Week 14: The Jazz Age and the Great Depression

Universal Negro Improvement Association

A Harlem-based group, led by charismatic, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, that arose in the 1920s to mobilize African American workers and champion black separatism.

William Faulkner

A Rose for Emily

Negro Nationalism

A cultural and political movement in the 1920s spearheaded by Marcus Garvey which exalted blackness, black cultural expression, and black exclusiveness.

Dust Bowl

A drought in the 1930s that turned the Great Planes very dry.

Marx Brothers

A family of American film comedians who flourished in the 1930s; Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera are two of their films. The brothers included the wisecracking, cigar-smoking Groucho; the harp-playing, woman-chasing Harpo, who never spoke but beeped a bicycle horn instead; and the piano-playing, Italian-accented Chico. A fourth brother, Zeppo, appeared in a few films, but a fifth brother, Gummo, did not appear in any.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

A gifted African-American poet, novelist, and playwright, who became one of the foremost interpreters of racial relationships in the United States and the name most often associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Influenced by the Bible, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Walt Whitman, Hughes depicted realistically the ordinary lives of black people.

Bull Market

A period of increased stock trading and rising stock prices

Claude McKay

A poet who was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement and wrote the poem "If We Must Die" after the Chicago riot of 1919.

Cotton Club

A speak easy where black people played but could not be apart of the audience. One of the most famous Harlem nightspots.

stock market

A system for buying and selling shares of companies

Bessie Smith

African American blues singer who played and important role in the Harlem Reniassance.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

Agency established in 1932 to provide emergency relief to large businesses, insurance companies, and banks.

Grant Wood

American Gothic

Douglas MacArthur

American general, who commanded allied troops in the Pacific during World War II.

John Steinbeck

American novelist who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath". (1939) A story of Dustbowl victims who travel to California to look for a better life.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

An interracial American organization that created work for the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation.

speculation

An involvement in risky business transactions in an effort to make a quick or large profit.

Art and entertainment in the Great Depression

Books and movies gave people distraction on what was going on

Edward "Duke" Ellington

Conductor and composer of the Big Band sound that blended instruments together

Mexican Repatriation

Forced migration of approximately one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico between 1929-1937. 60% of people deported were actually children born in the United States. It emerged out of the Great Depression and was a widespread assumption that Mexican Americans were usurpers of American Jobs. Many opted to leave in light of the anti-Mexican climate, but others were coerced to leave. Many accumulated in border towns. In 2005, California passed an apology act in which it officially recognized unconstitutional tactics of coerced deportation of Mexican Americans.

Harlem Renaissance (1920s)

Group of African American artists, intellectuals, and social leaders who lived in Harlem in the 1920s. They were termed the New Negroes by black professor Alain Locke because they had risen from the ashes of slavery to proclaim African American creative genius and work toward defeating racial prejudice.

Bonus Army

Group of WWI vets. that marched to D.C. in 1932 to demand the immediate payment of their goverment war bonuses in cash

Rugged Individualism

Herbert Hoover's belief that people must be self-reliant and not depend upon the federal government for assistance.

Hoboes

In the 1930s these men roamed the country, hopped of freight cars, and went to wherever they could find a job. Sometimes they had to beg for food.

Federal Reserve's role in the Great depression

It could have prevented deflation by preventing the collapse of the banking system or by counteracting the collapse with an expansion of the monetary base. It failed to do for many reasons and the economy collapsed.

Hunger Marches

January 1931: Oklahoma City, 500 men and women looted grocery stores, "feed the hungry, tax the rich"

Louis Armstrong

Leading African American jazz musician during the Harlem Renaissance; he was a talented trumpeter whose style influenced many later musicians.

Henry Luce

Magazine innovator whose Life exploited photographs for their visual impact

Black thursday

October 24, 1929; stock market crashes and almost 13 million shares are sold that day alone

Black Tuesday

October 29, 1929; date of the worst stock-market crash in American history and beginning of the Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Party: Republican Major Events: Great Depression strikes; Promoted attitude of rugged individualism

Stock Market Crash of 1929

Plunge in stock market prices that marked the beginning of the Great Depression

National Credit Corporation

This organization loaned money to smaller banks, which helped them stave off bankruptcy.

Shantytowns

Unplanned slum development on the margins of cities, dominated by crude dwellings and shelters made mostly of scrap wood, iron, and even pieces of cardboard.

Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935

Was established as a reparation program for Filipinos living in the United States. They were provided free passage back to the Philippines. If they wished to return to the US, the Filipinos were restricted under the quota system established by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934.

Marcus Gravey

a black leader in the 1920's who helped promote unity and racial pride among black Americans and urged them to join the "back to Africa" movement and his Universal Improvement Association

Jazz

a style of music characterized by the use of improvisation

margin

buying a stock by paying only a fraction of the stock price and borrowing the rest

Hawley-Smoot Tariff

charged a high tax for imports thereby leading to less trade between America and foreign countries along with some economic retaliation

margin call

demand by a broker that investors pay back loans made for stocks purchased on margin

The Great Migration

movement of over 300,000 African American from the rural south into Northern cities between 1914 and 1920

Causes of the Depression

overproduction, crisis in farming, rising gap in rich and poor, stock market, stock market triggers banking crisis, federal reserve, hawley-smott tariff

public works

projects such as highways, parks, and libraries built with public funds for public use

Emergency Relief and Construction Act

public works and emergency loans, first time government gave direct relief funds

Okies

the farmers, who in the Great Depression, were forced to move, many moved to Oklahoma

bank run

widespread panic in which great numbers of people try to redeem their paper money