1920s
The Decade That Roared
Red Scare images from
Image Database
by
Leo Robert Klein
Post WWI Problems
What were they?
•
•
•
•
•
violent labor strikes
urban racial riots
bomb scares
anger towards anarchists
Red Scare
–
–
–
–
the presence of Communist party members
in the United States
the Russian Revolution
bomb scares and actual bombings
labor strikes associated with communist
revolution
Attorney-General Palmer, whose
Wahington home, was damaged by a
bomb-explosion on June 2.
Bomb-erang
Stop! (nov, 1919)
The Patriotic American
(June 1919)
Step by step
People
•
Margaret Sanger
– advocacy of birth control
•
Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth
– Demonstrated that individualism was
still alive in a modern American
dominated by corporations and team
players
•
Marcus Garvey
– Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA)
Marcus Garvey
•
•
•
•
Self-reliance among A.A.
Black owned businesses
A.A. move back to Africa
Jailed for conviction of fraud
•
Events
KKK
– promote white supremacy, anti-Catholic,
Protestant fundamentalism
– Nordic Americans
•
Prohibition
–
–
–
–
–
•
the rise of organized crime
proved difficult to enforce
defiance of the law by large numbers of people
rise of organized crime
widespread smuggling
Harlem Renaissance
– Langston Hughes
– "Song to A Negro Wash Woman“
– “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain“
– Jazz Music
Al Capone
St. Valentines Massacre
Langston Hughes
Laws
•
The Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921
–
•
aimed at reducing childbirth mortality rates and infant
mortality rates—federally financed instruction in
maternal and infant health cares
Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 (National
Origins Act)
–
–
–
–
immigrants' taking jobs away from Americans by their
willingness to work for low wages
The nation's pool of labor was already overcrowded
The belief that immigrants would not become
Americanized
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants wanted to bar
immigrants of different racial, ethnic, and religious
backgrounds, particularly Southern and Eastern
Europe
Close the gate
Small Town Anti-Urban
Characteristics/beliefs
•
•
•
•
Prohibition
Fundamentalism
Immigration restriction
Ku Klux Klan
Sports
•
•
•
•
Gene Tunney defeated Jack Dempsey
to become the heavyweight champion
of the world.
Jim Thorpe, later voted the most
outstanding athlete of the first half of the
twentieth century, won the decathlon at
the Olympics and was later stripped of
his medals for earlier playing semiprofessional baseball
Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to
swim the English Channel.
Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in a single
season.
Jack Dempsey
Jim Thorpe won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and
decathlon, played American football college and
professional, and also played professional baseball and
basketball.
Gertrude Ederle
Babe Ruth-Sultan of Swat
Automobiles
•
•
Henry Ford-Assembly line to produce
cheap autos
Causes Changes
– Changes in dating customs
– Governmental funds for highways
– Growth of industries connected to the
automobile industry, such as batteries, steel,
oil, glass, and rubber
– The development of a motel industry
– Migration of people
– Growth of Suburbs
– Consolidation of schools
Great Trials
•
Leopold and Loeb
– symbolize immoral decadence
•
Scopes Trial
– fundamentalist’ discomfort with
evolutionary science
– John t. Scopes-Biology teacher in
Tennessee
– William Jennings Bryan v. Clarence
Darrow
Leopold and Loeb-Young, rich, well
educated, want to commit the perfect
crime-kidnap and murder for a thrill
Flappers-described a young woman
who rebelled against convention.