Warren Harding Warren Gamaliel Harding
(1865-1923): the 29th President of the United States (1921-1923).
Calvin Coolidge John Calvin Coolidge, Jr
(1872-1933): the 30th President of the United States (1923-1929).
Henry Ford
Founder of Ford Motor Company and pioneer of the assembly-line technique of mass production. His system of Fordism; the mass production of inexpensive consumer goods with high wages for laborers;revolutionized the American economy. Henry Ford's first car was a Model T, substantial not only to the 1920's but to cars today. Also, his most famous line was "You can buy a car in any color you want- as long as it's black." This line indicated that he was the top car salesperson of the time period.
assembly line
A system of workers and machinery by which a product is assembled in a series of consecutive operations; typically the product is attached to a continuously moving belt Source:
Kellogg-Briand Pact
an international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them. " It was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on August 27, 1928.
Red Scare
The term Red Scare denotes the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism or radical leftism, used by anti-leftist proponents.
Palmer Raids
attempts by the US Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The Palmer Raids occurred in the larger context of the Red Scare, the term given to fear of and reaction against political radicals in the U.S. in the years immediately following World
American Mafia
(or simply the Mafia or Mob in the United States), is an Italian-American criminal society.
Al Capone
(1899 –1947) was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1931.
Eighteenth Amendment
established prohibition, declaring illegal the production, transport, and sale of alcohol in 1920.
Fundamentalism
religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism. religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.
Nineteenth Amendment
Ratified in 1920, it granted women the right to vote and forbade any suffrage restrictions based on gender. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement, which had been active since before the Civil War.
Volstead Act
set down methods of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition
Harlem Renaissance
an African-American cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s.
Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr
(1887–1940): was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).
The Great Migration
the movement of six million African-Americans out of the rural southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians label the period between 1910 and 1930 as the first Great Migration, in which about 1.6 million migrants left mostly rural areas to migrate to northern and midwestern industrial cities.
bank run
the withdrawal by a large number of individuals or investors of money from a bank due to fears of the bank's instability, with the ironic effect of increasing the bank's vulnerability to failure
Black Tuesday
October 29, 1929, when a mass panic caused a crash in the stock market and stockholders divested over sixteen million shares, causing the overall value of the stock market to drop precipitously
speculation
the practice of investing in risky financial opportunities in the hopes of a fast payout due to market fluctuations.
American individualism
the belief, strongly held by Herbert Hoover and others, that hard work and individual effort, absent government interference, comprised the formula for success in the U.S.
Bonus Army
a group of World War I veterans and affiliated groups who marched to Washington in 1932 to demand their war bonuses early, only to be refused and forcibly removed by the U.S. Army
Dust Bowl
the area in the middle of the country that had been badly overfarmed in the 1920s and suffered from a terrible drought that coincided with the Great Depression; the name came from the "black blizzard" of topsoil and dust that blew through the area
Great Depression
A major economic collapse that lasted from 1929 to 1940 in the U.S.
Hoovervilles
the popular name for shanty towns built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after the President of the United States at the time, Herbert Hoover, because he allegedly let the nation slide into depression.