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This inquiry set focuses on how the US government prepared for war. Speeches by American political leaders, documents that show ordinary Americans readying for war, and images that feature California as a central place in wartime mobilization frame students’ exploration into American involvement in World War I.

Just as World War I stands as an important marker of the new role for the U.S. on the world stage, the war also is an important event that started a century-long growth of the federal government. Once the United States entered the war, the government grew through the administration of the draft, the organization of the war at home, and the promotion of civilian support for the war. Americans on the home front had mixed reactions to the war. Some bought Liberty bonds to support the war, while others opposed the war.

The people who fueled industrialization in the nation’s expanding urban centers migrated domestically from more rural areas and came from nations all over the world. Students may consider these questions to organize their study of immigration: Who came to the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century? Why did they come? What was their experience like when they arrived?

Students can continue with a selective review of American government by considering this question: How did the country change because of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the nineteenth century? The events leading up to the Civil War, the successes and failures of Reconstruction, and informal and formal segregation brought on by Jim Crow laws also provide context for understanding racial inequities in late-nineteenth-century America.

This lesson is about citizenship from the perspective of African Americans after the Civil War. The purpose of this lesson is for students to consider the challenges that African Americans faced in achieving full citizenship rights, and actions they took to address this inequality. Students will closely examine the Fourteenth Amendment and a report from an African-American state convention committee in order to answer the lesson focus question, What were the challenges to African American citizenship after the Civil War?