The Great Gatsby
RESEARCH PAPER TOPICS
Role of the Social Classes in the 1920s

Upper class

Old money

New money

Lower class

The roaring 20s

Post-war culture of the 1920s
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The “Lost Generation”
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Bootleggers, gangsters, flappers,
flagpole sitters, marathon dancers
Prohibition

Bootlegging

18th Amendment

Volstead Act
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Speak Easy’s
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Anti-saloon league
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Gangsterism

Distilling operations

Johnny Torrio

Al Capone

Eliot Ness

The Untouchables
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Twenty-first amendment

Women’s Christian Temperance Movement
Organized Crime and Its Influence

The American Mafia

Al Capone

Bonnie and Clyde

John Dillinger

Bootlegging

St. Valentines Day Massacre

Prohibition

Eighteenth amendment

Speakeasies

Chicago Outfit

Castellammarese War

New York and Chicago
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Who was he?

What else did he write?

Important biographical information about F. Scott

The Great Gatsby

Zelda Fitzgerald
Sacco and Vanzetti

The court case of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sports of the 1920’s, especially the
1919 World Series

The Golden Age of Sports

A decade full of extraordinary athletes

Yankee Stadium

Jack Dempsey

Helen Wills

‘Red’ Grange

Joe Lewis

Babe Ruth

Harlem Globe Trotters

The Harlem Rens
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Fashion and Sportswear for Men and Women in the 1920s
The Jazz Age

Louis Armstrong

Bessie Smith

The Jazz culture

The Roaring 20’s

The “New Woman”

The Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom,
the flea hop

Art Deco
Women in the 1920’s

Flappers vs. the Gibson Girl

Changing roles for women

Women’s rights

Sophisticated Ladies

The “New Woman”

New Found Social Freedoms

The Nineteenth Amendment

Suffragists

National American Women Suffrage Association

League of Women Voters

Carrie Chapman Catt

New Fashions

Hairstyles

The Rockettes
New York and Long Island in the
1920’s

The playground of the wealthy

The culture in New York City and Long Island

The Roaring 20s
Money and the American Dream

The history of the American Dream

The influence of money in the 1920s

New Money

Old Money

The demise of the “American Dream” in the 1920s

The Great Depression

The culture of the “wealthy American”
Technology and Daily Life in the 1920s

Decade of new inventions

Radio, silent films, automobiles, etc.

Frozen food- Clarence Birdseye

Insulin- Leonard Thompson

Scientific advances

Changes in daily life (freezers, cars,
the Band-aid)
Automobiles

Henry Ford

Assembly Line

Federal Highway act of 1921

The Model-T

The “Big Three”

Mass production
Charles Lindbergh and Aviation

Inventor, pilot, writer

First solo transatlantic flight

Distinguished Flying Cross medal

America First Organization
Art and literature in the 1920’s

Jazz Age, Jazz music

Surrealism and Art Deco

Music, Art, Literature

Pop culture

Harlem Renaissance

Georgia O’Keeffe

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Aaron Copland

George Gershwin

John Steinbeck
Famous people of the 1920’s

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Charles Lindbergh

Coco Chanel

Al Capone

Babe Ruth

Albert Einstein

Bessie Smith

Henry Ford

Woodrow Wilson

Rudolph Valentino

Charlie Chaplin
Women’s rights

Nineteenth Amendment

Woman Suffrage movement

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

NWP- National Women’s Project

NWSA- National Women’s Suffrage Association

Ruth Hanna McCormick
The KKK

The Ku Klux Klan

William Simmons

Birth of a Nation

Fundamentalism

White supremacy

The “decade”

“Invisible Empire”
The Harlem Renaissance

Alain Locke

A literary, artistic, and intellectual movement

Jean Toomer

Langston Hughes

Rudolf Fisher

James Weldon Johnson

Culture, social, artistic explosion

The rebirth of the African American culture

The Great Migration

Writers, actors, musicians