Chapter 24, Section 2“Life During the 1920s”

How did life change for young people after World War I?

• Those in the military brought experiences from Europe and didn’t want to return to old lives

• Many moved from farms to cities for work and excitement

• More young people moved away from parents before they were married for freedom

• Youth culture emerged – parties, dance clubs, fast cars, popular music

• More finished high school and more attended college

How did life change for young women after the

end of World War I?• More women in the work force• More with college degrees

worked as nurses, teachers, librarians, and social workers

• Still some careers mostly off limit to women – doctors, lawyers, etc.

• More getting involved in politics with more getting elected to political office

Flappers• Flappers were young single women

mostly from urban areas• They wore make-up, short hair, and short

dresses• They openly challenged traditional ideas

of how women were supposed to behave• They drank, smoked, and went on un-

chaperoned dates

Fear and Violence• Red Scare – a time of fear of

communists in the U.S. after 1917 Russian Rev. and a bomb scare in 1919 blamed on communists

• Americans feared communists caused the strikes in 1919 after WWI and communists would try to take over the nation

• Palmer raids – after a bomb exploded outside of the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he ordered police raids of suspected communists arresting thousands with little evidence

Sacco and Vanzetti Case• Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian

born anarchists who were arrested in 1920 for a robbery and murder in Massachusetts

• They declared their innocence and public opinion in the case was strong on both sides

• They were found guilty and executed despite conflicting evidence

• The case is seen as an example of red scare fears and anti-immigrant feelings of the decade

Restricting Immigration

• Americans feared immigrants as threats to jobs and democracy

• Laws were passed to restrict immigration

• Emergency Quota Act – restricted total number of immigrants admitted each year

• National Origins Act of 1924 – limited the number of new immigrants from each nation to 2% of the total number of people in the U.S. from that nation in 1890

Prohibition• 18th Amendment –

outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages

• Prohibition was supported in small towns and rural areas, not in cities

• It lasted until passage of the 21st Amendment (1920 to 1933 or 14 years)

How were people able to get alcohol during Prohibition?

• Speakeasies – illegal bars that sold alcohol

• Moonshine – homemade alcoholic beverages

• Bootleggers – people who transported alcohol illegally

• Gangsters -- people who built up distribution networks for alcohol and paid of police and politicians

Al Capone• Chicago gangster who

gained control of the alcohol trade there

• Murdered rival gang leaders to get this control

• Made $60 million a year• Eventually was arrested

and imprisoned for tax evasion

Fundamentalism• Protestant religious

movement characterized by a belief in the literal (word-for-word) interpretation of the Bible

• Especially strong in rural areas and small towns which blamed problems in society on the culture in urban areas

• It was part of the push for prohibition and the bans of the teaching of evolution in schools

Scopes Trial

• A high school science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee challenged a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools (instead of teaching creationism – that God created man and the universe)

• National coverage of the trial brought attention and business to the small town