Reflection on U.S. History since the Civil War

Reflection on U.S. History since the Civil War
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Reflection on U.S. History since the Civil War
I learnt a lot from the lecture videos about the history of America from the 1920s to shortly after the Second World War and especially about Frederick Roosevelt’s government and policies. It was refreshing to learn from the “New Woman” lectures that attitudes toward the role of women in society and their participation in the workplace, in education, and in politics started changing in the 1920s. I think that the most far-reaching change was the Nineteenth Amendment that gave women the right to vote and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that promised to guarantee equal legal rights to both sexes. Unfortunately, the male-dominated society of the period still set limits to women’s freedom and efforts to be active participants in society and the workforce were still suppressed. In the “New Era” lecture, I learnt that the prosperity of the decade resulted in new patterns of consumption especially with the expansion of credit that allowed average consumers to purchase numerous consumer goods. Around this time, there were growing anti-immigrant sentiments as evidenced by the discriminatory Johnson Reed Act.
In the “Lost Cause” lecture, I learnt that Confederate States attempted to rewrite the Civil War and used the Stone Mountain as an icon of their negationist ideologies on slavery and reasons for fighting the north. The “Great Depression” lectures revealed that the prosperous years came to an end with the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and the subsequent economic downturn that saw massive unemployment rates and shutting down of banks. A devastating drought alongside outdated farming practices resulted in several dust storms that forced many farmers to endure crushing poverty. Times were so bad that World War I veterans marched to Washington DC to get their bonuses but Congress denied payment and the army was ordered to violently remove the veterans from where they had camped. I was horrified by the contents of the “Bonus Army Riots” clip where veterans were dragged by policemen from a warehouse in Washington D.C. The desperate veterans were routed from their camps using tear gas and their shacks burned in an attempt to disperse them and thwart their efforts at claiming their bonuses.
I found the video “The Plow That Broke the Plains” rather insightful on the events that led to the devastating dust bowl. During the time of the settlement, many farmers converted the plains into large tracts of wheat farms through the World War I boom. Unfortunately, there was a postwar decline in the wheat market which brought about overproduction and most farmers went bankrupt. The period was also marked by a catastrophic drought accompanied by massive dust storms that rendered most farms unproductive. Most farmers moved west to find jobs as farm laborers in California but they had to compete with immigrants from Asia, Europe, and the American south for employment. I was dismayed to learn from the photo essay on the great depression of the miserable poverty most people lived in, sometimes selling their tents to get some food. I was also appal...