The Roaring Twenties & Great Depression

Jazz, flappers, bootleg gin — the Twenties roared with a cultural energy that masked deep fractures beneath the surface. The nation, weary of war and reform, threw itself into a frenzy of consumption and spectacle. Automobiles rolled off Henry Ford's assembly lines, radios crackled in living rooms from coast to coast, and Hollywood's silver screens projected a dazzling vision of modern life. It felt, to many Americans, like the good times would never end.

Prohibition, that great moral experiment enshrined in the Eighteenth Amendment, created organized crime empires almost overnight. Al Capone's Chicago became a synonym for lawlessness, and speakeasies flourished in every city. Meanwhile, in Harlem, a renaissance of Black art, music, and literature was transforming American culture — Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong gave voice to a community that had been systematically silenced.

Then came Black Tuesday. On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed with a violence that wiped out fortunes and shattered the illusion of permanent prosperity. Banks failed by the thousands. Factories closed. Breadlines stretched around city blocks, and Hoovervilles sprouted in the shadow of the nation's great cities. The country plunged into the worst economic catastrophe in its history, and a quarter of the workforce found itself without jobs.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept into office in 1932 promising a New Deal for the American people, and he delivered a transformation of the federal government's relationship with its citizens that endures to this day. Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps — the safety net was born. The Supreme Court fought him, and Huey Long challenged him from the left, but FDR's coalition reshaped American politics for a generation, even as storm clouds gathered once more across the Atlantic.