Aca Deca (2025-26) - Social Science - People

People of the Aca deca 2025-26 Social Science resource guide

Woodrow Wilson

President: 1913-1921.
Former Princeton professor
Defended American neutrality
Fourteen Points
League of Nations
Suffers a stroke: headaches and aphasia

John Maynard Keynes

British economist
About Wilson: "Never had a philosopher held such weapons wherewith to bind the Princes of the word."

Georges Clemenceau

French Prime Minister
Part of the Big Three of the Allied Powers

David Lloyd George

British Prime Minister
Part of the Big Three of the Allied Powers

John Pershing

"Black Jack"
Commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.

Henry Cabot Lodge

Massachusetts Senator
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Republican chairman
De facto majority leader of the Senate
Friend of Theodore Roosevelt
Lined up "Reservationists"
Criticized Article X

Theodore Roosevelt

Wilson's greatest rival

William E. Borah

Senator of Idaho
"Irreconcilable": total, unqualified opposition to the Treaty and the League
"Once having surrendered and become part of European concerns, where, my friends, are you going to stop?"

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Inspired by Wilson's international affairs

Samuel Gompers

The leader of the American Federation of Labor
Uneasy patriotic truce with big businesses and the government

Calvin Coolidge

Massachusetts Governor
After strike of the police force, fires every striking officer

Harding's vice president
Homespun appeal
Fly fishing, 3 collies
Replaced Ohio gang members
Small government, individualism
Laissez-faire economic approach: limiting government interference in the free market while encouraging entrepreneurial spirit
"The man who builds a factory, builds a temple. The man who works there, worships there."

A. Mitchell Palmer

Attorney General
Crackdown of subversive radicalism: the Red Scare

Ole Hanson

Seattle's mayor
Restored order to his city after the general strike
April 28: Was sent homemade bomb through the mail that failed to detonate

Thomas Hardwick

Senator of Georgia
April 29: Was sent homemade bomb that exploded, maiming his maid and wife

J. Edgar Hoover

Leader of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Infiltrated leftist organizations
Intelligence archive of 200,000 cards of suspected individuals

Emma Goldman

Famous anarchist
Deported to Soviet Russia after hasty hearings

Charles Schenck

Socialist Party leader, Philadelphia
Convicted for violating the Sedition Act
Arrested: 1917, Case heard: January 1919

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Supreme Court Justice
Delivered majority decision for unanimous court that Congress could suppress free speech a times

Eugene Debs

Labor leader, Socialist presidential candidate
10 years to prison for delivering an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio
Ran for president while jailed, 900,000 votes

Jacob Abrams

Russian-born radical
Convicted under Sedition Act for leaflets in NYC calling for a national general strike against American intervention against the Bolshevik government in Russia

Justice Clark

Majority decision on Abrams v. US
Emphasis on the pamphlet's revolutionary tone and Yiddish language

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Italian immigrants
Charged with murder of a security guard during an armed robbery
Anarchists but little evidence to the crime
1927: put to death by Massachusetts

Louis Armstrong

Jazz performer
From New Orleans, moved to Chicago
Chicago: treated as "some kind of God"
Joined King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

Count Basie

Pianist
Kansas City's "swing" style

Josephine Baker

Chorus girl in the Broadway hit musical Shuffle Along
International stardom as a dancer in Paris
Suggestive attire: banana skirt

Eugene Williams

African American teenager
Stoned to death by whites while swimming in "white side" of Lake Michigan
After his death: 7 days of rioting, 38 dead, >500 injured

James Weldon Johnson

Arrived in Washington D.C
"that men and women of my race were being mobbed, chased, dragged from streetcars, beaten and killed within the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, at the very front door of the White House."

Marcus Garvey

Founder of the UNIA
Born: St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, 1887
Youngest of 11 children
Immigrated to the US, Harlem
"Match fire with hellfire"
"Africa for the Africans"
Convicted because of a felony mail fraud case against his Black Star Line
Deported: 1927

Booker T. Washington

His ideals inspired Marcus Garvey

W.E.B. Du Bois

Head of NAACP
Harvard educated
"double consciousness" of Black Americans

Andrew Volstead

Minnesota Congressman
National Prohibition Act: to make wartime prohibition permanent

Jeanette Rankin

First woman elected to national office, House of Representatives
Montana

Alice Paul

National Women's Party
Militant protest style of British "suffragettes"
Chained herself to the White House gates, then when arrested, went on a hunger strike

Carrie Chapman Catt

National American Woman Suffrage Association
Loyal contributions of the "Woman's Land Army of America"

Warren G. Harding

Life-long Republican
The Marian Daily Star
Ohio state legislature
U.S. Senate
Inoffensive compromise candidate
"Return to Normalcy"
Campaign: avoided a firm stance on the League of Nations
Inaugural address: endorsement of the ""wisdom of the inherited policy of noninvolvement in Old World affairs."
Isolationist but: Treaty of Versailles, Naval conference

James Cox

Ohio Governor
Harding's Democratic opponent

Charles Evans Hughes

Governor of New York
U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Republican presidential nominee
Harding's Secretary of State

Charles Ponzi

Italian immigrant
Boston financier
International Reply Coupons
Pyramid scheme
86 counts of mail fraud
Convicted of mail fraud, forgery, and larceny
3.5 years in federal prison
9 years in state prison, Massachusetts

Herbert Hoover

Harding and Coolidge's Secretary of Commerce
Self-made mining engineer
Wilson's director of the War Food Administration
1922-1925: annual radio conferences
Used the Radio Act of 1912 to control the nation's airways
Pushed for the Federal Radio Act of 1927 ("The Constitution of the Air")
Fall 1927: 1st international radio conference
1928: elected as President
The Great Engineer, the Great Humanitarian
Quaker community service
Individualism
Less government intervention

Andrew W. Mellon

Harding's Secretary of Treasury
Wealthy Pittsburgh banking and aluminum titan
3 consecutive Republican administrations
Nation's 3rd richest man
New tax system: top income tax 40 -> 20%, burden of taxes on the middle-class

Harry Daugherty

Small-town Ohio lawyer
Harding's campaign manager
Appointed as Attorney General
Led the Ohio Gang

Nan Britton

Young secretary
Affair with Harding
1919: illegitimate daughter

Jess Smith

Daugherty's right-hand man
Special illegal services
May 30, 1923, found dead

William Burns

Daugherty's boyhood friend
Head of the Bureau of Investigation
Ohio Gang's enforcement racket

Thomas Miller

Early Harding backer
Alien Property Custodian
$391,000 bribe

Charles R. Forbes

Harding's friend on a Hawaii vacation
Head the Veterans' Bureau
Bribes from contractors
Unloading warehouses of surplus medical equipment at cheap prices
Fined $10,000, incarcerated for 2 years in Leavenworth Kansas

Albert Fall

New Mexico Senator
Harding's closest colleague in the Senate
Department of the Interior
Took control of the federal emergency petroleum reserves
Took $400,000 bribe from wealthy oilmen for drilling rights

La Follette

Progressive Wisconsin Senator
"Fighting Bob"
Excoriated Fall in a speech on the Senate floor

Edward Doheny

Oil magnate who paid Fall the cash bribe
No legal consequences

Harry Sinclair

Wealthy oilman
Escaped the charge of bribery
Jailed for refusing to provide testimony

Edward Purinton

Supported Coolidge's laissez-fair approach
"Thru business, properly conceived, managed, and conducted, the human race is finally to be redeemed."

Bruce Barton

Advertising executive
The Man Nobody Knows: self help book, Jesus Chirst - savy businessman

J. P. Morgan

$200 million loan to Germany

Charles Dawes

Chicago Banker
German Recovery
America ->
Germany ->
Allies ->
America

Henry Ford

Dearborn, Michigan
28 years old: moves to Detroit, mechanical engineer
40 years old: founded the Ford Motor Company

Albert Kahn

Architect
Worked with Ford to design a factory in Highland Park
Assembly line system

Frederick W. Taylor

"Scientific management"
Time and motion studies of factory workers

C. P. Russell

Profiled the parade of American tourists who traveled on the "long motor highway stretching from Bangor to Miami lined with auto accessory shops, filling stations, Greek lunch counters, and hot dog stands"
"le luxe style […] never long out of sight of ham and eggs or a quart of motor oil"

Thomas Edison

Inventor
Part of "the Vagabonds"

Harvey Firestone

Tire magnate
Part of "the Vagabonds"

John Burroughs

Naturalist
Part of "the Vagabonds"

Ruth Cowan

Time-saving gadgets and automobiles increased the burden of domestic work for many women

Betty Crocker

Fictional but relatable character

Amelia Earhart

Famous aviator
In an advertisement for Lucky Strike even though she wasn't an actual smoker

William C. Durant

Ran General Motors
1919: set up a corporation that financed credit purchasing agreements (installment buying)

David Sarnoff

Worked at American Marconi Company
Imagined the "Radio Music Box"
Becomes president of RCA in 1930

Dr. Frank Conrad

Electrical engineer
First true radio station
Free musical entertainment twice a week with a microphone rigged to a phone transmitter
First "broadcasting license"
Aired the 1920 Harding-Cox election results

Owen Young

Former GE executive
Directed the Radio Corporation of America

Charles Coughlin

Catholic priest
Hour-long weekly sermon broadcasted over radio
Shrine of the Little Flower Church
"Radio Priest"
Deal with CBS that broadcasted his program nationwide
Attack on Communists, Socialists, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies
Anti-Semitism.

Franklin Roosevelt

Fireside chats during the Depression and WW2

Douglas Fairbanks

Starred in The Thief of Bagdad
Masculine sex appeal

Rudolph Velentino

Starred in The Sheik
Masculine sex appeal

Mary Pickford

"America's Sweetheart"
Played coquettish doe-eyed girls
1916: successfully negotiated a contract worth more than a million dollars
Co-founded the independent production studio United Artists.
1920: married Fairbanks

Clara Bow

"flapper" ideal
Starred as Betty Lou Spence in It
"it girl"

Al Jolson

Vaudeville performer
The Jazz Singer: first "talkie", semi-autobiographic

Bobby Jones

Amateur golfer
Won 13 major championships

William Tilden

American tennis player
1920-1925: world's top-ranked amateur

Certrude Ederle

20 years old, New Yorker
Olympic gold medalist
First woman to swim across the English Channel
Two hours less than than the record set by a man

George Herman Ruth

Babe Ruth
New York Yankees win the World Series
60 home runs

Red Grange

Illinois's star halfback
"flashing, red-haired youngster, running and dodging with the speed of a deep"
5 touchdowns
Defeated the University of Michigan Wolvernines

Robert Staughton Lynd and Melen Merell Lynd

Middletown (Munice) study
Sociological study of a "typical" American city
Class, religious, and gender divisions

Ulysses S. Grant

Ordered federal troops to crush the original KKK

D. W. Griffith

Birth of a Nation: romanticized the original KKK, screened by President Woodrow Wilson

Hiram Wesley Evans

The "Imperial Wizard" of the KKK
"Native, white, Protestant supremacy"
Assembled a new KKK at Stone Mountain, Georgia

David Curtis Stephenson

The "Grand Dragon" of the Indiana Klan
"He sold fright, as he had sold coal, in carload lots"

Won Kim Ark

Born in San Francisco to Chinese parents
1898: his citizenship is affirmed because of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship

Takao Ozawa

Japanese
Immigrated to the United States at 19 to attend the University of California
Moved to Hawaii and started a family
Was ruled ineligible for American citizenship

Bhagat Singh Thind

From the Punjab region in northern British India, Sikh
Served in the U.S. Army during WW1
"a high caste Hindu of full Indian blood"
Argued he was "Caucasian" because of the Oawa ruling
The court returns to "common sense" to decide race

Leo Frank

Jewish factory owner
Falsely accused of murdering a young girl and lynched

Abbot Lawrence Lowell

Harvard President
Stealth campaign to limit the amount of Jewish people admitted
Vice president of the Immigration Restriction League

David Reed

Senator of Pennsylvania
New system of immigration quotas from the foreign born population of 1890

Albert Johnson

Congressman of Washington state
New system of immigration quotas from the foreign born population of 1890

Madison Grant

Chair of the New York Zoological Society, leader of the IRL
The Passing of the Great Race: North European virtues, South European vices
"race suicide"

T. L. Stoppard

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy
Unsettled European nations paved the way for Asian domination

Robert M. Yerkes

Psychologist
Intelligence tests to recruits of the U.S. Army
Low scores of Americans
Based on familiarity with American culture

H. H. Loughlin

Helped found the American Eugenics Society
Drafted compulsory sterilization legislation

Carrie Buck

18 years old: committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded after birthing a child of wedlock
Appealed the sterilization order

Emma Buck

Carrie's mother
Testified to be a "low-grade moron"

Fanny Hurst

Novelist
Compared traditional marriage to an old house

Ben Lindsay

Progressive Juvenile Court Judge in Denver
Revolt of Modern Youth
"companionate marrige": preliminary partnership