Harper class reviews 100 years of U.S. history in 3 hours

A three-hour seminar touring through Illinois community colleges that recounts the past 100 years of American history will be presented in two parts by the Lifelong Learning Institute at Harper College in February and March.

The seminar, "U.S. History and Today," features 600 historically-relevant photographs and 44 popular Hollywood film clips that highlight turning points in American life from the beginning of World War I in 1914 through present day.

Harper will present Chapter 1 of "U.S. History and Today" on its Palatine campus at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 2, with Chapter 2 following at the same time Feb. 9. The seminar will be presented in two parts again, March 7 and 14, at Harper's satellite campus in Wheeling, beginning at 11 a.m. Register for "U.S. History and Today" through Harper College's Lifelong Learning Institute by calling (847) 925-6300 or online at harpercollege.edu/ce/lli/index.php. The registration fee for LLI members is $19; nonmember fee is $38.

"American history at high speed," as some have described it, is presented by John LeGear, a Chicago-born builder of national not-for-profit organizations who dedicated every day of 2017 to put it together. His goal is to promote the value of history, and to provide a broader perspective on policy decisions being made in Washington today that may reverberate far into the future.

Here are several nuggets of U.S. history that have been mined from the presentation:

• 1914: Henry Ford stunned the world in 1914 when he more than doubled his employees' wages to $5 per day and reduced a full day's work from nine hours to eight. Critics scoffed that Ford merely wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. Sales of the Model T Ford grew from 308,000 in 1914 - more than all other automakers combined - to 501,000 the following year, suggesting that Ford's critics may have been right.

• 1918: The worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918-19 took a broadly estimated 20 to 50 million lives, compared to approximately 9 million soldiers and 5 million civilians who died in World War I (1914-18).

• 1933: During the first four years of the Great Depression, unemployment in the U.S. soared from 3 percent in 1929 to 25 percent in 1933, which contributed heavily to Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 landslide election victory over incumbent President Herbert Hoover. Unemployment in Germany peaked at 30 percent in 1932, setting the table for Adolf Hitler to gain control over his government within a year.

• 1945-60: Economic growth in the U.S. during the 15 years following World War II was phenomenal, largely attributed to explosive automobile manufacturing, a housing boom stimulated in large part by affordable mortgages given to returning military personnel, and ever-increasing defense spending during America's Cold War with the USSR.

• 1951: "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a science fiction classic, was released during the Korean War, and two years after the Soviet Union attained the technology to produce an atomic bomb. Its foreboding message at the end of the film about "reducing Earth to a burned-out cinder" was less about fiction and more about the fact that both the U.S. and USSR were now equipped with nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet.

• 1961: The Russians tested the most powerful human-made explosion in history, a 50-megaton nuclear device nicknamed in the west "Tsar Bomba," on Oct. 30, 1961, the 23rd anniversary of Orson Welles' infamous radio drama "War of the Worlds."

• 1970: It is widely known that four white students were shot and killed by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. But few remember that 11 days later, two African American students were shot and killed by state police at Jackson State College, now a university, in Jackson, Mississippi. Hundreds of holes from bullets and buckshot that were fired into a women's dormitory on campus that day remain intact today to serve as a reminder of the event.

• 1990: Despite efforts dating back to the end of World War I in 1918 to receive health care comparable to that received by wounded U.S. military personnel, it wasn't until passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 that the needs of disabled people were comprehensively addressed. The law prohibits discrimination in employment, public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications.