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The end of World War I and the Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s is often remembered as a uniquely American disaster that spread globally after the Wall Street crash of 1929. Regardless, the economic causes of the Depression stretched far beyond the United States. The end of World War I—especially the Treaty of Versailles, the burden of reparations, and the interlocking system of Allied war debts and U.S. loans—created a fragile global financial order. The way in which the global economic system was set up was dangerously dependent on American credit and highly vulnerable to collapse, as evidenced by the behavior of the German economy during the same period. When U.S. markets faltered in 1929, the weaknesses of this postwar order magnified the downturn and helped turn a stock market crash into a worldwide depression. When the First World War ended in 1918, European economies were devastated. Britain and France had borrowed heavily from the United States to finance their war efforts, leaving them with roughly $12 bil...
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Maggie Lena Walker

  Maggie Lena Walker’s life is a remarkable example of determination, leadership, and vision in an era when opportunities for black Americans, especially women, were extremely limited. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1867, just two years after the Civil War ended, Walker grew up during Reconstruction, a period that briefly promised progress for freed people but soon gave way to Jim Crow Her story illustrates how one woman transformed her circumstances through education, community leadership, and entrepreneurship, ultimately becoming the first Black woman in the United States to charter and serve as president of a bank. Life for black Americans after the Civil War was very similar to life for blacks before the Civil War. Legal equality was undermined by violence, prejudice, and the rise of discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. Economic opportunities were sharply restricted, with most African Americans working as sharecroppers, which was not that different from slavery prior t...
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Native Americans and Reparations

  One of the most heartbreaking tragedies in the history of the United States has been the American treatment of the Native American population.  This included taking land from the natives via force, deaths that were the result of European diseases such as smallpox and cholera, and massacres.  The latter was not unique to one region or present day U.S. State.  WIth that said, one of the lesser known examples of it is the Sand Creek Massacre, which took place in what is now Colorado. The road to the Sand Creek Massacre started with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which took place in 1851.  In this document, the United States government acknowledged the control of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes over the lands they controlled, which were mainly in what is now the American Midwest.  This would include the land on which the Massacre would later take place.  Within a decade of the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty, gold would be discovered ...
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Christianity and the Constitution

  The development of Christianity in the United States is an interesting journey for historians to explore.  One game changer for Christianity which allowed it to flourish to an extent that had not been seen in the United States was the completion of the United States Constitution in 1789.  This blog will seek to explore that by brief examinations of Christianity prior to the passage of the Constitution and after it. During the colonial are, one could make the argument that many cities, towns, and even colonies were ruled as theocracies, or governments via church.  In my view, this is best exemplified by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  This era also saw the witch hysteria, and the events in Salem, MA during the summer and fall of 1692 are the most well known example of this.  Men and women lost their lives because they questioned the events going on around them, failed to attend Sunday services, or other reasons.  One of the best examples involves a m...
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