APUSH Period 7 (1890–1945) is the largest and most content-dense period — roughly 17% of the exam. It contains the Progressive Era, both World Wars, the Depression, and the New Deal. DBQ and LEQ prompts in this period often focus on the expansion of federal power and debates about American global engagement.
Progressive Era (1890s–1920)
Muckrakers — investigative journalists exposing corruption and social problems: Ida Tarbell (Standard Oil), Upton Sinclair (The Jungle → Pure Food and Drug Act 1906), Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives — tenement conditions). 16th Amendment (1913) — federal income tax; enabled government expansion. 17th Amendment (1913) — direct election of senators. 18th Amendment (1919) — Prohibition (alcohol ban); 21st repealed it (1933). 19th Amendment (1920) — women's suffrage. Teddy Roosevelt — "trustbuster," conservationism, Square Deal (consumer protection, labor mediation, conservation); used Sherman Antitrust Act more aggressively than predecessors.
WWI and Its Aftermath
US neutrality and entry (1917) — Wilson's neutrality, German submarine warfare (Lusitania 1915), Zimmermann Telegram → US declared war April 1917. Espionage (1917) and Sedition (1918) Acts — criminalized criticism of war effort; Schenck v. US ("clear and present danger" test) upheld limits on speech. 14 Points and League of Nations — Wilson's idealistic peace plan; Senate rejected League (isolationists, Lodge reservations); US never joined. Great Migration (1910s–1970s) — millions of Black Americans moved from South to Northern cities (Chicago, Detroit, New York); driven by racial violence and Jim Crow, pulled by factory jobs; transformed urban demographics.
1920s: Prosperity and Tension
Consumer culture — mass production (Ford's Model T, assembly line), advertising, installment buying → "prosperity decade." Harlem Renaissance — flowering of Black art, literature, music (jazz) in New York; Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington; "New Negro" assertion of cultural identity. Ku Klux Klan revival — anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic; 4–5 million members by mid-1920s; political influence in Midwest as well as South. Immigration restriction — Emergency Quota Act (1921), National Origins Act (1924): severely limited immigration from Southern/Eastern Europe, banned most Asian immigration.
Depression and New Deal
Great Depression causes — overproduction, stock speculation, weak banking system, Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930), agricultural crisis. Hoover's response — voluntarism, opposed direct federal relief (rugged individualism); inadequate. New Deal (FDR, 1933–39) — relief (FERA, CCC — immediate jobs/aid), recovery (AAA — farm prices, NRA — industry codes), reform (FDIC, SEC, Social Security 1935, Wagner Act — labor rights, NLRB). Key debate: did it end Depression? No — WWII did; but it changed relationship between citizens and federal government permanently.
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