Black Thursday was 24 October 1929, the first major panic session of the Wall Street Crash.
Heavy selling struck the New York Stock Exchange that morning, and the market’s decline accelerated as investors rushed to exit positions. A group of prominent bankers later met and bought leading stocks to project confidence, helping prices recover part of the day’s losses. The temporary rebound did not end the crisis.
Panic returned on the following Monday and reached its most famous climax on Black Tuesday, 29 October. These dates are often blended together, but Black Thursday came first. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had already fallen from its September high, showing that the crash was a sequence of sessions rather than one isolated moment.
The underlying environment included speculative buying, margin debt, unequal income distribution, industrial overproduction, and weaknesses in the banking system. Historians debate the relative importance of each factor. The crash damaged confidence and helped deepen an economic downturn, but the Great Depression also reflected later monetary, banking, trade, and policy developments.