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The first assembly line was installed in Henry Ford's plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which was was used to make the process of manufacturing quicker and more efficient. By the next year, an automobile was being built every 93 minutes. Ford's first mass-produce vehicle was the Model T, which sold for only $205 in 1924.
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The 18th Amendment, called Prohibition, went into effect in January of 1920, which outlawed the sale, production, consumption, and transportation of alcohol in the U.S. Over 500 thousand arrests were made while Prohibition was in effect.
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"Shuffle Along" was the first musical written, produced, and performed by African Americans, which debuted in 1921 on Broadway. It helped launch the careers of several African American performers.
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In April 1920, two men were robbed and murdered in Massachusetts, and Italian immigrants and anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for the crime. They were found guilty and sentenced to death in 1921, and were executed 6 years later.
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Representatives from 8 major countries gathered at the Washington Conference to discuss disarmament. U.S. Secretary of State, Charles Hughes, proposed a halt on the construction of new warships and a list of existing warships to be destroyed.
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Albert Hall, a member of the Harding Administration, secretly leased Teapot Dome's private oil reserves to the Mammoth Oil Company. This site, combined with other leased sites, contained millions of dollars worth of oil, which was originally only to be used for emergencies.
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New Orleans native Louis Armstrong moved to Chicago in 1922, and brought with him a new style of music: jazz. Jazz was based off of ragtime and blues and elements of syncopation and improvisation.
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Claude McKay wrote a collection of poetry that highlighted racism in America and it was published in 1922. A strong defiance and contempt of racism were expressed through these poems.
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Charles G. Dawes makes an agreement with France, Britain, and Germany where American banks would loan money to Germany for WWI reparations. In return, Britain and France would accept less on reparations and pay more on their debts.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby," which was published in April of 1925. The novel was critical of the materialistic views in American society at the time.
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A Tennessee law outlawed the teaching of anything that opposed fundamentalism, and John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in his class. After 8 days of trial, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
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An investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal took most of the 1920s to complete. In 1927, the Supreme Court invalidated the leases on the private land, and Fall was imprisoned two years later.
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The federal government had been supporting commerce through planes in the 1920s, and Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic to show the possibilities of commercial aviation. By the end of the next year, 48 airlines were serving over 300 American cities.
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African American voters in Chicago helped elect Oscar DePriest to Congress. He served three terms in Congress and introduced laws to oppose racial discrimination and made lynching a federal crime.
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A treaty to outlaw war was proposed by the American Frank Kellogg and the French Aristide Briand. It stated that any nation that signed it agreed to abandon war and settle everything peacfully.
