Narrated by Simon Whistler, this YouTube video by the channel Biographics describes the background and personal life of Ulysses S. Grant. Best known for his service during the American Civil War, Grant later becomes the President of the United States and the tailor of the Reconstruction movement that looked to reintegrate the South. This video spans about thirty minutes and is a great resource as a way to have a deep dive into an individual within the context of history.

Reconstruction (1865-1877), a turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive "Black Codes" to control the labor and behavior of former enslaved people and other African Americans. This set the stage for the mood of the many years of occupation in the South and the attempts at integration of the Black population. The attached video from Crash Course is a good first step into discussing and beginning to understand the positives and negatives to spawn out of Reconstruction.

For more information, take a look at the History Channel's page on Reconstruction HERE and the Encyclopedia Britannica HERE.

Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968. These laws were meant to marginalize Black Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education and be barred from other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death. Then came the enforcement of the Black Codes shortly after the implementation of the 13th Amendment. This, in turn, made the legal system in the Jim Crow South nearly impossible for the Black community to navigate as former Confederates held many if not most of the judicial offices. For more information on Jim Crow Laws and their effects on the Black community after Reconstruction, visit the rest of the Ferris University website on Jim Crow HERE and the Encyclopedia Britannica's description of the Jim Crow South HERE. Ferris University has an interesting list etiquette norms followed by those living in the Jim Crow South:

• A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.

• Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.

• Under no circumstance was a black male to offer to light the cigarette of a white female -- that gesture implied intimacy.

• Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended whites.

• Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that blacks were introduced to whites, never whites to blacks. For example: "Mr. Peters (the white person), this is Charlie (the black person), that I spoke to you about."

• Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.

• If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck.

• White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.

Narrated by Simon Whistler, the YouTube video on the channel Biographics, discusses Sitting Bull, a prominent figure during the late 19th century, in which he led a resistance movement against the United States and promoted the unification of the Sioux tribes of the Great Plains. His most famous deed, challenging and defeating U.S. cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull and all the men he had at his command defended the Montana Territory by engaging General Armstrong Custer in the field and annihilating the U.S. force sent in to clear out any "hostiles". Later, while fleeing starvation and fighting the U.S. military, Sitting Bull made his way to the Canadian border in which he saw his following steadily decline from famine. This would later force his surrender.

It is important to remember the impact events can have on history and the traditions of one's people. In the case of Sitting Bull, knowing his life helps us understand his motivations and gives us an insight into the troubles and grievances of the Sioux Indian tribes.

The YouTube video is around twenty-two minutes long and covers the details of the life of Sitting Bull.

Lasting from April 21-August 13, 1898, the Spanish-American War started off with the suspicious sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. This caused the United States to engage against the Spanish in their American and Pacific colonies as many of them were in revolt or were in constant states of revolt. While Spain attempted to quell the revolutions in its colonies, the United States entered into war with Spain to support the rebels in the Spanish colonies. This started a wider expansion of the United States and what some name as the beginning of the United States' empire. Not only did the United States secure Puerto Rico and Pacific colonies but it established island colonies for resources similar to the European empires. This took place during an agricultural revolution, in which guano became a main ingredient for fertilizers. The U.S., and its seizure of islands in the Pacific Ocean, made guano easily accessible for the growing agricultural economy within the United States. The war eventually ended in the Treaty of Paris on December 10, in which Spain renounced claim to its territories, ceding Guam and Puerto Rico, and sold the United States the Philippines for $20 million.

For more information on the Spanish-American war, click HERE for the History Channel's page, HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica and HERE for the Department of State, Office of the Historian page on the Spanish-American War.

As the Great War kicked off in 1914, the U.S. stayed isolated, watching across the Atlantic Ocean as Europe erupted into chaos. Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare doctrine caused major tension between the U.S. and the German Empire as all vessels entering Entente waters was subject to sinking. Submarine warfare in the Atlantic kept tensions high, and Germany’s sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killed more than 120 U.S. citizens and provoked outrage in the U.S. In 1917, Germany’s attacks on American ships and its attempts to meddle in U.S.-Mexican relations drew the U.S. into the war on the side of the Allies. The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

Meanwhile, in January 1917, the British intercepted and deciphered an encrypted message from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhart. The so-called Zimmerman telegram proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico, America’s southern neighbor, if America joined the war on the side of the Allies. As part of the arrangement, the Germans would support the Mexicans in regaining the territory they’d lost in the Mexican-American War—Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Additionally, Germany wanted Mexico to help convince Japan to come over to its side in the conflict. The British gave President Wilson the Zimmerman telegram on February 24, and on March 1 the U.S. press reported on its existence. The American public was outraged by the news of the Zimmerman telegram and it, along with Germany’s resumption of submarine attacks, helped lead to the U.S. to join the war.

Within a few months, thousands of U.S. men were being drafted into the military and sent to intensive training. Women, even many who had never worked outside the home before, took jobs in factories producing supplies needed for the war effort, as well as serving in ambulance corps and the American Red Cross at home and abroad. Children were enlisted to sell war bonds and plant victory gardens in support of the war effort. The United States sent more than a million troops to Europe, where they encountered a war unlike any other—one waged in trenches and in the air, and one marked by the rise of such military technologies as the tank, the field telephone, and poison gas. At the same time, the war shaped the culture of the U.S. After an Armistice agreement ended the fighting on November 11, 1918, the postwar years saw a wave of civil rights activism for equal rights for African Americans, the passage of an amendment securing women’s right to vote, and a larger role in world affairs for the United States.[1]

[1] “U.S. Participation in the Great War (World War I): Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929: U.S. History Primary Source Timeline: Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress: Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress.

If you wish to read more, click HERE to visit the History Channel's page on the U.S. in the Great War, HERE you can visit the Office of the Historian from the Department of State that covers the U.S.'s entry into the Great War and HERE to visit the Library of Congress page on the Great War and U.S. entry.

The League of Nations, established January 10, 1920, boasted international cooperation between nations around the world in order to keep peace and stop wars, increasing the well-being of people and securing and enforcing the Treaty of Versailles. What Woodrow Wilson took to Paris as his Fourteen Points, later turned into the Treaty of Versailles and the creation of the League of Nations, although the United States never joined or enforced the orders/decisions made by the League. The main backers of the League idea came from allies and the victors of the Great War (World War I). The Prime Minister of Great Britain David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau of France acted as the major pushers of the League of Nations idea.

The League, through criticism and the members generally playing safe moves rather than strict enforcement, did aid certain countries in gaining their independence and solving global disputes. As Poland sat between the German Republic (Weimar Republic) and the rising Soviet Union (formerly the Russian Empire), the area seemed always in distress as a question of the sovereignty of Lithuania became an issue, the League involved itself in that dispute. The League also intervened in the Aaland Island issue between Finland and Sweden as their were disputes over the ownership of the islands. Later, the League investigated squabbles between Hungary and Romania, Finland and the Soviet Union (Russia), Yugoslavia and Austria and border conflicts between Albania and Greece. The League of Nations also established the Geneva Protocol in the 1920s, designed to limit chemical and biological weaponry after the horrors inflicted during the Great War.

The League and its ideas ultimately failed on the global stage as it failed to stop World War II from arriving in Europe and around the globe. If you wish to read more in detail about the League, HERE is the link for the U.S. government's Milestones between 1914-1920, HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica and HERE for the History Channel page that covers the League of Nations.

Known as the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrial world, the Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939 starting with the crash of the stock market on October 29. During the Roaring Twenties, the stock market made wild speculations along with the rising and rapidly expanding U.S. economy. Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931. Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens, and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers couldn’t afford to harvest their crops, and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved. In 1930, severe droughts in the Southern Plains brought high winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock and crops.[1]

The Dust Bowl

Narrated by Simon Whistler, this YouTube video by the channel Geographics describes the horror and chaos brought about by the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression.

History Channel Description of the Dust Bowl:

The Dust Bowl was the name given to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.

Recovery

After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, the federal government passed and implemented programs to help the working class and the banks recover from the Depression. The onset of the Second World War also put many unemployed Americans back to work as the United States entered full war mode. With the programs and the war, many effects of the Depression were wiped away.

For more information and global effects of the Great Depression, click HERE for the History Channel's page and HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica's page.

[1] History.com Editors. “Great Depression History.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 29, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history.

As war broke out in Europe in September of 1939, the United States stayed as out of the conflict per the Neutrality Act signed by FDR in 1939. However, this did not stop the United States from supplying materials to countries involved in conflict. On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt signed a “Destroyers for Bases” agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States gave the British more than fifty obsolete destroyers, in exchange for 99-year leases to territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had originally requested that Roosevelt provide the destroyers as a gift, but the President knew that the American public and Congress would oppose such a deal. He therefore decided that a deal that gave the United States long-term access to British bases could be justified as essential to the security of the Western Hemisphere—thereby assuaging the concerns of the public and the U.S. military.[1]

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States began to mobilize to enter the Second World War and joined the Allies. U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort. 

The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving some of their earnings. Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By 1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians were also interned. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were permanently injured or maimed.[2]

For more general information, click HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica and HERE for the History Channel's page on the U.S. in World War II, for information on Lend Lease click HERE and click HERE for the Library of Congress page on U.S. involvement in the Second World War.

[1] “Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II.” U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State.

[2]“World War II: Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945: U.S. History Primary Source Timeline: Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress: Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress.

This Yalta Conference between the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) took place from Feb 4 - Feb 11, 1945. When the three leaders meet, they each came with agendas to commit for the inevitable end to the war with Nazi Germany. Roosevelt wanted Soviet support in the U.S. Pacific War against Japan and Soviet participation in the United Nations. This included the division of Japanese territories, Manchuria and the southern section of Sakhalin. Churchill pressed for free elections and democratic governments within the eastern bloc countries, especially that of Poland. However, one section of the agreement was that Communists be allowed to participate in the post-war government. Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern and Central Europe as well as reparations from Germany for the amount of devastation the Great Patriotic War caused to the Soviet nation. Stalin wanted to make sure that after the end of the war, neighboring countries held "friendly" views of the Soviets as he pledged "free elections" to the nations in Eastern Europe.

As for Germany's fate, it was split between the four Allied majors in Europe. The capital of Germany, Berlin, was also to be split amongst the four major Allied victors. The Allied leaders also determined that Germany should be completely demilitarized and “denazified,” and that it would assume some responsibility for post-war reparations, but not sole responsibility. This would later create the Cold War divide in which Western Germany conglomerated from the territories occupied by the United States, France and Great Britain.

For more information on the Yalta Conference, click HERE to visit the Department of State's Office of the Historian, HERE for the History Channel's page on the Conference and HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on the Yalta Conference.

Narrated by Simon Whistler, this YouTube video by the channel Megaprojects goes over the lead up and implementation of the Marshall Plan. Whistler goes over the reasonings for the Plan and its intended goal for Western Europe in the fight against a new Communist threat.

History Channel Description of the Marshall Plan:

The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. The brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, for whom it was named, it was crafted as a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries and infrastructure heavily damaged during the war and to remove trade barriers between European neighbors—as well as foster commerce between those countries and the United States. 

In addition to economic redevelopment, one of the stated goals of the Marshall Plan was to halt the spread communism on the European continent.

Implementation of the Marshall Plan has been cited as the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and its European allies and the Soviet Union, which had effectively taken control of much of central and eastern Europe and established its satellite republics as communist nations.

The Marshall Plan is also considered a key catalyst for the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance between North American and European countries established in 1949.

Day-by-Day Breakdown

Indy Neidell hosts, from the TimeGhost History channel, a series on the Cuban Missile crisis breaking it down day-by-day. This sixteen episode series takes about three and a half hours from start to finish. Each episode takes about thirteen to eighteen minutes to get through. This is a great documentary style take on the lead up and conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The first two prelude episodes help describe the relationship and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union after the finale of the Second World War.

Background Description from the Encyclopedia Britannica

Having promised in May 1960 to defend Cuba with Soviet arms, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev assumed that the United States would take no steps to prevent the installation of Soviet medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Such missiles could hit much of the eastern United States within a few minutes if launched from Cuba. The United States learned in July 1962 that the Soviet Union had begun missile shipments to Cuba. By August 29 new military construction and the presence of Soviet technicians had been reported by U.S. U-2 spy planes flying over the island, and on October 14 the presence of a ballistic missile on a launching site was reported.

After carefully considering the alternatives of an immediate U.S. invasion of Cuba (or air strikes of the missile sites), a blockade of the island, or further diplomatic maneuvers, U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy decided to place a naval “quarantine,” or blockade, on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of missiles. Kennedy announced the quarantine on October 22 and warned that U.S. forces would seize “offensive weapons and associated material” that Soviet vessels might attempt to deliver to Cuba. During the following days, Soviet ships bound for Cuba altered course away from the quarantined zone. As the two superpowers hovered close to the brink of nuclear war, messages were exchanged between Kennedy and Khrushchev amidst extreme tension on both sides. On October 28 Khrushchev capitulated, informing Kennedy that work on the missile sites would be halted and that the missiles already in Cuba would be returned to the Soviet Union. In return, Kennedy committed the United States to never invading Cuba. Kennedy also secretly promised to withdraw the nuclear-armed missiles that the United States had stationed in Turkey in previous years. In the following weeks both superpowers began fulfilling their promises, and the crisis was over by late November. Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro, was infuriated by the Soviets’ retreat in the face of the U.S. ultimatum but was powerless to act.

The Cuban missile crisis marked the climax of an acutely antagonistic period in U.S.-Soviet relations. The crisis also marked the closest point that the world had ever come to global nuclear war. It is generally believed that the Soviets’ humiliation in Cuba played an important part in Khrushchev’s fall from power in October 1964 and in the Soviet Union’s determination to achieve, at the least, a nuclear parity with the United States.[1]

If you want some more information regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis, click HERE for the History Channel's description and HERE for the JFK Library's entry on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[1] “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Accessed April 26, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-missile-crisis.