1930's Cultural Timeline

    1929

    • Black Tuesday - Stock Market Crashes.
    • Chicago. "Don't-Buy-Where-You-Can't-Work" movement begins and soon spreads to other black communities.

    1930

    • By November 1930, 6000 people selling apples on the streets of New York alone.
    • Pluto, the eighth major planet is discovered by scientists on Mount Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
    • Fortune Magazine makes its' debut.
    • More than a million Mexican agricultural workers immigrate to the Southwestern United States. In California, the realty boards of many large communities report clauses inserted in housing deeds and sales contracts restricting occupation of certain areas to "persons of Caucasian race."

    1931

    • In Los Angeles alone, shelters gave asylum to over 200,000 persons. Another 200,000 became freight car migrants on the Missouri Pacific Line.
    • The Scottsboro Boys - Nine black youths are arrested for the suspected rape of two white girls. The last defendant would not be released until 1950.

    1932

    • Roosevelt defeats Hoover in the polls, is elected President of the United States. "Happy Days are Here Again", from the movie Chasing Rainbows becomes a theme song for the campaign. Popular with Radio listeners is the song "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
    • Robert L. Vann makes his now-famous remark that black people should turn the portrait of Abraham Lincoln to the wall, declare their debt to the Republican party paid, and join the party of Roosevelt.
    • Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road is published, quickening public interest in the plight of the sharecropper.
    • Spring of '32 - hunger marches take place throughout the country; the Bonus marchers are expelled from Washington.
    • Gary, Indiana. Over one-half of the black population unemployed and on relief.

    1933

    • March, 1933 - Return of 3.2 beer. Prohibition near an end.
    • Chicago's "Century of Progress" Fair draws 10 million admissions in its' first season in 1933.
    • Public Works Art Project begins. Many other "alphabet soup" projects also begun, including the FERA, PWA, NRA, and the CCC.

    1934

    • The Dust Bowl begins to engulf Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the Dakotas. People move Westward.
    • Summer 1934 - Strikes begun across the nation.
    • June, 1934 - Southern Tenant Farmers Union first organized.
    • It is reported that since 1930, over 300,000 poor Mexicans were deported, or "politely encouraged" to return to Mexico.

    1935

    • 40 hour work week introduced in this country.
    • The year 1935 saw more social legislation passed than at any other time in the nation's history. This included the Social Security Act, a provision for unemployment insurance, the National Labor Relations Act, the Welath-Tax Act, and the Public Utility Act. In the summer of 1935, the WPA begun and Resettlement Administration were created.
    • October 9, 1035. Joe Louis fights Max Baer in the first million-dollar fight since the beginning of the Depression.

    1936

    • FDR elected to second term. In his inaugural address the President alludes to the "one-third of{this}nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."
    • Life Magazine makes its' debut.
    • Knock-knock jokes first gain popularity.
    • Swing clubs spring up around the nation: Boogie-Woogie is all the rage. The Lindy Hop first popular at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.

    1937

    • Nation sees increase in the popular technique of the sit-down strike.
    • Farm Security Administration (FSA) begins.
    • In a classic retreat from reality, Disney releases its' first feature-length cartoon, Snow White.
    • A Fortune Magazine poll finds only 1 man in 7, and 1 women in 3 favors a return to Prohibition.

    1938

    • The dance craze for 1938 was the Lindy Hop, along with its' continental partner the Lambeth Walk and New York's the Big Apple.

    1939

    • Summer 1939 saw World's Fairs on either side of the country; San Francisco's Golden Gate Exposition and New York's "World of Tomorrow."
    • Dorothea lange and Paul Taylor publish An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion.
    • May, 1939. Rochester, New York. The Food Stamp Plan is first introduced.

    1940

    • Gallup polls report Americans moving in favor of joining in the war on the side of the Allies.

    1941

    • By January, 1941 the WPA had served 600 million school lunches.
    • Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, banning racial discrimination in the defense industries.
    • December, 1941. Pearl Harbor is attaced at dawn. America is pulled into another World War.

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