From Business Culture to Great Depression: The Twenties, 1920–1932

Chapter 20: From Business Culture to Great Depression:

The Twenties, 1920–1932

Jsrcc 01 PR HIS 122

Sacco-Vanzetti• Sacco-Vanzetti Case• well-known case in which two Italian-American Anarchists

were found guilty and executed for a crime in which there was very little evidence linking them to the particular crime

Enrico Caruso

• Great opera • Sometimes called the first modern celebrity

Charles Lindbergh

• 1927 • Made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic

Equal Rights Amendment

• Proposed amendment to eliminate all legal distinctions “on account of sex”• Equal rights amendment =ERA• Section 1:

• Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state

• Section 2:• Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate

legislation, the provisions of this article

• Section 3:• `This amendment shall take effect two year after the date of

ratification

Albert Fall

• Notorious scandal involved Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall• Who accepted nearly $500,000 from private businessman to

whom he leas government oil

• Fall became the first cabinet member in history to be convicted of a felony

Washington Naval Arms Conference

• U.S. hosted the conference in 1922• Negotiated reductions in the navies of Britain, France,

Japan, Italy and United States

Hawley-Smoot Tariff

• Hoover signed with some reluctance in 1930• Made the economic situation worse• Raising higher taxes on imported goods• Inspired similar increases abroad• Reducing international trade

American Civil Liberties Union

• Organization founded during World War I to protest the suppression of freedom of expression in wartime; played a major role in court cases that achieved judicial recognition of Americans civil liberties.

Scopes Trial

• Trial of John Scopes, Tennessee teacher accused of violating state law prohibiting teaching of the theory of evolution; it became a nationally celebrated confrontation between religious fundamentalism and civil liberties.

Harlem Renaissance

• The term “New Negro” in art meant the rejection of established stereotypes and a search for black values to put in their place

Langston Hughes

• Poets• novelists

Claude McKay

• Home to Harlem 1928• McKay’s novels, had graphic sex and violence, actually

reinforced white prejudices about black life• Poem “if We Must die”

Herbert Hoover

• Great Engineer• Progressive republican• Ideological and political liabilities• Republican

Great Depression• Worst economic depression in American history; it was

spurred by the stock market crash of 1929 and lasted World War 2

Reconstruction Finance Corporation• Federal program established in 1932 under President

Hebert Hoover to loan money to banks and other institutions to help them avert bankruptcy ‘• loan money to failing banks, railroads, and other

businesses, and federal home loan bank systems’• Offered aid to home owners threatened with foreclosure

Alfred E. Smith• a democrat who ran against Herbery Hoover. First

Catholic to be nominated by a major party. 

Bill Robinson• a tap dancer and actor with Shirley Temple. Also was

part of the WW1war.