Intro to the 1920s

Where in history is the 20’s located1918 – World War I ends

1919-1929 – The Roaring Twenties

Oct. 29, 1929 – The start of the Great Depression

The roaring twenties are remembered as a time of great technological advancement, prosperity and social change.

What happened in the Twenties?1920 – The 19th Amendment give women the right to vote

and prohibits the sale of alcohol (not the consumption)

1924 – The Scopes Trial begins and would later convict John T. Scopes of teaching Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

1927 – The Jazz Singer is the first talking motion picture

1927 – Charles Lindbergh makes the first non-stop transatlantic flight in history

1928 – Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance in Steamboat Willie

1929 – In Chicago, Illinois gangsters working for Al Capone kill seven rivals in an act known as the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1929 – Postwar prosperity ends in the 1929 Stock Market Crash to bring about the Great Depression.

What is the 1920s?The popular image of the 1920s, as a decade of

prosperity and riotous living and of bootleggers and gangsters, flappers and hot jazz, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers, is indelibly etched in the American psyche

The decade witnessed a titanic struggle between an old and a new America. Immigration, race, alcohol, evolution, gender politics, and sexual morality--all became major cultural battlefields during the 1920s.

The 1920s was a decade of profound social changes. The most obvious signs of change were the rise of a consumer-oriented economy and of mass entertainment, which helped to bring about a "revolution in morals and manners." Sexual mores, gender roles, hair styles, and dress all changed profoundly during the 1920s

Victorian woman in mid 19th century

Flapper in the roaring 20’s

Can you spot the differences in these two photos?

The 1920s was a change from the strict moral and

social codes of the Victorian age.

Women, especially, gained more freedom and independence than ever before.

Many women moved out on their own for the first time into big cities, made their own living and rode around in cars with boys without a chaperone.

Many Victorian parents were shocked and appalled by their children’s fashions and interests. They struggled to understand and accept the changes.

They had the same worries and concerns as parents today. In fact they blamed much of the problem on movies, books and magazines.

Changes in the 1920’s

The Flapper This girl would have been known in the

1920s as a flapper.

Flapper – initially described the sort of teenage girl whose gawky frame and posture were “supposed to need a certain type of clothing – long, straight lines to cover her awkwardness – and the stores advertised these gowns as ‘flapper-dresses.’ “

Webster’s Dictionary defined the flapper as “A young girl, esp. one somewhat daring in conduct, speech and dress.”

By the early 1920s the term flapper described a very notorious type of woman who bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs where she danced in a shockingly immodest fashion with a revolving cast of male suitors.

Several characters in the Great Gatsby are flappers.

Daisy Buchanan is Nick Carraway’s cousin and although she is married she is still a flapper.

Jordan Baker, a famous golfer and friend of Daisy’s, is a flapper as well.

Myrtle Wilson is a wannabe – flapper. She doesn’t have the money or means to be the real thing.

Prohibition Led by the Anti-Saloon League and the

Women's Christian Temperance Union, the dry forces had triumphed by linking Prohibition to a variety of Progressive era social causes

The wording of the 18th Amendment banned the manufacture and sale (but not the possession, consumption, or transportation) of "intoxicating liquors.”

Prohibition failed because it was unenforceable.

During prohibition people found ways around the law by going to speakeasies (underground night clubs that served liquor) or by making their own (moonshine).

In 1927, there were an estimated 30,000 illegal speakeasies--twice the number of legal bars before Prohibition. Many people made beer and wine at home. It was relatively easy finding a doctor to sign a prescription for medicinal whiskey sold at drugstores.

Organized CrimeProhibition likely led to

sharp increase of organized crime

Successful bootleggers made millions

Crime bosses like Al Capone or the fictional Meyer Wolfsheim held power and were called “untouchables.”

Race becomes a major issueAlthough race is not mentioned

directly in the Great Gatsby. The character Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, is considered a racist. He makes several comments throughout the book about people’s race.

In the 1920’s race issues began to escalate as the Great Migration occurred. African Americans began to move North and into major cities. Their culture helped to bring about the jazz age and much of the music and dancing during the area.

Al Jolson dressed in “blackface” to portray African-American jazz artists

Consumer EconomyKeeping up with the Jones was

started in the 1920s.

The growth of exciting new opportunities to buy cars, appliances, and stylish clothing made the country's cultural conflicts seem less significant.

Americans in the 1920s were the first to wear ready-made, exact-size clothing. They were the first to play electric phonographs, to use electric vacuum cleaners, to listen to commercial radio broadcasts, and to drink fresh orange juice year round.

Automobiles create a new culture

The cost of a new Ford was reduced to just $290. This amount was less than three months wages for an average American worker; it made cars affordable for the average family.

Alfred Sloan creator of GM was convinced that Americans were willing to pay extra for luxury and prestige. He advertised his cars as symbols of wealth and status.. He set up the nation's first national consumer credit agency in 1919 to make his cars affordable.

Cars revolutionized the American way of life.

Enthusiasts claimed that the automobile promoted family togetherness through evening rides, picnics, and weekend excursions.

Critics decried squabbles between parents and teenagers over use of the automobile and an apparent decline in church attendance resulting from Sunday outings.

Worst of all, charged critics, automobiles gave young people freedom and privacy, serving as "portable bedrooms" that couples could take anywhere.

Media - MusicThe blues craze erupted in

1920 when a black singer named Mamie Smith released a recording called "Crazy Blues." The record became a sensation, selling 75,000 copies in a month and a million copies in seven months.

"Hillbilly" music broke into mass culture in 1923 when a Georgia singer named "Fiddlin' John" Carson sold 500,000 copies of his recordings. Another country artist, Vernon Dalhart, sold 7 million copies of a recording of "The Wreck of Old 97.”

Media - SportsSpectator sports attracted vast

audiences in the 1920s.

Baseball drew even bigger crowds than football. The decade began, however, with the sport mired in scandal.

But baseball soon regained its popularity, thanks to George Herman ("Babe") Ruth, the sport's undisputed superstar.

Media - LiteratureFew decades have produced as many great works of art,

music, or literature as the 1920s. At the decade's beginning, American culture stood in Europe's shadow. By the decade's end, Americans were leaders in the struggle to liberate the arts from older canons of taste, form, and style.

It was during the 1920s that Eugene O'Neill, the country's most talented dramatist, wrote his greatest plays, and that authors William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe published their first novels.

American poets of the 1920s, such as Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Wallace Stevens, experimented with new styles of punctuation, rhyme, and form.

Likewise, artists like Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Joseph Stella challenged the dominant realist tradition in American art and pioneered non-representational and expressionist art forms.

F. Scott, Zelda and Scotty Fitzgerald were all icons in the 1920s

The Crash of 1929

On October 29, 1929, The New York Stock Exchange took a massive tumble, ending the Roaring 20’s and beginning the Great Depression of the 1930’s