payment page
Red Scare
The period immediately after the Russian Revolution of 1917 in which Americans feared that a similar Communist revolution might happen on U.S. soil. In 1919 and 1920, Americans became panicked and paranoid, convinced that communists were hiding and conspiring everywhere in the country. Hundreds of American Communist Party and Socialist Party members were arrested. Also, union members, who would strike and seek the right to collectively bargain with their employers, were seen as especially suspicious. As a result, unions began to shrink in number, because many labor organizers were arrested. Even those Americans who criticized the government were sometimes thrown in prison.
Sacco-Vanzetti Trial
The 1921 trial of Italian immigrants Niccola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both self-proclaimed atheists and anarchists, who were accused of murder, found guilty, and later executed (in 1927), largely because of their ethnicity and Communist leanings. Although historians and crime analysts have concluded that at least one of then (Sacco) may well have been guilty, their conviction had little to do with hard evidence and more to do with the anti-immigrant and antisocialist sentiments of the day.
Teapot Dome Scandal
A scandal that broke in 1923, late in Warren G. Harding’s presidency, in which the secretaries of the interior and the navy took large bribes to let a private company drill oil on federal lands near the town of Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Harding himself was implicated in the scheme but died before any charges could be filed. The scandal was the most famous of the many that surfaced during Harding’s term.
Scopes Monkey Trial
An infamous July 1925 trial that dramatically played out the debate between Christian Fundamentalism and Charles Darwin’s theories of Evolution and Natural Selection. In the trial, high school biology teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of flouting a Tennessee ban on the teaching of evolution. Although Scopes technically lost the case, fundamentalists came away looking ridiculous, especially after confusing and contradictory answers given by former politician and “Bible expert” William Jennings Bryan.
Stock Market Crash of 1929
The massive crash of the U.S. Stock Market on “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929. The crash occurred after American investors dumped more than 16 million shares in one day. Within two months, more than $60 billion had been lost. The crash was the primary catalyst for the Great Depression.
1937 “Roosevelt Recession”
A 1937 recession caused by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to cut back on deficit spending before the Great Depression was really over. The Roosevelt Recession put millions of Americans back on the streets and contributed to the American people’s loss of confidence in the president and his New Deal policy.
