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What was World War I? |
World War I was a supposed to be the war to end all wars, however as we know, that was not the case. World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The United States did not enter the war until 1917, the war started in 1914, because Germany was sinking United States ships.
With the entrance of the United States, the selective service act came into existence, otherwise known as the draft. All men that were capable of serving, had to sign up and a lot of men went off to war. This meaning a lot changed on the home-front. In the United States, men typically held all of the laborious jobs and women stayed home and did their work there. However, with all of the men leaving, women had to take on a new role. A lesser known fact is that Latinx did as well. Latinx were apart of the great migration, a mass movement from the fields in the south to the factory jobs in the north. Latinx also played another significant role in World War I, many of them had to sign up for the draft and go fight as well because the United States did not have enough people. Remember, they were still not considered citizens and had many rights restricted but had to sign up to fight for the country that did not support them. Alongside the idea of not supporting Latinx, the United States implemented a literacy test for immigration with the immigration act of 1917. This directly effected the immigrants who did not speak English. No matter how literate people were in their native language, they had to prove to be literate in English, although the United States had no official language (it still does not). |