Life and American Culture in the 1920s The Roaring 20s

A. The Roaring 20s Best word to describe the 1920s –Euphoria is generally considered to be an exaggerated state Not based in reality or anything tangible Feeling that things are great and only going to get better Not based in any proof or evidence

B. Difficult Post War Adjustment Winners: 1.American Businessmen –Made $ during the war 2.US Prestige –Great pride 3.Women and Minorities –Briefly –Jobs in factories –Great Migration for a better life 4.Urban Areas –Majority of people in US (51%) now live in cities –Chicago – 3 million –New York – 5 million

Losers: 1.Wilson and the Democratic Party Republicans in office during 1920s Turned to isolationism/return to laissez-faire/low taxes/tariff high Harding – Collidge – Hoover 2.Progressive Movement “The Business of America is Business” No hope for continue gov regulation 3.American involvement in world affairs Return to isolationism 4.Immigrants Nativism is on the rise due to labor strikes and red scare Sacco and Vansetti –Found guilty of robbery and murder Emergency Quote Act of 1921 –Limit immigration from Europe KKK is on the rise

Losers Continue: 5.Communists and Socialist The Red Scare –Fear of Communist taken over America The Palmer Raids –J Edgar Hoover hunts down suspected Communist, socialist, and anarchists –Trampled civil rights –Foreign-born were deported without trails 6.Union activity/Labor Movement Seen as communist Three big strikes –Boston Police Strike –Steel Mill Strike –The Coal Miners Strike Proof that US was on brink of Communist Revolution

C. Changing Way of Life 1.Rural verse Urban –More people living in cities than in rural areas 2.To drink or not to drink –Passing of the 18 th amendment –Era of Prohibition Manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol were prohibited –Drank at Speakeasies –Gave rise to bootlegging/bootlegger –Hard to enforce Insufficient funds Law enforcement officials took bribes Only banned alcoholic beverages made in US

3.Science verse Religion –Fundamentalism Did not like changes in morals and manners found in the 1920s Skeptical of scientific knowledge All knowledge can be found in bible Battle ground Scopes “Monkey” Trails John T. Scope put on trial for teaching evolution Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan

4.Mature vs Young Women –Flapper Image of rebellious youth Bright waistline dresses above the knees, bobbed hair, smoke, drank, wore make up and talked openly about….

5.Changing role for women –At Home Ready made clothing and canned foods Greater equality in the marriage Having less children More free - could focus on hobbies Divorce was considered less shameful –In the work place “Women’s professions” Handful did work that was once reserved for men Earned less Made up less than half of work force –Today 47%

D. Heroes in the 1920 In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment (includes sports). Sport heroes  Babe Ruth  Gertude Ederle  Andrew “Rube” Foster  Helen Wills

Lindbergh Flight most beloved hero of the time was a small- town pilot named Charles Lindbergh Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo trans- Atlantic flight He took off from NYC in the Spirit of St. Louis and arrived in Paris 33 hours later to a hero’s welcome Represented idea America could achieve anything

E. Mass Culture is Created Through…….

1. Newspapers and Magazines As literacy increased, newspaper circulation rose and mass-circulation magazines flourished By the end of the 1920s, ten American magazines -- including Reader’s Digest and Time – boasted circulations of over 2 million

2. Radio radio was the most powerful communications News was delivered faster and to a larger audience Americans could hear the voice of the president or listen to the World Series live

3. Movies 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.

F. Writers of the 1920s The 1920s was one of the greatest literary eras in American history Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote the novel, Babbitt In Babbitt the main character ridicules American conformity and materialism

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

Ernest Hemingway, wounded in World War I, became one of the best- known authors of the era In his novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, he criticized the glorification of war His simple, hard little sentences of writing set the literary standard Hemingway

G. The Lost Generation Many writers of the 1920s were critical of American Culture Pessimism and rejection of American values called “The Lost Generation”

H. The Harlem Renaissance Between 1910 and 1920, the Great Migration saw hundreds of thousands of African Americans move north to big cities By 1920 over 5 million of the nation’s 12 million blacks (over 40%) lived in cities Migration of the Negro by Jacob Lawrence

Harlem, New York Harlem, NY became the largest black urban community In the 1920s it was home to a literary and artistic revival known as the Harlem Renaissance A famous night club in Harlem, New York City that operated during Prohibition that included jazz music

Writers of the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was primarily a literary movement Led by well-educated blacks with a new sense of pride in the African- American experience Claude McKay’s poems expressed the pain of life in the ghetto Mckay

Langston Hughes Missiouri-born Langston Hughes was the movement’s best known poet Many of his poems described the difficult lives of working-class blacks

Louis Armstrong Jazz was born in the early 20 th century In 1922, a young trumpet player named Louis Armstrong joined the Creole Jazz Band Later he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in NYC Armstrong is considered the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz

Edward “Duke” Ellington In the late 1920s, Duke Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer, led his ten-piece orchestra at the famous Cotton Club Ellington won renown as one of America’s greatest composers

Bessie Smith Bessie Smith, blues singer, was perhaps the most outstanding vocalist of the decade She achieved enormous popularity and by 1927 she became the highest- paid black artist in the world