Unit: 1920s
Big Idea: America’s post-war “return to normalcy” and traditionalism comes into conflict with the
modernity of the “roaring twenties” and progress.
Unit Description:
The Sacco-Vanzetti case exemplifies the divisions within the larger society. Nativists dwelled on
the defendants’ immigrant origins. Conservatives insisted that these alien anarchists must die,
despite the lack of evidence. By contrast, prominent liberals, such as the future Supreme Court
justice Felix Frankfurter and the Socialist Eugene Debs, rallied around the convicted men.
Despite these divisions, the 1920s was a decade of economic prosperity for many, as the
business of America became business. The unit looks at the decline of labor, the shift in the
women’s movement after the Nineteenth Amendment, and the predominance of the Republican
Party overseeing business prosperity and economic diplomacy. The birth of civil liberties is
explored next, discussing Hollywood, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the
Supreme Court. Meyer v. Nebraska gave a tremendous boost to the civil liberties that had been
lost during World War I. However, the decade was still rife with social divisions, as seen within
the context of the culture wars. The fundamentalist revolt is seen most vividly through the
Scopes trial. In the wake of the anti-immigrant hysteria of World War I, the Ku Klux Klan
emerged again, targeting Catholics and Jews as well as blacks. The anti-immigrant sentiment is
capped with the 1924 Immigration Act, which strictly limited immigration. On the other hand,
cultural pluralism and the Harlem Renaissance celebrated the diversity and pluralism of America.
Widespread disillusionment with World War I, Europe’s post-war problems and communism in
the Soviet Union made Americans fearful of being pulled into another foreign war but did not
retreat into full isolationism. Instead, the US actively pursued arrangement in foreign affairs that
would advance American interests while also maintaining world peace.
Key Concept(s):
New technologies and manufacturing techniques helped focus the U.S. economy on the
production of consumer goods, contributing to improved standards of living, greater
personal mobility, and better communications systems.
By 1920, a majority of the U.S. population lived in urban centers, which offered new
economic opportunities for women, international migrants, and internal migrants.
Migration gave rise to new forms of art and literature that expressed ethnic and regional
identities, such the Harlem Renaissance movement.
As increased anxiety about radicalism led to a Red Scare and attacks on labor activism
and immigrant culture.
Several acts of Congress established highly restrictive immigration quotas, while national
policies continued to permit unrestricted immigration from nations in the Western
Hemisphere, especially Mexico, in order to guarantee an inexpensive supply of labor.
The United States pursued a unilateral foreign policy that used international investment,
peace treaties, and select military intervention to promote a vision of international order,
even while maintaining U.S. isolationism.
In the 1920s, cultural and political controversies emerged as Americans debated gender
roles, modernism, science, religion, and issues related
Key Terms by Historical Theme:
(WXT)
Strikes of 1919, Boston police strikes, falling farm prices, business prosperity, standard of living,
open shop, welfare capitalism, consumerism, electric appliance, impact of the automobile,
(POL)
Warren Harding, Charles Evans Hughes, Andrew Mellon, Albert Fall, Teapot Dome, FordneyMcCumber Tariff Act, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Alfred Smith, Volstead Act, 21st
Amendment, Red Scare, Palmer raids, quota laws of 1921 & 1924,
(CUL)
Jazz age, radio, phonographs, national networks, Hollywood, heroes, role of women, morals &
fashion, Lost Generation, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edward Hopper,
Grant Wood, George Gershwin, Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen, Langston
Hughes, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey, Back to
Africa movement, modernism, fundamentalism, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Scopes
trial, Clarence Darrow, organized crime, Al Capone, anti-radical hysteria, Saco & Vanzetti Case,
KKK, xenophobia, race riots
(WOR)
Disarmament, Washington Conference (1921), Kellogg-Briand Treaty (1928), Latin America
policy, war debts, reparation, Dawes Plan (1924)
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