The 1920s Government, Politics, and Law: Chronology
The 1920s Government, Politics, and Law: Chronology
1920: The 1920 census reports that 105,710,620 people live in the United States. For the first time, urban dwellers outnumber rural residents.
1920: January 16 Prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages goes into effect.
1920: May 8–14 The Socialist Party nominates Eugene V. Debs as its presidential candidate. Debs had been in prison since 1918 for violating the Espionage Act.
1921: June 20 Alice Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the U.S. House of Representatives. She remains at the podium for thirty minutes. A middle school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, later is named in her honor.
1921: June 30 President Warren G. Harding appoints former president William Howard Taft as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1921: November 2 Congress votes to designate November 11 a national holiday called Armistice Day.
1922: May 15 The U.S. Supreme Court declares the federal Child Labor Law unconstitutional.
1922: May 16 President Harding creates the Federal Narcotics Control Board.
1922: June 14 African Americans gather for a silent march in Washington, D.C. to show support for the Anti-Lynching Bill.
1922: October 3 Eighty-seven-year-old Rebecca Felton of Georgia becomes the first female U.S. senator. Her appointment, to take the place of her deceased son, lasts only one day.
1923: April 9 In Adkins v. Children's Hospital, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the minimum wage law covering women and children is unconstitutional.
1923: September 15 Oklahoma governor J. C. Walton places his state under martial law to control racial violence caused by the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
1924: March 10 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
1924: April 15 The U.S. Senate unanimously votes to ban all Japanese immigrants, except ministers, educators, and their families.
1924: June 15 President Calvin Coolidge signs legislation granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans.
1924: September 1 The Dawes Plan goes into effect. It calls upon American bankers to loan money to Germany to assist the defeated nation in paying its war reparations.
1925: January 5 Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming becomes the first woman governor of a state when she completes her late husband's term.
1925: August 8 Forty thousand members of the KKK march on Washington, D.C., to gain support for their cause.
1926: February 26 President Coolidge signs the Revenue Act, reducing federal income taxes.
1926: March 3 The Senate ratifies a treaty with Mexico to prevent smuggling narcotics, liquor, and illegal aliens across the border.
1926: April 7 The U.S. Attorney General reports to the U.S. Senate Prohibition Committee that the national trade in illegal intoxicating liquors is estimated at $3.6 billion since the Volstead Act, which codified the Proibition amendment, was passed in 1919.
1927: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is drafted, renouncing war as an option for resolving international disputes. Eventually, sixty-two nations will sign the pact.
1927: April 6 President Coolidge vetoes a resolution from the legislature of the Philippines declaring its independence from the United States.
1927: November 21 The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of the state of Mississippi to place all nonwhite students in "colored" public schools.
1928: June 4 The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of federal agents to wiretap private telephones during investigations of individuals suspected of violating Prohibition laws.
1928: November 27 The Civil Service Commission announces that it will install fingerprinting systems in 250 cities "to keep the crooks out" of government employ.
1929: January 1 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is sworn in as governor of New York.
1929: October 29 The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 30.57 points as the stock market crashes. $30 billion in market value evaporates on what comes to be known as "Black Tuesday."