Unit 9.2 (Ch. 21) Notes:
The Roaring Life of the 1920s
(Indicators USHC-6.1 & 6.2 )
U.S. History & The Constitution
Today’s Lesson Standard / Indicator
Standard USHC-6: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the
conflict between traditionalism & progressivism in the 1920s & the economic
collapse & the political response to the economic crisis in the 1930s.
USHC-6.1: Explain the impact of the changes in the 1920s on the economy,
society, & culture, including the expansion of mass production techniques, the
invention of new home appliances, the introduction of the installment plan, the
role of transportation in changing urban life, the effect of radio & movies in
creating a national mass culture, & the cultural changes exemplified by the
Harlem Renaissance.
USHC-6.2: Explain the causes & effects
of the social change & conflict between
traditional and modern culture that took
place during the 1920s, including the
role of women, the “Red Scare”, the
resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan,
immigration quotas, Prohibition, &
the Scopes trial.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
Bellringer: Political Cartoon Analysis
1.) What is this cartoon
“talking” about?
2.) What effect of the topic
from question #1 does this
cartoon illustrate?
3.) According to the cartoon,
what led to the growth of
organized crime during
Prohibition?
4.) In the cartoonist’s view,
helpful or harmful? Explain
your answer.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
- Temperance Movement - result of anti-German sentiment & grain shortages
during the war years.
- Advocated prohibition to preserve American culture in the face of
immigration = finally successful on a national scale.
- 18th amendment (1920) - prohibited the sale & distribution of alcohol, but not
its consumption.
- Compliance often a matter of class, ethnic background & religious
affiliation.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
- Illegal sources filled the demand & speakeasies proliferated in cities & ethnic
communities.
- Neither federal or local governments had the manpower to stop the illegal
trade or the organized crime that grew from bootlegging.
- 21st amendment (1933) repealed the 18th amendment & ended prohibition.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
- Conflict between religion & science caused tensions in the 1920s.
- Revival movement - start 20th century led to the development of religious
fundamentalism = believed in the literal truth of the Bible.
- Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged that belief.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
- Scopes Trial, (Monkey Trial) = result of a Tennessee state law that forbade
teaching evolution in public schools.
- Young biology teacher purposefully defied the law in order to bring a test
case,
was arrested & defended by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
- Clash of two famous lawyers, Clarence Darrow for the defense & William
Jennings Bryan for the state, resolved nothing.
- Teacher was fined & both sides believed that they had won the argument that
continues to this day.
21.1: Changing Ways of Life
- Conflict between social conservatives (conformity to a traditional moral code)
& liberals (advocate individual rights) took place in the 1920s & continues today.
End of 21.1 Notes
21.2: The Twenties Woman
- Women’s roles changed some during the 1920s.
- Took jobs during WWI, & many gave them up as soon as the
soldiers returned.
- Advocated suffrage since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
- Won in many states (particularly in the West),
- Won the right to vote throughout the U.S.
with the 19th Amendment (1920).
- Women didn’t significantly make politics more
moral as they had promised to do in their suffrage
campaign.
- Most women still voted as their husbands did.
21.2: The Twenties Woman
- Women didn’t win new opportunities in the workplace & continued to be
concentrated in the few occupations such as teachers, nurses, telephone
operators & secretaries.
- They continued to be employed as domestic servants, factory workers
& sweatshop laborers.
21.2: The Twenties Woman
- Working women made less money than their male counterparts.
- Movement to the cities during WWI nurtured new sexual attitudes &
aroused public anxiety about the decline of moral values.
- Flapper image represented this change but posed little threat to the
traditional roles of wife & mother.
End of 21.2 Notes
21.3: Education & Popular Culture
- Growing mass media shaped mass culture of 1920s America.
- Newspaper circulation; writers & editors hooked readers by imitating
sensational stories in the tabloids.
- Mass-circulation magazines flourished during the 1920s.
- Radio = most powerful communications medium to emerge in the 1920s.
- By the end of 1920s - radio networks had created
a new shared national experience = live news.
- Wider world opened up to Americans,
- Could hear the president’s voice or listen
to the World Series live.
KDKA Pittsburgh
(1920)
21.3: Education & Popular Culture
- Radio spread appreciation for new music trends like as jazz to white
audiences & promoted a shared national culture.
- Radio, newspaper, & magazine advertisements spread the consumer
culture.
21.3: Education & Popular Culture
- 1920s literature = reflected rejection of the idealism of the WWI era &
narrow-mindedness & shallowness of life in America as well as a
questioning of the materialism of the 1920s.
- The “Lost Generation’s” expatriate authors called American cultural values
into question.
Ernest Hemingway: A Farwell to Arms & The Sun also Rises
F. Scott Fitzgerald: author of The Great Gatsby
21.3: Education & Popular Culture
- 1920s art reflected conflict between tradition & the modern world,
challenging the dominant realist tradition & pioneering in expressionist art.
Blue & Green Music, 1921
Ram's Head White Hollyhock & Little Hills, 1935
Artist: Georgia O’Keefe
End of 21.3 Notes
Daily “Bell Ringer” Warm Up
3rd Nine Weeks
Bell Ringer #7 (1 & 4 Mar)
7.) Because of the availability of new types of consumer goods & the
advertising used to promote them during the 1920s,
a.) the culture of America became more standardized.
b.) farmers were able to sell crops at a high prices to get out of debt.
c.) people chose not to buy domestic made goods & bought imports instead.
d.) America became more culturally diverse.
CORRECT ANSWER: A
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Great Migration brought Af. Americans to segregated neighborhoods in the
cities of the North & Midwest, & also brought a cultural renaissance.
- Many Af. Americans moved to Harlem, (Upper West Side of NY’s Manhattan
Island).
- Harlem became the world’s largest black urban community, with residents
from the South, the West Indies, Cuba, Puerto Rico, & Haiti.
- Harlem Renaissance: brought
recognition & pride to black artists,
particularly musicians, but further
pointed out their second-class
citizenship.
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Harlem Renaissance - a literary movement led by well-educated, middle-class
African Americans who expressed a new pride in the Af-American experience.
- Writers celebrated ties to African cultural traditions & black pride, &
questioned the position of Af. Americans in American life.
- James Weldon Johnson: author, politician,
diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist,
educator, lawyer, songwriter, & early civil
rights activist.
- Best remembered for his leadership
within the NAACP, as well as for his writing.
- His works included Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing &
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Langston Hughes: 1920s poet; described the difficult lives of
working-class Af. Americans. (jazz poetry – beat & rhythm)
- Zora Neale Hurston: portrayed lives of poor, unschooled Southern
blacks – focused on simple folkways & values of people who had
survived slavery through their ingenuity & strength.
- Her notable work - Their Eyes Were Watching God.
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Harlem Renaissance included jazz music.
- Jazz was born in New Orleans (early 20th century) = blend of instrumental
ragtime & vocal blues.
- Harlem pulsed to the sounds of jazz, which lured throngs of whites to the
showy, exotic nightclubs there (Cotton Club).
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Louis Armstrong = musical genius & legend; perhaps the most important &
influential musician in the history of jazz.
- Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington = jazz pianist & composer; led his ten-piece
orchestra at the Cotton Club.
- One of America’s greatest composers, with pieces such as “Mood
Indigo” & “Sophisticated Lady.”
- Bessie Smith = female blues singer; perhaps the most outstanding vocalist of
the 1920s. In 1927, she became the highest-paid black artist in the world.
21.4: The Harlem Renaissance
- Harlem Renaissance represented a portion of the great social & cultural
changes that swept America in the 1920s.
End of 21.4 Notes