CHAPTER 17
THE JAZZ AGE
(1921 - 1929)
17.1 – POLITICS OF THE 1920s
• You only have to worry about pages 590-592 ,especially
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Harding’s election to the presidency in 1920
Teapot Dome Scandal
Coolidge’s election to the presidency in 1924
Herbert Hoover
• From Ohio
• Served one term in the Senate before
running for President
• Won the Presidential election of 1920
• He was a Republican
• He promised a “return to normalcy”
• What does this mean?
Warren G. Harding
• There were several scandals during his
presidency that seriously damaged his
reputation
TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
• Albert B. Fall - Harding’s Secretary
of the Interior
• Allowed private interests to lease
government lands containing U.S.
Navy oil reserves at Teapot Dome,
Wyoming
• In return Fall received bribes of
more than $300,000
• Fall was sent to prison
MEDICAL SUPPLIES SCANDAL
• Charles Forbes – Harding put
him in charge of the Veterans
Bureau
• Forbes sold medical supplies
from veterans’ hospitals and
kept the money for himself
CALVIN COOLIDGE
• Harding died in 1923 and Coolidge
became president
• Coolidge was disgusted with the
corruption in Harding’s
administration
• CC believed that prosperity relied
on business leadership, gov’t
should interfere very little
• Easily won the election of 1924
• Show clip from The 20th Century: A
Moving Visual History (America’s
Economic Boom)
Calvin Coolidge
CHANGES TO THE ECONOMY
HERBERT HOOVER – S. of
Commerce for Coolidge
• Wanted to balance gov’t regulation
w/ cooperative individualism
• Businesses would share/work
with government
• Reduce costs, promote economic
efficiency
• Created the Bureau of Aviation and
the Federal Radio Commission to help
promote and regulate both industries
• Obama’s cabinet
17.2 – A GROWING ECONOMY
(A lot of things were changing in the ‘20s)
Automobile
AUTOMOBILES & THE ASSEMBLY LINE
Henry Ford
Assembly Line
INVENTION OF FLIGHT
Show clip from The 20th
Century: A Moving Visual
History (Invention Takes
Flight– 4 mins and last
part of Stars and Heroes
– 30mins to 33:30))
airplanes
Charles Lindbergh
THE RADIO
Show clip from A
Christmas Story
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
• You are married, have 3 kids and
live in your own house. You need a
bigger car because all 3 of your kids
are in car seats. The cheapest car
that you think will work for your
family is $25,000.
1. How do you hear about, see,
find….the car you want?
2. You don’t have $15,000 lying
around, so how do you buy the
car?
THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
Higher Wages
Advertising
Techniques
Shorter work weeks
These 2 things gave people more money to spend and more
free time to spend it/enjoy. This created a consumer society
and the growth of advertising.
How the
Internet is
changing
advertising
Influential
commercials
AMERICAN CONSUMER DEBT
• Total consumer debt: $11.85 trillion
• National credit card debt: $918.5 billion
• Average household credit card debt: $16,140
• Average student loan debt: $31,946
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/average-credit-card-debthousehold/
HOW DO CREDIT CARDS/CREDITORS MAKE MONEY?
(they charge interest!)
• To find out how much interest you’re paying on your balance each day, you can convert
your APR to a daily percentage rate. To do so, divide your APR by 365, the number of
days in a year. At the end of each day, the card issuer will multiply your current balance
by the daily rate to come up with the daily interest charge. That charge is then added to
your balance the next day, a process called compounding.
• For example:
If your credit card has an APR of 15 percent, it will have a daily rate of .041096.
Let’s say a cardholder has a balance of $1,000 at the 15 percent APR standard interest
rate. The next day, interest is added and the balance becomes $1,000.41, plus any
additional purchases and minus any new credits or payments. This process occurs each
day until the end of the cardholder’s monthly statement cycle. So at the end of the
month, the beginning $1,000 balance becomes $1013 when interest charges are applied
at 15% APR.
https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/resources/interest-and-aprs/how-does-mycredit-card-interest-work/
CREATE A COMMERCIAL
 a 1-2 minute advertisement for your assigned product
You can use visuals and/or props; be as creative as you can/want as long as it
is school appropriate
Each member of the group must have at least 3 lines (1 word lines don’t
count, so you can say a 1 word line but it won’t count as one of your three
lines)
The goal of the commercial is to convince people to spend their money on
your product
UNEVEN PROSPERITY
• Not all Americans shared in
economic growth, these were
very difficult times for many…
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Native Americans
Immigrants
Deep South
Farmers
17.3 - A CLASH OF VALUES
& 17.4 – CULTURAL INNOVATIONS
• See your photo essay/magazine for this section
• Resurgence of the KKK clip (The 20th Century – A Moving
History - 3 mins)
• Thoroughly Modern Women clip (The 20th Century – A Moving
History - 3 mins)
• Scopes Monkey Trial clip (The 20th Century – A Moving History 3 mins)
• Stars and Heroes clip (The 20th Century – A Moving History - 7
mins)
17.5 – AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE
• Great Migration – thousands moved from
rural South to northern cities during WWI
and the ‘20s
- massive demographic/social
impact on the country
- examples???
• Harlem became the center of an AA
renaissance
• Art, racial pride, political organization
• This development of AA arts and
culture became known as the Harlem
Renaissance
WRITERS
Claude McKay:
- Harlem Shadows
(poetry)
- 1st important writer
of the HR
- Defiance, contempt
for racism
Langston Hughes:
- writing emphasized
racial pride
- I, Too, Sing America
Zora Neale Hurston:
- Jonah’s Gourd Vine
and Their Eyes Were
Watching God
- described rural AA
culture
- women as main
characters
JAZZ, BLUES & THEATER
• Louis Armstrong introduced an early form of
jazz
• Great cornet and trumpet soloist
• Revolutionized jazz and music in general
• Cover of TIME magazine in 1949
Louis Armstrong
• Duke Ellington – bandleader, influenced by
ragtime
• Wrote a ton of music
• Started at the Cotton Club
Duke Ellington
JAZZ, BLUES & THEATER
• In addition to jazz, blues became very
popular
• Blues is seen as soulful, emotional
• Evolved from AA spirituals
• Bessie Smith was the “Empress of the
Blues”
• Along with music, theater arts were also a
major part of the HR
• Shuffle Along made its Broadway debut
in 1921
• Famous performers included Paul
Robeson and Josephine Baker
Paul Robeson
POLITICS
• A march by AA veterans of WWI through
Manhattan to Harlem represented new
hopes/aspirations
• as a result of the Great Migration AAs
became a more powerful voting bloc in the
north
• Usually voted for Republicans (party of
Abraham Lincoln)
• Oscar DePriest – first AA representative in
Congress from a northern State (Illinois)
POLITICS
• NAACP – focused on influencing
public officials and working
through the courts
• Efforts decrease lynching
(Senate defeated a bill to outlaw
it)
POLITICS
• NAACP fought for political and
economic power, others fought for
black nationalism and black pride
• Separate from white society?
Marcus Garvey
• Marcus Garvey
• “Negro Nationalism”
• Established the Universal Negro
Improvement Association
• AAs could gain advances by
educating themselves; should
separate from whites
• Go to Africa?
• Some AAs did not like him; too
radical, insulted them…
• Back to Africa movement never
became a reality, but he had a
lasting impact on black pride