1. Ku Klux Klan rally In 1925, the KKK marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

2. Sacco and Vanzetti The trial and conviction of these working-class Italian immigrants became a public spectacle amid the growing mood of nativism.

3. All fair in drink and war Torpedoes filled with malt whiskey were discovered in the New York harbor in 1926, an elaborate attempt by bootleggers to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition. Each “torpedo” had an air compartment so it could be floated to shore.

4. Monkey trial In this snapshot of the courtroom, Scopes (far left) clasps his face in his hands and listens to one of his attorneys (second from right). Darrow (far right), too, listens on, visibly affected by the sweltering weather.

5. The Gastonia strike These textile workers pit their strength against that of a National Guardsman during a strike at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1929.

6. The Ohio gang President Warren G
The Ohio gang President Warren G. Harding (third from right) surrounded himself with a network of friends, often appointing them to public office despite inferior qualifications.

7. Teapot Dome scandal In this 1924 political cartoon, Republican officials try to outrun the Teapot Dome scandal, represented by a giant steamrolling teapot, on an oil-slicked highway.

8. Calvin Coolidge “Silent Cal” was so inactive as president that when he died in 1933, American humorist Dorothy Parker remarked, “How could they tell?”

9. Farming technology Mechanization became increasingly important in early twentieth-century agriculture. Here, farmers pose alongside their new equipment, ca

10. Campaign sheet music The sheet music for the Democratic nominee, Alfred E. Smith (left), and the Republican nominee, Herbert Hoover (right), drew on popular tunes and motifs of the time.

11. Herbert Hoover “I have no fears for the future of our country,” Hoover told the nation at his inauguration in 1929.

12. Black Tuesday In this photograph, panic-stricken crowds take to Wall Street as news of the plummeting stock market spread on the morning of Tuesday, October 29, An account of the crash in the New York Times wrote that “the streets were crammed with a mixed crowd—agonized little speculators, sold-out traders, inquisitive individuals and tourists seeking a closer view of the national catastrophe Where was it going to end?”

13. Bank run As news of the Great Crash spread across the world, people rushed to banks to withdraw their deposits. The line for this Millbury, Massachusetts, savings bank wraps around the building.

14. The morning news in a Chicago shantytown In response to the economic devastation of the Great Depression, numerous shantytowns emerged in cities across the country to house the recently-homeless; here, a man reads a newspaper outside his makeshift dwelling in Chicago.

15. Just dropping off a résumé In October 1938, the federal government opened six custodian positions and 15,000 African American women lined up overnight to turn in their applications. Pictured here is a policeman leaping over a hedge to keep the crowd under control.