Many of the changes experienced by GW in the early-twentieth century were products of a changing America. Much like today, world and national events affected University life and forced GW administrators to cope with new situations.

Veterans return to classes

At the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers returned home to the lives they had put on hold to serve overseas. Many of these young soldiers sought a college education and career training to help them reintegrate themselves into the professional world.

World War I, All that Jazz

Presidential Inaugurations: Herbert Hoover and Frankklin Delano Roosevelt

Throughout the 1920s, the United States experienced unprecedented prosperity after victory in World War I. As the troops came home, college enrollment skyrocketed, and the economy bounced back from its wartime hardships. In late October 1929, economist and Yale University professor Irving Fisher noted, "The nation is marching along a permanently high plateau of prosperity." This confident statement proved mere wishful thinking when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed less than a week later on October 24, 1929, the day that would be forever remembered as Black Thursday.

A call for freedom

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States technically began with the push for the abolition of slavery by several Northern groups prior to the Civil War, but it was not until the 1950s that the movement gained enough momentum to begin to make major progress for black rights.