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Marcus Garvey
A advocate of Black nationalism in Jamaica and especially the United States. The leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League -
Harlem Renaissance
A cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s. -
Prohibition
Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. During the 19th century, alcoholism, family violence, and saloon-based political corruption prompted activists to end the alcoholic beverage trade to cure the ill society and weaken the political opposition. -
Social Darwinism
Various ways of thinking and theories that emerged in the second half of the 19th century and tried to apply the evolutionary concept of natural selection to human society. -
1st Red Scare
A period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. At its height in 1919–1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread of communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern if not paranoia. -
Warren G. Harding’s “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. -
Jazz Music
A music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression. -
The Great Migration
The movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred in the 1920's. -
Tin Pan Alley
The collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In the 1910s and 1920s Tin Pan Alley published pop-songs and dance numbers created in newly popular jazz and blues styles. -
Henry Ford
An American captain of industry and a business magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. -
Frances Willard
An American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. -
Tea Pot Dome Scandal
A bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922. Secretary Albert Bacon Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. In 1922, the leases became the subject of investigation. Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies and became the first Cabinet member to go to prison. -
Langston Hughes
An American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. -
Clarence Darrow
An American lawyer, he defended high-profile clients in many famous trials of the early 20th century, including teacher John T. Scopes in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925), in which he opposed statesman and orator William Jennings Bryan. -
William Jennings Bryan
An American orator and politician from Nebraska. He opposed Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds, most famously at the Scopes Trial in 1925 in Tennessee. -
Scopes Monkey Trial
An American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. -
Charles A. Lindbergh
An American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, explorer, and environmental activist. At age 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to world famous by winning the Orteig Prize bymaking a nonstop flight from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, to Paris, France. His achievement spurred interest in both commercial aviation and air mail. -
The Great Depression
A severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s. The depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929. -
Stock Market Crash “Black Tuesday”
The most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. The crash signaled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. -
The New Deal
Federal programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations that occurred in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. -
The Dust Bowl
A period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused it. -
Federal Reserve System
The central banking system of the United States. Created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System. -
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
A United States government corporation providing deposit insurance to depositors in US banks. The FDIC was created by the 1933 Banking Act during the Great Depression to restore trust in the American banking system. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
An American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945, directed the United States federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband's policies. -
20th Amendment
Changed the end of the term of Presidency to January 20th instead of March. -
Tennessee Valley Authority
A federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter on May 18, 1933, to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. -
21st Amendment
Repealed the 18th Amendment which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol. Unique because it was the only amendment created to repeal a prior amendment. Ratified -
Securities & Exchange Commission
An independent agency of the United States federal government. The SEC holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws, proposing securities rules, and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other activities and organizations, including the electronic securities markets in the United States. -
Social Security Administration
An independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability, and survivors' benefits. It was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal with the signing of the Social Security Act of 1935. -
Dorothea Lange
An American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. -
“Relief, Recovery, Reform”
The Relief, Recovery and Reform programs, known as the 'Three R's', were introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to address the problems of mass unemployment and the economic crisis.
