jazz, blackface, and the stock market crash

What an exciting assignment, to research the origin of the word jazz.  I love both words and jazz,  and never thought about the origin of the word jazz itself, really had no idea what it was.  A truly fascinating summary can be found here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-jaz1.htm, but to pick out the high points in my own voice, basically the first use of the word jazz (as is the case with a lot of slang) is quite debatable.  Rumors lie anywhere from a nickname for any of a slew of particular musicians named Jasper, Chas, Jasbo, and Mr. Razz, to a term in baseball that refers to a player's pep.  Within websites across the internet, different origins are speculated, but most reference the first printed use of the word in The San Francisco Bulletin in 1913 in an article about baseball, and in particular, ET Gleeson.  Basically, jazz began as a blanket term for vigor, spirit, vitality, energy, and on and on in that vein.  I guess it was like that word you search for when you lose your vocabulary in the midst of a conversation.

I really prefer not to comment in depth about blackface.  It's something I've studied before (2  years at Temple University; they require "race" classes), and something that can obviously be a sensitive topic.  At any rate, I feel that blackface is truly one of those "period" things, albeit a rather extensive period of time.  That is, it certainly fits the era in which it was not only acceptable, but quite popular.  In our modern time of equality and sensitivity, such behavior would not likely be tolerated, were it not appropriately in jest...although I guess in a way, that's exactly what it was in it's heyday.  I found interesting that virtually all of my research turned up information that was extremely impersonal, just recalling facts with no emotion.

Moving on...the stock market crash of 1929.  There's one of those things I've heard about forever, but don't really know a whole lot about.  In fact, I don't really know much about the stock market at all, so this was interesting research considering we are in the midst of an economic downslide.  As far as causes go, from what I understand (which is not much), the stock market had been growing in popularity in the years leading up to 1929, and people saw it as a good way to make money rather easily.  So because more people were buying stocks, stock prices were going up, and that made it look like it was a good investment, so even more people jumped in on the action.  But then, too many people were buying stock all at once and the market grew confused, or something.  Somehow, in a way that doesn't really make sense to me, stock prices went down, or maybe were lower than they were supposed to be, and people were scared and started selling their stocks.  Then a bunch of bank guys tried to fix it, so they poured a bunch of money into the market, but it wasn't enough to stop the decline.  And then everything went to shit, from what I understand, for a good ten years.  Ah, economic crisis....and something about history repeating itself.  Or is it not repeating itself.  I liked thinking about jazz better than thinking about this.