1. Chapter 13

2. Society in the 1920s  In U.S. History the decade of the 1920s stands out as a time of rapid change.  World War I shattered a sense of optimism that had grown in the West since the Enlightenment.  The “Roaring Twenties” and the “Jazz Age” were both terms used to capture the rapid cultural change of the 1920s.  During the 1920s many young people who had been disillusioned by WWI rejected the moral values of the Victorian Age.

3. Women’s Changing Roles  Flapper, the nickname given to young women of the 1920s who defied convention and broke norms, became the symbol of the rebellious Jazz Age youth.  Though relatively few in number, in the 1920s the flappers symbolized women’s desire to break with the past.  During the 1920s many women felt freer to experiment with bolder styles and manners.  In the 1920s, the status of women in the workplace changed very little.

4. Women Working and Voting  During the 1920s, about 15% of wage-earning women became professionals and about 20% held clerical jobs.  Most women who worked were single but the percentage of married women working outside the home did increase during the 1920s.  Women were not paid the same, for the same work, and were often expected to quit if they married or became pregnant.  As of 1920, women could vote in all elections.  Early on many women did not exercise the right to vote for various reasons, including, that they did not feel comfortable voting, they could not leave their children to go to the poles, and their families discourage them from voting.

5. Farmers in the 1920s  The major demographic change of the 1920s was a movement away from the countryside.  The 1920 census showed that for the first time in the nation’s history, more Americans lived in urban areas than in rural areas.  While much of the country was in an economic boom in the 1920s farmers were economically stressed.  On farms most older children were vital workers and so they were less likely to go to high school.  While there was a shift away from traditional values in the cities, most rural populations maintained traditional values.

6. African Americans in the 1920s  Jim Crow laws in the South and new job opportunities in the North had produced the Great Migration of blacks from the South to Northern cities.  The Great Migration continued from the late 1800s through World War I.  This migration continued in the 1920s.  In 1860, 93% of all blacks lived in the South, by 1930 it had fallen to 80%.  The North was no promised land.  African American factory workers often faced anger and hatred from whites.

7. Other Migration  After World War I, masses of refugees applied for entry into the United States.  During the 1920s, Congress acted to limit immigration, especially from southern and eastern Europe and also from China and Japan.  Since the limits did not apply to nations in the Americas, employers turned to immigrants from Mexico and Canada to fill low-paying jobs.  Los Angeles became a magnet for migrants from Mexico.  Los Angeles developed a distinct barrio, or Spanish- speaking neighborhood.

8. Growth of the Suburbs  The migrations of the 1920s resulted in a growth of the suburbs.  In the late 1800s, trolleys enabled people to live in the suburbs and commute to the cities.  In the 1920s, trolleys to the suburbs were largely replaced by buses.  Movement away from the urban areas to the suburbs was a major demographic shift of the 1920s.  The automobile was also becoming more affordable.  During the 1920 the number of residents decreased in Manhattan, the heart of the city, while the suburb of Queens doubled in population.

9. American Heroes  The changing morals of the 1920s made many Americans hungry for the values of an earlier time.  Many Americans became fascinated with heroes because they longed for symbols of old-fashioned virtues.  In heroes Americans recognized the virtues of the “good old days.”  The most famous American hero was Charles Lindbergh who flew nonstop from New York to Paris in 1927.

10. More Heroes of the 1920s  Amelia Earhart, in 1932 was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.  Babe Ruth was a baseball star.  Jim Thorpe was a Native American who won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and the decathlon and went on to play pro football.  Jack Dempsey won the world heavyweight boxing title by defeating Jess Willard, held it from 1919 to 1926.  Gertrude Ederle won one gold and two bronze medals in the 1924 Olympics. Newspapers hailed her as the “bob-haired, nineteen-year-old daughter of the Jazz Age.”

11. Mass Media and the Jazz Age  Before the 1920s the U.S. had been largely a collection of regional cultures.  The rapid growth of the mass media in the 1920s produced a national culture.  The rise of films, radio broadcasting, and the news media all helped to bring about a national culture.  The mass media includes all methods of communicating information to large numbers of people.

12. The Jazz Age BBoth the growing radio audience and the great African American migration to the cities helped make a music called jazz widely popular in the 1920s. JJazz grew out of the African American music of the South, especially ragtime and blues. AAfrican Americans combined Western harmonies with African rhythms to create Jazz.

13. More on Jazz  Clubs in the Harlem district of New York City were among the hottest places to listen to jazz.  At these clubs such as the famous Cotton Club, musicians, most of whom were black, performed for audiences that were primarily white.  The Charleston was the name of a dance popular with the flappers that embodied the spirit of the Jazz Age.

14. Jazz Musicians  Duke Ellington one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the 1920s was a pianist, composer, and bandleader.  Louis Armstrong was a popular jazz trumpeter and singer who popularized a style known as “scat.”  “Scat” was using the voice to replace words with nonsense syllables.

15. Duke Ellington

16. Louis Armstrong

17. Literature during the 1920s  Several modern writers began fruitful careers during the 1920s.  Sinclair Lewis attacked American society with savage irony.  His targets included the prosperous conformist (Babbit, 1922), the medical business (Arrowsmith, 1925), dishonest ministers (Elmer Gantry, 1927) and small- town Americans (Main Street, 1920)

18. The Lost Generation  Group that rejected the quest for material possessions that seemed to occupy so many Americans.  Members scorned American popular culture as artless and uninspired.  Young adults in Europe and America in general, and writers in particular, who had become disillusioned with the world and Western Values after World War I.  The term for expatriate writers who were repelled by American popular culture and society in the 1920s.  Left the country to live in Paris.

19. Lost Generation Writers  Sherwood Anderson, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, EE. Cummings, John Dos Passos  Ernest Hemingway  F. Scott Fitzgerald  Gertrude Stein, who had already been living in Paris, remarked to Hemingway, that he and the other expatriate writers were all a Lost Generation, a group of people disconnected from their country and its values.  Hemingway introduced the term in his book The Sun Also rises.

20. Ernest Hemingway & F. Scott Fitzgerald

21. The Harlem Renaissance  African American literary awakening of the 1920s.  James Weldon Johnson was both a political activist, as a leader of the NAACP, and a writer in the Harlem Renaissance.  Johnson’s God’s Trombones (1927), is a collection of sermons in rhythmic verse modeled after the style of traditional black preaching.

22. More Harlem Renaissance  Zora Neale Hurston gained fame as a writer for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Langston Hughes is perhaps the writer from the Harlem Renaissance most studied today.  He was a poet, short story writer, journalist, and playwright whose career stretched into the 1960s.  He spoke with a clear, strong voice about the joys and difficulties of being human, being American, and being black.

23. Zora Neale Hurston & Langston Hughes

24. Prohibition  Prohibition of all alcoholic beverages became the law of the land when the 18 th Amendment to the Constitution took effect in 1920.  The main goals of Prohibition seemed worthy: 1. Eliminate drunkenness and the resulting abuse. 2. Get rid of saloons, where prostitution, gambling, and other forms of vice thrived. 3. Prevent absenteeism and on- the-job accidents stemming from drunkenness.

25. Prohibition continued PProhibition demonstrated that many people opposed the freer lifestyle of the Jazz Age. AA 1924 report showed Kansans obeying the law at about 95% and New Yorkers at a rate of only about 5%. PProhibition sharpened the contrast between urban and rural moral values during the 1920s.

26. Getting around Prohibition  Bootleggers supplied illegal alcohol during Prohibition.  Speakeasies were illegal bars that operated behind storefronts and pool rooms.  Supplying illegal liquor was a complex operation, involving manufacture, transportation, storage, and sales.  This complexity, and bootlegging’s huge potential for profit, helped lead to the development of organized crime.

27. Organized Crime LLocal gangsters found that by joining forces, they could create an organization large enough to handle the entire bootlegging operation. AAs rival groups fought for control with machine guns, gang wars and murder became commonplace. The streets of American cities became a battle ground. SSuccessful bootlegging organizations often moved into other illegal activities including gambling, prostitution, and racketeering. RRacketeering is the act of operating an illegal business or scheme in order to make a profit, perpetrated by a structured group.

28. Challenges to Traditional Beliefs  Science and technology were taking a larger role in everyday life.  War and other problems were causing people to question God.  Some scholars were saying that the Bible was written by humans and contained contradictions and historical inaccuracies.

29. Fundamentalism  In response to these challenges, between 1910 and 1915, religious traditionalists published a series of 12 pamphlets called The Fundamentals.  These pamphlets stated a set of beliefs that have come to be know as fundamentalism.  These beliefs included the view that the Bible was literally true and did not contain contradictions.

30. Evolution and the Scopes Trial FFundamentalist opposed the teaching of evolution as they believe it contradicted the Bible. TThey were successful at getting laws passed that prevented the teaching of evolution in public schools. JJohn Scopes taught evolution in Tennessee to deliberately challenge the constitutionality of a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. SScopes was convicted, but the trial is generally seen as a victory for evolutionist, and a setback for fundamentalists, though their membership strength would continue to grow.

31. Racial Tensions  Blacks fled the South in the Great Migration because they wanted to take advantage of job opportunities in the North and escape violence in the South.  Many of them found both racial prejudice and violence in the North.  Because mob violence between whites and blacks erupted in 25 cities during the summer of 1919 it became known as “Red Summer.”  In Chicago the Black population had doubled between 1910 and 1919. This led to overcrowded neighborhoods and racial tension.  When a rock thrown by a white struck a black boy, who drowned at a beach on Lake Michigan the result was a major race riot.

32. Revival of the KKK  During reconstruction, President Grant’s campaign against the Ku Klux Klan had largely eliminated it.  In 1915 the organization was revived.  By 1924 the Klan had grown to 4 million members.  The new Klan was no longer just a Southern organization. Indiana was the state with the most Klansmen.  The new Klan shifted its focus and vowed to defend white-protestant culture against any group not just blacks.  In the 1920s, Klan members carried out crimes against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and others.

33. The Garvey Movement  Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican-born leader of a movement promoting African American pride.  In the 1920s the Garvey movement worked to build up African American self-respect and economic power.  Garvey urged African Americans to return to Africa.  Garvey was a Black Nationalist, which means he wanted he wanted blacks to be united to help themselves and to remain separate from whites.  Garvey’s movement failed when he was jailed and later deported for mail fraud.