The Roaring Life
of the 1920s
U.S. History
Chapter 13
Section 1 - Changing Ways of Life
• Many people were living in cities.
• The New Urban Scene
– Jobs – day. Movies, vaudeville theaters at night.
– City life challenging, impersonal.
The Prohibition Experience
• 18th Amendment – banned the
manufacture, sale, and
transportation of alcohol. Takes
affect in January 1920.
• Was unenforceable.
• Volstead Act – set up to enforce
Prohibition, underfunded.
Hidden
saloons and
nightclubs –
speakeasies.
Bootleggers –
smugglers of
alcohol.
Organized Crime
• Al Capone – Chicago - 6 years of gang warfare –
bootlegging - $60 million/year.
• He killed off his competition while traveling around in
his armor-plated car with bulletproof windows.
• “Public Enemy Number One”
• Went to jail for tax evasion
• Crime’s led to prostitution, gambling, drugs. Harassed
honest merchants in to paying them for protection
from other gangs, or they would smash their stores.
• By 1930, the annual “take” for the underworld was
between $12 to $18 billion/year.
• By mid 20’s only 19% support Prohibition.
• 1933 – repealed with the 21st Amendment.
Science and Religion Clash
• Fundamentalism – protestant movement
grounded in a literal interpretation of the
Bible.
• Rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
• In the South – lots of revivals, led by people
like Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple
McPherson
The Scopes Trial
• TN -crime to teach evolution.
• ACLU – promised to defend any teacher who
wanted to protest it.
– John Scopes
– They hired Clarence Darrow as his lawyer.
– William Jennings Bryan - prosecutor.
• Scopes Trial – also called the
Monkey Trial – role of science
and religion in public schools
and society.
• Bryan called to the stand as an
expert on the Bible. On the
stand Bryan admitted the Bible
could be interpreted different
ways.
• Scopes found guilty, fined
$100. Later changed, but law
teaching evolution remained in
effect.
Section 2 The Twenties Woman
• Women – independent, rejecting the values of
the 19th century.
• The Flapper – liberated young women
embracing new fashions and urban attitudes.
Hats, short dresses, beads, short dyed hair.
Smoked, drank, danced. Saw marriage as an
equal partnership.
• Casual dating - more acceptable.
Women Shed Old roles at Home and
at Work
• New opportunities for women in the
workplace
– nurses, teachers, librarians, clerical work.
The Changing Family
• Birthrate decreased. More birth control
available. Margaret Sanger – founded
American Birth Control League.
• Household life easier thanks to things that
could be bought in stores.
• Working women juggling
home and work.
Section 3 Education and Popular
Culture
• 1914 – 1 million attending high school
• 1926 – 4 million attending high school
• Why? High educational standards for
industrial jobs, offering more courses. Also
states were requiring young people to remain
in school until age 16 or 18.
• Literacy increased as education increased
Radio Comes of Age
• November 1920 – Pittsburgh station KDKA
broadcast the new of the Harding landslide. By
late 1920s improvements had been made that
allowed long-distance broadcasting possible.
• Created the experience of hearing the news
together as it happened, like hearing the
President speak, or sporting events like boxing or
the World Series.
• Families gathered around the radio to listen to
programming.
America Chases New Heroes and Old
Dreams
• 1929 - $4.5 billion spend on
entertainment
• Babe Ruth
• Andrew “Rube” Foster – founded
Negro National League
• Helen Willis – tennis
• Charles Lindbergh - “Spirit of St.
Louis”
• Amelia Earhart
Entertainment and
the Arts
• Movies popular – 1903 –
first movie – The Great
Train Robbery.
• First full length movie –
The Birth of a Nation
(1915)
• First “talkie” – The Jazz
Singer (1927)
• George Gershwin –
concert musician
• Painters – Edward Hoper
and Georgia O’Keeffe
Writers of the 1920’s
• 1920’s – one of the richest eras in literary
history
• Sinclair Lewis
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ernest Hemingway
• William Faulkner
• Poetry – Ezra Pound and T.S.
Elliot
Section Four – The Harlem
Renaissance
• Marcus Garvey –
Founded the Universal
Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA)
– Promote African
American businesses
– Encouraged followers to
return to Africa
• Convicted of mail fraud
and jailed
The Harlem Renaissance
• A literary and artistic
movement celebrating
African-American culture
• Writers:
– Claude McKay
– Langston Hughes – poet
• Performers:
– Paul Robeson – actor
– Louis Armstrong – jazz
– Duke Ellington – jazz pianist
and composer
– Bessie Smith – blues singer