Basic american history facts: Every school year, there is a dispute regarding whether or not American students know that much about their country’s history, and what precisely should be included in any examination of that matter. After all, only 18% of eighth graders who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress test scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the most recent U.S. history part of the so-called “nation’s report card.”

While middle and high school kids aren’t the only ones who have a hard time remembering Basic american history facts, they aren’t the only ones. Ask historians about the issue, and you’ll likely find that each has had to deal with the persistent preconceptions that can plague any area of investigation. There are numerous causes for this: As the Internet has grown, there are more opportunities for people to learn, but also more means for errors to spread; and some errors are the consequence of new discoveries that have been made.

basic american history facts

Basic American History Facts: There Was Slavery In The North As Well

Basic american history facts: By the end of the 17th century, slavery had spread to all 13 British Colonies (which would subsequently become U.S. states). North America’s principal exports to the Caribbean during colonial times were primarily slaves, tobacco, sugar, and rum. The North was heavily involved in the first two of these industries and cultivated enormous plantations to supply the Caribbean. There were at least 50 percent of those who built and operated New York City in 1827, according to Ira Berlin, and 20 percent of the city’s inhabitants were slaves. Travelers from the slave-holding South continued to enslave many people in the region until just before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Slavery in Connecticut was abolished much later.

There Was No Anti-Male Sentiment In The Women’s Liberation Front

Any other social revolution has been more misinterpreted than that of the women of this generation in the 1960 and ’70s. In addition to their “sex issues” (pornography, abortion rights, sexual assault and rape, etc. ), they were also single, white, middle-class, and anti-male. Everyone of them is mistaken.

Basic american history facts: Women of all social classes and races were actively involved in the feminist movement during this time period. The 1960s feminism renaissance was spearheaded by working-class, labor-union women of all races and ethnicities. The sex issues were important to feminists, but they also stressed economic goals like better pay, equal access to higher-paying employment, and medical care and sick leave. 

Women’s unpaid family labour was recognised and valued in their writings and speeches. In order to alleviate the burden of juggling paid and unpaid work, feminists advocated for flexible work schedules, paid maternity leave, and cheap child care. What would have happened if they had won, and everyone had extra time to spend with their loved ones? Many of the fathers who decided to share child care said that they appreciated the opportunity to spend more time with their offspring. 

Cleanliness, on the other hand, is not such much of a strength of mine. It was a mixed bag for feminists. It was in changing public opinion that they achieved their greatest success, however: in 2016, 60 percent of American women and 30 percent of American men identified as feminists or strong feminists, despite years of vicious and fear-based attacks against feminism. Rather than being anti-male, feminists were optimistic that men could adapt and that feminist measures would benefit them, and they were correct.

The United States Of America Is Not A Democracy In The Strictest Sense Of The Word

We have never had a democracy in the United States of America. “Mixed,” according to John Adams, signified a combination of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in the form of the Executive and the senate (House). Most of the founders felt that the federal Constitution established a “republic,” which for Adams was a “empire of laws, not persons,” by virtue of the Constitution.

Sufficiency-restricting measures are the most glaring and persistent anti-democratic flaw in American culture. Even though women accounted for more than half of the adult population, they didn’t get the ability to vote until 1920, even though they were the majority. 

Unfair voting rules were put in place by states prior to the Civil War. When New York City abolished property restrictions in 1821, it did so for white men only, but kept them in place for free blacks. Urban poor were disenfranchised by legislation imposed in eight states and by a newly formed state, which abolished slavery but instituted a practise of peonage on Native Americans that deprived them political rights.

Southern governments utilised poll taxes after Reconstruction to limit the right to vote to poor black and white men. During the presidential elections of 1920 and 1924, just 20% of the southern population participated. In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that poll taxes were unconstitutional.

Last but not least, as the Supreme Court reiterated during the contentious presidential election of 2000, the Electoral College prohibits people the opportunity to pick the president directly. Winner-take-all rules for allocating state electoral votes disenfranchise voters from the opposition party. Australia, which made voting mandatory, is the actual leader in democratic reform. Election turnout and legitimacy have risen dramatically as a result of this new method of voting.

The Leaders Of The Communist Party In Vietnam Were Not The Individuals You Expect

Despite the fact that the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive is just around the corner, it’s time to dispel a long-standing lie about Hanoi’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap have been widely credited with guiding the Vietnamese communist war effort to triumph against the Americans, but they really lost a critical political fight on the eve of Tet. In the end, Ho and Giap were marginalized by the victorious Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. In spite of Ho and Giap’s convictions that a nationwide surprise attack on the cities and towns of South Vietnam was doomed to fail and result in massive casualties and a popular uprising, the rest of the Party leadership refused to change course. 

When Ho and Giap defied the “comrades Le,” they were punished with the biggest purge in Vietnamese communist history, which included the arrest of their closest aides and deputies. Uncle Ho remained in Beijing and General Giap remained in Hungary till the offensive was well under way, unable to free their companions from prison in Hanoi. As a wise man once said, “A lot of history is really nasty politics cleaned up for the benefit of children and other innocents.”. For Vietnam, the story of Tet serves as a reminder of the country’s history.

In The United States, Spanish Speakers Predate Those Who Spoke English

basic american history facts

Basic american history facts: Latinos in the United States are not all recent immigrants, as the media portrays them to be. Instead, there is a diverse mix of nationalities, generations, and life experiences among Latinos in the United States. But their stories are often overlooked or misunderstood.

The Spanish-speaking colonies of St. Augustine (1565), Santa Fe (1610), San Antonio (1718), and Los Angeles, which arrived much later, are very briefly mentioned in history textbooks in the United States (1781). This area would become the United States had its first European language spoken in Spanish, not English. Latino Americans have produced history on and off the national stage, from establishing frontier settlements in the early 1700s to writing about citizenship and liberty in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to battling for civil rights in the early 2000s.