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East St. Louis Riot
One of the deadliest riots in American history occurred in 1917 in East St. Louis, Illinois, where rampaging whites burned more than three hundred black homes and murdered between 50 and 150 black men, women, and children (the exact death toll remains unknown). Tensions rose after and during the great migration as black people competed with poorer whites and European immigrants for jobs and housing. -
The 18th Amendment
The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January 1920. Also called “prohibition,” the amendment was repealed in 1933. Some progressives joined the campaign, convinced that alcohol kept immigrant workers in poverty and that saloons bred political corruption. Mobilizing the economy for war, Congress limited brewers’ and distillers’ use of barley and other scarce grains. Moreover, anti-German hysteria linked the many German American breweries with the wartime enemy. -
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The Red Scare
A term for anticommunist hysteria that swept the United States first after World War I that led to government raids, deportations of radicals, and a suppression of civil liberties. Lead to the growth of the FBI, and an anti-radicalism unit of the justice department. The executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian immigrants accused of murder and (unjustly? biasedly?) sentenced to death, became a lasting symbol of the Red Scare’s hostilities and divisiveness. -
The Red Summer of 1919
In this case, "red" is not communist, but instead refers to the blood shed in this summer as a result of white violence across the US, both in urban and rural communities, leading to over 100 deaths. The worst riot occurred in Chicago, in which 38 people were killed (23 blacks, 15 whites). Sparked in part by black soldiers and citizens who were wholly committed to the war effort and no longer wanted to be treated as second class citizens. -
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The American Plan
Business strategy to keep workplaces free of unions, which included refusing to negotiate with trade unions & requiring workers to sign contracts pledging not to join a union, supported by the supreme court decision in Coronado Coal Company v United Mine Workers of America 1922, the Court ruled that striking unions could be penalized for illegal restraint of trade. Along with the antiunion campaigns under the American Plan, this drove down labor union membership from 5.1 mil to 3.6 mil. -
The Palmer raids
A series of raids ordered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer on radical organizations that peaked in January 1920, when federal agents arrest six thousand citizens and aliens and denied them access to legal council. Partially in response to a series of bombings conducted by communist groups, this reflected the general social mistrust and panic as a result of the "Red Scare" -
The Volstead Act
Officially, the National Prohibition Act, passed by Congress to enforce the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment banning the sale of alcohol. -
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The Harding/ Coolidge Administrations
Elected in 1920, Republican Warren G Harding's administration was markedly corrupt, with a great increase in lobbying and influence of business as seen with the Teapot Dome scandal. He died of a heart attack in 1923, and VP Calvin Coolidge took over. His administration advocated limited government and tax cuts for businesses. . Anti-radicalism became orthodoxy. Business and government grew closer. Lobbying grew into an established element of the legislative process. -
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The Harlem Renaissance
A flourishing of African American artists, writers, intellectuals, and social leaders in the 1920s, centered in the neighborhood of Harlem, New York City. Poet Langston Hughes, Painter Jacob Lawrence, Philosopher Alain Locke, and writer Zora Neale Hurston influenced the growth of art and literature. Jazz grew across the country, with performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington contributing. -
The Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act
Sheppard-Towner provided federal funds for medical clinics, prenatal education programs, and visiting nurses, leading to improved health care for the poor and significantly lower infant mortality rates. It also marked the first time that Congress designated federal funds for the states to encourage them to administer a social-welfare program. -
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Rise of Radio
Households with radios shot from 260,000 in 1922 to 6.5 million in 1927 and to 12 million by the early 1930s. Thousands of stations popped up across the country, and radio broadcasts came to include live theater and sporting events, news, music, variety and quiz shows, scripted comedies, and the first “soap operas.” Advertising dollars fueled radio’s rapid rise, and radio conveyed events as they happened, giving the medium an unprecedented immediacy and intimacy. -
National Origins Act
Used backdated census data to establish a quota system: in the future, annual immigration from each country could not exceed 2 percent of that nationality’s total in the 1890 census. Since only small numbers of Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russians, and other Southern and Eastern European immigrants had arrived before 1890, the law drastically curtailed immigration from those places. Did not restrict immigration from Latin America. -
"Dollar Diplomacy"
The use of American foreign policy to stabilize the economies of foreign nations, especially in the Caribbean and South America, in order to benefit American commercial interests, between World War I and the early 1930s. Samuel Guy Inman, a Disciples of Christ missionary who toured U.S.-occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic, coined the term in 1924. Later policies by FDR attempted to reverse the ill effects that this phenomenon had on many other American countries. -
Rise of Consumer Credit
Consumer Credit was forms of borrowing, such as auto loans and installment plans, that flourished in the 1920s and worsened the crash that led to the Great Depression. Such borrowing brought a modern lifestyle within reach for countless Americans. -
The Scopes Monkey Trial
The trial of John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher who admitted to teaching evolution, drew national attention to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Clarence Darrow, a famous criminal lawyer, defended Scopes, while William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate, spoke for the prosecution.
"Monkey" referred both to Darwin’s argument that human beings and other primates share a common ancestor and to the circus atmosphere at the trial. -
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The Stock Market Crashes
Easy credit had fueled years of excessive stock speculation, which inflated the value of traded companies well beyond their actual worth. During this period, the stock market lost approximately 40 percent of its value, a symptom of a weakening economy which few recognized as the beginning of a crisis.