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#Reform

121 entries

People (24)
Andrew Carnegie
Scottish-born steel magnate and America's greatest philanthropist
Betty Friedan
Author of The Feminine Mystique and Founder of Second-Wave Feminism, 1921–2006
Billie Jean King
The tennis champion who won the "Battle of the Sexes" and equal pay
Booker T. Washington
Educator, founder of Tuskegee Institute, and architect of the Atlanta Compromise
Chester A. Arthur
21st President of the United States, the machine politician who became an unlikely reformer
Dorothea Dix
Reformer who transformed the treatment of the mentally ill in America
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Suffragist, abolitionist, and primary architect of the American women's rights movement
Eugene V. Debs
Labor Leader, Socialist Presidential Candidate, and Prisoner of Conscience, 1855–1926
Frederick Law Olmsted
The man who invented American landscape architecture, 1822-1903
Gloria Steinem
Journalist and activist who became the defining public voice of second-wave American feminism
Helen Keller
Deaf-blind author and activist whose radicalism the 20th century spent decades trying to forget
Ida Tarbell
Investigative Journalist Who Broke Standard Oil, 1857–1944
Jane Addams
Social reformer, Nobel laureate, and founder of Hull House
John D. Rockefeller
Founder of Standard Oil and the wealthiest private citizen in American history
John Muir
Naturalist, Writer, and Father of the American Conservation Movement
Joseph Pulitzer
The immigrant publisher who built the New York World, 1847-1911
Margaret Sanger
Birth control pioneer whose crusade for reproductive rights is inseparable from her eugenicist ideology
Phyllis Schlafly
The conservative organizer who stopped the Equal Rights Amendment
Rachel Carson
Marine Biologist and Author Whose Silent Spring Launched the Environmental Movement, 1907–1964
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Father of American Transcendentalism and prophet of self-reliance
Samuel Gompers
Founder of the American Federation of Labor and father of the U.S. labor movement
Susan B. Anthony
The suffragist whose half-century of organizing made the 19th Amendment possible
Upton Sinclair
Muckraking Author of The Jungle Who Accidentally Reformed the Food Supply, 1878–1968
William Lloyd Garrison
Publisher, abolitionist, and the loudest moral voice against American slavery
Places (1)
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The most-visited national park, created by dispossessing 6,600 Appalachian families
Eras (2)
Jacksonian Democracy
The 20 years of democratic expansion — and brutal exclusion — that remade American politics, 1828–1848
The Progressive Era
The reform movement that used government to rein in the Gilded Age's excesses, 1900–1920
Events (10)
Civil Rights Movement
The decades-long struggle that dismantled legal segregation and reshaped American democracy
Labor Day
The first-Monday-in-September holiday honoring American workers
Prohibition Era
The national ban on alcohol that lasted from 1920 to 1933
Seneca Falls Convention
The 1848 gathering that launched the organized American women's rights movement
Tennessee Valley Authority
The New Deal's most ambitious experiment — electrifying Appalachia and remaking a region
The #MeToo Movement
The 2017 reckoning over sexual harassment and assault
The AIDS Epidemic
A public-health catastrophe that reshaped medicine and activism
The WPA Federal Art Project
The government as art patron, 1935-1943
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The 1911 factory disaster that transformed American labor law
Women's Suffrage Movement
The seven-decade campaign that won American women the right to vote in 1920
Documents (13)
Eighteenth Amendment
The Constitutional Ban on Alcohol That Created Prohibition, 1919–1933
Medicare and Medicaid Act
The 1965 Law That Created Health Coverage for the Elderly and the Poor
Pendleton Civil Service Act
The 1883 Reform That Ended the Spoils System in Federal Hiring
Seventeenth Amendment
The Amendment That Created Direct Election of U.S. Senators, 1913
Sherman Antitrust Act
The 1890 law that gave the federal government its first tool against monopoly power
Sixteenth Amendment
The Amendment That Created the Federal Income Tax, 1913
Social Security Act
The 1935 law that created the American social safety net
The Child Labor Amendment
The failed amendment to let Congress regulate child labor
The Fair Labor Standards Act
The 1938 law that set the minimum wage, the 40-hour week, and ended child labor
The Indian Citizenship Act
The 1924 law that made Native Americans citizens of a country built on their land
The Pure Food and Drug Act
The 1906 law that put the federal government inside the American food supply
The Wagner Act
The 1935 law that gave American workers the right to organize
Twenty-First Amendment
The Repeal of Prohibition — The Only Amendment to Undo Another, 1933
Concepts (18)
Abolitionism
The movement to end slavery in America, from moral argument to political force
Civil Disobedience
The deliberate, nonviolent refusal to obey unjust laws as a form of moral protest
Evangelical Christianity
The faith of revivals, reform movements, and the most durable political coalition in modern American history
First Great Awakening
The 1730s–1740s religious revival that made Americans a people before they were a nation
Machine Politics
The urban political organizations that traded services for votes and ran American cities for a century
Medicine in America
From heroic bleeding to a research enterprise that leads the world
Muckraking
The Progressive Era journalism that exposed America's hidden costs of industrial prosperity
Native American History
The nations who were here first — conquest, removal, and a story of survival
Temperance Movement
The campaign against alcohol that reshaped American social and political life
The Environmental Movement
From Theodore Roosevelt's conservation to Rachel Carson's alarm to the unresolved politics of climate
The Great Society
Lyndon Johnson's legislative program to end poverty and expand opportunity
The Labor Movement
The century-long fight by American workers for fair wages, safe conditions, and human dignity
The New Deal
Franklin Roosevelt's 1933–1939 legislative program to combat the Great Depression
The Second Great Awakening
The religious revival that reshaped American faith, reform, and politics, 1800–1840
Transcendentalism
The New England movement that gave America its philosophy of individual conscience
Trust-Busting
The Progressive Era campaign to break up industrial monopolies and restore competition
Women's Liberation Movement
The feminist uprising of the 1960s and '70s that transformed American law and culture
Women's Rights
The two-century fight for equality — the vote, the workplace, and the body
Organizations (50)
AARP
The seniors' lobby that became a political heavyweight, founded 1958
Hull House
Jane Addams's settlement house that pioneered American social work, 1889
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
The grief-driven movement that changed America's drinking laws, 1980
PBS
The public television network of Sesame Street and the news, founded 1969
Planned Parenthood
The reproductive-health provider at the center of the abortion battle, 1916
Tammany Hall
The New York political machine that ran on patronage and graft, 1789–1960s
The ACLU
The organization that made the Bill of Rights its client, founded 1920
The American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO)
The federation that has spoken for organized American labor since 1886
The American Museum of Natural History
New York's temple of dinosaurs, dioramas, and science, founded 1869
The American Red Cross
Clara Barton's humanitarian corps for war and disaster, founded 1881
The Anti-Imperialist League
The campaign against an American colonial empire, 1898-1921
The Anti-Saloon League
The single-issue lobby that drove America into Prohibition, 1893
The Black Panther Party
The armed revolutionary movement for Black liberation, 1966–1982
The Brookings Institution
The century-old think tank at the center of American policy, 1916
The CDC
The nation's front line against disease, from malaria to pandemics, 1946
The Environmental Protection Agency
The 1970 agency Nixon created to police the nation's air and water
The Federal Trade Commission
The Progressive-era regulator created to police unfair competition, 1914
The Food and Drug Administration
The agency that guards the nation's food and medicine, 1906
The Ford Foundation
The philanthropy that spread American ideas at home and abroad, 1936
The Heritage Foundation
The conservative think tank that shaped the Reagan revolution, 1973
The Industrial Workers of the World
The radical "Wobblies" who dreamed of One Big Union, founded 1905
The John Birch Society
The far-right anti-communist group that roiled Cold War conservatism, 1958
The Knights of Labor
The first mass American labor union, which surged in the 1880s — then collapsed almost overnight
The Liberator
Garrison's abolitionist weekly, 1831-1865
The Mayo Clinic
The Minnesota clinic that pioneered team-based medicine, 1889
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
America's grandest art museum, founded 1870
The Moral Majority
The evangelical movement that fused religion and Republican politics, 1979–1989
The Museum of Modern Art
The museum that made modern art respectable, founded 1929
The NAACP
The civil rights organization that fought segregation in the courts, founded 1909
The National Archives
The keeper of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the nation's records, 1934
The National Audubon Society
The bird-protection movement that became a conservation force, 1905
The National Gallery of Art
The nation's art museum, a gift to the people, 1937
The National Grange
The farmers' fraternal order that fought the railroads, founded 1867
The National Organization for Women
The group that drove the fight for women's equality, founded 1966
The National Park Service
The 1916 agency created to protect "America's best idea"
The National Rifle Association
From a marksmanship club to the most powerful gun lobby in America, 1871
The NCAA
The body that governs — and profits from — college sports, 1906
The New York Public Library
The people's library guarded by two stone lions, founded 1895
The Peace Corps
JFK's volunteer corps that sent young Americans to serve abroad, 1961
The Rockefeller Foundation
The oil fortune turned to fighting disease and funding science, 1913
The Rural Electrification Administration
The New Deal agency that put wires down the farm road, 1935
The Salvation Army
The evangelical charity that fights poverty with a brass band, in America since 1880
The Sierra Club
John Muir's wilderness guardians and the birth of the conservation lobby, 1892
The Smithsonian Institution
The national museum complex born from a mysterious English bequest, 1846
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Martin Luther King's engine of the nonviolent civil rights movement, 1957
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The young radicals who put their bodies on the line for civil rights, 1960
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The business lobby that speaks for American enterprise, founded 1912
The USO
The troops' morale organization, from WWII canteens to today, 1941
The YMCA
The Christian association that shaped American recreation and reform, since 1851
Tuskegee Institute
Booker T. Washington's school for Black self-reliance, founded 1881
Technology (3)
Dialysis
The artificial kidney, the God Committee, and the one disease Congress covered
Salk Polio Vaccine
The 1955 vaccine that ended summer polio epidemics — and the doctor who refused to patent it
The Birth Control Pill
The oral contraceptive, approved for contraception in 1960
All Tags
Politics 178 Economy 171 Military 129 Reform 121 Civil Rights 118 Law & Justice 116 Presidency 113 Science & Technology 112 Foreign Policy 107 Arts & Culture 103 Race 98 Founding Era 96 Industry 90 Constitution 75 Modern America 67 Protest 66 Cold War 65 Civil War 62 Westward Expansion 61 War 59 Revolution 59 Slavery 57 Media & Press 57 Women 56 Indigenous 51 Diplomacy 47 Immigration 41 Labor 40 Environment 36 Colonial America 34 Congress 33 Religion 33 World War II 32 Supreme Court 32 Disaster 29 Exploration 27 Public Health 25 Progressive Era 25 Abolition 22 Finance 22 Reconstruction 22 Democracy 20 Gilded Age 19 Assassination 15 Education 15 Suffrage 11 World War I 9 Sports 9 Corruption 9 Prohibition 1