-
Frances Willard
Frances Willard was an American educator, reformer, and founder of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. An excellent speaker, a successful lobbyist, and an expert in pressure politics, she was a leader of the national Prohibition Party. Her influence was a major factor in the passing of the 19th and 20th amendments. -
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a genre of American popular music that arose in the late 19th century from the American song-publishing industry centred in New York City.its name eventually became synonymous with American popular music in general. When these genres first became prominent, the most profitable commercial product of Tin Pan Alley was sheet music for home consumption, and songwriters, lyricists, and popular performers laboured to produce music to meet the demand. -
William Jennings Bryan
William Bryan became a Nebraska congressman in 1890. He starred at the 1896 Democratic convention with his Cross of Gold speech that favored free silver, but was defeated in his bid to become U.S. president by William McKinley. Bryan lost his subsequent bids for the presidency in 1900 and 1908. In his later years, Bryan campaigned for peace, prohibition and suffrage, and increasingly criticized the teaching of evolution. -
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism, the theory that human groups and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had perceived in plants and animals in nature. According to the theory, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the weak were diminished while the strong grew in power. Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest.” -
Henry Ford
In 1903, he established the Ford Motor Company, and five years later the company rolled out the first Model T. In order to meet overwhelming demand for the revolutionary vehicle, Ford introduced revolutionary new mass-production methods, including large production plants, the use of standardized, interchangeable parts and, in 1913, the world’s first moving assembly line for cars. Enormously influential in the industrial world, Ford was also outspoken in the political realm. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
She was one of the most active first ladies in history and worked for political, racial and social justice. After President Roosevelt’s death, Eleanor was a delegate to the United Nations and continued to serve as an advocate for a wide range of human rights issues. She remained active in Democratic causes and was a prolific writer until her death at age 78. -
Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System, often referred to as the Federal Reserve or simply "the Fed," is the central bank 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. -
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey became a leader in the black nationalist movement by applying the economic ideas of Pan-Africanists to the immense resources available in urban centers. After arriving in New York in 1916, he founded the Negro World newspaper, an international shipping company called Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. During the 1920s, his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the largest secular organization in African-American history. -
The Great Migration
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life. -
Jazz music
The decade between 1920 and 1930 marked many crucial events in jazz. It all started with the prohibition of alcohol in 1920. Rather than prevent drinking, the law gave rise to speakeasies and private residences and inspired a wave of jazz-accompanied and booze-fueled rent parties. Jazz was a very good way for people to express themselves, especially in the harlem renaissance. -
1st Red Scare
The so-called “Red Scare” refers to the fear of communism in the USA during the 1920’s. It is said that there were over 150,000 anarchists or communists in USA in 1920 alone and this represented only 0.1% of the overall population of the USA. This feeling was amplified when the royal family of Russia was overthrown. -
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Langston Hughes was known as a father to the Harlem Renaissance. He often used a form of poetry known as Jazz poetry. -
Warren G. Harding's "Return to Normalcy"
In 1920, he won the general election in a landslide, promising a “return to normalcy” after the hardships of World War I (1914-1918). As president, he favored pro-business policies and limited immigration. Harding died suddenly in San Francisco in 1923, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933). After Harding’s death, the Teapot Dome Scandal and other instances of corruption came to light, damaging his reputation. -
Prohibition
Prohibition was an attempt to end our nation's alcoholic tendencies. It prohibited the sell or purchase of alcohol. However, it was poorly enforced and bootleggers were common. -
Tea Pot Dome Scandal
The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government. The scandal involved oil tycoons, poker-playing politicians, illegal liquor sales, a murder-suicide, a womanizing president and a bagful of bribery cash delivered on the sly. In the end, the scandal would empower the Senate to conduct rigorous investigations into government corruption. -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural surplus in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art. -
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow a lawyer whose work as defense counsel in many dramatic criminal trials earned him a place in American legal history. He was also well known as a public speaker, debater, and miscellaneous writer. After World War I, Darrow defended several war protesters charged with violating state sedition laws. -
Scopes Monkey Trial
The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. -
Charles A. Lindbergh
He was an American aviator, made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. Other pilots had crossed the Atlantic before him. But Lindbergh was the first person to do it alone nonstop. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. -
Stock Market Crash "Black Tuesday"
Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken 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. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
20th Amendment
The 20th amendment is a simple amendment that sets the dates at which federal (United States) government elected offices end. In also defines who succeeds the president if the president dies. If the president were to die, then the vice president would become president. -
Franklin D. Rooselvelt
With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or “fireside chats.” His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. FDR helped the US to beat the Nazis and their allies. -
"Relief, Recovery, Reform"
The Relief, Recovery and Reform programs, known as the 'Three R's', were introduced by FDR. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to address the problems of mass unemployment and the economic crisis. FDR's Three R'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. -
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established in 1933 as one of President Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal programs, providing jobs and electricity to the rural Tennesee River Valley—an area that spans seven states in the South. The TVA was envisioned as a federally-owned electric utility and regional economic development agency. It still exists today as the nation’s largest public power provider. -
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FCIC)
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an agency created in 1933—during the depths of the Great Depression—to protect bank depositors and ensure a level of trust in the American banking system. After the stock market crash of 1929, anxious people withdrew their money from banks in cash, causing a devastating wave of bank failures across the country. -
Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)
The Securities and Exchange Commission was established in 1934 to regulate the commerce in stocks, bonds, and other securities. Controls on the issuing and trading of securities were virtually nonexistent, allowing for any number of frauds and other schemes. Further, the unreported concentration of controlling stock interests in a very few hands led to the abuses of power that the free exchange of stock supposedly eliminated. -
The New Deal
When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. More than that, Roosevelt’s New Deal permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to the U.S. populace. -
21st amendment
Prohibition proved difficult to enforce and failed to have the intended effect of eliminating crime and other social problems–to the contrary, it led to a rise in organized crime, as the bootlegging of alcohol became an ever-more lucrative operation. In 1933, widespread public disillusionment led Congress to ratify the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition. -
Social Security Administration (SSA)
Although it was initially created to combat unemployment, Social Security now functions primarily as a safety net for retirees and the disabled, and provides death benefits to taxpayer dependents. The Social Security system has remained relatively unchanged since 1935. -
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange has been called America's greatest documentary photographer. She is best known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. She created photographs for the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) investigating living conditions of farm workers and their families in Western states such as California.
