The 20th century began, as the previous one had, with war.
This time it was a war in Europe. World War I people called it because this was an international conflict, the world’s first.
A second such conflict, World War II, took place less than 25 years later. In between, the United States and the world suffered a Great Depression. A depression is a time of tremendous economic decline. People lost their jobs and their savings, banks failed, and businesses closed. The depression lasted until the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II. When that war ended, suburbs – towns on the borders of large cities – grew. And the country looked inward. Many saw great injustices being done on the basis of race. The struggle to right those wrongs through the civil rights movement grew in strength through the end of the century and beyond.
