Glossary

Industrial Revolution

a period of rapid change in the economy brought about by the introduction of power-driven machinery (in the U.S., the late 1800s).

Infrastructure

The physical structures, roads, needed to operate a society.

Infrastructure

The basic transportation and communication systems for a country or region.

Infringe

to violate or break something

Inheritance

Assets such as money or property that a person often leaves their family members.

Injunction

a judicial order that restrains a person from beginning or continuing an action threatening or invading the legal right of another.

Interstate Commerce Commission

a regulatory agency created in 1887 to monitor railroads and other industries conducting business across state lines.

Invalid

A person made weak by illness.

Jesuit

a Roman Catholic organization.

Jim Crow laws

refer to the legalized segregation of the Black population of the United States in schools, restaurants, public transportation, and other institutions or facilities, and the denial of the right to vote, after the Civil War up until the 1960s.