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The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect, prohibiting the making, selling, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
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Flappers were a "new breed" 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.
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A new way of playing the piano called the Harlem Stride Style was created during the Harlem Renaissance, and helped blur the lines between the poor Negros and socially elite Negros.
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The Twenties witnessed the large scale use of automobiles, telephones, motion pictures, and electricity, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and marked significant changes in lifestyle and culture.
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The most popular dances during the decade with the foxtrot, waltz, and American tango. From the early 1920s, a variety of eccentric novelty dances were also developed including the Breakaway, Charleston, and Lindy Hop.
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For black Americans in the Depression, churches remained the center of community life.
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Popular culture was characterized by innovation in film, visual art and architecture, radio, music, dance, fashion, literature, and intellectual movements.
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"The Catholic Church and the Negro Priest" demonstrates the obstacles African–American priests faced in the Catholic Church. The article confronts what it saw as policies based on race that excluded African–Americans from higher positions in the church.
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Cotton prices at New Orleans peak at 42 cents a pound, prompting Southern farmers to plant the largest crop in history, which resulted in the price of cotton dropping to 10 cents a pound.
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In 1920, Warren G. Harding ran against James M. Cox, in which Harding won the election.
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Warren G. Harding's policy of a "return to normalcy" was an attempt to capitalize on this populist feeling after the war.
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Congress passes immigration restrictions, for the first time creating a quota for European immigration to the United States.
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Congress passed the temporary Emergency Tariff Act to provide protection for American farmers, whose wartime markets in Europe were disappearing with the recovery of European agricultural production.
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Claude McKay wrote a poem called “America” which is a love sonnet to the country McKay had chosen as his own, though it also discusses the darker side of American society.
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The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon won the Children's Newbery Book Award.
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The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot was the ultimate indictment of the modern world's loss of personal, moral, and spiritual values.
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Congress passes the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, sharply raising tariff duties to protect the American market for American manufactures, boosting the domestic economy of the Roaring Twenties.
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Alfred Sloan built his company into the world's largest automaker.
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The Mellon Plan was economic legislation passed by Congress in 1924 reducing taxes on the wealthy and businesses, advocating high tariffs and cuts in government spending and corporate taxes.
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In 1924, Calvin Coolidge, John W. Davis, and Robert M. LaFollette ran for president, in which Coolidge won the election.
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The New Negro by Alain Locke was a hopeful look at the negro in America.
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Langston Hughes published his poem "The Weary Blues".
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Aaron Douglas painted "Into Bondage" in which the small shackled figures at the left of the composition (perhaps women) are overtaken by the large muscular men who also are shackled and move hesitantly toward the slanted slave ships on the horizon.
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The American Socialist Party nominated Eugene V. Debs for president, and he was the first candidate to mount a campaign from jail.
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Italian immigrant radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed by electric chair because they were accused of double murder.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston described black life in a black community.
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The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer.
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In 1928, Herbert Hoover ran against Alfred E. Smith; Hoover won the election.
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The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression.
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Edith Wilson, a black singer, sung her song "Black and Blue" on stage draped in all white.
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Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day.
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The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s.
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Hoover past the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which imposed even higher taxes on imports. Hoover believed that this would force Americans to buy American goods, but the plan back-fired. It simply made American exports even more difficult.
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Hoover began to build the Colorado Dam which was intended to provide work and also contracts for construction companies, but it was the only example of Hoover getting involved in the economy.
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The Civilian Conservation Corps sent 250,000 young men to work camps to perform reforestation and conservation tasks. Removed surplus of workers from cities, provided healthy conditions for boys, provided money for families.
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal reform legislation was highly similar to the Catholic Church's teaching on social and economic issues.
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The Agricultural Adjustment Act protected farmers from price drops by providing crop subsidies to reduce production, educational programs to teach methods of preventing soil erosion.
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The Federal Emergency Relief Act distributed millions of dollars of direct aid to unemployed workers.
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The Public Works Administration received $3.3 billion appropriation from Congress for public works projects.
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The National Industrial Recovery Act created NRA to enforce codes of fair competition, minimum wages, and to permit collective bargaining of workers.
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The Glass-Steagall Act created federally insured bank deposits to prevent bank failures.
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The Civil Works Administration provided public works jobs at $15/week to four million workers in 1934.
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The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission regulated stock market and restricted margin buying.
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The Works Progress Administration employed 8.5 million workers in construction and other jobs, but more importantly provided work in arts, theater, and literary projects.
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The Rural Electrification Administration encouraged farmers to join cooperatives to bring electricity to farms.
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The National Youth Administration provided part-time employment to more than two million college and high school students.
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The Wagner Act allowed workers to join unions and outlawed union-busting tactics by management.
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The Social Security Act provided pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to blind, deaf, disabled, and dependent children.
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The Soil Conservation Act is a United States federal law that allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil and prevent erosion.
