Life and American Culture in the

1920s

The Roaring 20s

A. The Roaring 20s

Best word to describe the 1920s– Euphoria

• is generally considered to be an exaggerated state

• Not based in reality or anything tangible

• Feeling that things are great and only going to get better

• Not based in any proof or evidence

B. Difficult Post War AdjustmentWinners:

1. American Businessmen – Made $ during the war

2. US Prestige– Great pride

3. Women and Minorities– Briefly– Jobs in factories– Great Migration for a better life

4. Urban Areas– Majority of people in US (51%) now live in cities– Chicago – 3 million– New York – 5 million

Losers:1. Wilson and the Democratic Party

• Republicans in office during 1920s• Turned to isolationism/return to laissez-faire/low

taxes/tariff high• Harding – Collidge – Hoover

2. Progressive Movement• “The Business of America is Business”• No hope for continue gov regulation

3. American involvement in world affairs• Return to isolationism

4. Immigrants• Nativism is on the rise due to labor strikes and red scare• Sacco and Vansetti

– Found guilty of robbery and murder • Emergency Quote Act of 1921

– Limit immigration from Europe• KKK is on the rise

Losers Continue:5. Communists and Socialist

• The Red Scare– Fear of Communist taken over America

• The Palmer Raids– J Edgar Hoover hunts down suspected Communist,

socialist, and anarchists– Trampled civil rights– Foreign-born were deported without trails

6. Union activity/Labor Movement• Seen as communist• Three big strikes

– Boston Police Strike– Steel Mill Strike– The Coal Miners Strike

• Proof that US was on brink of Communist Revolution

C. Changing Way of Life1. Rural verse Urban

– More people living in cities than in rural areas

2. To drink or not to drink– Passing of the 18th amendment– Era of Prohibition

• Manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol were prohibited

– Drank at Speakeasies– Gave rise to bootlegging/bootlegger– Hard to enforce

• Insufficient funds• Law enforcement officials took bribes• Only banned alcoholic beverages made

in US

3. Science verse Religion– Fundamentalism

• Did not like changes in morals and manners found in the 1920s

• Skeptical of scientific knowledge • All knowledge can be found in bible• Battle ground Scopes “Monkey” Trails• John T. Scope put on trial for teaching evolution• Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan

4. Mature vs Young Women– Flapper

• Image of rebellious youth

• Bright waistline dresses above the knees, bobbed hair, smoke, drank, wore make up and talked openly about….

5. Changing role for women – At Home

• Ready made clothing and canned foods• Greater equality in the marriage• Having less children• More free - could focus on hobbies• Divorce was considered less shameful

– In the work place• “Women’s professions”• Handful did work that was once reserved for

men• Earned less• Made up less than half of work force

– Today 47%

D. Heroes in the 1920

In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment (includes sports).

Sport heroesBabe RuthGertude EderleAndrew “Rube” FosterHelen Wills

Lindbergh Flight

most beloved hero of the time was a small-town pilot named Charles Lindbergh

Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo trans-Atlantic flight

He took off from NYC in the Spirit of St. Louis and arrived in Paris 33 hours later to a hero’s welcome

Represented idea America could achieve anything

E. Mass Culture is Created Through…….

1. Newspapers and Magazines

As literacy increased, newspaper circulation rose and mass-circulation magazines flourished

By the end of the 1920s, ten American magazines -- including Reader’s Digest and Time – boasted circulations of over 2 million

2. Radio

radio was the most powerful communications

News was delivered faster and to a larger audience

Americans could hear the voice of the president or listen to the World Series live

3. Movies Even before sound, movies offered a means of escape through romance and comedy

First sound movies: Jazz Singer (1927)

First animated with sound: Steamboat Willie (1928)

By 1930 millions of Americans went to the movies each week

Walt Disney's animated

Steamboat Willie marked the debut of Mickey Mouse. It was a seven minute long black and

white cartoon.

F. Writers of the 1920s

The 1920s was one of the greatest literary eras in American history

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote the novel, Babbitt

In Babbitt the main character ridicules American conformity and materialism

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

Ernest Hemingway, wounded in World War I, 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

His simple, hard little sentences of writing set the literary standard

Hemingway - 1929

G. The Lost Generation

Many writers of the 1920s were critical of American Culture

Pessimism and rejection of American values

called “The Lost Generation”

H. The Harlem Renaissance

Between 1910 and 1920, the Great Migration saw hundreds of thousands of African Americans move north to big cities

By 1920 over 5 million of the nation’s 12 million blacks (over 40%) lived in cities

Migration of the Negro by Jacob Lawrence

Harlem, New York

Harlem, NY became the largest black urban community

In the 1920s it was home to a literary and artistic revival known as the Harlem Renaissance

A famous night club in Harlem, New York City that operated

during Prohibition that included jazz music

Writers of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was primarily a literary movement

Led by well-educated blacks with a new sense of pride in the African-American experience

Claude McKay’s poems expressed the pain of life in the ghetto

Mckay

Langston Hughes Missiouri-born

Langston Hughes was the movement’s best known poet

Many of his poems described the difficult lives of working-class blacks

Louis Armstrong

Jazz was born in the early 20th century

In 1922, a young trumpet player named Louis Armstrong joined the Creole Jazz Band

Later he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in NYC

Armstrong is considered the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz

Edward “Duke” Ellington

In the late 1920s, Duke Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer, led his ten-piece orchestra at the famous Cotton Club

Ellington won renown as one of America’s greatest composers

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 highest- paid black artist in the world