US History: 1920s Economy, Society, and Culture

Vocabulary flashcards covering the economic boom, government policies, societal changes, Prohibition, mass culture, and the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.

Mass Production

The rapid manufacture of large numbers of identical products.

Model T

A reliable car introduced by Henry Ford that the average American could afford, first sold for $850.

Consumer Revolution

A period in which a flood of new, affordable goods became available to the public, supported by the widespread availability of electrical power.

Piggly Wiggly

The first self-service grocery store model, developed in Memphis, TN by Clarence Saunders.

Installment Buying

A purchasing method where a consumer makes a small down payment and then pays off the rest of the debt in regular monthly payments.

Bull Market

A period of rising stock prices.

Buying on Margin

A form of buying stock on credit where a buyer pays as little as 10% of the stock price upfront to a broker and pays the rest over time.

Andrew Mellon

Secretary of the Treasury under President Harding who favored low taxes on individuals and corporations and reduced national spending.

Laissez-faire

An economic approach supported by Harding and Mellon focused on reducing government regulation of business.

Ohio Gang

President Harding's close friends who were dishonest public servants that misused money and took bribes.

Teapot Dome Scandal

A scandal involving Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, who transferred Navy oil reserves to his department and leased them to private oilmen in exchange for bribes.

Washington Naval Disarmament Conference

A 1921–1922 meeting where world leaders agreed to limit the construction of warships.

Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928

A treaty ratified by 62 nations intended to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy.

Dawes Plan

An arrangement of U.S. loans to Germany enabling Germany to pay reparations to Britain and France so they could repay their WWI debts to the U.S.

Modernism

A trend emphasizing science and secular values over traditional religious ideas, growing primarily in urban areas in the 1920s.

Fundamentalism

A belief movement emphasizing Protestant teachings and the view that every word in the Bible is literal truth.

Scopes Trial

The 1925 court case in Dayton, Tennessee, where high school teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Red Scare

A wave of widespread fear across the U.S. of suspected communists and radicals thought to be plotting a revolution.

Palmer Raids

A series of raids in 1919 and 1920 led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in which police arrested thousands of suspected radicals and deported hundreds of immigrants.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Two Italian immigrants and anarchists who were convicted of murder and executed despite little evidence.

National Origins Act of 1924

A law setting up an immigration formula that limited the annual number of immigrants of a given nationality to 2% of that group's U.S. population in 1890.

Indian Citizenship Act of 1924

A law, also known as the Snyder Act, proposed by Homer P. Snyder that granted citizenship to all Native Americans born within the U.S.

Volstead Act

A law passed by Congress to enforce the 18th Amendment banning the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcohol.

Speakeasies

Secret drinking establishments in cities that sold illegal alcohol during Prohibition.

21st Amendment

The constitutional amendment ratified in 1933 that repealed Prohibition.

The Jazz Singer

The 1927 release that was the first movie with sound synchronized to the action.

The Grand Ole Opry

A popular weekly radio program created in 1925 on Nashville station WSM, recognized as the world's longest running radio program.

Charles Lindbergh

The first pilot to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in May 1927 in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis.

Flapper

A young woman of the 1920s with short skirts and rouged cheeks who cropped her hair in a bob and assumed equal social and political rights as men.

Lost Generation

A group of 1920s American writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who did not identify with Victorian culture and held a skeptical worldview.

Marcus Garvey

A Jamaican-born leader who organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association and promoted the 'Back to Africa' movement and separation of the races.

W.C. Handy

An African American blues composer and musician known as the 'Father of the Blues.'

Jazz

A musical form based on improvisation originating in New Orleans that combines African American blues, ragtime, and European-based popular music.

Harlem Renaissance

A 1920s flowering of African American culture in which novelists, poets, and artists celebrated their heritage and explored race in America.

Langston Hughes

One of the most powerful African American literary voices of the Harlem Renaissance who celebrated African American culture and life.

Zora Neale Hurston

An author of the Harlem Renaissance who collected folk tales in Mules and Men and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God.