1920s vocab

  1. Warren G. Harding : 29th president of the US; his policies favored business, but his administration was known for scandals

  2. Charles Evans Hughes : American politician who served as secretary of state and participated in the Washington Naval Conference 

  3. Fordney-McCumber Tariff :  a set of regulations, enacted by Congress in 1922, that raised taxes on imports on imports to record levels in order to protect American businesses against foreign competition 

  4. Ohio gang : a group of friends and political supporters who President Warren G. Harding appointed to his cabinet 

  5. Teapot Dome scandal : Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall’s secret leasing of oil-rich public land to private companies in return for money and land 

  6. Albert B. Fall : U.S. Secretary of the Interior in the Harding administration; he was found guilty of bribery for his role in Teapot Dome scandal 

  7. Calvin Coolidge : 13th president of the US; he became president upon the death of Warren G. Harding and was known for his honesty and his pro-business policies 

  8. Urban Sprawl : the unplanned and uncontrolled spreading of cities into surrounding regions 

  9. Consumerism : a preoccupation with the purchasing of material good

  10. Installment plan : an arrangement in which a purchaser pays over an extended time,without having to put down much money at the time of purchase 

  11. Xenophobia : an unreasoned fear of things or people seen as foreign or strange 

  12. Nativism : favoring the interests of native-born people over foreign-born people

  13. Isolationism : opposition and economic entanglements with other countries 

  14. Communism : an economic and political system based on one-party government and state ownership of property 

  15. Anarchist : person who opposes all forms of government 

  16. Nicola Sacco : Italian immigrant anarchist executed for robbery and murder, along with Bartolomeo Vanzetti; the case generated international attention 

  17. Bartolomeo Vanzetti : Italian immigrant anarchist executed for robbery and murder, along with Nicola Sacco; the case generated international attention 

  18. Quota system : a system that sets limits on how many immigrants from various countries a nation will admit each year 

  19. John L. Lewis : American labor, leader, president of the United Mine Workers, and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO); he helped win labor victories through strategies such as the sit-down strike 

  20. Prohibition : the period from 1920-1933 during which the 18th amendment forbidding the manufacturer and sale of alcohol was force in the US 

  21. Speakeasy : place where alcoholic drinks were sold and consumed illegally during Prohibition 

  22. Bootlegger : person who smuggled alcoholic beverage sinto the US during prohibition 

  23. Fundamentalism : a Protestant religious movement grounded in the belief that all the stories and details in the Bible are literally true 

  24. Clarence Darrow : famous American criminal lawyer; he defended John Scopes’s right to teach evolution in the Scopes Trial 

  25. Scopes Trial : a sensational 1925 court case in which the biology teacher John T. Scopes was tried for challenging a Tennessee law that outlawed the teaching of evolution 

  26. Flapper : one of the free-thinking young women who embraced the new fashions and urban attitudes of the 1920s

  27. Double Standard : a set of principles granting greater sexual freedom to men than to women 

  28. Charles A Lindbergh : American pilot; he became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean non stop in 1927 and became a hero to millions of American s

  29. George Gershwin :  composer whose famous piece Rhapsody in Blue showed the impact of jazz music on the 1920s

  30. Irving Berlin : American songwriter; he gained popularity during the 1920s for such compositions as “White Christmas”

  31. George O’Keeffe : American artist, she gained fame for her paintings of New Mexico and of flowers in extreme close-ups; her works were representative of modernism during the 1920s 

  32. Modernism : 20th century artistic movement that contended that traditional art was outdated and no longer meaningful in the new, industrialized, urban world

  33. Sinclair Lewis : American writer and first American to receive the Nobel Prize in literature; his novel Babbitt satirized Americans in the 1920s

  34. F. Scott FItzgerald : American writer famous for his novels and stories, such as The Great Gatsby, capturing the mood of the 1920s; he gave the decade the nickname “Jazz Age”

  35. Edna St. Vincent Millay : American poet and playwright; her work celebrated youth and a life of independence 

  36. Ernest Hemingway : American writer, he introduced a simplified style of writing; his novels The Sun Also RIses and A Farewell to Arms criticized the glorification of war 

  37. Zora Neale Hurston : African American writer and folklore scholar who played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance; much of her work celebrated simple folkways and traditional values of people who had survived slavery 

  38. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) :  an organization founded in 1909 to promote full racial equality 

  39. James Welson Johnson : NAACP leader and writer and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance; he wrote poetry and, with his brother, the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing”

  40. Marcus Garvey : African American leader who promoted self-reliance for African Americans; he started the Universal Negro Improvement Society (UNIA), which urged African Americans to take pride n their heritage 

  41. Harlem Renaissance : a flowering of American American artistic creativity during the 1920s centered in the Harlem community of NYC 

  42. Claude McKay : African American who played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance; his work expressed the pain of life in black ghettos and urged African Americans to resist discrimination 

  43. Langston Hughes : AA poet who described the rich culture of AA life using rhythms influenced by jazz music; he wrote of African American life using rhythms influenced by jazz music; he wrote of AA hope and defiance, as well as Harlem culture, and has a major impact on Harlem Renaissance 

  44. Paul Robeson : AA actor and singer who promoted AA rights and left-wing causes

  45. Louis Armstrong : leading AA jazz musician during Harlem Renaissance; talented trumpeter whose style influenced many later musicians 

  46. Duke Ellington : AA composer and jazz musician, one of the key figures of Harlem Renaissance; his orchestra was popular with audiences nationwide 

  47. Bessie Smith : AA blues singer who played an important part in the Harlem Renaissance