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The 1929 stock market crash resulted from a combination of factors, including excessive speculation and buying "on margin" (borrowing to buy stocks), an overvalued market, a struggling economy with declining production and unemployment, risky banking practices, and increasing interest rates -
Bank failures during the Great Depression were rampant, with over 9,000 banks collapsing between 1930 and 1933, leading to widespread loss of savings and significantly contracting the money supply. These failures were driven by bank runs and contagion, where fear about one bank's solvency would spread to others, creating a domino effect -
Herbert Hoover's tenure as the 31st president of the United States began on his inauguration on March 4, 1929, and ended on March 4, 1933. Hoover, a Republican, took office after a landslide victory in the 1928 presidential election over Democrat Al Smith of New York. -
Hoovervilles were makeshift shantytowns of homeless people during the Great Depression, built from scavenged materials and named derisively after President Herbert Hoover, who was blamed for the economic crisis. These communities sprung up across the U.S., providing shelter and a stark symbol of the widespread poverty, unemployment, and desperation of the era. -
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms in the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s, caused by a combination of a severe drought and aggressive, poor farming techniques like the systematic destruction of prairie grasses. -
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was U.S. legislation from 1930 that raised import duties to protect American businesses and farmers during the Great Depression. It resulted in widespread retaliatory tariffs from other countries, a significant decrease in global trade, and is considered by many to be a major factor that worsened the worldwide economic crisis -
AI Overview
The Scottsboro Boys case involved nine African American teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. The legal proceedings lasted several years, involved multiple retrials, and became a landmark case that highlighted the systemic racism of the Jim Crow-era justice system. -
The "Bonus Army" was a march on Washington, D.C., in 1932 by thousands of World War I veterans demanding immediate payment of a promised war bonus. Facing economic hardship from the Great Depression, they camped in the capital, but Congress defeated their bonus bill. In July, the U.S. Army -
Roosevelt began on January 20, 1941, when he was once again inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the fourth term of his presidency ended with his death on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt won a third term by defeating Republican nominee Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential election. -
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national Bank Holiday on March 6, 1933, to temporarily close all U.S. banks to stop panic-driven bank runs and stabilize the banking system. This "holiday" allowed the government to assess banks, passed the Emergency Banking Act, and established a licensing system for banks to reopen, restoring public confidence and preventing further collapses. -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his first fireside chat, on the Emergency Banking Act, eight days after taking office (March 12, 1933). -
The FDIC was created in 1933 by the Banking Act of 1933, signed into law by President Roosevelt, in response to widespread bank failures during the Great Depression. Its primary purpose is to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system by insuring deposits in banks and thrift institutions up to a certain limit. The agency officially began insuring deposits on January 1, 1934, and since then, no depositor has lost money in an FDIC-insured bank failure. -
The National Housing Act of 1934 established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to stimulate home building and homeownership during the Great Depression by providing mortgage insurance to lenders, which made home loans more accessible and affordable for working-class Americans. While successful in increasing homeownership, the FHA's policies also contributed to racial segregation and economic disparities through practices like redlining, which denied loans in minority neighborhoods. -
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, was a U.S. federal law aimed at reversing assimilation policies and promoting Native American self-governance and cultural revitalization. It ended the practice of allotting tribal lands, extended trust periods for existing tribal lands, and allowed tribes to form their own governments with their own constitutions.. -
The Social Security Act is a federal law signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935, as part of his New Deal program. It established the Social Security program, providing financial security through benefits for old age, survivors, and disability, as well as unemployment insurance. The Act aims to support the general welfare of Americans by providing a safety net for retirees, families whose wage earners have died, and workers unable to work due to illness or accident -
The Black Cabinet was an organized but unofficial group of African-American advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. African-American federal employees