Historian James Truslow Adams popularizes the term 'American Dream' in his book The Epic of America.

Puritan separatists like William Bradford leave the Anglican Church entirely to pursue a purer Protestant faith in America.

Puritans develop preparationism, a doctrine allowing believers to take active steps toward readiness for God's grace.

Anne Hutchinson is banished from her Puritan community after a blasphemy trial during the Antinomian Crisis.

Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence, asserting the right to 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'

Thomas Paine publishes pamphlets framing British colonial rule as slavery and arguing for American independence.

Benjamin Franklin rises from modest newspaper origins to become America's first celebrity and a founding father of the Dream of Upward Mobility.

Andrew Jackson's rise to the presidency signals that impoverished origins are a badge of honor rather than a shameful secret.

Abraham Lincoln leads the North into the Civil War to preserve the Union and protect the Dream of Upward Mobility for white workers.

The Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson ruling declares racial segregation lawful under the 'separate but equal' doctrine.

Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, sparking the organized civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his 'I Have a Dream' speech, declaring that freedom alone is not enough for Black Americans.

The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling proves that segregated facilities are never truly equal, striking down 'separate but equal.'

Congress passes the Homestead Act, enabling free men to claim 160 acres of western land and pursue the Dream of Home Ownership.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford build the Pickfair mansion alongside their United Artists studio, embodying the glamorous Dream of the Good Life.

This pool traces the American Dream through its most important milestones, from the Puritans' work ethic and religious freedom to the Founding Fathers' vision of liberty. Key figures like Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln embody the Dream of Upward Mobility at different stages of American history. The Civil War and its legal aftermath reveal how the Dream was used to preserve white opportunity rather than extend equality to all. The civil rights movement's defining moments — Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Brown v. Board of Education — show the ongoing struggle to make equality real rather than symbolic. The Dream of Home Ownership emerges as a federal priority through legislation like the Homestead Act. The pool closes with Hollywood celebrity culture and the Pickfair mansion as the glittering, hollow face of the Dream of the Good Life.

The landmark ideas and headline events that define the American Dream.

Cullen introduces human agency — the belief that individuals control their own destinies — as the common thread across all American Dreams.

John Winthrop's long governance of the Massachusetts Bay Colony exemplifies the Puritans' deep commitment to civic life and community participation.

Puritans migrate outward from Massachusetts Bay into Connecticut and New Hampshire seeking more land and freedom from strict communal rules.

The Salem Witch Trials illustrate how Puritan women became scapegoats for communal anxieties during times of social and religious crisis.

The Founding Fathers design a republic governed by a natural aristocracy of talent and virtue rather than a universal democracy.

Thomas Jefferson personally wrestles with the contradiction between his slaveholding and his authorship of a document proclaiming universal human freedom.

Cullen argues that free white colonists invoking British 'slavery' as a rallying cry rings hollow given their ownership of actual enslaved people.

Cullen argues that Lincoln was more troubled by slavery's economic threat to free white labor than by the moral injustice of slavery itself.

Post-Civil War Reconstruction fails to create meaningful equality for Black Americans despite the legal abolition of slavery.

Jim Crow laws institutionalize racial segregation across the American South, governing the daily lives of Black Americans after Reconstruction ends.

Activists Ella Baker and Septima Clark make crucial but widely underrecognized contributions to the success of the civil rights movement.

The expansion of cable car and streetcar systems in cities like Chicago and San Francisco enables workers to live outside urban centers for the first time.

White families engage in 'white flight,' leaving neighborhoods as Black families move in and reinforcing the racial exclusivity of American suburbs.

Nevada legalizes gambling and prostitution, allowing Las Vegas to grow into a city built on the dream of getting something for nothing.

Two immigrant women partner to open a successful business together, embodying the Dream of the Immigrant as a fulfillment of Upward Mobility.

This pool explores the secondary figures, social structures, and underlying tensions that ran alongside the Dream's famous landmarks. It begins with Cullen's argument that human agency is the common thread linking all versions of the Dream, then moves through Puritan civic culture, internal religious disputes, and the scapegoating of women in early colonial society. The Founding Fathers' elitist republicanism and Jefferson's personal hypocrisy complicate the Dream's democratic mythology. After the Civil War, Reconstruction's failure, the rise of Jim Crow laws, and the unsung heroines of the civil rights movement reveal how deeply inequality persisted beneath the Dream's surface. The suburban boom's role in enabling racial exclusion through white flight is examined before the pool closes with a hopeful story of immigrant women succeeding in business together.

The overlooked figures and structural forces that shaped the American Dream.

Cullen reveals that the American Dream has never been universally defined, yet most Americans take its existence and goodness for granted.

Despite shared faith and social homogeneity, Puritans find they cannot build a truly harmonious community in the New World.

Puritan predestination theology creates extreme psychological anxiety about eternal fate, driving believers toward preparationism as a source of relief.

Max Weber's argument that the Puritan work ethic drove the rise of capitalism is introduced as a key lens for understanding the American Dream.

The publication of the Declaration of Independence transforms the Revolution from a defense of existing freedoms into a forward-looking quest for new ones.

Cullen reveals that the Founding Fathers intended a republic led by men of merit, a vision directly at odds with modern democratic equality.

Lincoln privately acknowledges he cannot guarantee equality between Black and white Americans even as he works toward ending slavery.

Cullen reframes the civil rights movement as a 'Black equality movement,' since freedom without equality had proven hollow after the Civil War.

Cullen distinguishes between equality of condition and equality of opportunity, arguing that neither alone is sufficient to fulfill the American Dream.

Levittown, one of America's most famous postwar suburbs, is revealed to have had no Black residents as late as 1960.

Redlining — the practice of denying financial services to residents of predominantly Black neighborhoods — is exposed as a structural barrier to home ownership.

Filmmakers flee New York to escape Thomas Edison's patent lawsuits, inadvertently founding the Hollywood film industry in California.

The California Gold Rush is identified as the purest expression of the Dream of the Coast — the promise of sudden riches requiring no guaranteed labor.

Cullen compares early Hollywood celebrity values unfavorably to Puritan and Founding Father ideals, calling the glamorous Pickfair lifestyle a 'fraud.'

Cullen concludes that the American Dream functions as shared ground binding all Americans together and expresses optimism about its capacity to improve.

This pool focuses on the moments in Cullen's analysis where conventional wisdom is challenged and uncomfortable truths are uncovered. It opens with the admission that the American Dream has never been clearly defined, then moves through Puritan communal failure, predestination anxiety, and Max Weber's argument linking Protestant work ethics to the rise of capitalism. The Declaration of Independence's transformation of the Revolution's purpose and the Founders' anti-democratic vision of governance challenge the Dream's democratic mythology. Lincoln's inability to guarantee racial equality and the reframing of civil rights as fundamentally an equality struggle expose the long gap between freedom and true equality. Structural barriers like Levittown's racial exclusion and redlining reveal how the Dream of Home Ownership was systematically denied to Black Americans. The pool closes by tracing Hollywood's accidental birth and Cullen's critique of celebrity culture as a hollow fraud before ending with his tempered optimism for the Dream's future.

The key revelations and turning points that expose the Dream's hidden contradictions.