Nativism
 Post WWI America wants to pull out of European
affairs
 Americans also feel that Europeans can never really be
full Americans
 1921 immigration is limited to 350,000


1924 164,000
Restrictions aimed at different ethnic groups such as southern
and eastern Europeans
Suffrage
 Women win the right to vote in 1920
 Focus on women not voting instead of women who did
 Women voted the same as men in national elections
but did make a difference in local elections
 Given minor roles in major parties
Effects of Women’s Suffrage
 Polling places were moved out of saloons into neutral
public places
 Serve on juries
 Sheppard-Towner Act (1921): Federal money for
prenatal and infant care
 Cable Act (1922): Women who married foreigners kept
their citizenship
The Great Migration
 Jobs for African Americans in the south were low
paying and few
 Racial discrimination and violence kept African
Americans second class citizens in the South
 Northern factories expanded due to the war and were
losing workers to the Army
 As a result of the discrimination and availability of jobs
500,000 African Americans moved North

Great Migration
Life in the North
• North did offer more opportunity but discrimination
was still prevalent
– White workers saw them as a threat to their employment
and wages
• Race riots in East St. Louis (1917), Washington D.C.
(1919) and Chicago (1919)
– In Chicago a young African American boy swam into the
white part of the beach accidentally(defactosegragation). A white man threw a rock at him and he
drowned. African Americans started attacking whites in
the end 40 people were dead, hundreds injured and
thousands homeless.
The Harlem Renissance
• Harlem located in New York, New York had an African
American population of 14,000 in 1914 by 1930 it had
200,000
• Jazz flourished in the night clubs
– Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington and Louis
Armstrong
• Writing and the arts also flourished
– Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes
The Jazz Age
• Jazz spreads beyond African American culture and
into the mainstream
• The phonograph allowed music to be played
anywhere.
• Young adults had dance marathons
– Last one standing wins
• Youths also entertained themselves with:
– Flag pole sitting (literally)
– Goldfish eating
– Talking on the phone
– Driving their dates in cars
Immoral Youths
• Here are some of the ways young adults challenged
society in the 1920’s
– Dated without chaperones
– Went out on dates away from the home
– Danced while their bodies touched
– Women wore dress that exposed their arms, and knees
– Wore makeup
• Women had to adhere to a double standard as society
told them to grasp onto new ideas it also told them to
stay with the old
Flappers
 Flapper: A woman who grasped onto the new changes
of the jazz age
 Wore shorter more revealing dresses, used makeup and
had bobbed hair
 The flappers is the mascot of the Jazz Age
Women in the 1920’s
• While the Jazz Age did allow women more freedom it
was short lived
• Women held jobs but not trained above entry level
– Most employers believed white women would quit after
they married or had a child. Some were even fired
•
African American women stayed on due to economic reasons
• Many women also felt the pull of traditional life to
marry and take care of their children
Technology and Women
• Technological advances dramatically affected women’s
lives.
– Cars allowed for easier errand running
– Cheaper electrical products and installment buying allowed
women to buy:
•
•
•
Sewing machines
Vacuum cleaners
Other time saving devices
• While electrical appliances did help women with
housework it also put more pressure on them as well.
– “By their floors ye shall judge them”
– “It is written that floors are like unto a mirror reflecting the
character of the housewife.”
America at Leisure
 Average factory work week was 50 hours
 People looked for ways to spend their leisure time
 Radios
 1922 500 radio stations around the country
 Broadcast games, shows, music, news
 NBC used small stations that broadcast the same
material and the nation was now enjoying the same
shows, jokes and music
Leisure time
 Movies
 Large luxurious movie theaters began to show movies
 Some even had iced air
 Talkies arrived in 1927
 By 1930 patrons bought 100 million movie tickets
National Heroes
 Sports athletes became national heroes as a result of
radios and news reels
 Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey
 Charles Lindbergh the first man to fly solo across the
Atlantic became an instant national hero
National Products
• Chain super markets sold name brand merchandise
– Kleenex
• First Fast food chain appeared in the 1920’s
– A&W
• National advertising changed the way Americans
referred to items
– Kleenex instead of facial tissue
– Victrolas instead of phonographs
• Advertisers sell to desire instead of need
The Model T
• Ford had a dream of making cars ordinary people
could afford
– Accomplished with the moving assembly line
• Ford had a 60% market share in the automobile
industry
• General Motors surpassed Ford by making cars in
different colors and styles
– He then started producing the model A in different
colors
The car
• The car allowed people to individually travel instead of
waiting for a train
• Cars stimulated the construction, rubber, gasoline,
tourism, and petroleum industries
• Cars also changed the semipublic life of the front
porch
– People walking by or in a carriage could talk to those on
their front porch but the car eliminated the opportunity
– Frank Lloyd Wright now designs homes without front
porches that are away from the street with discreet
entrances
Prohibition
 1919 the 18th amendment passed making it illegal to make,
sell, transport, import or export any intoxicating beverage.
 Many believed this would fix America’s social problems
 Allowed for some of the most violent times in American
History
 Many people openly defied the laws at speakeasies
 Illegal backdoor taverns and clubs
 Others bootlegged alcohol from Mexico or Canada
 Men like Al Capone become rich from the sale of illegal
beverages
 Others bootlegged which is the making of illegal spirits
Morality in Pop Culture
 To bring larger crowds film makers started to make
films more risqué
 However a movement started to control the industry
 The movie industry then self censored itself limiting
nudity, sex, and crime
 By 1929 there were 300 laws limiting and regulating
dance halls
 Couples needed to be 6 inches apart
 No moonlight dances with the lights dimmed
Ku Klux Klan
 Klan membership soared in the 1920’s
 3-5 million members
 Persecuted groups:
 African Americans
 Catholics
 Jews
 Violators of prohibition
 People who were grasping onto new ideas
 They were for the white, American born Protestant
The Decline of the Klan
 The decline of the Klan happened suddenly and
dramatically due to its violent nature
 David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana
violently raped and beat a white women
 She died of her wounds
 Stephenson then revealed the extent of the Klan
influence and corruption in government
 Stephenson was punishing those he felt betrayed him by
not dropping the charges
1920’s Decade of the Republicans
• Warren G. Harding won Election in 1920
– Ran on the slogan “Return to normalcy”
• Calvin (Closed Lip Cal) Coolidge took over after he
died in 1923 and won elections in 1924.
– A lady once bet President Coolidge that she could make
him say more than three words. His response, “You lose.”
• Herbert Hoover won election in 1928 as Coolidge
would not run for another term
Warren G. Harding
• Considered to be a “amiable second rater”
• Coolidge appointed unqualified friends to key posts
– They brought scandal to the administration
• Tea Pot Dome was the most scandalous of Harding
scandals (Harding not a scandaler)
– Secretary of the interior Alfred B. Fall leased
government oil reserves in Elk Hill California and Tea
Pot Dome Wyoming.
– In return Fall received $300,000 in “loans”
•
Later convicted and went to jail
Closed Lip Cal
• Easily won the Election in 1924
– American Public did not associate him with the Harding
administrations scandals
• Supported big business in America
– “The chief business of the American people is business”
– Raised tariffs
• Refused to help the average American even in natural
disasters
Election 1928
Al Smith
Herbert Hoover
 Democrat
 Republican
 New York
 Iowa
 Catholic
 Quaker
 Wanted to stop prohibition
 Pro prohibition
 Pro worker
 Pro Business
 Self educated after 8th grade
 Stanford education
 Product of Tammany Hall
 Popular with female voters
 Fiery campaigner
 Dull but polished campaigner
Why Hoover Won
 On the radio he sounded moderate, sensible and
trustworthy
 Smith had a thick New York accent
 Anti-Catholic propaganda worked in his favor
 Widespread yet false beilief that the economy was
strong
Economy of the Late 1920’s
 Herbert Hoover proclaimed, “poverty will be banished




from the nation.”
All stocks in 1925 were $27 billion by 1929 $87 billion
Real wages increased 40% with unemployment below
4%
John J. Raskob, “Everybody ought to be rich”
Employers used Welfare capitalism
 raising wages and benefits to stave off union
organization
Trouble on the Horizon
 200 companies controlled 49% of American Industry
 0.1% of the wealthiest families owned 34% of the
countries savings
 80% of all families had no savings
 In these families children even had to work
 Installment or credit buying became popular
 Cars, radios, electrical appliances were bough with
credit
 In the past Americans avoided buying things they could
not pay for
The Stock Market
 Pre World War I only the wealthy dealt in the stock
market
 Speculation by average Americans became a common
practice
 Buying stock in the hopes the price will rise and then
selling for a profit
 People also begin to buy on Margin
 Paying only a fraction of stocks price in hopes that it
would go up making enough money from the sale to pay
back the loan and make money
Goods and Farmers
 Consumer goods production outpaced consumption in
the 1920’s
 The auto industry along with the industries that
supported it started to slump in 1925
 Farmers never shared in the prosperity of the 1920’s
 Loans on land and machinery went bad with a drop in
crop prices
 6,000 rural banks failed due unpaid loans