Social Changes in the
“Jazz Age”
The Flowering of the Arts
■The Harlem Renaissance
reflected the explosion of black
culture & the “New Negro”:
–Jazz & Blues expressed the
social realities of blacks; Louis
Armstrong became very popular
–Langston Hughes’ poetry,
novels, & plays promoted
equality, condemned racism, &
celebrated black culture
Josephine Baker,
internationally
renowned singer/dancer
“You could be black & proud, politically
assertive & economically independent,
creative & disciplined—or so it seemed”
The Flapper
The
Flowering
of theonArts
“The
Waste
Land” focused
a sterilegave
U.S. society
■The 1920s
rise to a new
Poetry
discussed
a “botched
wasteland”
class of
intellectuals
who
“Main
Street”–narrow-minded
small towns
condemned
the new American
“Great
Gatsby”—human
emptiness
industrial
society & materialism:
Romantic individualism
& violence
–Pessimistic
Literature:
TS Eliot,
Ezra Pound,
Lewis,
Plays ofSinclair
tragic pipedreams
F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway
–Playwrights: Eugene O’Neill
–Music: Gershwin & Copland
Italian
immigrants
Nicola Sacco &
Bartolomeo
Vanzetti were
The judge in the case even
executed for referred to Sacco & Vanzetti
armed robbery as “those anarchist bastards”
& murder
without
evidence
The
Fundamentalist
Challenge
Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Jehovah’s
■The
most long-lasting
reaction of
Witnesses
all grew in membership
rural America was a retreat to
Christian beliefs
–Aggressive fundamentalist
churches provided a haven for
rural American values
–The Scopes “Monkey Trial”
revealed the rural attack on
evolution in schools
Scopes Monkey Trial
Legendary defense lawyer Clarence
Darrow faces off against William
Jennings Bryan in the Dayton, Tennessee
trial of schoolteacher John Scopes.
Bryan died in Dayton five days after the
trial ended.
Attorney Clarence Darrow represents the
defendant, high school biology teacher John
Scopes, in what became known as the Monkey
Trial.
The Ku Klux Klan
■The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in
1915 (Stone Mtn, GA) was aimed
at blacks, immigrants, Jews,
Catholics, & prostitutes
■The “Invisible Empire” sought to
ease rural anxieties in the face of
changing cultural attitudes
■Used violence, kidnapping,
murder, & politics to affect change
The KKK provided a sense of identity to its
members: “Women’s Order, Junior Order for
boys, Tri-K Klub for girls, Krusaders for
assimilated immigrants
Klan violence met resistance &
membership declined by 1925
Marcus Garvey
■Marcus Garvey was the
preeminent civil rights
activist of the 1920s
■Oppression in the U.S.
necessitated strict
segregation & black
nationalism
“Theformed
most dangerous
enemy
■He
the United
of the
Negro race”
Negro
Improvement
—W.E.B. DuBois
Assoc & advocated a
return to Africa
The shift in focus from the countryside revealed
Life
in thetraditional
Jazz Ageties of
that urban City
life was
different;
home,
church,
schools
were
absent
■The 1920 census revealed for the
1st time that more Americans lived
in cities than the countryside
The New York City skyline in 1930: Skyscrapers
gave cities a unique architectural style
The Rural Counterattack
■Rural Americans identified cities
with saloons, whorehouses,
communist cells, & immorality
■The 1920s saw an attempt to
restore a “Protestant” culture in
America & an attack on any
“un-American” behavior like
drinking, illiteracy, & immigration
Prohibition
■In Jan 1920, Congress passed
the Volstead Act to enforce the
18th Amendment (1917)
■26 states had already banned
alcohol but the real conflict came
when prohibition was applied to
urban ethnic groups
■Rural America became dry &
A rural, Protestant attack on the
urban
consumption
dropped
but
“social disease of drunkenness”
was severely resisted
Per capita consumption of alcohol (1910-1929)
The Fear of Radicalism
Including
the bombing
of Attorney
■The
most dramatic
rural
reaction
Palmer’s
in 1919
wasGeneral
the Red
Scarehouse
(1919-1920):
–A general workers strike in
Seattle, police strike in Boston,
& series of mail bombs led to
fears of anarchy & socialism
–Deportation without due
process, searches without
warrants, & imprisonment of
innocent people was initially
backed by the American people
Palmer’s
“Soviet Ark”
The solution is simple:
“S.O.S.—ship or shoot”
“Place the Bolsheviks on ships
of stone with sails of lead”
“Stand them up before the firing
squad and save space on our ships”
Dealing with War Debt/The Dawes Plan
Dire economic conditions in Germany led to default on the reparation payments
and the imposition of a moratorium by the creditor nations, which hoped that a
temporary cessation of payments would allow the German economy to recover so
that payments could be resumed. France decided not to wait for the moratorium to
expire and in January 1923, occupied the vital German industrial region in the Ruhr
Valley in hope of extracting payment from what they regarded to be a reluctant
debtor.
An international committee was formed with two representatives each from Britain,
France, Italy, Belgium, and the United States. The American delegates were financier
Charles G. Dawes, who headed the effort, and financier Owen D. Young. A report
was issued in April 1924 that called for the following:
-A series of financial reforms was to be implemented in Germany, including the
backing of the mark with gold reserves as a means to stabilize the currency;
-a variety of new taxes was to be introduced in Germany;
-the reparation payment schedule was reworked to require annual installments that
would increase from one billion gold marks due in 1924, to two and a half billion
marks due four years later;
-a massive series of loans was to be extended to Germany, many of them from the U.S.;
-France agreed to evacuate its forces from the Ruhr.
Conclusions
■Urban America came to define all
of the United States in the 1920s:
–Radio, movies, advertising
reflected urban culture
–Consumer goods were made in
American cities
–Small-town whites, blacks, &
immigrants moved to cities
■But, conservative rural Americans
(religious fundamentalists & KKK)
attacked these new, urban ideas