1. The 1920s Vocabulary List

2. Teapot Dome Scandal Definition: A national scandal involving members of President Harding’s cabinet. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, was leasing government land to oil companies in exchange for bribes. The scandal damaged the reputation of Warren G. Harding.

3. Assembly Line Definition: An arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers in which work passes from operation to operation in direct line until the product is assembled.

4. Consumer Goods Definition: Goods bought and used by consumers, rather than by manufactures for producing other goods.

5. Installment Plan Definition: The payment of money over time toward the total cost of an item.

6. Advertisement Definition: Something that is shown or presented to the public to help sell a product or make an announcement.

7. Mass Media Definition: Communications that reach large numbers of people.

8. Jazz Music Definition: A musical style created by African Americans in the South during the early 1900s. American music marked by lively rhythms with unusual accents and often by melodies made up by musicians as they play.

9. Fundamentalism Definition: To believe in a strict interpretation of the bible.

10. Evolution Definition: A theory that the various kinds of plants and animals are descended from other kinds that lived in earlier times and that the differences are due to inherited changes that took place over many generations.

11. Prohibition Definition: The period of time from 1920 to 1933 in the United States when it was illegal to make or sell alcohol.

12. Speakeasy Definition: A secret bar or club that sold alcohol to patrons during Prohibition.

13. Bootlegger Definition: Someone who made or sold alcohol during Prohibition.

14. Gangster Definition: An individual who participates in illegal activity for economic gain.

15. Renaissance Definition: A time of new interest and activity in the arts.

16. Harlem Renaissance Definition: An African American cultural movement in Harlem, NY during the 1920s. African American artists produced an abundance of art, including music, poetry, literature, and theatrical productions. The Harlem Renaissance was enjoyed by African American and white Americans.

17. Inflation Definition: A general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.

18. Communism Definition: A system in which property and goods are owned in common (by the government). A system of government in which a single party controls state-owned means of production with the aim of establishing a stateless society.

19. The Red Scare Definition: A period, from 1919 to 1920 in which American society was deeply afraid of a communist conspiracy to takeover the United States government and make America a communist state. A. Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General of the United States, carried out raids to round up suspected communists in the United States and deport them their native countries.

20. Deport Definition: To force a person to leave a country. The person must be a citizen of a foreign nation to be deported from the United States.

21. The Quota System Definition: A U.S. government policy created in 1921 to restrict immigration into the United States of America.