THE ROARING TWENTIES

1919-1929

Felix the Cat

Warren Harding1921-1923

• Administration marked by corruption and scandal, though he was ignorant of it. Teapot Dome was biggest scandal

Calvin Coolidge

• “Silent Cal” became president on the death of Harding (1923).

• Laissez faire• “The business of

America is business.”

The Roaring 20’s• Americans grew isolationist

following the war• Thousands of Labor Strikes

erupted, many violent• Fears of a Communist or

Anarchist conspiracy to take over US government

Inflation

Race Riots

Race Riots• In total, 38 killed (23 blacks) and 291 wounded.

• In Tulsa, over 300 blacks are claimed to have been killed and buried in a mass grave in 1921.

• Riots due to racial frictions intensified by large-scale Negro migration to the North, industrial labor competition, overcrowding in urban ghettos, and greater militancy among black war veterans who had fought "to preserve democracy."

Race Riots• Race riots broke out in Washington, D.C.;

Knoxville, Tenn.; Longview, Texas; and Phillips County, Ark. In the North the worst race riots erupted in Chicago and in Omaha, Neb.

• Chicago riot lasted 13 days despite state militia being activated. Began when a black boy drowned when not allowed to get out of the water in a “white only” area.

Tulsa Race Riots (1921)

KKK

KKK

• Admitted only Native-born, white protestants

• Hated foreigners, blacks, Catholics, and Jews

• Claimed 5 million adherents in 1923

• Persecuted gamblers, “loose” women, violators of prohibition

Tulsa Race Riots, body ofa charred blackman.

Tulsa

35 blocks of Tulsa in Ashes

Lynchings

Ruben Stacy, lynched 1925 in Fort Lauderdale

http://www.songfacts.com/songimage.lasso?id=543

• Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old was convicted in City Court of murdering Lucy Fryer. Washington was immersed in coal oil, hoisted up onto the tree and slowly lowered into the fire. Spectators cut off fingers and toes from the corpse as souvenirs

• “This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

• “The Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on…before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits…the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver…small pieces of bones went for 25 cents…” (The Springfield Weekly Republican, April 28, 1899). This was an actual description of the lynching of one Sam Holt, accused murderer, who was burned at the stake in Newman, Georgia in April, 1899.

• Between the years 1889 through 1918, at least 3,224 people were lynched in America. Of that number 2,522 were black.

• The Tuskegee Institute chronicled over 4,000 lynchings during a similar period.

Strange Fruit• Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

• Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

• Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter cry.

Marcus Garvey

• Feared blacks would end up like Indians (buried)

• Started Shipping Co. to employ blacks

• Argued for racial segregation

Charles Lindbergh

• 1st person to fly non-stop (33 1/2 hrs.) across the Atlantic (May 21, 1927)

New York to Paris

The Jazz Age

Jazz Age

Flappers

• Short hair, short skirts, emphasis on being slender

• Fashion based on clothing of French prostitutes

The Scopes Trial

John Scopes, the substituteBiology teacher accused ofteaching evolution in Tennessee, 1925

William Jennings Bryan

• State assist. prosecution in Scopes Trial. Bryan died in his sleep one week after the trial

Clarence Darrow

• Represented John Scopes in the Dayton Case. Scopes found guilty, fined $100

Scopes TrialSignificance

• Conflict between Urban and Rural America, between tradition and progress, conflict over the very existence of God.

• Conflict over the very meaning of life.

Significance of Scopes• “...there are 5 inescapable implications [of

Darwinism]:

1. there’s no evidence for God;

2. there’s no life after death;

3. there’s no absolute foundation for right and wrong;

4. there’s no ultimate meaning for life;

5. people don’t really have free will.”– --William Provine, atheist.

Margaret Sanger

• Founded American Birth Control League, 1921

• Birth Control was the “weeding out of the unfit.”

Margaret Sanger

• called for the extirpation of "weeds .... overrunning the human garden";

• the segregation of "morons, misfits, and the maladjusted;"

• “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one its infant members is to kill it.”

• Margaret Sanger

• for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races."

• Sanger would have been wildly enthusiastic over China's one-child policy, for her "Code to Stop Overproduction of Children," published in 1934, decreed that "no woman shall have a legal right to bear a child without a permit ... no permit shall be valid for more than one child."

• January 1919, 18th amendment passed

• Only 1520 federal agents hired to enforce the law

• Led to a new disrespect for law

Prohibition

• Reduced alcohol consumption from 2.6 gallons per capita to under 1 gallon by 1930.

• # of arrests for drunkenness dropped, as did # of missed work days due to drunkenness

Prohibition

• Consumption of sacramental wine jumped by 800,000 gallons during the first two years of prohibition

• Repealed in 1933

• By 1932, 500 Prohibition agents and 2,000 others--gangsters, rum runners and innocent bystanders would die in alcohol turf wars; 5,000 people a year would die from "bad stuff" such as toxic wood alcohol; that $2 billion that went to legitimate brewers and distillers would shift to the pockets of violent thugs; that Chicago's political graft would be so bad that 227 gang murders between 1927 and 1931 would garner no convictions; that New York City's 15,000 legal saloons would become 32,000--possibly many more--speakeasies;

Strikes!

•Boston Police Strike•Led to rioting and

vandalizing. Coolidge calls out State militia.

•All striking officers were fired

Boston Police Strike1919

• “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

Boston Police Strike

Other Strikes• Steel Strike• - wanted change

from 69 hour week.

• Violence erupted leaving 18 workers dead

• Coal Strike (1919) -

• led by John L. Lewis, called for fewer hours and higher wages

3600 strikes in 1919 alone

The Red Scare 1919-1920

Red Scare

• 1919-1920--belief that communists were bringing revolution to the U.S.

• 36 bombs mailed in 1919• Palmer Raids-A.G. Mitchell

Palmer ordered 5000 suspected communists arrested, violated rights.

The Red Scare

Red Scare

Sacco and Vanzetti

Sacco and Vanzetti1920

• Accused of robbery and killing a paymaster and guard; many believe the two were convicted in flimsy or questionable evidence simply because they were anarchists, atheists, and foreign.