1920s Culture
Roaring 20s
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Popular Culture
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More $$$    more leisure time
Sports stars
Babe Ruth
 Jack Dempsey
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Hollywood
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Charlie Chaplin
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79i84xYelZI192
7 “talking picture”
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Radio shows & music
Politics
 Jazz
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Fostered a sense of a shared national experience that
helped unify the nation
Roaring 20s
Harlem Renaissance
 Epicenter of African
artistic expression

 Claude
Mckay – ‘defiance and bitterness
towards racism’
 Langston Hughes- most famous today
 Zora Neal Hurston- featured women
Roaring 20s
Jazz
 Louis Armstrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDrzKBF6gD
U
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Influenced by Dixieland music & ragtime with its ragged
rhythms & syncopated melodies
“Everything, and I repeat everything had to swing. And that
was just it, those cats really had it; they had that soul. And
you know you just can’t play some of this music without
soul. Soul is very important.”
Duke Ellington
Roaring 20s

Bessie Smith

Blues
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A soulful style of music that evolved from African American
spirituals
Unfulfilled love, poverty, & oppression
“Down Hearted Blues”
Paul Robeson
Won acclaim for acting
 Shuffle Along (1921)

Harlem Renaissance succeeded in bringing
international fame to African Americans & sparked
political transformation in the U.S.
Roaring 20s
African American Politics
 Marcus Garvey

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“Negro Nationalism”

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United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
Advoacted separation from whites

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Inspired by Booker T. Washington
Lead to Africa
Racial purity & separation
Prison time

Deported to Jamaica
I Hear America Singing
I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam, The mason
singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on
the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he
stands;
The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning, or at the
noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young wife at work--or of the girl
sewing or washing--Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of young fellows, robust,
friendly, Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

Walt Whitman
Assignment

Create a travel Brochure for the 1920s
 Highlight
all the areas that would make
people want to live in the 20s
 Thriving
economy, popular culture, jazz age, etc
 Information can be found in chap 15 sec 2-3

Brochure must include
5
pieces of information about the 20s
 5 pictures with color