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improved
'''Note: this lecture is intentionally shorter in order to give you time to review material that you missed on the midterm exam. Those who take advantage of this opportunity will do better on the final exam.'''
In the early 1900s, Business business continued to expand, labor conflicts increased, racial groups advanced, and there were more marvelous inventions. In 1903, for example, the Wright brothers had the first airplane flight on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Wilbur and Orville Wright were actually from Dayton, Ohio, where a fascinating museum stands devoted to innovations in air travel.
The sons of a Christian minister, the Wright boys lost their mother to an illness while they were teenagers. Orville, the younger of the boys, dropped out of high school to start a printing business, which then turned into a newspaper after his brother Wilbur joined the project. But the competition from larger newspapers was too great, and their business went back to only printing.
Yankee ingenuity continued. Within five years Henry Ford was producing his first "Model T" automobiles. He developed the assembly line and the use of interchangeable parts to speed production, reduce costs, and double output. Henry Ford also believed in sharing his enormous profits with his workers, increasing their wages to record high levels. He felt they could become his best customers if they were paid more. Ford was an example of a businessman who had almost no original ideas of his own, but improved and used the ideas he learned from others. Nothing wrong with that at all, and unfortunately many do not achieve their potential because they are unwilling to use someone else's good idea.
A split developed in the views of the African American community about how to advance. W.E.B. Du Bois took a more aggressive and militant approach to advancement than Booker Washington had. In 1905 Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement, which demanded full citizenship rights for African Americans. In 1910 he founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which became very influential in the mid to late 1900s in advocating for civil rights.
In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court helped African Americans by striking down "grandfather clauses" that interfered with voting by descendants of slaves. The Court based its ruling on the 15th Amendment, which you should recall guaranteed the right to vote regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
In the last lecture we discussed imperialism, and mentioned how Teddy Roosevelt became a hero in the Spanish-American War. He is also a modern-day hero to some, such as Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and Teddy Roosevelt is the only modern figure to have his face carved in Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Let's begin this lecture with a discussion of now look at this important American President.
== Teddy Roosevelt ==
