1. American Life in the Roaring Twenties
Chapter 31 APUSH
American Life in the Roaring Twenties

2. THE ROARING TWENTIES Return to normalcy
US turned inward---isolationism
Decade notable for obsessive interest in celebrities
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainment
Eat, drink & be merry, for tomorrow we die
Jazz Age
first modern era in the U.S.

3. Red Scare
Red Scare, 1919 to 1921, was a time of great upheaval…U.S. “scared out of their wits".
"Reds” as they were called, "Anarchists” or "Outside Foreign-Born Radical Agitators” (Communists).
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
Anti-red hysteria came about after WWI and the Russian Revolution.
6,000 immigrants the government suspected of being Communists were arrested (Palmer Raids) and 600 were deported or expelled from the U.S.
No due process was followed

4. Kept out immigrants from southeastern Europe.
IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS
The U.S. Government began to restrict certain “undesirable” immigrants from entering the U.S.
Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924
Kept out immigrants from southeastern Europe.

6. IMMIGRATION QUOTAS
The U.S. Government began to restrict certain “undesirable” immigrants from entering the U.S.
Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, in which newcomers from Europe were restricted at any year to a quota, which was set at 3% of the people of their nationality who lived in the U.S. in 1910.
Immigration Act of 1924, the quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of 1890, when few southeastern Europeans lived in America.

7. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

8. Cartoon from 1919: “Put them out and keep them out”

9. In this time period, anti-foreignism was high as well.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants charged with murdering a guard and robbing a shoe factory in Braintree, Mass.
The trial lasted Convicted on circumstantial evidence, many believed they had been framed for the crime because of their anarchist and pro-union activities.
In this time period, anti-foreignism was high as well.
Liberals and radicals rallied around the two men, but they would be executed.

10. IKA Imperial Klans of America

11. 1925: Membership of 5 million 1926: Marched on Washington.
K K K
Rise of the KKK was due to the ever changing of a traditional America.
1925: Membership of 5 million
1926: Marched on Washington.
Attack on urban culture and defends Christian/Protestant and rural values
Against immigrants from Southern Europe, European Jews, Catholics and American Blacks
Sought to win U.S. by persuasion and gaining control in local/state government.
Violence, internal corruption result in Klan’s virtual disappearance by 1930 but will reappear in the 1950s and 1960s.

13. PROHIBITION
Goal: was to reduce crime and poverty and improve the quality of life by making it impossible for people to get their hands on alcohol.
This "Noble Experiment" was a failure.
Midnight, January 16th, 1920, US went dry.
The 18th Amendment, known as the Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture, sale and possession of alcohol in America. Prohibition lasted for thirteen years.
So was born the industry of bootlegging, speakeasies and Bathtub Gin.

14. Most support for prohibition came from religious rural white Protestants
By 1917, more than half the states had passed laws restricting alcohol.

15. PROHIBITION
People drank more than ever during Prohibition, and there were more deaths related to alcohol.
No other law in America has been violated so flagrantly by so many "decent law-abiding" people.
Overnight, many became criminals.
Mobsters controlled liquor created a booming black market economy.
Gangsters owned speakeasies and by 1925 there were over 100,000 speakeasies in New York City alone.

16. Prohibition was doomed to failure because government did not have enough officers to enforce it. (Only 3,000 nationwide)
People made their own alcohol illegally, or got their doctor to prescribe it as medicine.
Prohibition allowed for huge smuggling operations. In 1925 government officials estimated that they stopped only 5% of all illegal alcohol entering the country.

17. PROHIBITION

18. PROHIBITION
The "Noble" Experiement

19. The Golden Age of Gangsterism
Chicago
Al Capone (“Scarface”)- Public Enemy #1
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre- seven members of a rival gang were murdered after their weapons were taken away from them
The Culture
500 mobsters murdered in the gang wars of Chicago in the 1920s
By 1930, organized crime has an income of $12-$18 billion, more than 4 times the income of the federal government

20. EDUCATION AND POPULAR CULTURE
During the 1920s, developments in education had a powerful impact on the nation.
Enrollment in high schools quadrupled between 1914 and 1926.
Public schools met the challenge of educating millions of immigrants

21. SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL
1925
The first major legal conflict between religion vs. science being taught in school was in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.

22. Famous trial lawyer who represented Scopes
SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL
John T. Scopes
Respected high school biology teacher arrested in Dayton, Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Clarence Darrow
Famous trial lawyer who represented Scopes
William J. Bryan
Sec. of State for President Wilson, ran for president three times, turned evangelical leader. Represented the
prosecution.
Dayton, Tennessee
Small town in the south became protective against the encroachment of modern times and secular teachings.

23. The right to teach and protect Biblical teachings in schools.
SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL
The right to teach and protect Biblical teachings in schools.
The acceptance of science and that all species have evolved from lower forms of beings over billions of years.
The trial is conducted in a carnival-like atmosphere. The people of Dayton are seen as ‘backward’ by the country.

24. Outcome of the Scopes Trial
Scopes found guilty and fined $100- the fine was later revoked by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality in the procedure of the trial
The Butler Act would not be formally repealed until 1967
WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS?

25. The Second Industrial Revolution
U.S. develops the highest standard of living in the world
The twenties and the second revolution
electricity replaces steam
Henry Ford’s modern assembly line introduced
Rise of the airline industry
Modern appliances and conveniences begin to change American society

26. The Automobile Industry
Auto makers stimulate sales through model changes, advertising
Auto industry fostered the growth of other businesses
Autos encourage movement and more individual freedom.

31. “Pink Collar” Jobs Gave women a taste of the work world.
Low paying service occupations.
Made less money than men did doing the same jobs.
Examples of jobs:
Secretaries
Teachers
Telephone operators
Nurses

32. THE FLAPPER These women challenged traditional American values.
Characteristics of a Flapper:
Short, bobbed hair
Short hems on their skirts
Listened to Jazz music
Wore makeup
Drank hard liquor
Smoked cigarettes
Treated sex in a more casual manner
Were opposed to the conventional social and sexual norms

33. MODERN FAMILY EMERGES Marriage was based on romantic love.
Women managed the household and finances.
Children were not considered laborers/ wage earners anymore.
Seen as developing children who needed nurturing and education

35. Mass Media Increases in Mass media during the 1920s
Print and broadcast methods of communication.
Examples:
Newspapers
Magazines
Radio
Movies
Newspapers:
27 million to 39 million
Increase of 42%
Motion Pictures:
40 million to 80 million
Increase of 100%
Radios:
60,000 to 10.2 million
Increase of 16,983%

36. RADIO
Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA was a world pioneer of commercial radio broadcasting.
Transmitted 100 watts on a wavelength of 360 meters.
KDKA first broadcast was the Harding-Cox Presidential election returns on November 2, 1920.
220 stations eighteen months after KDKA started.
$50 to $150 for first radios
3,000,000 homes had them by 1922.

37. RADIO
Radio sets, parts and accessories brought in $60 million in 1922…
$136 million in 1923
$852 million in 1929
Radio reached into every third home in its first decade.
Listening audience was 50,000,000 by 1925

39. ENTERTAINMENT AND ARTS
Even before sound, movies offered a means of escape through romance and comedy
First sound movies: Jazz Singer (1927)
First animated with sound: Steamboat Willie (1928)
By 1930 millions of Americans went to the movies each week.
Walt Disney's animated Steamboat Willie marked the debut of Mickey Mouse. It was a seven minute long black and white cartoon.

40. AMERICAN HEROES OF THE 20s
In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment. (includes sports)
People crowded into baseball games to see their heroes.
Babe Ruth was a larger than life American hero who played for Yankees
He hit 60 homers in 1927.

41. WRITERS OF THE 1920s
Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the phrase “Jazz Age” to describe the 1920s
Fitzgerald wrote Paradise Lost and The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby reflected the emptiness of New York elite society

42. It wasn’t call the “Jazz Age” for nothin’.
Jazz moved up from New Orleans to Northern cities during the Great Migration.
Early pioneers: W. C. Handy- “St. Louis Blues”, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington would steal the show.

43. “If I had to choose between Harlem and heaven, oh-ho-ho, Harlem would win every time.”
Harlem Renaissance:
Cultural renaissance of African American art, literature, music, and pride.
The “New Negro”- proud, a full citizen, and EQUAL to whites!
Song of the Towers- Aaron Douglas

44. Contributors to African American Culture in the 1920s
Authors
Langston Hughes- poems with tempos that echoed jazz and blues. “Strange”
Claude McKay- Cane one of first full-length publications of Harlem Renaissance
Zora Neale Hurston- portrayed lives of poor, Southern blacks. “The greatest cultural wealth of the continent.”
The poet laureate of Harlem

45. African American political leaders
Marcus Garvey
Created the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
Promoted resettlement of Africa
Keep black dollars in black communities