Encyclopedias

The Harlem Renaissance refers to a time period that spanned the 1920s and early 1930s when African American artists and their work flourished. Though largely considered a literary movement, the…

Warren G. Harding served as president just under two and a half years before dying in office. His administration is most remembered for its scandals. Newspaper man Harding was born…

Alexander Hamilton is counted as one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. Extremely vocal and active in politics, his vision of government shaped the American nation…

Woody Guthrie was a folk singer whose music told the stories of the migrant and agricultural workers during America’s Great Depression (1929–41), a period of high unemployment that began with…

In his State of the Union message in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69) announced the Great Society he envisioned for the United States. Johnson’s Great Society encompassed…

In 1873, the United States was in the midst of an economic depression, a period of low production and sales and high rates of unemployment and business failures. The root…

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké grew up in a prominent family in Charleston, South Carolina. Sarah was born in 1792, and Angelina, her parents’ fourteenth child, was born in 1805.…

Nine out of ten African Americans lived in the American South in 1900. By 1930, nearly three in ten lived outside the South. By 1970, about five in ten African…

When it was published in 1925, The Great Gatsby was almost immediately hailed as an artistic success for its young author, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). The novel reflects the outward…

When Herbert Hoover (1874–1964; served 1929–33) was inaugurated as the thirty-first president of the United States in March 1929, it seemed to most Americans that the economy was thriving. U.S.…