Vocab 1
The killing of someone, often by hanging, carried out by a mob without a fair trial, usually targeting African Americans in the South.
Lynching
A community center in poor urban neighborhoods that offered education, childcare, and support services to immigrants and the poor.
Settlement House
A crowded, poorly built apartment building in cities where many immigrant and poor families lived during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Tenement
A person who starts and manages a business, taking on financial risks in hopes of making a profit.
Entrepreneur
An inventor best known for developing the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and motion picture technology.
Thomas Edison
A law passed in 1890 that made it illegal for companies to form monopolies or unfairly limit competition.
Sherman Antitrust Act
State and local laws in the South that enforced racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans.
Jim Crow Laws
The idea that only the strongest people or businesses survive in society, often used to justify wealth and inequality.
Social Darwinism
A political party in the late 1800s that represented farmers and workers, calling for reforms like free silver and railroad regulation.
Populist Party
An African American leader who encouraged education and vocational training as the best way for Black people to improve their lives.
Booker T. Washington
An African American scholar and activist who pushed for higher education, civil rights, and political action to achieve equality.
W.E.B. Du Bois
A belief that government should have little or no interference in the economy, letting businesses operate freely.
Laissez-faire
An economic system where businesses and property are privately owned, and competition drives prices and profits.
Capitalism
n industrialist who built luxury railroad sleeping cars and created a company town for his workers.
George Pullman
Founder of Standard Oil, he built a monopoly in the oil industry and became one of the richest men in U.S. history.
John D. Rockefeller
A powerful businessman who made his wealth in shipping and railroads during the 1800s.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
A wealthy businessman who built a steel empire in the late 1800s and later gave away much of his fortune to charities and education.
Andrew Carnegie
An Apache leader who fought against U.S. and Mexican forces to defend his people’s land and way of life.
Geronimo
Leader of the Nez Perce who tried to lead his people to Canada to escape U.S. forces, famously saying, “I will fight no more forever.”
Chief Joseph
A Lakota Sioux leader who resisted U.S. government policies and helped lead Native forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Sitting Bull
A law passed in 1862 that gave settlers 160 acres of free land if they agreed to farm it for at least five years.
Homestead Act
An 1887 law that tried to break up Native American tribes by giving individual families land, hoping to force them to adopt farming and “American” culture.
Dawes Act
In 1890, U.S. soldiers killed around 300 Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, marking the end of major Native American resistance.
Wounded Knee Massacre
A major 1876 battle where Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, defeated U.S. troops under General Custer.
Battle of the Little Bighorn
A violent attack in 1864 when U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in Colorado, many of them women and children.
Sand Creek Massacre