The 1920’s and the
Great Depression
THEME:
A disillusioned America turned away from
idealism after WWI and toward social
conservatism, a new mass-consumption
economy, and exciting new forms of popular
culture that undermined many traditional
values.
1. What was Sacco and Vanzetti’s eventual
fate?
2. Mitchell Palmer, AKA “Fighting Quaker,”
fought who?
3. Poles first came to the Americas as part
of what colony?
4. What organization had 5 million dues
paying member sin the 1920’s?
5. The Immigration Act of 1924 restricted
immigration by using what system?
The Return to “Normalcy”
ELECTION OF 1920
Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge (REP)
Vs.
James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt (DEM)
OUTCOME:
REPUBLICANS WIN BY WIDE MARGIN.
WHY? Harding pledges “normalcy” again.
PRESIDENT HARDING
“America's present need is not
heroics, but healing; not
nostrums, but normalcy; not
revolution, but restoration; not
agitation, but adjustment; not
surgery, but serenity; not the
dramatic, but the dispassionate;
not experiment, but equipoise;
not submergence in
internationality, but sustainment
in triumphant nationality...."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/wh29.html
America turns Inward
• RED SCARE
–
–
–
–
AG Mitchell Palmer – the Palmer Raids
the Buford Deportations
IWW and Socialists
Sacco-Vanzetti trial and execution
• KKK’s NEW NATIVISM
– 5 million members in 1920’s
– Ultraconservative and anti-modern
• NEW IMMIGRATION LAWS vs. “New Immigrants”
– Emergency Quota Act of 1921
– Immigration Act of 1924
WHO WAS BEING TARGETED???
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/mhr/5/images/bold_fig01b.jpg
IMMIGRATION QUOTAS
• US experience a wave of racism, lynchings, and
nativism after WWI.
• Immigration booms after WWI
• Quota System enacted to slow the flow
• Quotas discriminate against Southern and Eastern
Europeans, Roman Catholics and Jews
AND excludes Japanese.
http://www.phschool.com/curriculum_support/taks/images/PWU4ques10-11.jpg
PROHIBITION
What were the causes of Prohibition?
What Amendment banned alcohol?
What were the effects of prohibition?
Scopes Trial
What was the trial about?
Who was on trial?
What was the verdict?
Who got “punished”?
Was the debate resolved?
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.3/images/moran_fig03a.gif
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scopes/SCOPE2.JPG
Increased Profits
Innovation
EX: Ford’s
Assembly Line
THE MASSCONSUMPTION
ECONOMY
Increased Credit
Increased Production
=BAD HABITS
Increased Consumption
Advertising
CHANGE IN
AFRICAN AMERICAN SOCIETY
• Great Black Migration during WWI and
1920’s
• 4.8 of 12 million Af-Am move from South to
cities, mainly in Northeast and Mid-West
• 1917-1919: 25 race riots
• NAACP membership doubles
• James Weldon Johnson leads NAACP on
anti-lynching crusade
• Fails to pass anti-lynching bill in Congress
MARCUS GARVEY
• Marcus Garvey founds more radical UNIA
(Universal Negro Improvement
Association)
• Promotes collective action and Af-Am
businesses
• Argues for separatism and separate
businesses, such as Black Star Line,
attempt to re-colonize Africa.
• Deported to Jamaica for mail fraud
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/gallery/3.html
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
• Harlem is the “Mecca” or “Capital” of
Black America
• At 330,000 inhabitants, it is the largest
black urban community in the world
• 1920’s Harlem is the epicenter of an
artistic and literary movement, the
Harlem Renaissance
African-American Writers
• Claude McKay: Poet, inspired resistance to prejudice,
known for his militant verses.
“America”
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps me like a flood.
African-American Writers
• Langston Hughes: Poet, described every-day life
of African-Americans
I am a Negro
Black as the night is black
Black like the depths of my Africa
“Backlash Blues”
Mister rich man, rich man,
Open up your heart and mind.
Mister rich man, rich man,
Open up your heart and mind.
Give the poor man a chance,
Help stop these hard, hard times.
While you're livin' in your mansion
You don't know what hard times means.
While you're livin' in your mansion
You don't know what hard times means.
Poor workin' man's wife is starvin',
Your wife is livin' like a queen.
African-American Writers
• Zora Neale Hurston: Female Author, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Quotes –
"...I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my
soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all."
"Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter
of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.“
"At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain
angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as
the lions in front of Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. ...The cosmic
Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its
string of beads."
"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It
merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my
company? It's beyond me."
African-American Performers
• Paul Robeson: Actor, Lawyer
• Louis Armstrong: Trumpet
Player, Band Leader
• Duke” Ellington: Jazz pianist,
Composer,
Band Leader
at Cotton Club
• Bessie Smith: Blues Singer
What were some of the most
important ideas, opinions and
beliefs expressed in AfricanAmerican art and literature in the
1920’s?
PRESIDENT HARDING
“America's present need is not
heroics, but healing; not
nostrums, but normalcy; not
revolution, but restoration; not
agitation, but adjustment; not
surgery, but serenity; not the
dramatic, but the dispassionate;
not experiment, but equipoise;
not submergence in
internationality, but sustainment
in triumphant nationality...."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/wh29.html
SCANDAL!!!
Harding appoints some good Secretaries:
– Charles Evans Hughes as Sec. of State
– Herbert Hoover as Sec. of Commerce
– Andrew Mellon as Sec. of Treasury
BUT, some really bad appointments too:
– “Ohio Gang” member Attorney General
Harry M. Daugherty
– Albert Fall as Sec. Of Interior
– Charles Forbes at Veterans Affairs
THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
• US set aside oil-rich public land for US Navy
• Albert Fall, Secretary of Interior, secretly and
illegally “leased” the oil rich land to two private
oil companies
• Fall got “kickbacks” of over $325,000
• Harding flees scandal on tour to Alaska, dies of
heart attack
• VP Calvin Coolidge becomes president in 1923.
ALBERT FALL
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews4/teapotdomecartoon.jpg
HARDING AND THE COURT
• Appoints former president Taft as Chief
Justice
• Appoints 4 out of 9 justices on court
• Harding’s appointees roll-back progressive
reforms
• See Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923)
• ICC fails to enforce anti-trust laws
• Big Business has a free hand
Kellogg-Briand Pact
• 1921: US invites nations to freeze naval
construction and begin disarmament.
• 1929: 64 nations had signed the KelloggBriand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument
of diplomacy.
• US “leads” in disarming after WWI, renouncing
building large navy.
PROBLEM: The pact was voluntary and not
enforceable.
RESULT:
US quickly falls behind – especially behind
Japan.
Rate five events of the Harding administration as either
+, -, or ? Based on whether the event was good, bad, or
mixed. Then, give your reasons.
EVENT
RATING REASON
Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1928
• A true “stand-patter” on probusiness policies
• Famously said, “the man
who builds a factory builds a
temple” and “the man who
works there worships there.”
• His administration enjoys
five years of prosperity, but
trouble is brewing.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/images/cc30.gif
WARNING SIGNS…
• Farmers crushed by boom-bust cycle following
WWI
• Prohibition dividing country and political parties
• LaFollette and Progressive revival defeated in
Election of 1924, despite scandals of Harding
Administration
• US harshly intervenes in Central America, aka
“yanqui imperialism”
• Allies fail to repay their WWI debts to USA,
destabilizing international economy
TARIFFS AND REPARATIONS
US paid
in its
own $
Allies
struggle
to pay
Back loans
Germany gives $ to
Britain and France
US loans $
to Germany
Germany
bankrupt
OUTCOME:
Bad feelings all around.
Unstable economic house of cards.
Allies
demand
reparations
from Germany
FordneyMcCumber
Tariff !!!
Allies cannot
make a profit
or pay loans
US
demands
repayment
1. What was John Scopes on trial for?
2. What was the nickname for “liberated”
women in the 1920’s?
3. What was the artistic and literary
movement of African-Americans in this
era?
4. Albert Fall is famous for what scandal?
5. The Kellogg-Briand pact sought to
ensure peace among nations through a
pledge to do what?