Unit 12

Main Idea – Americans
experienced cultural
conflicts as customs and
values changed in the
1920s. The popular
culture reflected the
prosperity of the era, as
mass media, movies,
and spectator sports
played important roles
in the 1920s.


Wartime economy  Peacetime economy
Technology growth made life easier
Washing machine
 Electric stove
 Electric lighting


Buying on Credit  Spending money you
don’t have.





People became more carefree and
adventurous.
Women held jobs outside the home and
went to college
Flapper: carefree young women with
short hair, heavy makeup, and short
skirts.
Flagpole sitter…people actually sat on
top of flagpoles for fun. Flagpole
skaters…
Charles Lindbergh…first solo flight across
Atlantic (Spirit of Saint Louis)

Greater Mobility (easier to move around)


People moved from the suburbs and commuted to
work in the cities
Created jobs in transportation industry






Road construction
Oil
Steel
Cars
Gas stations
Airplane-transports mail and eventually people

Charles Lindbergh

Background: 18th
Amendment
established an era of
Prohibition – def. –
manufacture, sale,
and transportation of
alcoholic beverages
illegal



U.S. government failed to
budget enough money to
enforce the law
Speakeasies – def. –
underground saloons and
nightclubs that sold alcohol
Bootleggers – def. – people
who manufactured or
smuggled illegal liquor

SIG – Prohibition
experiment failed


Rise in organized crime
– ex: gangster Al
Capone in Chicago
In 1933 – 21st
Amendment repealed
prohibition

Fundamentalism –
def. – belief in the
literal interpretation
of the bible


Led to conflict with
some scientific ideas
Rejected the idea that
man had evolved
from apes = Darwin’s
theory of evolution

The Scopes Trial (1925) –
Teacher John T. Scopes
violated TN law that
banned teaching of
evolution in school
 Featured fight between
defense lawyer Clarence
Darrow and prosecution
witness William Jennings
Bryan
 SIG - Highlighted the
conflict between science
and fundamentalism

Sacco and Vanzetti
Italian immigrants (and
anarchists) who were
charged and found
guilty in the armed
robbery and murder of
two pay-clerks
 Eyewitnesses had only
been able to say that the
guilty parties looked
Italian, Sacco and
Vanzetti were arrested
 Executed via
Electrocution





Newspapers
Magazines
Radio
Movies

more literate
Americans =
increased newspaper
circulation

SIG – shaped cultural
norms and sparked
fads

mass-circulation to
reach wide audiences

Focused on weekly
news and culture –
ex: Reader’s Digest,
Time

The radio was the most
powerful
communications
medium of the 1920s


Broadcast news, sports,
music (Jazz), children’s
programs
SIG – created a more
national culture – different
audiences around the
country hearing the same
programs

Movies offered viewers
a way to escape their
lives through romance
and comedy


SIG – helped promote a
national culture
Development of
movies—Silent movies!
Felix the Cat
 The Big Parade
 Mickey Mouse








Babe Ruth - a professional ball player that hit 60
homeruns in one season.
Jack Dempsey - a boxer defeated by Gene Tunney.
Gene Tunney - the boxer that defeated former
champion Jack Dempsey.
Johnny Weissmuller - an American Olympic swimmer
that won 5 gold medals and was an actor.
Bobby Jones - was the greatest amateur golfer of
modern times.
Big Bill Tilden - first American to win men's singles at
Wimbledon, England.
Red Grange - was a halfback at the University of
Illinois from 1923 to 1925.


Background: 19th Amendment
increased women’s rights by
giving women the right to
vote
Flappers – def. - young urban
women who embraced new
fashions and attitudes


Featured short bobbed
haircuts, shorter dresses, makeup, smoking, drinking, talked
openly about sex, dancing
20 Slang

Anti-immigrant
attitudes (nativism) had
been growing since the
1880s due to increased
immigration, especially
from Southern and
Eastern Europe

Increased immigration led
to more competition for
industrial jobs in cities

Return of the Ku Klux
Klan (KKK)



1920s KKK devoted to
hatred of immigrants,
blacks, Catholics, Jews,
4.5 million male members
by mid-1920s
Declined by the end of the
decade due to criminal
activity

The Quota System –
established the
maximum number of
people who could
enter the U.S. from
each foreign country

Designed to limit
number of Southern
and Eastern
European immigrants




Jobs for African Americans
in the South were Scarce and
low paying
African Americans faced
discrimination and violence
in the South
African Americans moved to
northern cities in search of
jobs
African Americans also faced
discrimination and violence
in the North
South
North


African American artists,
writers, and musicians
based in Harlem revealing
the freshness and variety
of African American
culture.
The popularity of these
artists spread to the rest of
society.



Literature: Langston
Hughes-poet who
combined the experiences
of African and American
cultural roots.
Art: Jacob Lawrencepainter who chronicled
the Great Migration North
through art.
Music: Duke Ellington and
Lewis Armstrong-Jazz
composers; Bessie SmithBlues singer

Literature:


Art:

F. Scott Fitzgeraldnovelist who wrote
about the jazz age
 The Great Gatsby

John Steinbecknovelist who portrayed
the strength of poor
migrant workers in the
30s
 The Grapes of Wrath

Georgia O’Keefeartist known for
urban scenes and
later paintings of
the southwest and
flowers
Music:

Aaron Copland and
George Gershwinwrote uniquely
American music.
Chapter 22 – Section 1
Chapter 23 – Section 1

Main Idea – As the
prosperity of the 1920s
ended, severe economic
problems gripped the
nation and led to the
Great Depression. After
becoming president,
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt used
government programs
as part of his New Deal
to combat the
Depression.

The economy naturally goes through times of
recession, recovery, and prosperity.

Background: The
prosperity of the 1920s
was largely based on
the use of credit – def. –
consumers agreed to
buy now and pay later
for purchases
 Installment buying
 Buying on margin
 Over speculation

Installment buyingdef. - form of credit
with monthly
payments with
interest

def. – buying too
many stocks hoping
to sell at a higher
price in a short period
of time, regardless of
risk involved
•
Over Speculation:
paying only a small
percentage of a stock’s
price as a down payment
and borrowing the rest to
make a stock purchase


Black Tuesday
Hawley-Smoot Act

October 29, 1929– the
stock market crashed
with 16.4 million shares
of stock sold in one day,
causing prices to
collapse

Prices of stocks fell 
speculators left with huge
debts that couldn’t be
repaid to banks banks
failed people lost their
savings

The Federal Reserve
failed to prevent
widespread collapse
of the nation’s
banking system as
banks continued to
fail through the early
1930s

Hawley-Smoot Act
(1930) - High
protective tariff
resulted in retaliatory
tariffs in other
countries, which
strangled
international trade



Great Depression
“Hoovervilles”
Farm foreclosures
When was
unemployment
the highest?
Answer:
1933

Great Depression– def. –
period from 1929 to 1940 in
which the economy
plummeted and
unemployment skyrocketed,
causing widespread
hardship
Business failures – 90,000
businesses went bankrupt
 Collapse of the financial
system - over 11,000 bank
closings
 Unemployment – 25% of
American workers were
unemployed by 1932

“Hoovervilles”– def. shacks and shantytowns of
homeless people, named for
President Hoover
•

President Hoover
thought that private
companies and
volunteers should take
care of the economy

Did not act in the
beginning to try to
counter act the
depression
President Hoover

Farm Foreclosures–
farmers lost their
homes and lands and
were forced to
migrate across the
country looking for
work
Dust Bowl
 “Okies”


Parts of Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas,
New Mexico, and
Colorado that were
hardest hit by draught
and dust storms



Lasted 8 years
Caused by poor agricultural practices and
years of sustained drought
The winds of the Great Plains stirred up the
dust from the fields and blew it across the
plains



In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains.
In 1933, there were 38 storms.
By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of
farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the
winds.

The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April
14, 1935.



The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal,
taking a walk — were no longer simple.
Children wore dust masks to and from school, women
hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to
stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops
blew away.


The cloud that appeared on the horizon that Sunday was the
worst. Winds were clocked at 60 mph. Then it hit.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm
Life during the Dust Bowl



Okies: those who moved
west to California from
Oklahoma
Arkies: those who
moved west to
California from
Arkansas
These migrant
workers/families lived
in tents or out of their
automobiles





What feelings does this
image give you?
What do you think to woman
is feeling? How about the
kids?
Describe the way they are
dressed?
Migrant Stories
Migrant Mother Photo
Video Clip

As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The
Grapes of Wrath:

"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from
Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from
Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and
hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a
hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They
streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift,
to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any
burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We
got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for
food, and most of all for land."

Franklin Delano
Roosevelt (FDR) won
the presidential election
of 1932

Inaugural address –
rallied a frightened nation
 “The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.”

Fireside Chats – FDR’s
radio addresses aimed at
restoring American
confidence



Relief
Recovery
Reform

Relief: measures that
provided direct
payment to people for
immediate help
 CCC (Civilian
Conservation Corps)
 TVA (Tennessee Valley
Authority)
 WPA (Works Progress
Administration)
 Civilian Conservation
Corps – provided jobs
for young single males
on conservation projects
 Tennessee Valley
Authority – provided
jobs building dams to
bring running water
and electricity to poor
regions in the South
 Works Progress
Administration –
created as many jobs
as quickly as possible
in construction of
airports, highways,
and public buildings
as well as professions
such as art, music,
and theater

Recovery: programs
designed to bring
the nation out of the
Depression over
time
 AAA (Agricultural
Adjustment Act)
 NRA (National Recovery
Administration)

AAA (Agricultural
Adjustment Act) – aided
farmers by regulating
crop production so prices
would rise

NRA (National Recovery
Administration) –
reformed banking
practices and established
fair codes of competition
for businesses



FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)
Wagner Act
SSA (Social Security Act)


Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation –
protected bank deposits
up to $5,000
What does it protect up to
today?

– defined unfair labor practices
and established the National
Labor Relations Board to settle
disputes between employers
and employees
 Social Security Act
– provided a
pension for retired
workers and their
spouses and
helped people with
disabilities



Who are they main
figures in the cartoon?
What are they pouring
down the pump?
What is occurring as it
is being pumped into the
economy?

The New Deal
changed the role of
government to a
more active
participant in solving
problems
 Public believed in the
responsibility of the
federal government to:
1. deliver public
services
2. intervene in the
economy
3. act in ways to
promote the
general welfare