Unit 7 The Roaring Twenties (2 weeks)
Big Picture Questions:
What challenges faced Americans as they adjusted to peace following WWI?
Isolationism
Recession
Nativism
Immigration Acts
KKK
Red Scare
Palmer Raids
J Edgar Hoover
Sacco and Vanzetti case
How did the three republican presidents of the 1920s change the economic landscape and how did
they differ from the previous progressive presidents?
Laissez-faire policies
Warren Harding
“return to normalcy”
Washington Naval Conference
World Court
Teapot Dome Scandal
Calvin Coolidge
“the business of America is business”
Herbert Hoover
“Rugged Individualism”
What factors were the most responsible for the prosperity of the 1920s?
Henry Ford
Model T
Assembly Line
Glenn Curtis
Mass Consumption
Buying on credit
Speculation
Uneven prosperity
To what extent did the urban-rural conflict over social values, both real and imagined, bring about
changes in American politics and society in the 1920s?
Prohibition
Frances Willard
Eighteenth Amendment
Organized crime
Twenty-first Amendment
Scopes “Monkey” Trial
William Jennings Bryan
Clarence Darrow
Immigration Acts
Eugenics
Charles Davenport
Social Darwinism
To what extent did new values encourage greater openness and self-expression in the 1920s?
How do these new values conflict with some of the values studied previously?
Flapper
Sigmund Freud
Tin Pan Alley
“Lost Generation”
Sinclair Lewis
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Migration
Harlem Renassance
Langston Hughes
Alain Locke
Countee Cullen
Zora Neale Hurston
Marcus Garvey
Back to Africa movement
Charles Lindbergh
Instructional Focus: The unit begins by addressing the issues America faced following WWI. We then
move on to concentrate on the three republican presidents of the 1920s, examining their policies and how
they favored the growth of business and prosperity in the 1920s. Attention should also be paid as to how
some of these policies may have ultimately led to the Great Depression. Other factors that led to the
prosperity of the 1920s should be examined such as the rise of the automobile, more efficient production
techniques, and the age of mass consumption. Special attention also needs to be paid in this unit to
conflicting values in the 1920s, such as conservatism v. liberalism, rural v. urban, religion v. science.
Many social and cultural changes occurred in America during the 1920s and these changes to women,
African-Americans, and on the cultural landscape should be explored. This is a great opportunity to
incorporate music, such as “Give my regards to Broadway”, and present samples of some of the poems of
writers such as, Langston Hughes, or short excerpts from novels such as, A Farewell to Arms by
Hemingway, also tie it into the Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald which many juniors have read in their
English classes.