Rise of fascism in Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan

1931    Scottsboro Nine trial

1932    Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president

1933    Hitler’s rise to power, the Nazi party gains more control

1935    Dust Bowl, the Great Drought

            Social Security Act

            Spanish Civil War begins

Works Progress Administration

1939    World War II begins with Germany’s invasion of Poland

            United States comes out of the Great Depression

1943    Artists for Victory organizes the national print exhibition, America in the War

1947    The Secretary of State George C. Marshall cancels the exhibit, Advancing American Art, claiming that the contemporary art is “communistic”

            Marshall announces there will be “no more taxpayers’ money for modern art”

1972    Photographer Nick Ut records US use of Napalm against Vietnamese citizens, his photograph later wins a Pulitzer Prize

1978    Cindy Sherman’s black and white Untitled Film Stills series

1960s   Rise of Pop art

1965    National Endowment for Arts and Humanities established

            Minimalism recognized

1910s   Picasso and Braque develop Cubism in Paris

            Ashcan influence spreads, introduction of realism (early 1910s)

1911        First publication of The Masses

1913    New York Armory Show

1916    Dada movement begins in Switzerland, soon spreads to New York and Europe

1917    The Masses goes out of print

1870    15^th amendment ratified, ensures the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”

1875    Civil Rights Act passed, no citizen can be denied equal use of public facilities

1877    End of Reconstruction

1860    Abraham Lincoln elected president of the United States

1861    American Civil War begins

1863    Abraham Lincoln delivers Emancipation Proclamation

1865    13^th amendment ratified, slavery is outlawed

            End of Civil War

            Abraham Lincoln assassinated

1866    First Klu Klux Klan established in Tennessee

1867    First Reconstruction Act passed

1868    14^th amendment ratified, grants citizenship to all people born in the United States

1869    First railroad connecting east and west completed

1880    States begin passing “Jim Crow” laws

1883    Brooklyn Bridge constructed

1885    First US skyscraper

1920    Société Anonyme founded

1890    Sherman Anti-trust Law

1896    Supreme Court rules that “separate but equal” segregation is legal in Plessy v. Ferguson

            Rise of “yellow journalism” (sensationalist news reporting)

1898    Spanish-American War

1901    First Trans Atlantic radio

1903    Wright brothers fly

1904    National Child Labor Committee formed

1906    Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, leading to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act

1908    Henry Ford introduces the Ford Model T

1909    W.E.B DuBois founds the NAACP

1920s   Height of the KKK in the United States (4 million members, 5000 recorded lynchings)

1920    19^th amendment passed, women are allowed to vote

1929    US stock market crashes, beginning of the Great Depression

1912    The Titanic sinks

1914    World War I begins

1917    United States enters World War I

1918    World War I ends

            Influenza epidemic kills 30-40 million people worldwide

1919    18^th amendment passed, prohibits the sale or consumption of alcohol

            Treaty of Versailles

            Communist Party formed in Chicago

Public Works of Art Project

1934    The Unemployed Artist Group becomes the Artist’s Union with the publication Art Front

            Reeves Lewenthal founds Associated American Artists

1935    Federal Art Project (FAP) founded

            Works Progress Administration (WPA) art project founded

            The Farm Security Administration (FSA) hires photographers to record American poverty

            Two anti-lynching exhibits open in New York City, one sponsored by the NAACP and the other by the New York City John Reed Club

1936    A group of New York artists founds the American Artists’ Congress

            The Photo League is founded in New York

            Dorothea Lange takes the photograph Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley

1937    The Nazi party organizes an exhibition of “degenerate art,” composed mainly of avant garde works

            Picasso paints Guernica, memorializing the Spanish town bombed by Germans

1950s   Abstract expressionism and color field painting become dominant art styles

1950    Société Anonyme officially closes

1951    The Photo League closes

1941    Pearl Harbor bombed, US enters World War II

1945    Harry S. Truman becomes president following FDR’s death

            Cold War begins

            United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

            World War II ends

            United Nations organized

1946    First computer invented in Philadelphia

1948    Berlin divided due to Soviet blockades

            Truman abolishes segregation in the armed forces

1960    John F. Kennedy elected president

1962    Michael Harrington publishes The Other America: Poverty in the United States

1963    John F. Kennedy assassinated

            MLK’s March on Washington

1964    The Civil Rights Bill passed

            Gulf of Tonkin resolution

            Vietnam War begins

            President Lyndon B. Johnson announces War on Poverty

1965    Voting Rights Bill passed

1968    MLK assassinated

            Democratic Convention in Chicago

            US has 543,000 troops in Vietnam

1969    United States astronauts land on moon

1950s   US government aggressively investigates suspected Communists

1950    Korean War begins

1953    Korean War ends

Joseph McCarthy is chair of Senate Sub-Committee on Government Operations

1954    Supreme court rules to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education

            McCarthy hearings

1955    Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott

Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as civil rights leader

1975    Vietnam War ends