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Lenin and the Communist Red Scare
People started to fear the rise of communism, so they took action. In the case of "The Most Brainiest Man," a Connecticut clothing salesmen was sentenced to sixth months in jail simply for saying Lenin was smart. A story that same year in the Washington Post noted with approval how in Chicago, a sailor shot another man merely for failing to rise during the national anthem. -
18th Ammendment
Defined "intoxicating liquors" excluding those used for religious purposes and sales throughout the U.S., established Prohibition in the United States. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919. It was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, the only instance of an amendment's repeal. -
Palmer Raids
Attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport left-wing radicals, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Though more than 500 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the US Department of Labor. -
Volstead Act
Was the enabling legislation for the Eighteenth Amendment which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill. -
Sacco & Vanzetti Trial
Only Vanzetti was tried for the attempted robbery and attempted murder in Bridgewater. Others arrested produced ironclad alibis, like Sacco's time-card proving he was at work. In 1927, advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti charged that this case was brought first because evidence against Vanzetti in the Braintree robbery was weak and a conviction for the Bridgewater crimes would help convict him for the Braintree crimes. -
19th ammendment ratified
Prohibits each state and the federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920. It states: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." -
National Origins Act
A law that severely restricted immigration by establishing a system of national quotas that blatantly discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and virtually excluded Asians. The policy stayed in effect until the 1960s. -
Scopes Trial
formally known as The State of Tennessee v. Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was an American legal case in 1925 in which a high school biology teacher John Scopes was accused of violating the state's Butler Act that made it unlawful to teach evolution.Scopes was found guilty, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality and he was never brought back to trial. -
Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic
Lindbergh, then a 25-year old U.S. Air Mail pilot, emerged from virtual obscurity to almost instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo non-stop flight on May 20–21, 1927, from Roosevelt Field located in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles, in the single-seat, single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. -
1st talking movie, "The Jazz Singer" is released
The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. -
Herbert Hoover Elected
Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience. He promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization" -
Stock Market Crash
The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash,[4] was a time of wealth and excess. Despite caution of the dangers of speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
