ch. 22 review sheet
KKK
In its second coming, in the '20s, the Ku Klux Klan differed in some ways yet retained a base commonality with its parent: revving up anger and fear that the country was being stolen by the wrong people.The '20s Klan claimed from 4 to 6 million members in the northern states. Not at all secret, it recruited through newspaper ads and elected 16 senators, scores of congressmen (the Klan claimed 75), and 11 governors. It declared itself nonviolent. But while Klan leaders paid lip service to nonviolence, its rhetoric was designed to instill rage and alarm.
Warren Harding
President of the United States from 1921-1923. He is considered one of our worst presidents because of his womanizing and poker-playing ways. The Teapot Dome scandal was his most well known catastrophe, before he died in 1923.
Prohibition
The 18th Amendment banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of liquor. The illegal sale and production of liquor was called "bootlegging" and it was very common, which made this amendment difficult to enforce. Criminal activity was very high due to the nature of bootlegging and the gangs associated with it.
Business Economy
The economy starts to prosper. Throughout the 1920s, each year saw a rise in every leading economic indicator (signs that the economy is thriving). Income levels rose (workers, for example, made 26 percent more in 1929 than they had in 1919), as did business growth, new construction, and stock market trading.
18th Amendment
The ratification of the 18th Amendment was completed on January 16th, 1919 and would take effect on January 17th, 1920. The 18th Amendment did not prohibit the consumption of alcohol, but rather simply the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
The Scopes Monkey Trial
Traditionalists in Tennessee believed that evolution should not be taught in schools. A teacher, John Scopes, was charged with teaching evolution in 1925. Scopes lost the case and was charged $100.
Flappers
a generation of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.
Consumer Society
a society in which the buying and selling of goods and services is the most important social and economic activity.
Speakeasies
also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an illicit establishment that sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920-1933, longer in some states)l
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
american leaders imposed dramatically high tariffs before with an infamous act of Congress passed in 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. In the late 1920s, more than a thousand economists warned American leaders against hiking tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods to as much as 60 percent.
Charles Lindbergh
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.
Clarence Darrow
an American judge, lawyer, and government official who currently serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Thomas succeeded Thurgood Marshall and is the second African American to serve on the court.
Jazz
artists such as King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, and Duke Ellington define the future of jazz in the United States and abroad. African American jazz culture has an amazing influence upon popular culture in the 1920s due to the availability of these recordings to white, upper middle class listeners.
Stock Market
during the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, after a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value.
New Women
flappers were the new women of the 1920's. They had short hair, short skirts, lots of makeup, and a new attitude. They came after the new legalizations for woman suffrage and the American woman's new freedom in society.
Baseball
for the first time, large numbers of Americans began to pay money to watch other people compete in athletic contests. Baseball was the "national pastime" in the 1920s. The most famous athlete in the United States in the 1920s was baseball star George Herman "Babe" Ruth, the right fielder for the New York Yankees. The colorful Ruth hit more home runs than any player had ever hit before. He excited fans with his outgoing personality. Ruth was the perfect hero for the Roaring Twenties.
Volstead Act
formally National Prohibition Act, U.S. law enacted in 1919 (and taking effect in 1920) to provide enforcement for the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
Anti-Unionism
he 1920s marked a period of sharp decline for the labor movement. Union membership and activities fell sharply in the face of economic prosperity, a lack of leadership within the movement, and anti-union sentiments from both employers and the government. The unions were much less able to organize strikes.
Nativism
in the 1920s a wide national consensus sharply restricted the overall inflow of immigrants, especially those from southern and eastern Europe. The second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the U.S. in the 1920s, used strong nativist rhetoric, but the Catholics led a counterattack.
Ernest Hemingway
is among the most prominent of the "Lost Generation" of expatriate writers who lived in Paris in the 1920s. He was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in literature and several of his books were made into movies. After a long struggle with depression, Hemingway took his own life in 1961.
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
is the name given to the 1929 Valentine's Day murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park garage on the morning of Valentine's Day, where they were made to line up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants.
Red Scare
many in the United States feared recent immigrants and dissidents, particularly those who embraced communist, socialist, or anarchist ideology.
Impact of Radio
most radio historians assert that radio broadcasting began in 1920 with the historic broadcast of KDKA. Few people actually heard the voices and music which were produced because of the dearth of radio receivers at that time. Families gathered around their radios for night-time entertainment.
Foreign Policy of 1920's
new restrictions on immigration and a lack of membership in international organizations, such as the League of Nations and the World Court, contributed to this isolationist period of America. Focus during this era was upon domestic affairs more so than foreign affairs.
Kellogg-Briand Act
or Pact of Paris, officially General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) is a 1928 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.
19th Amendment
passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.
William Jennings Bryan
ran unsuccessfully 3 times for president. He was a Democratic and Populist leader who was influential with income tax, Department of Labor, Prohibition, and woman suffrage.
Impact of Aviation
the 1920s and 1930s were formative decades in aviation on many levels. Flight technology rapidly advanced, military and civilian aviation grew tremendously, record-setting and racing captured headlines and public interest, and African Americans began to breach the social barriers of flight. The interwar period also witnessed the birth of modern rocketry.
Impact of Automobile
the company produced 1,700 cars during its first full year of business. Henry Ford produced the Model T to be an economical car for the average American. By 1920 Ford sold over a million cars. At the beginning of the century the automobile entered the transportation market as a toy for the rich.
Movies/Talkies
the primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. Al Jolson was an acclaimed American singer and actor whose career lasted from 1911 until his death in 1950. He was one of the most popular entertainers of the twentieth century whose influence extended to other popular performers, including Bing Crosby and Eddie Fisher. Famous for his character "The Tramp," the sweet little man with a bowler hat, mustache and cane, Charlie Chaplin was an iconic figure of the silent-film era and one of film's first superstars, elevating the industry in a way few could have ever imagined.
Hollywood
the rise of Hollywood in the 1920s was due to the economic prosperity during the Roaring Twenties Era. People had more time to spend on leisure and Americans fell in love with the movies. The movies were a cheap form of entertainment and Hollywood in the 1920's was a booming industry.
A. Mitchell Palmer
was United States Attorney General from 1919 to 1921. He is best known for overseeing the Palmer Raids during the Red Scare of 1919-20.
Harlem Renaissance
was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the African-American Great Migration, of which Harlem was the largest. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts.
Andrew Mellon
was a millionaire financier who served as Secretary of the Treasury for 11 years under Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. During the Roaring '20s, Mellon was regarded as a genius of rapid economic growth.
Teapot Dome
was a scandal in the 1920's under president Harding. There was oil set aside for emergency use at Teapot Dome in California under president Taft, but under Harding, he received a bag full of of bribery money. This was the first scandal that sent a cabinet member to jail.
Margaret Sanger
was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Herbert Hoover
was an American engineer, businessman, and politician who served as the 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. A Republican, as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s he introduced Progressive Era themes in the business community and provided government support for standardization, efficiency and international trade. As president from 1929 to 1933, his ambitious programs were overwhelmed by the Great Depression, which seemed to get worse every year despite the increasingly large-scale interventions he made in the economy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.
Calvin Coolidge
was the 30th President of the United States (1923-29). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th vice president in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923.
Marcus Garvey
was the most popular Black nationalist leader of the early-20th century, and the founder of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). A Jamaican immigrant, Garvey rose to prominence as a soapbox orator in Harlem, New York.
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.
Al Capone
went on to become the most infamous gangster in American history. In 1920 during the height of Prohibition, Capone's multi-million dollar Chicago operation in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling dominated the organized crime scene.
Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
were Italian immigrants and anarchists. They were executed for murder by the state of Massachusetts in 1927 on the basis of doubtful ballistics evidence . For countless observers throughout the world, Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted because of their political beliefs and ethnic background.
