World War I is over!!!
November 11, 1918
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzZ1O
wPXgk&index=3&list=PL4AE238DF9D8961
A9
1
Effects of the War
internationally
Unstable international order
 Loss of territory
 Harsh reparations imposed by the Allies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl5OqQ
VaD9Y
2
Effects of the War
USA

Horrors of the war
3
America Adjusts to Peace

Flu Epidemic Grips the Nation
 1918
Influenza pandemic spread worldwide
and killed millions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJM6M3
AMwSs
4

Women and African Americans Confront
New Realities
 Postwar
recession created a competitive job
market as a result, less jobs for women then
prior to the war.
6
America Adjust to Peace

African Americans competed for jobs and
housing with returning soldiers.
 1919
Race riots erupted throughout the
country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7XT
g2tSDo
7
Inflation leads to labor unrest.
After the war, inflation, or rising prices
sparked the need for higher wages.
1919, 20% of the workforce went on
strike
9
10
The Red Scare

Fear of communist and radicals led
Americans to question their political and
economic role in the world.

** Explain what the Political Cartoon
represents.
The Red Scare

The Emergence of the Soviet Union as a
communist nation.
 Communists
ideology called for an
international workers’ revolution as a prelude
to the death of capitalism.
 Union strikes and radical reformers prompted
the RED SCARE
 “Will
the workers revolt?”
12
The RED SCARE

Attorney General Mitchell Palmer received bomb
threats by mail by radical groups, as a result,
thousands of people were arrested by the police.
 These raids became known as the Palmer
Raids.
13
14
Question????

After returning from The Great War
explain how conflict impacted our nation?
Toward A
Modern
America
The Roaring
Twenties
16
I. The Economy That Roared
Boom Industries
 Corporate Consolidation
 Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism
 Sick Industries

17
A. Boom Industries

The Automobile
• Henry Ford’s automobile production best
demonstrates the era’s use of the
assembly-line
• In 1908 he introduces the Model T
Ford adds a moving
belt, and a Model T took
90 minutes to assemble
instead of 12.5 hours
and 10,000 cars a week
were produced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMg
mv_66J7Q
18
•
By the 1930’s there were 26.5 million cars on
the road
•
Changes America’s landscape, homes
urban sprawl and made those in the
country less isolated.
“You can paint it any color, so long as it's black.”
19
Technology Creates New Ways of Living
Electricity

•
•
•
By 1929 2/3rd of American
households had electricity
America produced more
electricity than all the other
nations of the world
combined
How might technology
change working conditions?
George Westinghouse invents
alternating current in the 1890’s
20
Mass Media

Increases in Mass media during the 1920s
 Print
and broadcast methods of communication.
 Examples:
 Newspapers
 Magazines
 Radio
 Movies
Newspapers:
27 million to 39 million
Increase of 42%
Motion Pictures:
40 million to 80 million
Increase of 100%
Radios:
60,000 to 10.2 million
Increase of 16,983%
21
EXPANDING NEWS
COVERAGE

Literacy increased in the
1920s…


as a result
Newspaper and magazine
circulation rose.
By the end of the 1920s…

10 American magazines -including Reader’s Digest,
Saturday Evening Post,Time
– boasted circulations of

over 2 million a year.
Tabloids created
22
RADIO COMES OF
AGE
radio was the most
powerful communications
medium to emerge in the
1920s.
 News was delivered faster
and to a larger audience.
 Americans could hear the
voice of the president or
listen to the World Series
live.

23
ENTERTAINMENT AND
ARTS

Even before sound, movies
offered a means of escape
through romance and
comedy
. Talkies
Charlie Chaplin “the Kid”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE2R7s5
SCSQ
Walt Disney's animated Steamboat Willie
marked the debut of Mickey Mouse. It
was a seven minute long black and white
cartoon.
sound movies: Jazz
Singer (1927)
 First

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBg
ghnQF6E4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48T9
BoKxlI
24
Entertainment
Hollywood and Broadway

•
•
•
•
60 million people, or nearly half the
population of the United States flocked to
movies in the 20s every week!
Charlie Chaplin was the most popular star of
the 20’s (The Gold Rush -1925)
Paul Roberson was an enormously popular
African American Actor who performed in
such shows as Showboat and Othello
How did entertainment influence society?
25
B. Corporate Consolidation

Oligopoly- the control of an entire industry
by a few giant firms
 Automobile
manufacturers
 Utility companies
 National chain stores replaced local retailers
26
C. Open Shops and Welfare
Capitalism
Open-shop campaign was organized by
businesses to break union contracts
 Yellow-dog contracts forced workers to
agree to reject unions in order to keep
their job.
 Welfare capitalism to compete with
Unions, many corporations provided
employees with benefits. (healthcare,
vacation, pensions etc.)

27
Consumerism
Advertising fueled a
desire to buy more
Financing/ Credit
allowed people to do so


•
Installment plan:
payments spread over
several months or years
one song said, that you
could have anything for
a “dollar down and a28
dollar a week”
D. Sick Industries

Diminishing companies with high
unemployment
 Coal
mining
 Textile
 Agriculture
29
Assignment
Read p 212 – 217
 Checkpoint questions p 216 & 217
 Comprehension p. 217 #1

30
II The Business of Government
Republican ascendancy
 Government corruption
 Coolidge Prosperity
 The Fate of Reform

31
A. Republican Ascendancy




Republicans dominate in the politics of the 1920s.
“less government in business, more business in
government”.
President Warren G. Harding (R 1921-1923)
Vice President Calvin Coolidge
32
Warren G. Harding is elected president
• Not known for being well informed he left
policy to high level appointees
 Government takes a conservative turn
 Big Business wins with new laws ending
restraints
 Taxes are lowered for the wealthy

33
B. Government Corruption

Scandal Harms the Harding Administration
Many appointees were unqualified friends (the
Ohio gang)
• Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty is
convicted of fraud for selling pardons to
criminals and for taking payoffs from violators
of prohibition
•
34
•
Teapot Dome Scandal: Secretary of the
Interior Albert B. Fall sells oil rights that
belong to the navy to private business
for a payoff.
35

Check for
Understanding
What object is used
to represent the
scandal? Why?
 What is the impact
of the Scandal?

36
C. Coolidge Prosperity
1923 Calvin Coolidge
becomes the 30th
President after the
death of President
Harding.
 Known as “silent Cal.”

37
D. The Fate of Reform
19th Amendment
 After years of struggle women finally gain
the right to vote in 1920
 Their effort in WWI also played a key role
in winning the fight that began at the
Seneca Falls convention in 1848

38

League of Women Voters
 Many
states granted women the right to serve
on juries, equal pay and equal-rights

Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy
Act.
 Federal
care.
funds supported infant and maternity
39
III Cities and Suburbs
Expanding Cities
 The Great Black Migration
 Barrios

40
A. Expanding Cities

Urbanization still
accelerating.
 More
Americans
lived in cities than
in rural areas
 1920:
 New
York 5 million
 Chicago 3 million
41
URBAN VS. RURAL

Farms started to struggle postWWI.


Urban life was considered a
world of anonymous crowds,
strangers, moneymakers, and
pleasure seekers.

Rural life was considered to be
safe, with close personal ties,
hard work and morals.

Suburban boom: trolleys,
street cars etc.
Cities were impersonal
Farms were innocent
6 million moved to urban areas
42
B. The Great Black Migration

Demographics:
statistics that describe
a population.

Migration North

African Americans
moving north at rapid
pace.

Real Time Demographics
Why?


New job opportunities
in north
Struggles:


Faced hatred from
whites
Forced low wages
43
AFRICAN AMERICAN
GOALS
Founded in 1909,
the NAACP urged
African Americans to
protest racial
violence
 W.E.B Dubois, a
founding member,
led a march of
10,000 black men in
NY to protest
violence

44
MARCUS GARVEY - UNIA
Marcus Garvey believed
that African Americans
should build a separate
society (Africa)
 In 1914, Garvey founded the
Universal Negro
Improvement Association
 Garvey claimed a million
members by the mid-1920s

Garvey represented a more
radical approach
45
46
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Great Migration saw
hundreds of
thousands of African
Americans move
north to big cities
 1920:


Migration of the Negro by
Jacob Lawrence
5 million of the
nation’s 12 million
blacks (over 40%)
lived in cities
47
HARLEM, NEW YORK
Harlem, NY became
the largest black
urban community
 Harlem suffered
from overcrowding,
unemployment and
poverty
 Home to literary and
artistic revival
known as the Harlem
Renaissance

48
C. Barrios

Employers turned to Mexican
immigrants to work
 Barrios-

Spanish speaking neighborhoods.
Other Migration.
 Post-WWI:
European refugees to America
 Limited immigration in 1920s from Europe
and Asia.
49
IV Mass Culture in the Jazz Age
Advertising the Consumer Society
 Leisure and Entertainment
 The New Morality
 The Searching Twenties

50
THE TWENTIES WOMAN
After the tumult of
World War I, Americans
were looking for a little
fun in the 1920s.
 Women were
independent and
achieving greater
freedoms.

 ie.
right to vote, more
employment, freedom
of the auto
Chicago
1926
51
MODERN FAMILY
EMERGES
Marriage was based
on romantic love.
 Women managed
the household and
finances.
 Children were not
considered laborers/
wage earners
anymore.


Seen as developing
children who needed
nurturing and
education
52
NEW ROLES FOR WOMEN
Early 20th Century teachers
Many
women entered the workplace as
nurses, teachers, librarians, & secretaries.
Earned
less than men and were prevented
from obtaining certain jobs.
53
THE CHANGING
AMERICAN FAMILY
American birthrates
declined for several
decades before the
1920s.
Trend continues in
1920s with
development of birth
control.
Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger and other
founders of the American Birth
Control League - 1921


Birth control activist
Founder of American
Birth Control League

ie. Planned
Parenthood
54
THE FLAPPER
Challenged the
traditional ways.
 Revolution of
manners and
morals.
 A Flapper was an
emancipated young
woman who
embraced the new
fashions and urban
attitudes.

55
V. Culture Wars
Nativism and Immigration Restriction
 The Ku Klux Klan
 Prohibition and Crime
 Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial

56
B. Ku Klux Klan

Colonel William J Simmons

Revived organization in 1915
1922: enrollment 4 million

Attacks against:




African Americans, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and
others.
By night, whipped, beat and even killed.
By 1927 Klan activity diminished once again.
57
C. PROHIBITION
58
PROHIBITION

One example of
the clash between
city & farm was the
passage of the 18th
Amendment in
1920.


Launched era known
as Prohibition
Made it illegal to
make, distribute,
sell, transport or
consume liquor.
Prohibition lasted from 1920
to 1933 when it was repealed
by the 21st Amendment
59
SUPPORT FOR
PROHIBITION
Reformers had long
believed alcohol led
to crime, child & wife
abuse, and accidents
 Supporters were
largely from the
rural south and west

60
Poster
supporting
prohibition
61





SPEAKEASIES AND
BOOTLEGGERS
Many Americans did not
believe drinking was a sin
Most immigrant groups
were not willing to give up
drinking
To obtain liquor, drinkers
went underground to
hidden saloons known as
speakeasies
People also bought liquor
from bootleggers who
smuggled it in from
Canada, Cuba and the
West Indies
All of these activities became
closely affiliated with …
Speakeasies
62
GOVERNMENT FAILS TO
CONTROL LIQUOR

Prohibition failed:


Why? Government did not
budget enough money to
enforce the law
The task of enforcing
Prohibition fell to 1,500
poorly paid federal
agents --- clearly an
impossible task!
Federal agents pour wine
down a sewer
63
SUPPORT FADES,
PROHIBITION REPEALED


By the mid-1920s, only
19% of Americans
supported Prohibition
Many felt Prohibition
caused more problems
than it solved


What problems did it
cause?
The 21st Amendment
finally repealed
Prohibition in 1933
64
ORGANIZED
CRIME


Prohibition contributed to
the growth of organized
crime in every major city
Al Capone –





Capone took control of the
Chicago liquor business by
killing off his competition

Al Capone was finally convicted
on tax evasion charges in 1931
Chicago, Illinois
famous bootlegger
“Scarface”
60 million yr (bootleg alone)

Talent for avoiding jail
1931 sent to prision for tax-65
evasion.
Racketeering

Illegal business scheme to make profit.
 Gangsters bribed police or gov’t officials.
 Forced local businesses a fee for “protection”.
 No fee - gunned down or businesses blown
to bits
66
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre


Valentines Day –
February 14, 1929
Rival between Al Capone
and Bugs Moran



Capone – South Side
Italian gang
Moran – North Side Irish
gang
Bloody murder of 7 of
Moran’s men.

Capone’s men dressed as
cops
67
SCIENCE AND
RELIGION CLASH

Fundamentalists vs. Secular thinkers

The Protestant movement - literal interpretation of the
bible is known as fundamentalism

Fundamentalists found all truth in the bible – including
science & evolution
68
SCOPES TRIAL


Scopes was a biology teacher who
dared to teach his students that man
derived from lower species
In March 1925,
Tennessee passed
the nation’s first
law that made it a
crime to teach
evolution
The ACLU
promised to
defend any
teacher willing to
challenge the law
– John Scopes did69
SCOPES TRIAL
The ACLU hired
Clarence Darrow, the
most famous trial
lawyer of the era, to
defend Scopes
 The prosecution
countered with
William Jennings
Bryan, the threetime Democratic
presidential nominee
Darrow

Bryan
70
SCOPES TRIAL


Trial opened on July 10,1925 and became a national
sensation
In an unusual move, Darrow called Bryan to the stand
as an expert on the bible – key question: Should the
bible be interpreted literally?


Under intense questioning, Darrow got Bryan to admit
that the bible can be interpreted in different ways
Nonetheless, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100
Bryan
Darrow
71
72
Icons of 1920s
73

Charles Lindbergh


Spirit of St. Louis
NYC - Paris



Nickname: “Lucky Lindy”
May 27, 1927: Lindbergh made
the first nonstop solo transAtlantic flight.


LINDBERGH’S
FLIGHT
33 ½ hours later – (no auto pilot)
$25,000 prize
2yr old Son Charley kidnapped
in 1932


$50,000 ransom
murdered
74
Amelia Earhart

1932: First female to
fly solo across the
Atlantic
1935: First person to
fly from California to
Hawaii
 1937: Attempt to fly
around the world


2/3 completed and
went missing,
presumed dead.
75
AMERICAN HEROES OF THE
20s
In 1929, Americans
spent $4.5 billion on
entertainment.
(includes sports)
 People crowded into
baseball games to see
their heroes
 Babe Ruth was a larger
than life American hero
who played for Yankees
 He hit 60 homers in
76
1927.

MUSIC OF THE 1920s

Famed composer George
Gershwin merged
traditional elements
with American Jazz.



Someone to Watch Over
Me
Embraceable You
I Got Rhythm
Gershwin
77
EDWARD KENNEDY “DUKE”
ELLINGTON

In the late 1920s,
Duke Ellington, a jazz
pianist and composer,
led his ten-piece
orchestra at the
famous Cotton Club.


Band: “The
Washingtonians”
Ellington won renown
as one of America’s
greatest composers.
78
LOUIS
ARMSTRONG



Jazz was born in the
early 20th century
In 1922, a young
trumpet player named
Louis Armstrong joined
the Creole Jazz Band.
Armstrong is
considered the most
important and
influential musician in
the history of jazz
79
BESSIE
SMITH
Bessie Smith, blues
singer, was perhaps
the most outstanding
vocalist of the decade
 She achieved
enormous popularity
and by 1927 she
became the highestpaid black artist in the
world

80
BILLIE HOLIDAY


Born Eleanora Fagan
Gough
One of the most recognizable
voices of the 20s and 30s.
Embraceable You
 God Bless the Child
 Strange Fruit

81
1920s DANCING
Charleston
 Swing Dancing
 Dance Marathons

82
Walt Disney
Walt Disney only
attended one year of
high school.
 He was the voice of
Mickey Mouse for two
decades.
 As a kid he loved
drawing and painting.
 He won 32 Academy
Awards.

83
ART OF THE 1920s
 Georgia
O’ Keeffe
captured the
grandeur of New York
using intensely
colored canvases
Radiator Building,
Night, New York , 1927
Georgia O'Keeffe
84
VI. The New Era in the World?
War Debs and Economic Expansion
 Rejecting War
 Managing the Hemisphere

85
WRITERS OF
THE 1920s
Writer F. Scott
Fitzgerald coined
the phrase “Jazz
Age” to describe
the 1920s
 Fitzgerald wrote
Paradise Lost and

The Great Gatsby
 The Great Gatsby
reflected the
emptiness of New
York elite society
86
WRITERS OF THE
1920

Ernest Hemingway, became one
of the best-known authors of
the era


In his novels, The Sun Also
Rises and A Farewell to Arms, he
criticized the glorification of war

Hemingway - 1929
Wounded in World War I
Moves to Europe to escape the life
in the United States.

“Lost Generation” (Gertrude Stein)


Group of people disconnected from
their country and its values.
His simple, straightforward
87
style of writing set the literary
LANGSTON
HUGHES


Missouri-born Langston
Hughes was the
movement’s best known
poet
Many of his poems
described the difficult
lives of working-class
blacks


“Thank you Ma’am”
Some of his poems were
put to music, especially
jazz and blues
88