what would be a good topic for my essay, event that happened between 1860s and 1930s?

Question

that is for my us history class thanks so much..

Answer 1

World War I/Great Depression

Answer 2

That is a wide swath of time that encompasses the Civil War through the opening shots of WWII. Unless you plan to write a book, I would stick to a more specific topic than the "Great Depression", "WWI", or "Russian Revolution." That is unless you would like to examine specifics of those larger events. Like the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand, or the Bloody Sunday (the 1905 event that was the prelude to the 1905 Russian Revolution).

There were so many interesting events that come to mind for that period. And you might score extra points for not going after the low hanging fruit of the big events. Some of them might be the Teapot Dome Scandal, the assassination of William McKinley, the election of 1876 (Hayes/Tilden), Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, or even something like a company town (like Pullman, IL). I would suggest being original as I am sure that your instructor/teacher will be rather sick of reading essays on "Lincoln freeing the slaves."

Answer 3

Well you have a few top wars to choose from, but if it's american history, stick with the Civil War or WWI.

American Civil war (1861-65)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
and all the slavery stuff that comes with it

World War I (1914-1918)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War

If you're not into war, you can do the Women's suffrage movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage

In the USA, the turn of the century was characterised by huge progress and the building of museums, subways, galleries, parks, city infrastructure at great human and financial cost. It was a legendary period of wealthy families (Rockefellers, Vanderbilts), salons and suffering immigrants (you can rent the films 'The Age of Innocence' and 'Gangs of New York' to get an idea of what both sides of life in New York were like -- another film based on a book about that period is the 'Golden Bowl,' yet another, most famous of all, 'Citizen Kane' (which basically starts when the main character is a child at the end of the civil war) another great film about this period is the 'Magnificent Ambersons' -- about the invention of the automobile and what it did to America). It was called the Gilded Age (a term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner) and was a crucial time in America's modern development. Look at their book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)

download the book from Project Gutenberg for free:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3178
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gilded_Age:_A_Tale_of_Today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Era

Henry Ford and cars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

Then there were the Roaring Twenties, most associated with the novel, the 'Great Gatsby'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties

I'm putting the film links in only so you can get a feel for the period. But for history, you have to avoid quoting films and novels. It's still good to get a quick idea about the time period first.
Good luck, it's a great period.

Answer 4

Aug, 1994 - Genocide, Rwanda 1995 - Massacre in Waco, TX Dec, 1998 - US President Bill Clinton Impeached (Acquitted: Feb, 99) Dec, 2000 - US Supreme Court decides the outcome of the US Presidential race (Bush over Gore) Sept, 2001 - Terrorist attack on the US: World Center and Pentagon

Answer 5

Jeez Louise

The possibilities are endless. I just read Empire Rising by Thomas Kelly. It is a fiction loosely based around the construction of the Empire State Building. Great novel that covers a very interesting period in the history of NYC.

Answer 6

The most shocking event I found that happened in the 1870's is the first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull, did so at a time that women couldn't even vote. She ran on the Equal Rights Party platform with running mate Frederick Douglass.

Their radical campaign to defend suffrage for both blacks and women as equal human rights issues was so radical, it was written out of history books. Please look online for the full research, or check your library for books that have come out on this most censored story in American history.

I interviewed Mary Shearer, the great great granddaughter of Woodhull, who hosts a website to promote this lost history. Woodhull's views of love and marriage were compared to the activists of the 1960's, making her 100 years ahead of her time. It is fascinating to think how upsetting she must have been to the Victorian culture at that time. It also a interesting revelation that other feminists, such as Susan B. Anthony fought to censor and discredit Woodhull, whom they viewed as a liability to the women's movement, so that no one knows who she is today.

Look it up on the web or at the library. This could be a great way to tie together the abolition of slavery (Frederick Douglass was an active leader) with voting rights for blacks and for women.

Answer 7

The Great Depression is really significant. The US has never flanked economically like that. The event changed the Americans' lives that time.

Answer 8

The Statue of Liberty was given to us by the French in the 1880's.

Answer 9

Go to your search area, or GASP an encyclopidia, and look up the events that occured in that time frame. Do your own homeowrk and research. Not that hard I promise.

Answer 10

My grandfather was born in that era. A very significant event for me as well as my family.