The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

A deeply rooted yet ambiguous concept in American history and culture, the American Dream is the idea that anybody in America who works hard can achieve success. The author identifies several subsets of the American Dream, which refer to different parameters of success, including the Dream of Upward Mobility and the Dream of Home Ownership. The concept of the American Dream is a subject of fierce debate, in large part because so many avenues of success in the US have historically blocked women, First Nations people, slaves, and even subsets of white men.

The American Revolution refers to a series of events that resulted in the independence of the Thirteen Colonies from British colonial rule and eventually led to the formation of the United States of America. The need for independence was often framed as a fight for freedom against British tyranny by pamphleteers like Thomas Paine. One of the Revolution’s central events was the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, which Cullen describes as the key document of the American Dream.

This term describes the movement for Black equality in America that took place throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the movement’s major events include Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of a city bus in 1955 (which historians often cite as the official start of the movement) and Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.