Era of Sudden Change
 Role of Women:
 19th Amendment – Women get right to vote – 1920
 First woman governor in Wyoming – Nellie Tayloe Ross
 Women voting had little impact – voted same as husband
 Work place changes – during boom of 1920s women went back to
work
 Still held most of lowest paying jobs
 College attendance went up among middle and upper class women
 Still was caretaker of home – sought more equality with men
 Flappers emerge – young women who defied traditional values of
women
 Primarily found in large cities
 Angered many of traditional women’s rights groups – did not like image
 Urbanization – the movement of people from the farms to the
city
 Causes of rise of urbanization
 Farm life was hard and farmers were poor
 1920s saw the first time more people lived in urban areas
 Rise of automobiles
 Increase in education – grew with growth of industry
 Effects of Urbanization:
 Caused a shift in values of Americans – value warfare between urban and
rural people
 Caused growth in Ku Klux Klan
 Rise of Fundementalism – literal interpretation of Bible
 Famous preachers: Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson
 Famous Court Case of Fundementalism – Scopes Trial
 Christian Creationism vs. Evolution
 Clearance Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan
 Prohibition – made the national law by the 18th Amendment
 Prohibition restricted making, distributing, and selling of
alcohol
 Volstead Act – law enforcing prohibition
 Problems with Prohibition:
 Drinking alcohol was still legal
 Those who wanted it could still get it – created smuggling rings
 Organized crime groups (mobsters) rose – Al Capone
 Saw creation of speakeasies – illegal bars
 Bootlegging become a major business – smuggling of alcohol
 People made their own alcohol – moonshiners
 Doctors prescribed medicinal alcohol
 Government spent a great deal of money on stopping alcohol
 Causes:
 Great Migration – Started in 1910
 Blacks moved from South to North looking for freedom
 Moved to neighborhood in Manhattan (New York City) called
Harlem
 Still found racism in the North – Chicago riot of 1919
 Many blacks felt military service earned them rights/freedom
 Inspiration of Renaissance
 W.E.B DuBois – started magazine called The Crisis
 Magazine was outlet promoting African writing and poetry
 Marcus Garvey – started Universal Negro Improvement
Association which promoted a “Back to Africa” movement
 Charged with mail fraud went to prison and then deported from
country
 Harlem Renaissance – explosion of art, writing, music, and
entertainment from the African American culture of
Harlem.
 Writers and Poets: common theme was black defiance to
white oppression
 James Weldon Johnson – wrote book of poetry called God’s
Trombones
 Langston Hughes
 Claude McKay
 Artists: work focused on experiences of African Americans
 William H. Johnson
 Aaron Douglas
 Jacob Lawrence
 Performers and Musicians
 Paul Robeson – actor, singer
 Josephine Baker – actor, singer, dancer
 Louis Armstrong – major jazz musician
 Jazz got its start in Harlem Renaissance – blended music that was
mostly improvised
 Other artists: Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Bessie
Smith
 Driven by new media: broke down old barriers that
separated the nation
 Radio – brought radio shows and music into homes
 Movies
 became feature films with themes
 D.W. Griffith – made Birth of a Nation
 Became equipped with sound
 Jazz Singer
 Animated movies were born
 Walt Disney – Steamboat Willie featured Mickey Mouse
 1920s becomes era of heroes – all walks of life
 Film stars – Charlie Chaplain, Rudolph Valentino, Clara
Bow, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
 National Heroes:
 Charles Lindbergh – first to have transatlantic flight
 Amelia Earhart – first woman to fly across Atlantic
 Disappeared trying to fly around the world
 Sports Heroes:
 Red Grange – football player “Galloping Ghost”
 Helen Willis – tennis player
 Bobby Jones – golfer
 Babe Ruth – baseball – ushered in Golden Age of Baseball
 Writers: themes focused on things going on during the age
 F. Scott Fitzgerald – wrote The Great Gatsby (rich vs. poor)
 Sinclair Lewis – wrote Babbitt (middle class life)
 Ernest Hemmingway – writer impacted by World War I
 Wrote Farewell to Arms
 Women were also writers
 Edna St. Vincent Millay – poetry
 Willa Cather and Edith Wharton – novelists
 Music writers
 George Gershwin – wrote Rhapsody in Blue