great Plains faced economic hardship when their farms became dust in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930's.

Flappers

Hollywood in the 1920's

Jazz Music

New Deal

Prohibition

The 18th Amendment that prohibits the manufacturing, selling, and buying of alcohol which gave rise to the mafia and corruption.

Rise of Mafia

Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

Famous trial of men who were tried and convicted of killing a paymaster and guard in Boston with very little evidence and sentenced to death.

Scopes Trial

Famous trial in 1925 in Tennessee in which a school teacher is convicted and found guilty for teaching the Theory of Evolution

Unemployment

A Bomb

The making, testing, dropping, and destruction of the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities by the U.S. to end WWII

Auschwitz

The notorious death and experimentation camp run by the Nazis during WWII in Poland

Experiments at concentration camps

Gruesome experiments were performed on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during WWII.

Bataan Death March

Bergen-Belsen

Another notorious death camp run by the Nazi during WWII

Code breakers (Enigma)

Code talkers

Native Americans that used their Navajo and Apache languages to transmit messages during WWII in the Pacific Theater.

Dachau

Another notorious death camp run by the Nazi during WWII

D-Day/Normandy Invasion

The Allied invasion of Normandy, France during WWII to gain a foothold on continental Europe. There were many U.S. deaths.

Friends of Jews

Holocaust survivors

Homefront during WWII

The U.S. citizens were working hard on the home front to help the U.S. war effort.

Japanese Internment Camps

Kamikazes

Life after the A-bomb

Nazi hunting

Nuremberg Trials

Other victims of the Holocaust

Pearl Harbor

The December 7, 1941 sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor pulled the U.S. into WWII.

Tuskegee Airman

U.S. Army Air Force African American fighter pilots during WWII, receiving many awards and medals

USS Indianapolis

U.S. ship carried the dismantled A Bomb components to Tinian Island after the drop off it was sunk in the Pacific with no radio. Men were in the water three days before being rescued.

Warsaw Ghetto

Apollo 11

First manned spaceflight to land on the moon

Arab-Israeli conflict

Assasination attempt on Reagan

Berlin Airlift

After WWII the U.S. and its Allies airlifted supplies to West Berlin because East Germany blocked all roads into West Berlin.

Birth of Rock and Roll music

Camp David Accords

President Jimmy Carter acted as mediator between Isreal's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat in peace talks in 1978.

Civil Rights

The movement for African American civil rights starting in the 1950's.

Cold War

Cuban Missile Crisis

During JFK's presidency the Soviet Union set up missiles in Cuba aimed at the U.S.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

In 1989 with the European countries under Soviet control protesting for freedom the Berlin Wall came crumbling down.

Kennedy Assassination

President JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas during a parade. There has been much controversy over the assassination.

Kent State Protest

During the Vietnam War many college students were protesting against the war, at Kent State four students were shot and killed during a protest.

Korean conflict

Conflict between communist North Korea in which the U.S. entered to prevent a take over of South Korea by the North.

Marshall Plan

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination

Montgomery, AL Bus Boycott

The successful bus boycott in which African Americans in the South obtain rights such as riding on the bus in the front.

NATO/Warsaw Pact

Persian Gulf War (1991)

Red Scare

September 11, 2001

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and possible White House by Osama bin Laden.

Soviet Union/Collapse of communism

In 1991 communist Soviet Union collapses giving rise to democracy

Sputnik

In the 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into space

The Little Rock Nine

In 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas the all white high school was forced to integrate. There were many protests as the world watched on the nightly news.

U.S. Hostages in Iran

In 1979 Iranian militants took U.S. hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran for 444 days.

Vietnam Soldiers Missing in Action

U.S. soldiers missing in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

Watergate Scandal