1. The Roaring Twenties (1920-1929)
AIM: How did the end of WWI impact Americans lives at home?
Do Now: How do you think Americans responded to the end of WWI?

2. Decade of partying and celebration!
WAR ENDS!
Decade of partying and celebration!
USA, USA, USA!!!

3. The “Jazz Age” or the “Golden Twenties” War is over- let’s party!!!

4. 1920-Economy was BOOMING!
During war- US exported over $ 8 billion dollars worth of supplies/goods
BUT
2 mil. soldiers come home, stop exporting, eco. starting to halt (don’t worry, be happy!)

5. “Republican Decade” Hands-off Presidents
President Warren G. Harding: “Return to Normalcy”
Laissez-faire
Isolationism
President Calvin Coolidge
President Herbert Hoover

6. Installment Buying Advertising  make people want more and more!
Buying on “margin” : credit cards
“Buy now, pay later!!!”
People think they’re rich!

7. BUY! BUY! BUY!
“On margin”- Buy now, pay later

8. BUY! BUY! BUY! Appliances!! Vacuum cleaners! Washing machines!
WOMEN CAN LEAVE THE HOUSE! (& have voting rights!)

9. Leisure Activities- Sports
People have money to spend on sports
Babe Ruth (baseball)
Jack Dempsey (boxer)

10. Leisure Activities- Movies
Hollywood
Silent films Charlie Chaplin
“Talkie” films
1 national culture
Immigrants learn English from the movies!

11. Mass Media & Communication
Radio-Created a “national culture” everyone listens to the same thing

12. Prohibition (18th amendment)
Create speakeasies (secret bars that illegally sold alcohol)

13. Organized Crime Bribery of police The “Mafia” (gang)
Mafia wars sought control of the booze market
Chicago

14. Organized Crime
Al Capone -gangster who made millions from bootlegging: illegally selling alcohol

15. Planes (Aviation)
Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh (1927) 1st to fly over the Atlantic Ocean from LI to Paris

17. The Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance
New attitudes- party on!
URBANIZATION
1920 census revealed that more than ½ the population lived in urban cities

18. Women Greater sense of equality working Changes in manners and morals
Question traditional roles as mothers

19. Flapper Short skirts Bobbed haircut Listened to jazz
Drank and smoked in public
“liberated” (free)

20. The Jazz Age Celebrating African-Americans
New rhythms and improvisation
Jazz clubs- “Cotton Club” in NYC

21. Harlem Renaissance pride in A.A. culture “rebirth” = Renaissance
new demands for equality
Langston Hughes (poet): I, Too, Sing America

22. Youth Culture “Fads” Flagpole sitting Marathon dancing
The “Charleston” dance

23. The “Lost” Generation New group of writers after WWI
Questioned American morals
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
showing how people waste money

24. How did American life change in the 1920s?
2. Did the 1920s “roar” or was it more of a “yawn?”