Definitions
The Lost Generation
A group of writers and artists who came of age during World War I. Disillusioned with American values and culture, many moved to Europe during the 1920s.
Sacco-Vanzetti case
A case held during the 1920s in which two Italian American anarchists were found guilty and executed for a crime in which there was very little evidence linking them to the particular crime.
Equal Rights Amendment
An amendment to guarantee equal rights for women, introduced in 1923 but not passed by Congress until 1972; it failed to be ratified by the states.
stock market crash
Also known as Black Tuesday, a stock market panic in 1929 that resulted in the loss of more than $10 billion in market value (worth approximately ten times more today); one among many causes of the Great Depression.
Fundamentalism
Anti-modernist Protestant movement started in the early twentieth century that proclaimed the literal truth of the Bible; the name came from The Fundamentals, published by conservative leaders.
Adkins v. Children's Hospital
1923 Supreme Court case that reversed Muller v. Oregon, the 1908 case that permitted states to set maximum hours to protect working women; justices ruled in Adkins that women no longer deserved special treatment because they could vote.
Teapot Dome
Harding administration scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall profited from secret leasing to private oil companies of government oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
1930 act that raised tariffs to an unprecedented level and worsened the Great Depression by raising prices and discouraging foreign trade.
Illegal Alien
A new category established by the Immigration Act of 1924 that referred to immigrants crossing U.S. borders in excess of the new immigration quotas.
Olmstead v. United States
1928 Supreme Court decision that allowed the federal government's use of wiretapping without a warrant to prosecute suspected criminals.
American Civil Liberties Union
Organization founded during World War I to protest the suppression of freedom of expression in wartime; played a major role in court cases that achieved judicial recognition of Americans' civil liberties.
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Federal program established in 1932 under President Herbert Hoover to loan money to banks and other institutions to help them avert bankruptcy.
Flappers
Young women of the 1920s whose rebellion against prewar standards of femininity included wearing shorter dresses, bobbing their hair, dancing to jazz music, driving cars, smoking cigarettes, and indulging in illegal drinking and gambling.
Schenck v. United States
1919 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the wartime Espionage and Sedition Acts; in the opinion he wrote for the case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes set the now familiar "clear and present danger" standard.
Indian Citizenship Act
1924 act that conferred American citizenship to all non-citizen Indians born within U.S. territorial boundaries.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
1930 act that raised tariffs to an unprecedented level and worsened the Great Depression by raising prices and discouraging foreign trade.
Great Depression
Worst economic depression in American history; it was spurred by the stock market crash of 1929 and lasted until World War II.
Scopes trial
1925 trial of John Scopes, Tennessee teacher accused of violating state law prohibiting teaching of the theory of evolution; it became a nationally celebrated confrontation between religious fundamentalism and civil liberties.
Wickersham Commission
Established by Herbert Hoover in 1929, the commission was the first large-scale federal study of the problem of crime.