Defining the Decades — Part 1: 1900, 1910, and 1920

The Saturday Evening Post knows a thing or two about documenting big events across the decades. This magazine reported on the Civil War and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. It’s documented historical milemarkers like emancipation, suffrage, and Obergefell v. Hodges. And each time the calendar turns, we, like all of you, wonder what will be the next era-defining event will be. With that in mind, here’s a look at the events that have defined each decade in the United States since 1900. Here in part 1, we start with the first three decades of the 1900s.

1900s: McKinley Assassinated; Teddy Roosevelt Becomes President

The assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy loom large in the national consciousness, but it’s frequently overlooked that two other presidents were felled by assailants. In 1881, 20th president James A. Garfield died of a combination of infection and illness brought on by being shot weeks earlier. Twenty years later, William McKinley was gunned down at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, shot twice by an anarchist assassin. McKinley actually lived several more days, even showing signs of improvement. However, gangrene set in and he died on September 14, 1901. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president.

Roosevelt had already cut a famous public figure. His résumé to that point read like a novel. He’d been the governor of New York, assistant secretary of the Navy, a New York state assemblyman, and president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners. In the military, he had ascended to the rank of colonel and was celebrated as a national hero for his role in the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. Across his two terms as president, he would be a force. Not only was he the youngest president to take office (at 42), but he also blazed a trail in conservation (the engine behind the creation of national parks), championed the anti-trust battle, and fought for food and medicine policies that protected citizens. On top of that, his administration saw the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for the role he played in ending the Russo-Japanese War. Factor in that he has one of the most popular toys in history named after him (the Teddy Bear) and that he once finished a speech after being shot, it’s easy to see what a transformative figure he was in the 1900s and beyond.

1910s: Titanic Sinks

In their collection, Our Dumb Century, parody publication The Onion marked April 16, 1912, with the headline, “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg.” While it’s obviously darkly funny as a punchline, it’s true that the story of Titanic sits at the intersection of a number of issues; it somehow manages to be emblematic of incompetence, hubris, and class struggle all at once. The hubris, of course, comes from the White Star Line’s labelling of their new liner as “unsinkable” (which is essentially an invitation for The Fates to say, “Watch this”).

Multiple feature films, TV movies, and documentaries have thoroughly established how the events of April 15 played out; suffice it to say that a good many mistakes were made and that priorities were placed on getting the more well-to-do passengers into the insufficient number of lifeboats ahead of the less wealthy passengers in steerage.  Even The Saturday Evening Post weighed in on questions of blame at the time. It remains one of the most famous disasters in history, perhaps all the more compelling because of the ways it might have been avoided.

If one bright spot emerged from the story, it was the ascendance of the public profile of Molly Brown. Born and married poor, Brown became wealthy when her miner husband struck it rich; Brown became a philanthropist and well-known socialite. She’d been in Europe and only booked her passage on Titanic because it was the fastest way to get back home (her grandson had taken ill). As everything went to hell on the ship, Brown strenuously fought to get as many people onto the lifeboats as they could fit, even incurring the wrath of some of the ship’s crew. When the RMS Carpathia began rescuing survivors, Brown rallied other first-class passengers to make sure that the survivors from the so-called lower classes also had their needs met. Her record of charity and good works after the disaster is frankly staggering, including doing so much to help rebuild France after World War I that she received the French Legion of Honor in 1932.

1920s: The 19th Amendment

As much as a few modern pundits may want to undo it, one of the biggest steps forward for the United States was the 19th Amendment to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States. The text reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Short and to the point, the 19th codified the right of women to vote. Ratification and certification of the Amendment in August of 1920 immediately made it possible for 26 million women to exercise their right. However, non-white women faced other obstacles placed by states (notably discriminatory practices in the South, such as literacy tests that targeted not only Black women, but other women of color). However, the addition of millions of citizens to the voting pool did have an impact, and the Suffrage movement would pave the way for increased opportunities for women in education and the workforce while laying the groundwork for expanded fights for women’s rights and civil rights.