The “Era of Wonderful Nonsense” brought fun in many forms

Culture of the 1920s

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CARS

CREDIT

FADS

PROHIBITION

MOVIESRADIO

Fad: an activity or a fashion that is taken up with great passion for a short time

– Flagpole sitting– Dance Marathons– Crossword Puzzles– Mah-Jongg– Charleston: dance originating in S. Carolina—moving to a

quick beat, dancers pivoted their feet while kicking out first one leg, then the other, backward & forward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAOHtmy4j0 I’m going to teach

you how!!!!

Flappers: young women who rebelled against traditional ways of thinking & acting

– Wore hair bobbed, dresses short, bright red lipstick

– To older Americans, flappers behaved & looked shockingly ridiculous

– Smoked cigarettes in public– Drank alcohol in speak-easies– Drove fast cars– Very few were flappers – but

soon older women would start trimming their hair & wearing shorter skirts & makeup

Jazz

• Jazz: music style that developed from blues, ragtime & other earlier styles

• Louis Armstrong: (1901-1971) one of the young African American musicians who helped create jazz– Learned to play the trumpet in a New Orleans orphanage– Experimentation with a simple melody paired with notes &

rhythm

• Many older Americans worried that jazz & new dances were a bad influence on the nation’s young people

New Writers

• Many had horrifying experiences in WW1• Many criticized U.S. for caring to much about

money & fun• Some moved to Paris because they were unhappy in

the states– Expatriates: people who leave their own country to live

in a foreign land

Hemingway & Fitzgerald• Hemingway – was a teenager when WW1 broke out

– Drove an ambulance on the Italian front– A Farewell to Arms (novel – young man’s growing disgust with war– The Sun Also Rises – examined the life of expatriates in Europe

• F. Scott Fitzgerald– The Great Gatsby - examined the lives of wealthy young people who attended

endless parties but could not find happiness• Flappers, bootleggers, moviemakers

Other Writers• Sinclair Lewis– Babbitt – wrote novels that presented small-town

Americans as dull & narrow-minded– First American to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930

McKay - “If We Must Die” condemning lynching & mob violence that black Americans suffered after WW1

“If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted & penned in an inglorious spot,

While ‘round us bark the mad & hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

& for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”

Harlem Renaissance: a rebirth of African American culture

• Large #s of African American musicians, artists & writers settled in Harlem, NY in the 1920s

• Celebrated heritage• Protested prejudice & racism• Whites notice black achievements

Langston Hughes• Poet• Encouraged African

Americans to be proud of their heritage

• Wrote parallels between African Americans living on the Mississippi with Africans living along the Nile

Sports• Bobby Jones – Golf• Jack Dempsey –

heavyweight boxing• Red Grange the

“Galloping Ghost”- college football (University of Illinois)

• Babe Ruth the “Sultan of Swat”—Baseball (most loved sport) NY Yankees– 714 HR record until 1974

Lucky Lindy

• Charles A. Lindbergh– May, 1927 – nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean alone– 33 hour journey on the Spirit of Saint Louis, out of NY– No map, no parachute, no radio– Landed in Paris, France

CULTURAL EXPERIENCE!!!