The Jazz Age
and the KKK
Klan Resurgence > Timeline of Klan History
• founded during Reconstruction, collapsed in 1870s
• revived in 1915 (in part because of the movie Birth of a Nation)
• resurgence of popularity in the 1920s, but collapsed again by the 1930s
• again reappears in the 1950s
Klan Resurgence > Poster for the Film The Birth of a Nation by W.G. Griffith
(1915)
Klan Resurgence > NAACP Protest the Screening of The Birth of a Nation, 1947
Klan Resurgence > Key Scenes in The Birth of a Nation
• intertitles drawn from A History of the American People (1902) by thenpresident Woodrow Wilson
• black legislators lolling in their chairs in the South Carolina legislature in the
early 1870s
• white children don white sheets and scare black children nearby, “inspiring”
Klan outfits
• Klansmen dump the body of the character Gus, an African American, who
they had killed for causing a young white woman, Flora, to jump off a cliff
Klan in the 1920s > Washington, D.C. Parade
Klan in the 1920s > Social Movements Supported by the Klan
• prohibition
• anti-immigrant sentiments
• anti-radicalism
• religious fundamentalism
• morality and family values
Klan in the 1920s > Different Historical Explanations of the Klan
• racist and nativist movement
• populist movement
• reform movement
• reactionary movement
Immigration Restriction > Ku Klux Klan Marching in DC
Immigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Literacy Test
Immigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Quota Act of 1921
Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)
• Based ceilings on the number of immigrants from any particular nation on 2
percent of each nationality recorded in the 1890 census
• Was directed against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who
arrived in large numbers after 1890
• Barred all immigrants ineligible for citizenship on racial grounds, including
all south and east Asians (including Indians, Japanese, and Chinese)
Immigration Act of 1924 > Annual Immigration Quotas
• Germany - 51,227
• Great Britain - 34,007
• Ireland - 28,567
• Italy - 3,845
• Hungary - 473
• Greece - 100
• Egypt - 100
Immigration Act of 1924 > Map of Europe, Literary Digest, 1924
Immigration Restriction > U.S. v Bhagat Singh Thind, 1923
Prosperity > Who Prospered in the 1920s?
• 1200 mergers caused the disappearance of over 600
independent enterprises
• top 0.1% of U.S. families in 1929 had combined income as
large as bottom 42%
• i. e. approx 24,000 families had combined income as large as
11.5 million poor and lower-class families
• per capita income in the U.S. rose 9% between 1920-1929
• per capita income for the top 24,000 families rose 75%
• 80% of families had no savings
• farmers did not prosper - 1/4 of all employment
• less than 10% invested in the stock market
Prosperity > Bruce Barton, author of The Man Nobody Knows, here
with Hollywood producer Cecil B. DeMille, 1920s
Prosperity > Welfare Capitalism: Shoe Company’s Billboard Ad, 1923
Prosperity > Comic Strip on Workers Owning Shares, 1929
Automobile > Automobile Sales and Registration
Automobile > Ford Model T, 1920s
Automobile > Ford Model T French Ad, 1924
Automobile > General Motors Ad, 1925
Automobile > Cadillac Ad, 1925
Automobile > Ford Assembly Line, Model A, 1928
Automobile > Ford Model A Ad, 1929
Automobile > Song about Ford Model A, 1928
Automobile > Chevrolet Ad, 1931
Automobile > Paige-Jewett Car Ad, 1929
Great Migration > Social Patterns
• from rural areas to cities
• from the South to the North
• Appalachian whites
• Puerto Ricans
• African Americans
Great Migration > Motives
• immigration slows down because of WW I
• more work because of WW I
• more jobs for groups previously left out--women, rural migrants, racial
minorities
• racial segregation and violence in the South
• sharecropping
• natural disasters such as floods and boll weevil infestations
• conscious choice on the part of migrants (many did not leave)
Great Migration > Railroad Routes
Great Migration > Painting by Jacob Lawrence, 1940
Great Migration > Painting by Jacob Lawrence, 1940
Harlem Renaissance > Marcus Garvey’s Supporters Parade in Harlem
Harlem Renaissance > NAACP Anti-Lynching Ad in the New York Times
Harlem Renaissance > Zora Neale Hurston Photo by Carl Van Vechten
Harlem Renaissance > The Crisis Ad for Black Swan Records, 1923
Harlem Renaissance > The Crisis Cover, 1929
Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke, “Sorry,” 1928
Louis Armstrong, “Weather Bird,” 1928
New Woman > Magazine illustrations: “Gibson Girls” by Charles Gibson--a
beauty standard of the 1900s--and a flapper by John Held, Jr. from the 1920s
New Woman > Suffragists picketing the White House, January 1917
New Woman > Department Stores and Consumer Culture
New Woman > Working-class women at the turn of the century
New Woman > John Held, Jr.: Flappers have no manners or brains
New Woman > John Held, Jr.: “It’s all right, Santa-- you can come in. My parents
still believe in you.”
New Woman > John Held, Jr., dustjackets for F. Scott Fitzgerald novels
New Woman > Film Actress Louise Brooks and a comic strip she inspired
New Woman > Actress Clara Bow, the ultimate flapper in It (1927) and
Dangerous Curves (1929)
Fundamentalism > Timeline
• Word coined at around 1910
• Denotes religious groups that take the Bible literally
• Popular and active in the 1920s
• Then the movement retreats from politics until 1980s, in part because
of the Scopes Trial
Fundamentalism > Church Membership
Fundamentalism > Actor Lionel Barrymore and Modern Christ
Scopes Trial > Cartoon on Evolution
Scopes Trial > W. J. Bryan’s Cartoon against Modernity, 1924
Scopes Trial > Cartoon comparing Bolsheviks and Scientists, 1925
Scopes Trial > Bryan and Darrow
Scopes Trial > Bryan as Don Quixote
Scopes Trial > Darrow as a Street Player
Scopes Trial > Monkeys Vote on Evolution