Life in the Roaring Twenties
1920-1929
New Urban Scene
Americans experience cultural conflicts as customs and
values change in the 1920s
1920 census: 51.2% of Americans live in cities
1922–1929, nearly 2 million people leave farms and
towns each year
Largest cities are New York, Chicago, Philadelphia
In 1920s, people caught between rural and urban
cultures
close ties, hard work, strict morals of small town vs.
anonymous crowds, money making, entertainment
of cities
Times Square near 42nd Street in New York City, in the
1920s.
Prohibition
18th Amendment outlawed the
“manufacture, sale, or transportation of
intoxicating liquors”
supported by religious groups
Volstead Act- (1919)set penalties and
defined “intoxicating liquors”
Led to an increase in crime and
lawlessness; government does not
budget money to enforce law
Authorities empty barrels of beer into the
sewers during prohibition
18th Amendment
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale,
transportation, importation or exportation of intoxicating liquors in the United States and all
its territory is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the States shall both have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall have no power unless it shall have been ratified as an
amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the States, as provided in the
Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission to the States by the
Congress.
APPENDIX A
Document: Prohibition and Health
Alcohol poisons and kills; Abstinence and Prohibition save lives and safeguard health.
Dr. S.S. Goldwater, formerly Health Commissioner of New York City, stated the decision
of science, the final opinion of our nation after a hundred years of education upon the
subject of alcohol.
“It is believed that less consumption of alcohol by the community would mean less
tuberculosis, less poverty, less dependency, less pressure on our hospitals, asylums and
jails.”
“Alcohol hurts the tone of the muscles and lessens the product of laborers; it worsens
the skill and endurance of artists; it hurts memory, increases industrial accidents, causes
diseases of the heart, liver, stomach and kidney, increases the death rate from
pneumonia and lessens the body’s natural immunity to disease.”
Justice Harlan speaking for the United States Supreme Court, said:
“We cannot shut out of view the fact that public health and public safety may be harmed
by the general use of alcohol.”
Source: Statement read at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the National Temperance
Council, Washington D.C., September 20, 1920.
Analyze the document to
answer the question.
1. How does this statement help
explain the popular support of
Prohibition at the time?
“Skirting the Law”
•
Speakeasies (hidden saloons, nightclubs) become fashionable
People distill liquor, buy prescription alcohol and sacramental
wine
Bootleggers smuggle alcohol from surrounding countries
•
Prohibition contributes to organized crime in major cities
•
Al Capone controls Chicago liquor business by killing competitors
•
•By mid-1920s, only 19% support Prohibition
•
18th Amendment in force until 1933; repealed by 21st Amendment
•
•
Science and Religion Clash
•
•
Fundamentalist preachers lead revivals in the South and West.
Fundamentalists are skeptical of some scientific discoveries and theories, so many reject theory of
evolution
•
The Scopes “Monkey” Trial
o
o
o
o
o
1925, Tennessee passes law making it a crime to teach evolution
American Civil Liberties Union backs John T. Scopes challenge of law
Clarence Darrow, most famous trial lawyer of day, defends Scopes
Fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan is special prosecutor
Scopes trial—debates evolution, role of science, religion in school
— national sensation; thousands attend
o Scopes found guilty and fined, but later acquitted
o Law repealed in 1967
The 1920s Woman
•
American women pursue new lifestyles and assume new
jobs and different roles in society during the 1920s
•
The Flapper—emancipated young woman, adopts new
fashions and attitudes
•
Many young women want equal status with men, become
assertive
Middle-class men and women begin to see marriage as
equal partnership
— housework, child-rearing still woman’s job
Casual dating begins to replace formal courtship
•
•
New Work Opportunities
• After war, employers replace female workers with men,
however...
• Female college graduates become teachers, nurses, librarians
• Many women become clerical workers as demand rises
• Some become sales clerks, factory workers
• Management positions are limited and inequality in pay exists
The Changing Family
•
•
•
•
•
Birthrate drops partly due to more birth-control information
Manufactured products and public services give homemakers freedom
Housewives can focus more on families, pastimes, not housework
Marriages increasingly based on romantic love, companionship
Children spend most of day at school, organized activities
— teens resist parental control, more rebellious youth
• Working-class, college-educated women juggle family and work
Education
• High school population increases dramatically in 1920s due to:
— prosperity
— higher standards for industry jobs
• Increase in compulsory education
• Pre-1920s, high school for college-bound students
• In 1920s, high schools also offer vocational training
• Public schools prepare immigrant children who speak no English
Mass Media
•
Expanding News Coverage
o Mass media shapes mass culture; takes advantage of
greater literacy
o By 1914, hundreds of local newspapers replaced by
national chains
o 1920s, mass-market magazines thrive; Reader’s Digest,
Time founded
•
Radio Comes of Age
o Radio is most powerful communications medium of
1920s
o Networks provide shared national experience
— can hear news as it happens
New Heroes
•
The mass media, movies, and spectator sports play
important roles in creating the popular culture
•
In 1920s, many people have extra money and leisure time to
enjoy it
•
Crowds attend sports events; athletes glorified by mass media
Sports mania-baseball, football, boxing only some of the
popular sports
o “Sultan of Swat” (Babe Ruth)-star of the day
Movie industry booms launching movie stars like Mary
Pickford and Rudolph Valentino
o (1927) The Jazz Singer- the first “talkie” or movie with
sound
Charles A. Lindbergh-first man to fly solo across the Atlantic in
his “Spirit of St. Louis” paving the way for other pilots
o
•
•
The Arts in the 1920s
•
•
•
George Gershwin uses jazz to create American music
Painters portray American realities and dreams
Georgia O’Keeffe paints intensely colored canvases of New York
•
Lost Generation-writers soured by American culture and war
o Sinclair Lewis is first American to win Nobel Prize for literature
— criticizes conformity, materialism
o F. Scott Fitzgerald reveals negative side of era’s gaiety, freedom
o Expatriate Ernest Hemingway introduces simple and tough, American style
Harlem Renaissance
•
African-American ideas, politics, art, literature, and music flourished.
•
1910–1920, Great Migration of thousands of African Americans move from South to
Northern cities
o By 1920, over 40% of African Americans live in cities
•
•
•
•
Playwrights, poets, writers, artists, and actors flocked to Harlem
Harlem Renaissance—African-American literary, artistic movement that express pride
in African-American experience
Langston Hughes’s poems describe difficult lives of working class
o many written in jazz, blues tempo
Zora Neale Hurston shows folkways, values of poor, Southern blacks
I, Too
Appendix B:
HIPP
Langston
Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed__
I, too am America.
Jazz
•
•
•
•
•
Jazz born in early 20th century New Orleans, spreads
across U.S.
Trumpeter Louis Armstrong makes personal
expression key part of jazz
o most influential musician in jazz history
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington—jazz pianist,
orchestra leader
o one of America’s greatest composers
Cab Calloway, Armstrong popularize scat (improvised
jazz singing)
Bessie Smith—blues singer, perhaps best vocalist of
decade
African American Goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP)
— protests racial violence
NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson fights for civil rights
legislation
NAACP anti-lynching campaign leads to drop in number of
lynchings
Marcus Garvey founds Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA)
— believes African Americans should build separate society
Garvey promotes black pride, black businesses, return to Africa
Garvey inspires later civil rights leaders
Sum It Up!
Complete the following:
• Causation: 1920s Culture Wars
• Interpretation:1920s