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Buford Ellington
Tennessee orders an investigation into a CBS news crew for filming a Nashville sit-in. -
John F. Kennedy is elected 35th President of the US
defeating sitting Vice President Richard M. Nixon in what is considered to be the closest and most intellectually charged US presidential election since 1916. -
Treaty Creates Conflict
In Paris, diplomats representing the combatant nations of World War I sign the Treaty of Versailles, which promises to sustain peace through the creation of the League of Nations but also plants the seed of future conflict by imposing mercilessly stiff reparations upon Germany. -
Woodrow Wilson Suffers a Stroke
Under heavy strain while on a speaking tour promoting the League of Nations, President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke, leaving him largely incapacitated for the final 18 months of his term. He dies on February 3rd, 1924. -
More Urban Than Rural
The United States Census reports for the first time that more Americans live in urban areas than in rural areas. However, "urban" is defined as any town with more than 2,500 people. -
Too Much Cotton
Cotton prices at New Orleans peak at 42 cents a pound, prompting Southern farmers to plant the largest crop in history. The resulting overproduction causes a collapse in prices, with cotton falling to less than 10 cents a pound by early 1921. Cotton farmers will toil in near-depression conditions throughout most of the 1920s and 30s. -
Garvey Conference
Charismatic Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant, convenes the first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World in New York's Madison Square Garden. -
Immigration Quota Established
Congress passes immigration restrictions, for the first time creating a quota for European immigration to the United States. Targeted at "undesirable" immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the act sharply curtails the quota for those areas while retaining a generous allowance for migrants from Northern and Western Europe. -
Tariffs Up
Congress passes the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, sharply raising tariff duties to protect the American market for American manufactures. The tariff boosts the domestic economy of the Roaring '20s, but it also worsens the crisis for struggling European economies like Germany's, helping to enable Adolf Hitler's rise to power there on a platform of economic grievance. -
Harding Dies
President Warren G. Harding dies of stroke in a San Francisco hotel room. Vice President Calvin Coolidge ascends to presidency. -
Ford Motor Company
The market capitalization of Ford Motor Company exceeds $1 billion. -
Scopes Violates Ban on Teaching Evolution
Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching evolution, in violation of new state law banning the teaching of Darwin. The ensuing "Scopes Monkey Trial," pitting defense attorney Clarence Darrow against three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in a proxy debate of modernity versus fundamentalism, captivates the nation. Scopes is eventually found guilty. -
SANE
holds an anti-arms race rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. 20,000 attend. -
Dow reached a closing record
The stock market would not return to its pre-crash high for the next 25 years -
Black Thursday
kicked off the stock market crash of 1929. Stock prices immediately fell 11 percent. Wall Street bankers bought stocks, so only 2 percent was lost by the time the market closed. -
on Black Sunday
the worst storm came and caused severe damage. The government creates The Drought Relief Service to organize relief activities. The FDR approves of an act that provides $525 million dollars in drought relief, which is called the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. The FDR also authorized the Works Progress Administration, which would employ 8.5 million people. People in a meeting that occurred in Pueblo, Colorado, estimated that 850 million acres of topsoil has blown off the southern plains. -
James E. Davis
he chief of the Los Angeles Police sends 125 police men to protect the boarders of Nevada and Oregon to keep out the undesirables. This lead to the American Civil Liberties Union sues the city. The SCS publishes a law, which, if passed by the law, will allow farmers to own their own district for soil conservation for a five-year period. -
the FDR’s Shelterbelt Project begins
The project calls for the planting of trees across the Great Plains. This started after Roosevelt said, -
the Dust Bowl
he drought ended in result of the end -
Look Magazine
journalist George Leonard writes about "Youth of the Sixties: The Explosive Generation" and predicts that the "quiet generation" of the 1950s "is rumbling and is going to explode". -
Greensboro sit-ins
the first sparks a wave of similar protests against segregation at Woolworth and other retail store lunch counters across the American South. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -
U-2 Incident
a US spy plane searching for Soviet nuclear installations is shot down deep within the USSR. Presumed dead by the US, the CIA pilot is captured alive and paraded in the Russian press after the White House enlists NASA in a botched and quickly exposed deception claiming that the plane went missing during a weather flight. -
The Pill
The US Food & Drug Administration approves the use of the first reliable form of birth control: a 99%-effective pill. The Sexual Revolution commences, first in the bedrooms of married couples. -
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
the UN is signed in New York City, tightening controls on international trade in opiates. -
To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning story of racial inequality is published and becomes a classic of American literature. The story arrives in cinemas in 1962. -
Student League for Industrial Democracy
changes its name to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and first meets in Ann Arbor, Michigan. SDS dissociates itself from LID in 1965, and becomes the most notable radical student political organization of the counterculture era. -
Black Monday
stocks prices fell 13 percent. -
foreign investors had been buying
stocks cheaper by comparison. As a result U.S. stocks at the fastest rate. -
stock market
The stock market historically performs similarly to the economy. A bear market occurs during a recession and a bull market during an expansion. -
1920s to 1960s