The Roaring Twenties:
A Time of Great Change
New Amendments
16th Amendment, 1913- Legalizes income
tax
 17th Amendment, 1913- People elect
senators directly
 18th Amendment, 1919- Prohibition
 19th Amendment, 1920- Women given the
right to vote

Let the Good Times Roll!

Good economic times led to:
 Buying modern goods (cars, radios, tractors, trips,
refrigerators, vacuums)
 New infrastructure (highways, telephone lines,
indoor plumbing, electrification)
 Better educational opportunities
 Pop Culture- Women cut their hair and wore
shorter dresses, fast paced dances, new fads
The Changing 1920s

Pop Culture- Women cut their hair and
wore shorter dresses, fast paced dances,
new fads
Prohibition

Leads to:
 Gangsters who sold alcohol illegally (like
Al Capone)
 Moonshiners in the South (their fast
cars led to racing and NASCAR)
 Speakeasies, flappers, women’s advances
 Development of jazz
The Changing 1920’s



The Red Scare- Fear of Communism coming to
America.
Immigrants- Anti German/ Eastern European
hysteria: Immigrants seen as cheap labor taking jobs.
Laws passed to limit immigration. KKK includes
Catholics as groups to be hated.
The Stock Market- People invested in stocks to
build vast fortunes. Prosperity ends in 1929 when
the market crashes.
Southern Problems
The boll weevil destroys the cotton crop (up
to 75% in some cases).
 Major drought in 1925.
 Number of farms drops dramatically and
millions of blacks move North to find work,
causing a major migration.
 Depression starts much earlier in the
South.

1920’s Act It Out!
Each group will receive an envelope with their
topic- it will be some kind of change that took
place in the 1920’s.
 Your group must create a short skit (1-2 mins) to
act out your change.
 Each group must turn in a sheet of paper with the
following information: names of group members,
what your topic (your change) is, and a brief
description of what you will do in your skit.
 Your group will act out your skit for the class, and
the class will try to guess which change your
group has.
