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Humanitarian Work
Hoover dedicated his talents to humanitarian work. He helped 120,000 stranded American tourists return home from Europe when the hostilities broke out, and coordinated the delivery of food and supplies to citizens of Belgium after that country was overrun by Germany. -
Prohibition
The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution–which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors–ushered in a period in American history known as Prohibition. -
Palmer raids
Palmer Raids, also called Palmer Red Raids, raids conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1919 and 1920 in an attempt to arrest foreign anarchists, communists, and radical leftists, many of whom were subsequently deported. -
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith, American singer, one of the greatest blues vocalists. Smith grew up in poverty and obscurity. -
recession
A recession began in January. The highest marginal tax rate was 73 percent for those earning more than $1 million. Almost 70 percent of federal revenue came from income taxes. -
the lost generation
The Lost Generation refers to the generation of writers, artists, musicians, and intellectuals that came of age during the First World War and the “Roaring Twenties.” -
Consumerisam
Consumer culture flourished, with ever greater numbers of Americans purchasing automobiles, electrical appliances, and other widely available consumer products -
F. Scott Fitzgerald
American short-story writer and novelist famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age -
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and noted sportsman. -
Sign In to My Britannica Gertrude Stein
vant-garde American writer, eccentric, and self-styled genius whose Paris home was a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II. -
Ezra Pound
American poet and critic, a supremely discerning and energetic entrepreneur of the arts who did more than any other single figure to advance a “modern” movement in English and American literature. -
Harlem Renissance
Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. -
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 from about 1916 to 1970. -
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. -
Louis armstrong
The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also. -
New Immigrants
The 1920s unfolded at the tail end of the greatest wave of immigration in American history. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 25 million foreigners arrived on American shores, transforming the country. -
Sacco-Vanzetti case
Sacco-Vanzetti case, controversial murder trial in Massachusetts, U.S. (1921–27), that resulted in the execution of the defendants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. -
Bessie Colemen
ecame the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license -
The Immigration Act of 1924
imited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
Scopes Trial
prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. -
stock market crash
Stock market crash of 1929, also called the Great Crash, a sharp decline in U.S. stock market values in 1929 -
great depression
The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from the stock market crash of 1929 to 1939. -
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. -
The Dust Bowl
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. -
black blizzards
swept the Great Plains. Some of these carried Great Plains topsoil as far east as Washington, D.C. and New York City, and coated ships in the Atlantic Ocean with dust. -
Hoovervilles
Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and savings. Many people were forced to wait in bread lines for food and to live in squalid shantytowns -
FDR New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. -
Bank Stabilization
Franklin D. Roosevelt calls Congress into special session, sending up as his first piece of proposed legislation a bill to stabilize the country's failing banking system. Congress passes the bill that very day. -
Economy Bill
Congress passes Franklin D. Roosevelt's economy bill, slashing government spending by cutting $500 million in scheduled payments to veterans and federal employees. -
First Fireside Chat
Franklin D. Roosevelt conducts his first "Fireside Chat," going on the radio to communicate directly with the American people. Roosevelt reassures the country that its banks are now safe for business. -
Confidence in Banks Restored
Franklin D. Roosevelt lifts the nationwide bank holiday he imposed one week earlier. Customers, buoyed by FDR's confidence in the banking system, deposit more money than they withdraw, ending the country's banking crisis. -
Civilian Conservation Corps
Congress creates the Civilian Conservation Corps, which will put 250,000 young unemployed men to work in reforestation and development of the National Parks and Forests. -
Agricultural Adjustment Act
Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which seeks to alleviate rural misery by reducing farm output and raising prices. -
Federal Emergency Relief Act
Congress passes the Federal Emergency Relief Act, distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the states for dispersal to the one-fourth of the national workforce unable to obtain jobs. -
Federal Securities Act
Congress passes the Federal Securities Act, for the first time committing the federal government to the regulation of Wall Street. -
National Industrial Recovery Act
Congress passes the National Industrial Recovery Act, the signature piece of legislation of the First New Deal, which Roosevelt hopes will lift the industrial economy out of Depression. -
Federal Housing Administration Created
Congress creates the Federal Housing Administration to insure loans for construction and repairs of homes. -
Emergency Relief Appropriations Act
Congress passes the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which allocates $5 billion for work relief projects administered through the new Works Progress Administration, which will ultimately employ more than eight million Americans. -
National Industrial Recovery Act Ruled Unconstitutional
In Schechter v. United States, the Supreme Court rules that the National Industrial Recovery Act—the centerpiece of the First New Deal—is unconstitutional. -
Social Security Act
Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, the signature piece of legislation of the entire New Deal era, which permanently changes the relationship between the American people, their government, and the free market. -
19th amendment
allowed women to vote.
