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Henry Ford
Henry Ford developed the assembly line and conveyor belt to speed up motor production. Ford's River Rouge plant in Detroit, Michigan became the largest factory in the world. Ford produced a standard model, the Model T Ford. -
Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created by the Congress to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. -
1st Red Scare
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which led many to fear that immigrants, particularly from Russia, southern Europe, and eastern Europe, intended to overthrow the United States government. The end of World War I, which caused production needs to decline and unemployment to rise. -
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley refers to the physical location of the New York City centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the 1920s. -
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is the belief that all personal and social problems were inherited. Some social Darwinist argue that governments should not interfere with human competition by attempting to regulate the economy or cure social ills. During the 1920s many political observers blamed it for contributing to German militarism and the rise of Nazism. -
Jazz Music
African American Jazz culture has an amazing influence upon popular culture in the 1920s due to the availability of these recordings to white, upper middle class listeners. Jazz music influenced all aspects of society. -
The Great Migration
By the end of 1919, millions of blacks had left the south, usually traveling by train, boat, or a bus. Many new arrivals found jobs in factories, slaughterhouses, and foundries, where working conditions were sometimes dangerous. Female migrants had a harder time finding work. -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning in the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance was very significant because it marked a moment when white America started recognizing the intellectual contributions of Blacks. -
Frances Willard
Frances Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth (prohibition) and Nineteenth (women suffrage) Amendments to the United States Constitution. Frances Willard thought it was important for women to have the right to vote. -
Warren G. Harding's "Return to Normalcy"
Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920. In the aftermath of World War I, the Palmer Raids, a failed effort to ratify the League of Nations, economic stagnation and the failing presidency of Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding ran for president on a promise to return the nation to a better sense of normalcy. -
Prohibition & the 18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - known as the Prohibition Amendment - was adopted in the 1920s and made the making, selling, possessing, and consuming of alcoholic drinks illegal. -
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey was an advocate of Black nationalism. He was a leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Committees League. -
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. -
William Jennings Bryan
Bryan campaigned for peace, prohibition and suffrage, and increasingly criticized the teaching of evolution. In 1925, he joined the prosecution in the trial of John Scopes, a Tennessee schoolteacher charged with violating state law by teaching evolution. In a famous exchange, Clarence Darrow put Bryan on the witness stand and revealed his shallowness and ignorance of science. -
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow's most famous case occurred in 1925 when he defeated John T. Scopes, a public high school teacher accused of teaching evolutionary theory in violation of Tennessee State law. -
Scopes Monkey Trial
High school teacher John T. Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee's law against teaching evolution instead of the divine creation of man. The trial was the first to be broadcasted on live radio. -
Charles A. Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was a famous aviator. In 1927 he became the first man to successfully fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. He called his airplane the Spirit of St. Louis and his courageous feat helped make Missouri a leader in the developing world of aviation. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized western world. -
Tea Pot Dome Scandal
During the Tea Pot Dome Scandal, Albert B. Fall, who served as secretary of the interior in President Warren G. Harding's cabinet, is found guilty of accepting a bribe will in office. Fall was the first individual to be convicted of a crime committed while a presidential cabinet member. -
Stock Market Crash "Black Tuesday"
Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression. -
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-sicken southern plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was a key figure in several of the most important social reform movements of the twentieth century; the Progressive movement, the New Deal, the Women's movement, the struggle for racial justice, and the United Nations. -
The New Deal
The New Deal was a series of federal programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. -
21st Amendment
The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide prohibition on alcohol. -
"Relief, Recovery, Reform"
Franklin D. Roosevelt's - Relief, Recovery, and Reform - required either immediate, temporary, or permanent actions and reforms and were collectively known as FDR's New Deal. The many Relief, Recovery, and Reform programs were initiated by a series of laws that were passed between 1933 and 1938. -
20th Amendment
The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, known as the "Lame-Duck Amendment," was ratified in 1933. The 20th Amendment shortened the period of time lame duck Members of Congress could stay in office after an election had been held from 13 months to 2 months. -
Civilian Conservation Corp.
The Civilian Conservation Corp. was a public relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men. The organization put thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits. -
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The FDIC's purpose was to provide stability to the economy and the failing banking system. The FDIC guaranteed a specific amount of checking and saving deposits for its member bank. -
Securities & Exchange Commission
The United States Securities & Exchange Commission is an independent, federal government agency responsible for protecting investors, maintaining fair and orderly functioning of securities markets, and facilitating capital formation. -
Social Security Administration
An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several states to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment. -
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics was an international multi-sport event that was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. The Nazi Party had risen to power in 1933, 2 years after Berlin was awarded the Games, and its racists policies led to an international debate about a boycott of the Games. The 1916 Olympics scheduled for Berlin were canceled due to WWI, under Goebbels' direction, the Nazi intended to use the Summer Olympics in Berlin as a showcase for the "new Germany."
