THE ROARING LIFE OF
THE 1920’S
Americans experienced cultural
conflicts as customs and values
changed in the 1920s.
American women pursued new
lifestyles and assumed new
jobs and different roles in
society during the 1920s.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
How did newfound
prosperity change
American life in the
1920s?
OBJECTIVES
 Explain how urbanization created a new way of life that often clashed
with the values of traditional rural society.
 Describe the controversy over the role of science and religion in
American education and society in the 1920s.
 Explain how the image of the flapper embodied the changing values
and attitudes of young women in the 1920s.
 Identify the causes and results of the changing roles of women in the
1920s.
PROHIBITION
Speakeasies: Hidden Saloons.
Bootleggers: Brought alcohol in
from Canada and Caribbean.
Al Capone: Chicago organized
crime leader.
• $60 million a year
• 522 gang killings
SCIENCE VS. RELIGION
Fundamentalism
• Skeptical of Science
discoveries.
Religious Revivals
Laws against teaching
Evolution.
Evolution
• Charles Darwin’s Theory
Scopes Trial
• Biology teacher arrested for
teaching evolution.
• Defended by Clarence Darrow
• Found guilty but later
“overturned” on a technicality.
1920S WOMEN
Flapper: Emancipated young
woman who embraces new fashion
and urban attitudes.
Double Standards: Principles
granting greater sexual freedom to
men than women.
THE CHANGING FAMILY
Women leave the home and find work.
Job discrimination and inequality towards
women were established by the 1930s.
Birthrate drops dramatically due to birth
control.
Start of “Teen” culture and rebellion.
OBJECTIVES
 Describe the popular culture of the 1920s.
 Explain why the youth-dominated decade came to be called the
Roaring Twenties.
 Identify the causes and results of the migration of African Americans
to Northern cities in the early 1900s.
 Describe the prolific African-American artistic activity that became
known as the Harlem Renaissance.
EDUCATION & POP CULTURE
High school enrollment soars.
• 1914-1926: 4x the students.
Mass literacy leads to magazines.
• Time & Reader’s Digest
Radio broadcast’s music, news,
sports, and radio shows for first
time.
REAL AMERICAN HEROES
America’s Pastime (Baseball)
• Babe Ruth & Rube Foster
Women Athletes
• Gertrude Ederle : Swam the English Channel
Entertainment in Arts and Films
• The Jazz Singer and Steamboat Willie
Literature
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) & Ernest Hemingway
AFRICAN -AMERICANS 1920S
 Marcus Garvey: Build a separate society apart from whites. (Black
Pride)
• Return to Africa and through off white colonial oppressors.
 The Harlem Renaissance: A literary and artistic movement celebrating
African-American culture.
 Langston Hughes: Born in Missouri and was the movement’s bestknown poet.
THE JAZZ AGE
 Louis Armstrong
 “Duke” Ellington