AP Chapter 24 The New EraCommonly known as the “Roaring

Twenties”, this new era for America was the backdrop for a clashing of

old and new, traditionalists vs. liberalism, country life vs. city life. It was a time of significant change in

terms of social, economic and political views.

• The 1920’s was an era of rapid change and clashing values. Many Americans believed society was losing its traditional values and they took action to preserve these values. Other Americans embraced new values associated with a freer lifestyle and the pursuit of individual goals.

• A disillusioned America turned away from idealism after WWI and many turned toward social conservatism—they turned inward and became hostile to anything foreign or different

1. Themes: 1920’s common themes-• Return to normalcy• US turned inward---isolationism• Jazz Age• first modern era in the U.S.• change from a rural society to an

urban.

The War’s Impact

• Racial Unrest: As hundreds of thousands of white American soldiers from Europe returned home looking for a job, clashes occurred with the African Americans who had moved north during the war to take those jobs. Frustration and racism combined to produce violence. In the summer of 1919, over 20 race riots broke out across the nation.

Red Summer

• The worst violence occurred in Chicago. On a hot July day, African Americans found themselves at a White only beach.

• http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/10/12/red-summer

The Red Scare

• Americans had become very anti-German as the war progressed, and when the Communists withdrew Russia from the war, they seemed to be helping Germany. American anger at Germany quickly expanded into anger at Communists as well. Americans began to associate communism with being unpatriotic and disloyal.

Nativism Resurges

• The fear and prejudice many felt toward Germans and Communists expanded to include all immigrants. This triggered a general rise in racism and in nativism, the desire to protect the interests of old-stock Americans against those of immigrants.

Why?

• Immigration returns• Economic recession• Racial and cultural tensions• Fear and prejudice toward Germans and

Communists

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case

• Both Italian immigrants (anarchist)• Convicted of murder during a robbery• Evidence was insufficient, found guilty and

executed in 1927

Return of the KKK• At the forefront to restrict immigration, the

new KKK targeted not only African Americans, but also Catholics, Jews and other groups believed to represent “un American” values.

• By 1924 membership in the Klan exploded, reaching nearly 4 million.

Controlling Immigration• After WWI, American immigration policies

changed in response to the postwar recession and nativist pleas to “Keep America American”.

• In 1921, President Harding signed the Emergency Quota Act, which established a temporary quota system.

• Only 3% on the total number of people in any ethnic group already living in the US could be admitted in a single year.

• http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/immigration-us.html

•The U.S. Government began to restrict certain “undesirable” immigrants from entering the

U.S.•Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, in which newcomers from Europe were restricted at any year to a quota, which was set

at 3% of the people of their nationality who lived in the U.S. in 1910.

• Immigration Act of 1924, the quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of

1890, when few southeastern Europeans lived in America.

• After the recession of 1921-22 ended, the US economy experienced a time of remarkable growth and prosperity.

What was the ‘Boom’?What was the ‘Boom’?

Let the good times roll!Sales of Consumer Goods 1915 - 1930

Overall, the output of American industry doubled in the 1920s

Cars

Radios

Telephones

Refrigerators

9 million

60,000

10 million

For every one …

1919 1929

19291920

1915 1930

19291921

26 million

10 million

20 million

There were 167

:

The New Culture—A Consumer Society

• Per capita income $522-1921 $716-1928—greater than anywhere in the world.

The Second Industrial Revolution U.S. develops the highest standard of living

in the world The twenties and the second revolution

electricity replaces steam Henry Ford’s modern assembly line introduced

Rise of the airline industry Modern appliances and conveniences begin

to change American society

Electrical Conveniences • New technologies led to electrical

conveniences during the 1920s• Cars, airplanes, radios, telephones were

all innovative technologies of the time• Women used new electric household

appliances like refrigerators, vacuum cleaners & electric stoves

• Advertising: Propaganda had been effective in the war, so now ad agencies targeted their message to certain groups

The Advertising Industry• The growth of business produced the advertising

industry• Businesses offered the installment plan, which

allowed consumers to use credit to purchase expensive items a little at a time

• America became a consumer society for the first time (status was measure by how many “things” you owned

• However, people were going into debt and saving less money

Labor in the New EraWelfare Capitalism

Employers hoping to avoid any interruption in production provided

benefits, paid vacations, and shortened work weeks. Only a small number of workers were involved.

The 1920’s were not a good time for unions.

Women and Minorities in the Work Force

• Women: “Pink Collar” jobs-low paying service occupations—secretaries, sales clerks, telephone operators

• African Americans: “Great Migration” produced many unskilled workers who took jobs as janitors, dishwashers, garbage collectors, laundry attendants, domestics

• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters-1925-• A. Philip Randolph• Railroad employees- powerful labor union • Asians: Chinese Exclusion Act kept the Chinese

out. Japanese took their place. The Issei (Japanese immigrants) and the Nisei (children born in American of Japanese parents) did have some success by establishing their own businesses. So much in fact that legislation was passed against them between 1913 and 1920 to make it much more difficult for them to purchase land.

Mexicans

• ½ million entered the US in the 1920s. Most lived along border states. Living conditions were poor. Barrios in cities-no services like running water and sewage. Worked in factories, shops, mines, migratory farm laborers.

The American Plan

• Unions were weak due to the strength of the corporations. Unionism was equated to subversive activities. Employers wanted an “open shop” rather than union's. This was called the American Plan—requiring no worker to join a union.

The Movies and Broadcasting

• Silent films were well attended, but in 1927 the first “talkie” The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson was an huge success. The son of a Jewish Cantor must defy his father in order to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer.

• http://youtu.be/TncSKQXYENQ• Birth of a Nation

Radio

• The really important communications appliance was the radio. It developed news programs, soap operas, farm shows, comedy shows—just about anything one could ask for.

Religion

• Religion was taking a back seat to other forms of family activities. But not by everyone..

Fundamentalism• Fundamentalism is the belief that the Bible is

literally true, because it was written by God and cannot contain contradictions or errors

• The rise of fundamentalism in the 1920s was caused by the belief that traditional life was under attack

• Fundamentalists attacked women’s suffrage, education, and science

• Women’s suffrage was attacked by fundamentalists who believed that it upset traditional gender roles

• Evangelical ministers spread the word of the fundamentalists at revivals & over the radio

Billy Sunday, Evangelical Preacher

The Scopes Trial• New ideas & fundamentalism clashed

during the Scopes Trial--A historic trial that pinned evolutionists and creationists against each other.

• A Tennessee teacher, John Scopes, was arrested and tried for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution instead of the Bible’s account of Creation

The Scopes Trial

• Main Characters:• John T. Scopes—science teacher who taught

evolution• William Jennings Bryan—prosecutor,

represented the creationists• Clarence Darrow—most famous trial lawyer at

the time, defended Scopes

Darrow and Jennings

Inherit the Wind

• Film about the Scopes Trial• http://youtu.be/S_DQUAuNUvw• http://youtu.be/A6Gk5H3c5f8• http://youtu.be/ECITwTYSIsg• http://youtu.be/l5Kdc0LLSW8

Women in the 1920’s

• The Flapper—a modern women of the 20’s.• Fashion took on a modern look during the

1920’s

The Playful flapper here we see,The fairest of the fair.

She's not what Grandma used to be,You might say, au contraire.

Her girlish ways may make a stir,Her manners cause a scene,

But there is no more harm in herThan in a submarine.

She nightly knocks for many a goalThe usual dancing men.

Her speed is great, but her controlIs something else again.

All spotlights focus on her pranks.All tongues her prowess herald.

For which she well may render thanksTo God and Scott Fitzgerald.

Her golden rule is plain enough -Just get them young and treat them

rough.

by Dorothy Parker

“Flappers” sought individual freedom

Ongoing crusade for equal rights

Most women remain in the “cult of domesticity”

sphereDiscovery of adolescence

Teenaged children no longer needed to work

and indulged their craving for excitement

Fashions

Flappers pursued social freedoms by entering the work

force as salesclerks, secretaries and

phone operators as well as making

contributions in science, medicine, law and literature.

Thoroughly Modern Millie

• http://youtu.be/KVNcLUE87HQ

The Youth Culture

• http://local.aaca.org/bntc/slang/slang.htm

Prohibition

• The 18th Amendment- making the manufacturing, selling and distributing of liquor illegal.

• Enforcing the new law proved to be very difficult. Americans blatantly ignored the law. Speakeasies, bootlegging and hip flasks became part of common speech.

Prohibition

•Goal: was to reduce crime and poverty and improve the quality of life by

making it impossible for people to get their hands on alcohol.

•Called the "Noble Experiment" •Midnight, January 16th, 1920, US

went dry. •The 18th Amendment, known as the

Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture, sale and possession of

alcohol in America. Prohibition lasted for thirteen years.

•So was born the industry of bootlegging, speakeasies and Bathtub

Gin.

•No other law in America has been violated so flagrantly by so many "decent law-abiding"

people.

•Overnight, many became criminals.

•Mobsters controlled liquor created a booming black market economy.

•Gangsters owned speakeasies and by 1925 there were over 100,000 speakeasies in New

York City alone.

Organized Crime• Organized crime specialized in supplying and

often ran the speakeasies. Crime became big business and some gangsters had enough money to corrupt local politicians. Al Capone became the most notorious gangsters of the era.

• An era of exciting and innovative cultural trends, the 1920’s witnessed changes in art and literature. This period also saw a dramatic increase in the country’s interest in sports and other forms of popular culture.

Art and Literature

• John Marin

Edward Hopper

Poets and Writers

• Ernest Hemingway “For Whom the Bell Tolls”• “ A Farewell to Arms”• F. Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”• Many of these artist and authors were

distraught due to the lack of direction or vision for America. The ideals of progressivism were gone and were replaced by big business, consumerism and politics.

Lost Generation

A group of novelists and poets including Ernest Hemingway and poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, abandoned the US for Europe.

Many writers expressed disillusionment with the materialism that they witnessed.

Popular Culture• The economic prosperity of the 1920’s provided many

Americans with more leisure time and more spending money, which they devoted to making their lives more enjoyable.

• Baseball and Boxing

Charles Lindbergh

• He flew the first transatlantic flight in his plane called the Spirit of St. Louis and became a national hero

The Harlem Renaissance

• After WWI, black populations swelled in large northern cities—particularly in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. It was there that African Americans created an environment that stimulated artistic development, racial pride, a sense of community and political organization. The result was a flowering of AA arts that became known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Writers

• One of the most prolific, original, and versatile writers of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. He became a leading voice of the African American experience in the US.

The Negro Speaks of RiversI've known rivers:I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flowof human blood in human veins.My soul has grown deep like the rivers.I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln wentdown to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turnall golden in the sunset.

Jazz, Blues and the Theater

• Jazz-a new style of music influenced by Dixieland music and ragtime, with its ragged rhythms and syncopated melodies.

• http://youtu.be/9idqeiACqn4• http://youtu.be/E2VCwBzGdPM• Duke Ellington• Louis Armstrong• The Cotton Club

•Beginning of the Jazz Age in New York City

•Acceptance of African American culture

•African American literature and music

JAZZ

African American Politics

• The racial pride that sparked the artistic achievements of the Harlem Renaissance also fueled the political and economic aspirations of many African Americans.

• A dynamic black leader from Jamaica, of millions of African Marcus Garvey captured the imagination Americas with his call for “Negro Nationalism” which glorified the black culture and traditions of the past.

Marcus Garvey

“Return to Normalcy”

• This was Warren Harding’s campaign slogan.• 2 presidents during the 1920’s: • Warren Harding• Calvin Coolidge