US president Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, the leaders of the Allies in World War II, met at Yalta in February, 1945.
Churchill and Roosevelt pushed strongly for Stalin to allow free elections to take place in the nations of Europe after the war. At that time Stalin agreed, but there was a strong feeling by the other leaders that he might renege on that promise. The Soviets never did allow those free elections to occur. Later, Winston Churchill wrote, ""Our hopeful assumptions were soon to be falsified." Stalin and the Soviets felt they needed the Eastern European nations as satellites to protect their own interests. A line of countries in Eastern Europe came into line with the USSR and communism. Churchill later would say an "iron curtain" had fallen between Western and Eastern Europe.
Racial inequality was a persistent problem during the Gilded Age. African Americans, other minorities, and women struggled in a losing battle as they sought to gain equality. Following the Civil War, during the Reconstruction southern states passed laws that separated blacks and whites.
