
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.
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repealed prohibition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

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

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,
make-up, 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.



Art: Jacob Lawrencepainter who chronicled
the Great Migration
North through art.
Literature: Langston
Hughes-poet who
combined the
experiences of African
and American cultural
roots.
Music: Duke Ellington
and Lewis ArmstrongJazz composers; Bessie
Smith-Blues singer

Art:


Literature:


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

def. - 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
•
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

Federal Reserve failed
to prevent
widespread collapse
of the nation’s
banking system as
banks continued to
fail through the early
1930s

(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?

– 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
– 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

– 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

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

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 region 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

– programs designed
to bring the nation
out of the Depression
over time
 AAA
 NRA
 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
Wagner Act
SSA


(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:
 deliver public services
 intervene in the
economy
 act in ways to promote
the general welfare