CLASS NOTES
THE ROARING LIFE OF THE 1920’S
“CHANGING WAYS OF LIFE”
I.
Rural and urban differences.
A.
Agricultural America largely unchanged from the end of the 19th century.
1.
Conservative moral values.
2.
Church defined morality.
3.
American middle-class values of thriftiness emerged.
a.
Small towns were self-contained with many friends
and neighbors.
4.
1920 census.
a.
51.4% Americans lived in communities of 2500 to
1 million people.
5.
In the 1920’s, 2 million people left the farm for the city each
year.
B.
The new urban scene.
1.
1920 NYC – 5.6 million people.
2.
1920 Chicago – 3 million people – industrial powerhouse.
a.
163 skyscrapers.
b.
City of competition and change.
c.
New ideas at museums and art exhibits, plays and sporting
events and nightclubs and movies.
3.
1920 Philadelphia – 2 million people.
4.
Another 65 cities with 100,000+ people.
5.
1920’s, Americans caught in the tug between the rural and urban
cultures.
C.
The prohibition experiment.
1.
January, 1920, the 18th Amendment went into effect that launched
prohibition.
2.
Alcoholic beverages seen as a prime cause of corruption.
a.
Also led to crime, wife and child abuse, accidents on the
job and other social problems.
3.
Organizations that supported prohibition.
a.
Anti-Saloon League.
b.
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
c.
Most support for prohibition came from the rural
South and West.
4.
At first, saloons closed and arrests for drunkenness declined.
a.
Immigrants resented government interference.
5.
II.
Prohibition failed because the government failed to fund enough
to enforce the law.
a.
The Prohibition Bureau was under funded.
b.
Responsible for 18,700 miles of coastline.
c.
Tracking down illegal stills.
d.
Monitor transportation of illegal alcoholic beverages.
e.
Only 1550 federal agents to enforce prohibition!
D.
Speakeasies and bootleggers.
1.
Speakeasies - where liquor was sold illegally and they existed
everywhere.
2.
Exceptions: Alcohol for medicinal purposes and sacramental wine
3.
Bootleggers were the smugglers, bringing in from Canada, Cuba
and the West Indies.
E.
Organized crime.
1.
The flow of money from unlawful businesses and into
organized crime groups.
2.
Al Capone of Chicago netted up to $60 million per year
controlling the liquor business.
a.
Killed off his competition.
b.
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
3.
By the mid 1920’s, only 19% of Americans supported prohibition.
a.
Rise in crime!
Science and religion clash.
A.
There was a rift between traditional and modern ideas.
1.
Between traditional religious groups and secular thinkers
over the truths of science.
B.
American fundamentalism is grounded in a literal interpretation of the
Bible.
1.
Fundamentalists were skeptical of scientific knowledge and argued
that all the knowledge people needed was in the Bible.
a.
They believed that the Bible was inspired by G-d and
that all the Bible stories were true.
2.
Fundamentalists rejected the theory of evolution.
a.
G-d created the world in six days and made man and
woman.
3.
Billy Sunday was a popular revivalist at the time.
a.
Former professional baseball player, turned preacher.
4.
Aimee Semple McPherson was another popular evangelist.
a.
Theatrical dresses in flowing white satin robes.
C.
The Scopes Trial - March, 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.
1.
John T. Scopes, 24 year old biology teacher was accused of
teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
2.
The ACLU hired Clarence Darrow as the defense attorney.
3.
William Jennings Bryan served as the special prosecutor.
4.
The trial was a fight over evolution and the role of science and
religion in public schools and in American society.
5.
Darrow put on a great defense even calling Bryan to testify.
6.
In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
7.
Trial made national news!
THE ROARING LIFE OF THE 1920’S
“THE TWENTIES WOMAN”
I.
Young women change the rules.
A.
The Flapper was an emancipated young woman who embraced new
fashions and urban attitudes of the day.
1.
Many women began to assert their independence and demand
the same freedoms as men.
2.
The flapper was more of an image of rebellious youth than a
widespread reality.
3.
Their style consisted of close-fitting felt hats, bright, waist less
dresses an inch above the knee, skin-toned silk stockings,
sleek pumps, strings of beads and bracelets.
4.
Their hair dyed jet black was clipped short into a “bob” and
they had “kiss proof” lipstick.
a.
These new fashions reflected a new attitude.
5.
Young 20’s women became more assertive.
a.
Began smoking and drinking in public.
6.
Dancing the fox trot, camel walk, tango, lindy hop and shimmy.
7.
Some women even learned to play golf.
8.
Flappers of the 20’s began to view marriage as more of an equal
partnership.
a.
Housework and child-rearing was still the woman’s job!
B.
The double standard.
1.
Set of principles granting greater sexual freedom to men than
women.
a.
Women were required to observe stricter standards than
men.
2.
Casual dating became more acceptable.
II.
Women shed old roles at home and at work.
A.
New work opportunities.
1.
1 million college graduated women started teaching and nursing.
2.
2 million women took clerical jobs in offices.
3.
Thousands became librarians and social workers.
4.
Women bankers, lawyers, police officers and probation officers
became more common.
5.
800,000 women became clerks in stores.
6.
2 million women took jobs on assembly lines.
7.
By 1930, 10 million women were wage earners.
a.
24% of the American work force.
8.
Medical schools had a 5% quota on female admissions.
a.
The number of female doctors declined between 1910-1920
9.
Women continued to earn less money then men.
a.
By 1930, the patterns of discrimination and inequality
for women in the job place was established.
B.
The changing family.
1.
The birthrate continued to decrease.
2.
Women were having fewer children.
a.
Availability of birth control.
3.
Life made easier for the homemaker: ready-to-wear clothes,
sliced bread and canned foods.
4.
All children were in school daily.
a.
Compulsory education and stricter child labor laws.
b.
Children stayed in school through their teens.
5.
Nursing homes cared for the elderly.
6.
More people were marrying for love – less arranged marriages.
a.
The divorce rate doubled.
7.
Women adjusted to their changing roles.
THE ROARING LIFE OF THE 1920’S
“EDUCATION AND POPULAR CULTURE”
I.
Schools and the mass media shape culture.
A.
School enrollments.
1.
1914 – 1 million students, by 1926 – 4 million students.
a.
Prosperous times and demand in job market for higher
educational standards.
2.
Offered courses for a broad range of students.
a.
Vocational training for industrial jobs.
b.
Home economics.
3.
II.
School cost doubled between 1913 and 1920.
a.
Doubled again by 1926.
b.
Total cost of American education in the mid-1920’s
was $2.7 billion a year.
B.
Expanding news coverage.
1.
Education increased literacy.
2.
Growing mass media shaped a mass culture.
a.
Newspaper circulation rose as writers wrote sensational
stories in the tabloids.
1.
Mass-circulation magazines flourishing in the 20’s.
C.
Radio came of age.
1.
Radio was the most powerful communications medium to emerge.
2.
Various programming available similar to today’s television.
a.
Everything from hearing the President speak to listening to
the World Series from the comfort of your living room!
America chased new heroes and old dreams.
A.
In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment.
1.
New leisure pastimes included working crossword puzzles and
playing mahjong.
B.
Sports heroes of the 1920’s.
1.
Baseball’s Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat.
a.
Hit a record 60 home runs in 1927 for the NY Yankees.
2.
Boxing’s biggest star was Jack Dempsey who turned boxing into
a legitimate sport.
a.
He was defeated by prizefighter Gene Tunney in 1926.
3.
Red Grange was a running back for the University of Illinois.
4.
Between 1918 and 1930 the Notre Dame Fighting Irish led by
Coach Knute Rockne was extremely popular.
a.
Five undefeated seasons and 105 victories.
5.
Tennis greats Big Bill Tilden and Helen Wills.
6.
Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the
English Channel in 1926.
C.
Charles A. Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo flight across the
Atlantic.
1.
He took off on May 20, 1927 from NYC for Paris on the
Spirit of St. Louis.
2.
33 hours and 29 minutes later he landed at Paris’ Le Bourget
Airport.
3.
Paris held a huge party for Lindy, NYC had a ticker tape parade
for him and President Coolidge received him at the White House.
D.
Movies.
1.
By 1925, filmmaking had become the nation’s fourth largest
industry with more than 20,000 theaters in the US.
2.
Hollywood was established as the world’s capital of moviemaking.
3.
Stars of the day included: Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Theda
Bara, Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino.
The Jazz Singer staring Al Jolson became the first “talkie” in 1927.
Walt Disney produced Steamboat Willie the first talking cartoon
character – Mickey Mouse!
Theater, music and art.
1.
Eugene O’Neill was the first American playwright to win a Nobel
Prize in literature.
2.
George Gershwin was a great American songwriter.
3.
Aaron Copeland was a concert composer.
4.
American painters Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe.
Writers of the 1920’s.
1.
Sinclair Lewis is the first American to win a Nobel Prize in
literature.
2.
Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken.
3.
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald.
4.
The famous Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC founded
by famous writers.
5.
Other famous American writers: Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow,
Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos
Passos, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
4.
5.
E.
F.
THE ROARING LIFE OF THE 1920’S
“THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE”
I.
African-American voices in the 1920’s.
A.
The Great Migration took place between 1910 and 1920 as hundreds of
thousands of African Americans moved to northern cities.
1.
An expression of their changing attitudes toward themselves:
“Black is beautiful!”
2.
Left the south due to racial violence and economic discrimination.
a.
1915-1916, floods, droughts and destruction of the cotton
crop by boll weevils.
3.
In the 20’s, 1.5 million African Americans moved to NYC,
Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Philadelphia,
St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
a.
By the end of the decade, 40% of all blacks, 4.8 million
of 12 million live in cities.
4.
Northern cities did not welcome them with open arms.
a.
Racism existed in northern cities as well.
b.
Summer of 1919, 25 urban race riots.
B.
II.
African-American goals.
1.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and prominent whites in 1909 as
a response to the racial violence.
a.
Du Bois led a parade of 10,000 down 5th Avenue in NYC
protesting, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
b.
NAACP membership doubled in the 1920’s.
2.
James Weldon Johnson, poet and lawyer became the NAACP
Executive Secretary.
a.
Fights by means of legislation.
b.
Anti-lynching bills.
3.
NAACP represented the new, more militant voice of African
Americans seeking a better life in America.
C.
Marcus Garvey and the UNIA.
1.
United Negro Improvement Association presented a more radical
message of black pride.
2.
Marcus Garvey had over 500,000 members through oratory,
mass meetings, parades and a message of pride.
3.
Message of promoting African-American businesses.
a.
Set up: grocery stores, laundries, millinery stores, tailor
shops and his newspaper The Negro World.
b.
Health and death benefits.
4.
Garvey encouraged followers to return to Africa and start a new
nation.
5.
He formed the Black Star Line steamship company.
6.
His company went bankrupt and his support declined by
the mid-20’s.
a.
He was convicted of mail fraud and jailed.
b.
Eventually he was deported back to his homeland of
Jamaica.
The Harlem Renaissance flourished in New York.
A.
Many blacks migrated to Harlem, a fashionable neighborhood on
Manhattan’s upper west side, growing from 150,000 to 330,000 residents.
1.
They came from all over: The South, the West Indies, Cuba,
Puerto Rico and Haiti.
a.
A mix of cultures as well.
2.
Harlem suffered from the same city problems as all cities:
overcrowding, unemployment and poverty.
B.
African-American writers.
1.
The Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement led by welleducated, middle-class African Americans.
a.
Expressed a new pride.
b.
Explored and celebrated their African heritage and
their people’s folklore.
c.
Wrote about being black in a white world.
2.
C.
D.
Claude McKay, a Jamaican immigrant helped establish the
Harlem Renaissance.
a.
Militant verses urging African Americans to resist
prejudice and discrimination.
b.
Expressed the pain of life in the black ghetto.
3.
Jean Toomer was another gifted writer.
4.
Langston Hughes was the movement’s best known poet.
5.
Harvard educated Countee Cullen was another poet.
6.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote novels of black folklore.
7.
Novelist and short story writer Nella Larsen.
8.
Dorothy West wrote about people in regards to racism and sexism.
9.
Alain Locke.
African-American performers.
1.
Famous women: Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, Mabel
Mercer and Ethel Waters.
2.
Paul Robeson was a famous singer that graduated Columbia
Law School and was hassled by the government because he was
a communist.
African-Americans and Jazz.
1.
Louis Armstrong was the greatest.
2.
Others: Joe “King” Oliver and Fletcher Henderson.
3.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington had a great jazz band.
4.
Cab Calloway, another great jazz band.
5.
Bessie Smith was an outstanding vocalist.
6.
William “Count” Basie, another popular Big Band.