THE ROARING TWENTIES
PART II: Life
Americans experience cultural conflicts as
customs in values changed in the 1920s.
Section 1: Changing Ways of Life
*18th Amendment- (January 1920) banning the manufacture,
sale, and transportation of alcohol. CLICK HERE
-Laws against it were unenforceable.
Rural and Urban Differences
At the New Urban Scene- city population increased and
became very overcrowded, this caused many problems.
The Prohibition Experiment
*Prohibition- the banning of the manufacture, sale, and possession
of alcoholic beverages.
-Reformers had long considered liquor a prime cause of corruption.
-Thought that it lead to crime, wife and child abuse accidents on the job, and other
serious social problems.
-Reformers were mainly from rural South and West areas of native-born Protestants.
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*The Volstead Act- established a Prohibition Bureau in
the treasury department in 1919. It was underfunded and
enforcement was hard.
Speakeasies and Bootleggers
-To obtain liquor illegally, drinkers went underground to
hidden saloons and nightclubs known as *Speakeasies- socalled because when inside, one spoke quietly, or easily to
avoid detection.
*Bootleggers- named for smugglers practice of carrying liquor in the legs of boots, who
smuggled it in from Canada, Cuba, and the West Indies.
-Chicago became notorious as the home of
*Al Capone- a gangster who’s bootlegging empire made over $60
million a year. CLICK HERE
-He took control of the liquor business by killing off his competition.
ST. VALENTINES DAY MASSACRE: CLICK HERE
*21st Amendment- 1933- repealed Prohibition.
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Science and Religion Clash
-The battle raged between fundamentalist religious groups and secular thinkers over the
validity of certain scientific discoveries.
American Fundamentalism
*Fundamentalism- (Protestant Movement) a literal, or nonsymbolic, interpretation of the
Bible.
-They were skeptical of some scientific discoveries and theories; they argued that allimportant knowledge could be found in the Bible.
-No evolution- no way humans came from apes.
*The Scopes Trial: CLICK HERE
-March 1925- Tennessee passed the nation’s first
law that made it a crime to teach evolution.
-Immediately, the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) promised to defend any teacher who would
challenge the law.
*John T. Scopes- a biology teacher in Tennessee
read a passage from a book called Civic Biology.
-He was arrested and the ACLU hired *Clarence
Darrow- the most famous trial lawyer of the day, to
defend him.
*William Jennings Bryan- the three-time
Democratic candidate for president and a devout
fundamentalist was the prosecutor.
-The trial became so big that it was moved to an
outside platform.
-Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
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Section 2: The Twenties Women
-American women pursued new lifestyles and
assumed new jobs in different roles in society during
the 1920s.
Young Women Change the Rules
*Flapper- an emancipated young woman who
embraced the new fashions and the urban attitudes of
the day.
-Attitudes towards marriage were viewed as a more
equal partnership- but the housework and taking care
of the children were still a woman’s job.
-Casual dating became increasingly accepted.
*Double Standard- a set of principles granting greater
sexual freedom to men than to women- required
women to observe stricter standards of behavior than
man did.
Women Shed Old Roles at a Home and at Work
New Work Opportunities- “women’s professions” teacher, nurse, librarian, and all sorts
of clerical workers.
-Always earned less than men did.
Changing the Family- birthrate had been declining for several decades and even faster
in the 1920s.
-Partly due to the wider availability of birth control information.
*Margaret Sanger- first birth-control clinic established in 1916- founded the American
birth control league in 1921.
-Many housewives focused their attention on their homes, husbands, children, and
pastimes.
-Number of children in school increased.
Section 3: Education and Popular Culture
-The mass media, movies, and spectator sports played important roles in creating the
popular culture that many artists and writers criticized.
Schools and the Mass Media Shape Culture
-School enrollments increased.
-Taxes to finance schools increased as well.
-Newspaper and magazine circulation rose.
-Radio comes of age- hearing the news as it happened.
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America Chases New Heroes and Old Dreams
-New leisure pastimes.
-Babe Ruth
-Lindbergh’s Flight- Charles A. Lindbergh- made the first solo flight across the Atlantic.
-Amelia Earhart
Entertainment and Arts
-Talking movies, plays, concert, painters,
and writers.
*George Gershwin- a composer who
emerge traditional elements with American
jazz.
*George O’Keefe- a painter who produced
intensely colored canvases that captured the
grandeur of New York.
*Sinclair Lewis- a writer who was the first
American to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
He was among the eras most outspoken critics.
*F. Scott Fitzgerald- was a writer who coined the term “Jazz Age” to describe the
1920s.
*Edna St. Vincent Millay- wrote poems celebrating youth and a life of independence
and freedom from traditional constraints.
*Ernest Hemingway- wounded in World War I, became the best known expatriate
author often criticized the glorification of war.
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Section 4: The Harlem Renaissance CLICK HERE
-African-American ideas, politics, art, literature, and music flourished in Harlem and
elsewhere in the US.
*Zora Neale Hurston- ended up in New York where she struggled to the top of the
African American Literacy Society.
African-American Voices in the 1920s
The Move North- 1910-1920 Great Migration
-Tensions grew in northern cities as
the massive influx came in.
-Summer of 1919- approximately 25
urban race riots.
African-American Goals: NAACPurged people to protest racial
violence.
*James Weldon Johnson- poet,
lawyer, and NAACP executive
secretary- the organization fought for
legislation to protect their rights.
*Marcus Garvey- an immigrant from
Jamaica, believed that AfricanAmericans should build a separate society.
-This aroused the hopes of many.
-1914- he founded the Universal Negro improvement Association (UNIA).
-Opened offices in urban ghettos in NYC in order to recruit followers.
-Also promoted African-American businesses.
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-He also encouraged his followers to return to Africa, help the native people there throw
off white colonial oppressors, and build a mighty nation.
-Support declined in the mid-1920’s when he was jailed for the mail fraud.
The Harlem Renaissance Flowers in New York
-In the 1920s, Harlem became the world’s largest black urban community.
*The Harlem Renaissance- a literary and artistic movement celebrating AfricanAmerican culture.
-Led by well educated middle-class African-Americans who expressed a new pride in
African-American experience.
*Claude McKay- a novelist poet, and Jamaican immigrant, was a major figure whose
militant versus urged African-Americans to resist prejudiced and discrimination.
*Langston Hughes- was the movement’s best-known poet.
-During the 1920s, African-Americans in the performing arts won large followings.
*Paul Robeson- son of a slave-became a major dramatic actor. Widely acclaimed for
his role in Shakespeare’s Othello.
-He struggled with racism and supported the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.
*Louis Armstrong- jazz was born in the early 20th century.
-He was a trumpet player in the Creole Jazz Band, then joined the Fletcher Hendersons
Band.
-He went on to become perhaps the most important and influential musician in the
history of jazz.
*Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington- a jazz pianist and composer, led his 10 piece
orchestra at the Cotton Club.
-“Scat”- or improvised jazz singing using sound instead of words was introduced.
*Bessie Smith- a female blues singer was perhaps the most outstanding performer of
the decade.
-1927- Became the highest-paid black artist in the world.
-The Harlem Renaissance represented a portion of the great social and cultural
changes that swept America in the 1920s.
Most of the social changed were lasting, but
the economic boom was short-lived.
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