Between the Wars: Key Terms

  • 20th Amendment

    20th Amendment
    The Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3.
  • Frances Willard

    Frances Willard
    Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
  • Clarence Darrow

    Clarence Darrow
    Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer, a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform.
  • William Jennings Bryan

    William Jennings Bryan
    William Jennings Bryan was an American orator and politician from Nebraska. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, standing three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States.
  • Henry Ford

    Henry Ford
    Henry Ford was an American captain of industry and a business magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Franklin D. Roosevelt
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt

    Eleanor Roosevelt
    Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American politician, diplomat and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, and served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952.
  • Marcus Garvey

    Marcus Garvey
    Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. ONH was a proponent of Black nationalism in Jamaica and especially the United States.
  • Dorothea Lange

    Dorothea Lange
    Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration.
  • Tin Pan Alley

    Tin Pan Alley
    Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
  • Langston Hughes

    Langston Hughes
    James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry.
  • Charles A. Lindbergh

    Charles A. Lindbergh
    Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed Lucky Lindy, The Lone Eagle, and Slim, was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, explorer, and environmental activist.
  • Federal Reserve System

    Federal Reserve System
    The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics (particularly the panic of 1907) led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.
  • The Great Migration

    The Great Migration
    The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the American South.
  • 21th Amendment

    21th Amendment
    The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol on January 16, 1919.
  • Harlem Renaissance

    Harlem Renaissance
    The 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.
  • Teapot Dome Scandal

    Teapot Dome Scandal
    The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding.
  • Scopes Monkey Trial

    Scopes Monkey Trial
    The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.
  • Stock Market Crash "Black Tuesday"

    Stock Market Crash "Black Tuesday"
    The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29), the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great Depression), when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after effects.
  • The Great Depression

    The Great Depression
    The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, originating in the United States.
  • The Dust Bowl

    The Dust Bowl
    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 American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s: severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon.
  • The New Deal

    The New Deal
    The New Deal was a series of federal programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations enacted in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression.