Black Thursday on October 24, 1929, preceded Black Tuesday in the Wall Street Crash.
On Black Thursday, heavy selling drove the New York Stock Exchange sharply lower at the opening. A group of prominent bankers later bought large blocks of leading shares, helping stabilize prices temporarily and calm some investors. The relief did not last: selling pressure returned the following week.
The crash sequence included Black Monday on October 28 and Black Tuesday on October 29. Those sessions showed that the market’s earlier weakness was not a temporary disturbance. The collapse was rooted in speculation, margin debt, concentrated ownership, and a fragile financial system.
Black Thursday is sometimes incorrectly described as the entire crash. It was an early dramatic session in a broader breakdown. The market’s fall damaged banks and businesses, but historians generally distinguish the stock-market crash from the wider causes and mechanisms of the Great Depression.