The 1920's

The decade of the 1920's which got this nickname because of the times prosperity and excitement, yet there were many economic issues lurking behind the scenes just waiting for the perfect moment to upend the U.S. economy.

• The Critical Period

• The Era of Good Feelings

• The Roaring Twenties

• The Great Depression

African Americans moved to Northern cities because of job opportunities in factories producing war goods and better social conditions.

• The Exodusters

• Harlem Renaissance

• Great Migration

• NAACP

Americans would purchase consumer products (washing machines, vacuums, radios, etc.) and make partial payments on set intervals. Often these installment plans led to a lot of debt (i.e. early form of credit cards).

• consumer spending

• buying on margin

• debt spending

• buying on credit

An intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s.

• Harlem Renaissance

• Charleston Renaissance

• Atlanta Renaissance

• Chicago Renaissance

A subculture of young women in the 1920's who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.'

• victorians

• bobs

• flappers

• friends

The time period in which the manufacture and sale of liquor was illegal according to the United States Constitution. It didn't work!

• Reconstruction

• Prohibition

• Civil War

• Suffrage

A widespread fear of far-left extremism, including but not limited to Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included the Russian 1917 October Revolution and anarchist bombings.

• First Red Scare

• Second Red Scare

• Third Red Scare

• Fourth Red Scare

The Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 were referred to as this because they limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. 1921 reduced flow to 3%, but then 1924 reduced to just 2% of 1890 census.

• Chinese Act

• Japanese Act

• Mexican Act

• Quota Acts

By the middle of the 1920s, estimates for national membership in this group ranged from three million to as high as eight million crossing all classes - low, middle, and high, depicting the problem of racism in the United States.

• Know-Nothings

• Anti-Saloon League

• Ku Klux Klan

• American Federation of Labor

The 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal. The trial showed off the growing gap of traditionalists v. modernists in society. It was a victory for the traditionalists. Also, known as the Monkey Trial.

• Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Trial

• Scopes Trial

• Lindbergh Trial