Allison+Echstenkamper+2

A Year in History 1919 http://www.dipity.com/allisonechstenkamper/personal/#timeline

Dear Diary, Today is December 28, 1919. As it is almost New Years Eve, I have been thinking back on all that has happened in the last year. This has been a year of a lot of changes for me as I am now in HIGH SCHOOL! I cannot believe that I am already halfway through my freshman year of high school, wow. My family moved this year from Ohio to Chicago. We moved because Mama was freaked out after the May Day Riots and she thought that racism wouldn't be as prevalent in Chicago, but she was dead wrong. I think that racism is going to be bad wherever you go because people are always looking for someone to blame. We moved in May after the riots in Cleveland, but it was only two months later that the Chicago race riot started, which was way bigger than the one in Cleveland. Thank goodness we weren't in the area of Chicago directly affected by the riots, we live in the suburbs of Chicago in a little town called Evanston, but still. It was scary coming home from school everyday to see Mama and Daddy watching the news of all that was happening only 20 minutes away from us. The strike went on for almost two weeks, and Mama and Daddy said I had to stay home at nights and the weekends. I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends because there were so many people fighting. Those were the most lazy two weeks of my life because Mama let me watch TV since I couldn't go anywhere else. Right before the race riots a huge blimp exploded in downtown Chicago too. I didn't actually see the damage it caused to the bank that it flew into, but Daddy works down the street from it at a business firm. He told me that everyone stopped what they were doing and ran outside to watch the balloon on fire and people running out of the building. He said it was really scary because the police couldn't tell if people were trapped inside or not, and it turned out that ten people inside the building were killed. The pilot of the balloon just jumped out the window as soon as he found out they were gonna crash, can you believe that? I think that'd be scarier than actually crashing.

Another big thing that happened this year was the government enforced this new law called Prohibition. It means that absolutely no alcohol is allowed in the country. Mama and Daddy are sooooo mad about this. They're not obsessive drinkers or anything, but they used to have beer every night with dinner. Daddy said at first he was going to go on strike until they brought alcohol back, until Mama said he'd be sleeping on the couch until he went back to work. That perked him up real fast. There was also a lot of worries about communism breaking out this year. Apparently there was a huge revolution in Russia called the Bolshevik Revolution where communists tried to take over the government, so now the U.S. government is paranoid that the same thing is going to happen over here. Bombs have been sent in the mail to people high up in the government and threats of anarchy have been made by people saying they want to take over the government, so now the country is really scared of communism spreading in the U.S. At one time this year my friend's parents were taken into the police station for questioning to see if they were pro-communism. I didn't know this was happening at the time, it happened in November, but I just found out that over 200 people were forced to leave the country! I feel so sorry for them. What if they really weren't part of the communist party and they were innocent? I can't imagine if my parents and I were forced to leave America.

Although there was a lot of scary stuff that happened this year, which Mama and Daddy wouldn't completely tell me about, only the basics, there was also a lot of exciting things that happened this year. Mama is so excited that the 19th amendment finally passed! Women can vote! She told me that that amendment passing was the result of many years of fighting for equal rights, and that I should take pride in being a girl. Even though I can't vote yet she told me that I needed to be as excited as she was. I guess I am excited, even though I already knew that girls were better than boys. Boys are stupid. Another exciting thing that happened this year is there is a new TV show that has drawings as characters. It is really funny. It is all about this drawn cartoon cat. Daddy is super excited because Wisconsin finally has an NFL football team, the Green Bay Packers. I don't really understand why he is so excited because we're from Ohio, and Ohio has the Cleveland Browns, but he said he is rooting for Green Bay now because the Browns suck. He has also been in a tizzy about some guy named Babe Ruth, I think he plays baseball? I only like baseball because of the boy's cute uniforms, but Daddy said that it is a really big deal that Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees from the Red Sox because they are huge rivals. He also said that Babe Ruth was traded for 125,000 dollars! That is an insane amount of money!

I think that's about everything that happened this year politically....I'll have to save everything that happened in my social life for another time :) HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Love, Allison Echstenkamper

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Historical Inquiry Project: Harriet Tubman



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