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Great Depression
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 until 1942. It was a very difficult time in the United States. Banks and businesses closed, leaving millions of Americans without a job. With no way to earn money, many people could not pay their bills or buy food and needed help from the government to survive. -
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday refers to October 29, 1929, when panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange (four times the normal volume at the time), and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 12%. Black Tuesday is often cited as the beginning of the Great Depression. -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination.Severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused the phenomenon. -
Food Riots
"Food riots" begin to break out in parts of the U.S. In Minneapolis, several hundred men and women smash the windows of a grocery market and make off with fruit, canned goods, bacon, and ham. One of the store's owners pulls out a gun to stop the looters, but is leapt upon and has his arm broken. The "riot" is brought under control by 100 policemen. Seven people are arrested. -
Reconstruction
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government chartered during the administration of Herbert Hoover in 1932. The agency gave $2 billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations, and other businesses. The RFC continued under the New Deal and played a major role in recapitalizing banks. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt President
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president Nov 1932. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Being the only president to be elected four times. -
Work Progress Administration
The program employs more than 8.5 million individuals in 3,000 counties across the nation. These individuals, drawing a salary of only $41.57 a month, will improve or create highways, roads, bridges, and airports. In addition, the WPA will put thousands of artists -- writers, painters, theater directors, and sculptors -- to work on various projects. -
Emergency Relief Appropriation Act
The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 was passed on April 8 during the "Second Hundred Days" as a part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoping to lift the country out of the crippling Great Depression, Congress allowed the president to use the funds at his discretion. Providing almost $5 billion for work relief for the unemployed and projects.The act was unprecedented and remains the largest system of public-assistance relief programs in the nation's history. -
Social Security ACct
By signing this act on August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt became the first president to advocate federal assistance for the elderly. The Act provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, and a lump-sum benefit at death. Payments to current retirees are financed by a payroll tax on current workers' wages, half directly as a payroll tax and half paid by the employer. The act also gave money to states to provide assistance to aged individuals, unemployment, child welfare, and many more things -
Dorothea Lange takes the Migrant Mother photo
The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. This photo is now one of the most well known images from the Great Depression -
The Grapes of Wrath
The book "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck is published. The book is about a family that is forced to leave home and try to find work in California during the Great Depression. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Great Depression Ends
The suffering American economy was given a boost when the fighting countries needed supplies and looked to America to make them. After Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, America entered the war. The U.S. enlisted more than 10 million men and women into the military. Since so many were fighting in the war, it was left for those left at home to work in the factories to make supplies for the war effort.
