APUSH Ch. 23 & 24 Terms

Dow Jones Industrial Average

A stock market index that tracks the performance of 30 major publicly traded American companies, used as a key indicator of the overall health of the U.S. stock market.

Black Tuesday

October 29, 1929, the day the U.S. stock market catastrophically crashed, with millions of shares sold in a panic, triggering the beginning of the Great Depression.

Reparations

Payments demanded from Germany by the Allied powers after World War I under the Treaty of Versailles to compensate for war damages, which crippled the German economy and contributed to global economic instability.

Gross National Product

The total monetary value of all goods and services produced by a country's residents in a given year, used as a measure of a nation's economic output and health.

Dust Bowl

A severe environmental disaster during the 1930s in which drought and poor farming practices caused massive dust storms across the Great Plains, destroying crops and forcing hundreds of thousands of families to migrate westward.

Okies

A term, often used disparagingly, for migrants — many from Oklahoma and surrounding states — who fled the Dust Bowl and economic hardship during the 1930s, typically heading to California in search of work.

Scottsboro Boys

Nine young Black men falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in 1931, whose trials became landmark cases exposing racial injustice in the American legal system.

Dorothea Lange

An influential American documentary photographer best known for her iconic images of Depression-era poverty and suffering, including her famous photograph "Migrant Mother."

John Steinbeck

An American novelist who wrote powerfully about the struggles of the poor during the Great Depression, most famously in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which followed an Oklahoma family's migration to California.

Orson Welles' War of the Worlds

A 1938 radio broadcast dramatizing H.G. Wells' alien invasion novel in a realistic news-bulletin format, which reportedly caused widespread public panic among listeners who believed it was a real alien attack.

Popular Front

A political coalition of left-wing parties — including communists, socialists, and liberals — formed in the 1930s to oppose fascism, active in several countries including France, Spain, and the United States.

American Communist Party

A U.S. political party founded in 1919 aligned with Soviet-style communism, which gained influence during the Great Depression by advocating for workers' rights, racial equality, and economic reform.

Spanish Civil War

A conflict from 1936 to 1939 in which General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces, backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fought against and ultimately defeated the democratically elected Republican government, drawing international attention and volunteers from around the world.

Agricultural Marketing Act

A 1929 law passed under President Hoover that established the Federal Farm Board to stabilize agricultural prices by purchasing surplus crops, though it ultimately failed to stop the collapse of farm prices during the Depression.

Hoovervilles

Shantytowns built by homeless and unemployed Americans during the Great Depression, sarcastically named after President Herbert Hoover, whom many blamed for the nation's economic suffering.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

A federal agency created in 1932 under Hoover that provided government loans to banks, railroads, and other large institutions to prevent their collapse, though critics argued it helped businesses more than ordinary citizens.

Farmers' Holiday Association

A Midwestern farm organization in the early 1930s that organized strikes and protests — including blocking roads to prevent crop deliveries — to demand higher prices for agricultural products.

Bonus Army

A group of approximately 20,000 World War I veterans who marched on Washington, D.C. in 1932 to demand early payment of promised bonuses, and were forcibly dispersed by the U.S. Army under General Douglas MacArthur.

Douglas MacArthur

A prominent U.S. Army general who, on President Hoover's orders, led troops to violently evict the Bonus Army marchers from Washington in 1932, and later commanded Allied forces in the Pacific during World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The 32nd President of the United States, elected in 1932, who led the country through the Great Depression with his New Deal programs and through most of World War II, serving an unprecedented four terms in office.

Election of 1932

The presidential election in which Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover in a landslide, as Americans voted overwhelmingly for change during the depths of the Great Depression.

Bank Holiday

A temporary closure of all U.S. banks declared by FDR immediately upon taking office in March 1933, designed to stop bank runs and restore public confidence before allowing sound banks to reopen.

21st Amendment

The 1933 constitutional amendment that repealed Prohibition by overturning the 18th Amendment, making the manufacture and sale of alcohol legal again in the United States.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

A 1933 New Deal law that attempted to raise farm prices by paying farmers to reduce their production of certain crops and livestock, reducing surpluses and stabilizing the agricultural economy.

National Recovery Administration

A New Deal agency established in 1933 to promote economic recovery by setting industry-wide codes for fair wages, prices, and working conditions, later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.

Tennessee Valley Authority

A federal agency created in 1933 to develop the Tennessee River valley through dam construction, flood control, and electricity generation, bringing jobs and modern infrastructure to one of the nation's poorest regions.

Huey Long

The populist governor and senator from Louisiana who became one of FDR's most vocal critics, proposing his "Share Our Wealth" plan to redistribute income from the rich to the poor before his assassination in 1935.

Supreme Court Fight / Court Packing Bill

FDR's controversial 1937 proposal to add up to six additional justices to the Supreme Court after the Court struck down several New Deal programs, widely seen as an attempt to manipulate the judiciary and ultimately defeated in Congress.

Glass-Steagall Act / FDIC

The 1933 banking reform law that separated commercial and investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to insure individual bank deposits, restoring public confidence in the banking system.

Civilian Conservation Corps

A New Deal work relief program from 1933 to 1942 that employed millions of young unemployed men in conservation projects such as planting trees, building trails, and improving national parks.

Securities and Exchange Commission

A federal regulatory agency established in 1934 to oversee stock markets and protect investors from fraud and manipulation, restoring confidence in the financial system after the 1929 crash.

Federal Emergency Relief Administration

A New Deal agency created in 1933 that provided direct financial aid to states for distribution to unemployed and impoverished Americans, marking a major expansion of federal responsibility for public welfare.

American Liberty League

A conservative organization founded in 1934 by wealthy businessmen and politicians to oppose the New Deal, arguing that FDR's programs were unconstitutional and threatened free enterprise and individual liberty.

Townsend Plan

A proposal by Dr. Francis Townsend in the 1930s to give all Americans over age 60 a monthly pension of $200, provided they spent it within a month, intended to boost consumer spending and aid the elderly.

Father Coughlin

A Catholic priest and popular radio personality who initially supported FDR but later turned against the New Deal, promoting increasingly populist and anti-Semitic views to millions of listeners until his broadcasts were shut down.

Share Our Wealth

Huey Long's populist program that called for capping personal fortunes at a few million dollars and using the redistributed wealth to guarantee every American family a minimum income and other benefits.

Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Board)

The 1935 landmark labor law that guaranteed workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively, and created the National Labor Relations Board to enforce those rights and prevent unfair labor practices by employers.

Congress of Industrial Organizations

A federation of unions founded in 1935 that organized workers industry-wide (regardless of specific trade or skill), successfully unionizing mass-production industries like steel and automobiles that the older AFL had largely ignored.

Sit-Down Strike

A labor protest tactic in which workers stopped production but remained inside the factory rather than picketing outside, making it difficult for employers to replace them with strikebreakers, famously used in the 1936–37 Flint, Michigan auto workers' strike.

Social Security Act

The landmark 1935 law that created a federal system of retirement benefits for the elderly, as well as unemployment insurance and aid programs for dependent children and the disabled, establishing the foundation of the American social safety net.

Broker State

A concept describing the role of the federal government under the New Deal as a mediator or broker among competing interest groups — business, labor, farmers, and consumers — balancing their demands rather than favoring any one group.

Eleanor Roosevelt

FDR's wife and First Lady, who transformed the role into an active public position by advocating forcefully for civil rights, women's rights, and the poor, serving as a moral conscience for the New Deal administration.

Fair Labor Standards Act

The 1938 federal law that established the first national minimum wage, set a maximum 44-hour workweek, and banned child labor in industries engaged in interstate commerce.

Marian Anderson

A celebrated African American contralto singer who, after being barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1939, gave a landmark concert at the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 75,000, becoming a symbol of the civil rights struggle.

Black Cabinet

An informal group of African American advisors and officials who served in various New Deal agencies during FDR's administration, advocating for the inclusion of Black Americans in federal programs and policies.

Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

Also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, this law reversed the earlier Dawes Act policy of breaking up tribal lands, restored some lands to tribes, promoted tribal self-governance, and encouraged the preservation of Native American cultures and traditions.