History of Wall Street Q3 BM

Created by Danny Wirt and Alex Johnson. 

         The recent events that have occurred on Wall Street have sparked an interest in Alex and I. Both Alex and I were fascinated around the entire idea and so we decided to take up the challenge of looking back and investigating the history of Wall Streets protests. The ideas behind the protests, the reasons that they happened, the reasons why Wall Street was such a hot destination for protestors were all things that caught our attention and our eagerness for learning. Since the theme of this years National History Day was revolution, reaction, and reform, we felt as though using Wall Street was the perfect topic to use for the theme. Through the long history of Wall Street, there have been many revolutions, which has resulted in reaction and thus reform.

         After finding our topic, we both branched out and studied a lot about Wall Street. We studied the history of it, we studied documents, and compared past protests to later ones. We watched videos and documentaries on Wall Street. We really wanted to make sure that we fully understood the diversity and complexity of Wall Street. We found that Wall Street is more then just a place where people go to trade stock.

         After we finished researching as much as we could we decided to meet together and share our ideas together. We used our collaborative research to create a published piece of work. After much thought we decided that a website would be most effective at displaying what we have learned. We split up the tabs in the website according to the century that the protests occurred. We decided to include a timeline page with a very useful map that we found. It allows the viewer to go to different locations where protesters occurred and read a little bit about them and also see the year that they occurred. It was a nice useful and interactive feature for the viewer.

         Revolution, a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence. Reaction, action in response to some influence, event, etc. Reform, to change to a better state, form, etc.; improve by alteration, substitution, abolition, etc. These three terms are simply the way Wall Street works. Perhaps something happens and the people want change. This creates a revolution, in which a reaction is only inevitable, and thus when the reaction gets noticed there is reform, a change. Wall Street is a place where stock is traded, money is gained, and is essentially, a spotlight for the United States.