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Four Progressive Era Amendments — Timeline and Context

Learning Objective

Students explain the purpose of each Progressive Era amendment and the social movement or political pressure that produced it.

  • Bloom Level: Understand (L2)
  • Bloom Verb: Explain
  • Library: vis-timeline

Preview

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Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 12: The Progressive Era (1890–1914).

Type: timeline
**sim-id:** progressive-amendments-timeline<br/>
**Library:** p5.js<br/>
**Status:** Specified

Purpose: Allow students to explore the four Progressive Era constitutional amendments (16th–19th), the social movements that produced them, and the political context in which each was ratified.

Bloom Level: Understand (L2)
Bloom Verb: Explain

Learning Objective: Students explain the purpose of each Progressive Era amendment and the social movement or political pressure that produced it.

Canvas layout:
- Responsive width; height approximately 480px
- Horizontal timeline from 1890 to 1925
- Four clickable markers, one per amendment: 16th (1913), 17th (1913), 18th (1919), 19th (1920)
- Background shows key political events: McKinley assassination (1901), TR presidency, WWI shading (1917–1918)

Each marker, when clicked, opens a detail panel:
- Amendment number and ratification year
- What it changed (one sentence)
- The movement that drove it (Populists, direct democracy reformers, temperance, women's suffrage)
- One historical context note explaining the timing
- A "What happened next?" line showing the amendment's legacy or unintended consequences

Additional clickable elements:
- Hovering the WWI band shows: "Wartime nationalism accelerated both Prohibition (grain conservation) and women's suffrage (women's war contributions)"
- A "Populating over time" mode shows state ratification maps for the 18th and 19th amendments

Color scheme: Each amendment has a distinct color (gold = 16th, indigo = 17th, red = 18th, teal = 19th); WWI period shaded in gray.

Responsive behavior: Timeline scrolls horizontally on narrow canvas.

Implementation: p5.js