fandomhigh | 20th Century American History, Friday, February 5, 2016

Steve stepped into the classroom a few minutes late, looking harried as he hung up his phone. Talking with Nick Fury was never a particularly relaxing experience.

"So last week, we talked about the invention of the telephone has played in harrassing us all in our daily lives," he began with a tiny smile. "Today we're going to talk about World War I and then about the Roaring 20s, a time I have some actual memories of."

He gave a brief overview of the United States' involvement in World War I, making sure to explain how much longer Europe had been fighting before Woodrow Wilson got the country involved. He emphasized the loss of almost an entire generation of men in some countries with a quick, almost impersonal aside that his father had been one of the 110,000 American deaths, and then moved on to the rise of Communism in Russia and the surge of immigration from Eastern Europe to the United States. Then Steve talked about the passage of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote, the passing of Prohibition, the rise of the jazz age, and the cultural tensions that began springing up due to the Great Migration of African Americans north to cities like Chicago and New York, as well as the Red Scare and immigration backlash.

After the drier parts of the lecture were over, Steve smiled at the class. "Anything you guys want personal insight into? I was a pretty little kid in the 1920s, but it's probably more than most of you remember."