11.1 culture of the roaring twenties 1920-1929

“The Roaring Twenties”
1920s: The U.S., The Myths, Juice Joints
and All that Jazz

The Razzle Dazzle
• The 1920s is also known as:
– The Roaring Twenties or The Jazz Age [U.S.A, Canada or the U.K.]
– Sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age 20s” due to an economic
boom following the economic boom of WWI
– Weimar Republic, like many other European countries faced severe
economic downturn in the opening years of the decade due to
enormous debt caused by WWI & the Treaty of Versailles
– Decade included the rise of radical politics-
• Communism, and the Bolsheviks’ to win the Russian Civil War
• U.S. had a city population that surpassed rural population
• Rise of far rights and fascism in Europe
– Ended with the devastating Wall Street Crash in October 1929

Fear and Xenophobia
Learning Goal: NJCCCS 6.1.12.A.8.c
Relate social intolerance, xenophobia, and fear of
anarchists to government policies restricting immigration,
advocacy, and labor organizations.

Seeing Red
• Fear of Russia ran high even after
the Bolshevik revolution of 1917,
which spawned a communist party
in America.
• The "red scare" of 1919-1920
resulted in a nationwide crusade
against those whose Americanism
was suspect.
• Attorney General A. Mitchell
Palmer was chosen to round up
immigrants who were in question.

Crime Syndication Laws

• In 1919-1920, a number of
states passed criminal
syndicalism laws that made
the advocacy of violence to
secure social change unlawful.
• Traditional American ideals of
free speech were restricted.

Sacco and Vanzetti
• Antiredism and antiforeignism were
reflected in the criminal case of Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
• The two men were convicted in 1921 of
the murder of a Massachusetts
paymaster and his guard.
• Although given a trial, the jury and
judge were prejudiced against the men
because they were Italians, atheists,
anarchists, and draft dodgers
• Despite criticism from liberals and
radicals all over the world, the men
were electrocuted in 1927.

Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK
• The Ku Klux Klan (Knights of
the Invisible Empire) grew
quickly in the early 1920s
• The Klan was antiforeign, anti-
Catholic, anti-black, anti-
Jewish, antipacifist, anti-
Communist, anti-
internationalist,
antievolutionist,
antibootlegger, antigambling,
antiadultery, and anti-birth
control. It was pro-Anglo-
Saxon, pro-"native" American,
and pro-Protestant.

Spread of the KKK
• The Klan spread rapidly, especially in the Midwest and
the South, claiming 5 million members.
• It collapsed in the late 1920s after a congressional
investigation exposed the internal embezzling by Klan
officials.
• The KKK was an alarming manifestation of the
intolerance and prejudice plaguing people anxious
about the dizzying pace of social change in the 1920s.

Stemming the Foreign Blood
• Isolationist Americans of the
1920s felt they had no use for
immigrants.
• The "New Immigration" of the
1920s caused Congress to pass
the Emergency Quota Act of
1921,
• restricting newcomers from
Europe in any given year to a
definite quota, which was at 3%
of the people of their nationality
who had been living in the United
States in 1910.

Johnson Reed Immigration Act
• The Immigration Act of 1924 replaced
the Quota Act of 1921, cutting quotas
for foreigners from 3% to 2%. Different
countries were only allowed to send an
allotted number of its citizens to
America every year.
• Japanese were outright banned from
coming to America.
• Canadians and Latin Americans, whose
proximity made them easy to attract for
jobs when times were good and just as
easy to send back home when times
were not, were exempt from the act.

• The quota system caused immigration to
dwindle.
• The Immigration Act of 1924 marked the end of
an era of unrestricted immigration to the United
States. Many of the most recent arrivals lived in
isolated enclaves with their own houses of
worship, newspapers, and theaters.

The Prohibition "Experiment"

• The 18th Amendment, passed in
1919, banned alcohol.
• Prohibition, supported by churches
and women, was one the last
peculiar spasms of the progressive
reform movement.
• It was popular in the South, where
white southerners were eager to
keep stimulants out of the hands of
blacks, and in the West, where
alcohol was associated with crime
and corruption.

Putting on the Ritz
• Prohibitionists were naïve in that
Federal authorities had never been
able to enforce a law where the
majority of the people were hostile
to it.
• Prohibition might have started off
better if there had been a larger
number of enforcement officials.
• "Speakeasies” [a place where
alcoholic drinks were sold and
consumed illegally during
Prohibition. ] replaced saloons.
• Prohibition caused bank savings to
increase and absenteeism in industry
to decrease.

The Golden Age of Gangsterism
• The large profits of illegal alcohol led
to bribery of police.
• Violent wars broke out in the big
cities between rival gangs, who
sought control of the booze market.
• Chicago was the most spectacular
example of lawlessness.
• "Scarface" Al Capone, a murderous
booze distributor, began 6 years of
gang warfare that generated millions
of dollars
• Capone was eventually tried and
convicted of income-tax evasion and
sent to prison for 11 years.

American Gangsters
• Gangsters began to
move into other
profitable and illicit
activities:
– prostitution,
– gambling,
– narcotics,
– kidnapping for ransom.

Crime in the 1920s
• Police funding: INCREASED $11.4 Million
• Arrests for Prohibition Las Violations: INCREASED 102+%
• Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct: INCREASED 41%
• Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81%
• Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9%
• Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13%
• Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561%
• Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366%
• Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions: INCREASED 1,000%

Review- Analyzing Effects 
• How did criminals take • Answer: Criminals broke

advantage of the law by smuggling, as

Prohibition? well as by making alcohol
and selling it for profit.

Prohibition, 1920-1933
Causes Effects

Various religious groups thought Consumption of alcohol declined
drinking alcohol was sinful

Reformers believed that the government Disrespect for the law developed
should protect the public’s health

Reformers believed that alcohol led to An increase in lawlessness, such as
crime, wife and child abuse, and smuggling and bootlegging, was evident
accidents on the job
During WWI, native-born American Criminal found a new source of income
developed a hostility to German-
American brewers and toward other
immigrant groups that used alcohol

Organized crime grew

The Bum Rush
• After the son of Charles A.
Lindbergh [(February 4, 1902 –
August 26, 1974), nicknamed Slim,
Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle,
was an American aviator, author,
inventor, explorer, and social
activist.]
• was kidnapped for ransom and
murdered,
• Congress passed the Lindbergh
Law in 1932, making interstate
abduction in certain circumstances a
death-penalty offense.

The Crime of the Century
• The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the son
of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow
Lindbergh, was one of the most highly publicized crimes of
the 20th century.
• The 20-month-old toddler was abducted from his family
home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of
Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of March 1, 1932.
• Over two months later, on May 12, 1932, his body was
discovered a short distance from the Lindberghs' home.
• A medical examination determined that the cause of
death was a massive skull fracture.

Trial of the Century
• After an investigation that lasted more than two years, Bruno
Richard Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the crime.
In a trial that was held from January 2 to February 13, 1935
• Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the first degree and
sentenced to death.
• He was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State
Prison on April 3, 1936, at 8:44 in the evening.
• Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end
• Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and
subsequent trial "the biggest story since the Resurrection".

Dear Sir!
Have 50.000$ redy 25.000$ in
20$ bills 15.000$ in 10$ bills and
10.000$ in 5$ bills After 2–4 days
we will inform you were to deliver
the mony.

We warn you for making
anyding public or for notify the Police
The child is in gut care.
Indication for all letters are
Singnature
and three hohls.

Progressive Education
• Education made great strides in the 1920s.
• Professor John Dewey set forth the principles of "learning by doing" that formed
the foundation of so-called progressive education.
• He believed that "education for life" should be a primary goal of the teacher
• Science and better health care also resulted out of the 1920s.
• Fundamentalists, old-time religionists, claimed that the teaching of Darwinism
evolution was destroying faith in God and the Bible, while contributing to the
moral breakdown of youth.
• Progressive educators opposed a growing national movement that sought to
separate academic education for the few and narrow vocational training for the
masses.
• During the 1920s, when education turned increasingly to "scientific" techniques
such as intelligence testing and cost-benefit management, progressive educators
insisted on the importance of the emotional, artistic, and creative aspects of
human development--"the most living and essential parts of our natures," as
Margaret Naumburg put it in The Child and the World.

Review- Summarizing 
• Answer: More students
• How did schools change
were able to attend school
during the 1920s?
during this prospering time;
schools had to adapt to
teaching students of new
immigrant families; schools
offered a broad range of
courses for students to train
for industrial jobs.

Monkey Business in Tennessee
• In 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in
Tennessee for teaching evolution.
• Scopes had violated the Butler Act, which
made it unlawful to teach evolution in any
state-funded school
• Scopes was unsure if he had taught
evolution or not, however he purposely
incriminated himself so that the case
could have a defendant
• At the The State of Tennessee v. John
Thomas Scopes ["Monkey Trial,”] Scopes
was defended by Clarence Darrow, while
former presidential candidate William
Jennings Bryan prosecuted him.
• Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.

The Battle over Evolution. Opponents of Darwin’s theories set up shop at the opening of
the famed “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. The trial was an early battle in an
American “culture war” that is still being waged more than 75 years later.

Review- Analyzing Issues 
• What was the conflict • Answer: Fundamentalists
between fundamentalists believed that God created
and those who accepted the world in six days,
evolution? whereas evolutionists
argued that modern
species developed from
earlier forms of life over
millions of years ago.

The Mass-Consumption
•
Economy
WWI and Treasury Secretary Andrew
Mellon's tax policies brought much
prosperity to the mid-1920s.
• Bruce Barton founded advertising
which sought to make Americans
want more and more.
• Sports became a big business in the
consumer economy of the 1920s.
• Buying in credit was another new
feature of the postwar economy.
• Prosperity thus accumulated an
overhanging cloud of debt, and the
economy became increasingly
vulnerable to disruptions of the
credit structure.

Mass Consumption and
Business
Learning Goal: NJCCCS: 6.1.12.A.8.b
Compare and contrast the global marketing practices of
United States factories and farms with American public
opinion and government policies that favored isolationism.

Mellon’s Tax Cuts
• Andrew Mellon's plan had four main
points:
• Cut the top income tax rate from 77 to 24
percent - predicting that large fortunes
would be put back into the economy.
• Cut taxes on low incomes from 4 to 1/2
percent - tax policy "must lessen, so far as
possible, the burden of taxation on those
least able to bear it."
• Reduce the Federal Estate tax - large
income taxes tempted the wealthy to
shift their fortunes into tax-exempt
shelters.
• Efficiency in government - lower tax rates
meant few tax returns to process by few
government workers, cutting the actual
size of paper bills to fit into wallets saved
expenses in paper and ink.

Reducing Public Debt
• By 1926 65% of the income tax
revenue came from incomes
$300,000 and higher, when five years
prior, less than 20% did.
• During this same period, the overall
tax burden on those that earned less
than $10,000 dropped from
$155 million to $32.5 million
• Mellon's policies helped reduce the
overall public debt (the national debt
skyrocketed from $1.5 billion in 1916
to $24 billion in 1919 because of
World War I obligations) from $33
billion in 1919 to about $16 billion in
1929

Mass Consumption
• Mass consumption, also called
Consumerism, is a term used to
describe the phenomena of people • standardized mass production led to
purchasing goods in excess of their
needs. • better machinery in factories, which
• Mass Consumption occurred as a led to
result of Mass Production, which was • higher production and higher wages,
caused by better machines and new
technologies in factories. This better which led to
machinery and new technology lead • more demand for consumer goods
to higher production and higher
wages for workers. • which led back to more standardized
• Higher wages lead to higher demand mass production.
for consumer goods, which in turn
lead to Mass production.

Average Income of Factory
Workers

Credit
• Credit allowed people to pay for goods,
such as cars, in installments.
• This meant that rather than paying for a
car all at once, people were able to spread
out the payments over time.
• Later, overspending due to Credit would
be a cause of the Great Depression, but
during the 1920's the American economy
was booming.
• Wages were higher, Americans were
spending their higher wages and
improving the economy, and technology
used in factories was advancing, meaning
factories would only become better able
to produce goods that consumers were so
willing to buy.

New Technology
• Just as technology within factories advanced, the
technology of goods being produced advanced as well.
New inventions using electricity were being discovered
rapidly, and many had a profound effect on America as a
whole.
• Electric appliances emerged, many of which helped
reduce the time it took to do everyday housework.
• Products such as electric sewing machines, washing
machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, mixers,
stoves, toasters, irons, hot-water heaters, space heaters,
and refrigerators helped the American housewife by
mechanically preforming tasks that were otherwise
done by hand.
• The American kitchen became "modernized", and ads
showing the "perfect" American kitchen emerged.

A "modern" 1920's American kitchen

United States Approximate House
of Housework per Week, 1900-
1925
Year Meals and Dishwashing Laundry General Cleaning
1900 44 7 7
1925 30 5 9

Media gives prominence to Sport creating
Male and Female Sporting Stars.

• Sports which grew and
flourished in the nineteen
twenties due to unprecedented
publicity and promotion
included
baseball, tennis, golf, swimmin
g, football and boxing.
• Newspapers, magazines, radio
and movies all played a role in
boosting the profile of sport
and the sporting giants.

Baseball In America
• In the 1920’s the first Negro leagues were
started in America founded by Rube Foster.
• In the 1920’s baseball became known as the
American sport because it became so
popular.
• Babe Ruth was the most famous baseball
player in the 1920. He was a little chunky guy
who would hit homeruns out of the park like
nothing ever seen before. 1927 he hit a record
setting 60 homeruns which was a record that
stood for 30 years.
• Satchel Paige, James Bell, and Josh Gibson
were some of the many famous black players
in the Negro league.
• Jackie Robinson was the first black player to
play in the MLB in America. His inclusion
sparked controversy between races
• Baseball today is played all over the world.

Football
• On September 17, 1920 the first American
organized football league was
established. Teams were only charged
$100 to join the league.
• The first ever trade was made in
December of 1920 between Akron and
Buffalo.(Tackle Bob Nash)
• In 1921 the first use of football standings
were put to use. The Green Bay Packers
team was established.
• The NFL,( National Football League) was
established which consisted of 18 teams.
• In 1925 one of the best football players,
Harold (red) Grange joined the Chicago
Bears. This brought lots of national
attention because he was a player you
had to see to believe.
• By the end of the 1930’s the NFL was in
full stride nation wide, Grange was still
one of the best in the sport.

Boxing
• Boxing was banned from America in the early
1900’s.
• In 1920 New York passed the Walker Law, this
law permitted boxing fights to be legal in New
York.
• As others states witness what was happening in
New York so they also legalized boxing. Boxing
in America at this point was in full stride.
• The first million-dollar fight was fought between
Jack Dempsey of the U.S. and Georges
Carpenter of France.
• The first 2 ½ million-dollar fight was a rematch
between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney.
Tunney won both of the fights.
• This fight was viewed by 100,000 persons. To the
boxing world in America this was a positive and
great outcome.

Tennis
• Tennis became an American sport
just like all the other sports in the
1920’s.
• William “Big Bill” Tilden was the
best tennis player in the 1920’s.
• In tournaments he was astonishing
to watch. He was the first American
to win the Wimbledon tennis title.
• He was arrested and shunned for
his homosexuality. He died
penniless and alone.
• Helen Wills won every single match
“she” played from 1927 to the end
of the decade.
• She was the number one female
tennis player in America in the
1920’s.

Golf
• Golf was not one of the most popular sports
during the 1920’s because all the other
sports were in full stride.
• There were three guys who help
revolutionize the sport of golf in America;
Boobby Jones, Walter Hagen, and Gene
Sarozen.(all Americans)
• Bobby Jones was playing the best golf of
his life wining tournament after
tournament.
• Walter Hagen is well recognized for his
style of dressing. He won 2 U.S. opens, 4
British opens, and 5 PGA tittles including 4
in a row. (1924-1927)
• Gene Sarazone was consider on of the best
golfers of the 1920’s and 1930’s. He is the
first golfer to win 2 major tittles in the same
year. In total he captured 10 major tittles.
• Americans began to fall in love with a sport
that was different from all the others.

Putting America on Rubber Tires
• The automobile industrial started an
industrial revolution in the 1920s.
• It yielded a new industrial system based
on assembly-line methods and mass-
production techniques.
• Detroit became the motorcar capital of
the world.
• Henry Ford, father of the assembly line,
created the Model T and erected an
immense personal empire on the
cornerstone of his mechanical genius.
• By 1930, the number of Model Ts in the
nation had reached 20 million.

The Advent of the Gasoline Age
• The automobile industry
exploded, creating millions of
jobs and supporting industries
• America's standard of living
rose sharply, and new
industries flourished while old
ones dwindled.
• The petroleum business
experienced an explosive
development and the railroad
industry was hard hit by the
competition of automobiles.

Gas Station, 1923. Gas stations like this one began to appear about 1913.
Before that the nation’s handful of automobile owners bought fuel from their
local oil companies and stored it in tanks in their own yards.

Women, Cars, and Death
• The automobile freed up
women from their
dependence on men, and
isolation among the
sections was broken down.
• It was responsible for
thousands of deaths, while
at the same time bringing
more convenience,
pleasure, and excitement
into more people's lives.

Humans Develop Wings
• Gasoline engines provided the power
that enabled humans to fly.
• On December 17, 1903, Orville and
Wilbur Wright made their first
flight, lasting 12 seconds and 120
feet.
• After the success of airplanes in
WWI, private companies began to
operate passenger airlines with
airmail contracts.
• Charles A. Lindberg became the first
man to fly solo across the Atlantic
Ocean in 1927.
• His flight energized and gave a
strong boost to the new aviation
industry.

Lucky Lindy. Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974) stands in front of the aircraft
that made him famous. The first person to fly solo across the Atlantic,
Lindbergh became an acclaimed celebrity- perhaps the first media “hero” of
the twentieth century. His shining reputation later lost some of its lusted
when he voiced anti-Semitic sentiments and opposed American entry into
World War II, though he went on to fly several combat missions in the war
against Japan.

The Radio Revolution
• Guglielmo Marconi invented
wireless telegraphy (the
telegraph) in the 1890s.
• In the 1920s, the first voice-
carrying radio broadcasts
reached audiences.
• While automobiles were luring
Americans away from the
home, the radio was luring them
back.
• Educationally and culturally, the
radio also made a significant
contribution.

Hollywood's Filmland Fantasies
• As early as the 1890s, the motion picture,
invented by Thomas A. Edison, had gained
some popularity.
• The true birth of motion picture came in 1903
with the release of the first story
sequence: The Great Train
Robbery. Hollywood became the movie
capital of the world.
• Motion picture was used extensively in WWI
as anti-German propaganda.
• Much of the diversity of the immigrants'
cultures was lost, but the standardization of
tastes and of language hastened entry into
the American mainstream-and set the stage
for the emergence of a working-class political
coalition that would overcome the divisive
ethnic differences of the past.

1920’s Studio System
• The 1920s saw a vast expansion of Hollywood film making and worldwide film
going.
• Throughout the decade, film production increasingly focused on the feature film
rather than the "short" or "two-reeler."
• This is a change that had begun with the long D.W. Griffith epics of the mid-1910s.
• In Hollywood, numerous small studios were taken over and made a part of larger
studios, creating the Studio System that would run American film making until
the 1960s.
• MGM (founded in the middle of the decade) and Paramount were the highest-
grossing studios during the period, with Fox, Universal, United Artists, and Warner
Brothers making up a large part of the remaining market.

Picture Palaces
• The 1920s was also the decade of
the "Picture Palaces": large urban
theaters that could seat 1-2,000
guests at a time, with full
orchestral accompaniment and
very decorative design (often a
mix or Italian, Spanish, and
Baroque styles). These picture
palaces were often owned by the
studios and used to premier and
first-run their major films.

Movie Stars and
Genres
• Key genres such as the swashbuckler,
horror, and modern romantic comedy
flourished during the decade.
• Stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Ramon
Novarro, Pola Negri, Nazimova, Greta
Garbo, Mary Pickford, Lilian Gish, Francis
X. Bushman, Charlie Chaplin, Buster
Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Lon Chaney,
Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, Clara
Bow, Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford,
George O'Brien, and John Barrymore
created some of their most memorable
roles and films during the period

Transition to “Talkies”
• The transition to sound-on-film technology occurred mid-decade with the talkies
developed in 1926-1927, following experimental techniques begun in the late
1910s.
• Fox Studios and the Warner Brothers were crucial in the development and
acceptance of the technology of sound in motion pictures.
• With sound, the concept of the musical appeared immediately, as in The Jazz
Singer of 1927, because silent films had been accompanied by music for years
when projected in theaters.
• Sound also greatly changed the Hollywood approach to storytelling, with more
dependence on dialogue and less creative use of the visual element.
• Also, in 1927, the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was
formed. Later, "International" was removed from the name.
• Today, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is most famous for its
annual presentation of The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars.

Wings is considered by media the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Lewis Milestone, Best Director, Comedy Picture
Emil Jannings, Best Actor
Janet Gaynor, Best Actress
Charles Chaplin, Honorary Award

Dynamic Decade & Women
Learning Goal: 6.1.12.C.8.b
Relate social, cultural, and technological changes in the
interwar period to the rise of a consumer economy and the
changing role and status of women.

The Dynamic Decade
• In the 1920s, the majority of Americans had shifted from rural
areas to urban (city) areas.
• Women continued to find jobs in the cities.
• Margaret Sanger led a birth-control movement.
• Alice Paul formed the National Women's Party in 1923 to
campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
• The Fundamentalists lost ground to the Modernists who believed
that God was a "good guy" and the universe was a friendly place.
• Fundamentalism n. a Protestant religious movement grounded in
the belief that all the stories and details in the Bible are literally
true.
• The 1920s witnessed an explosion in sex appeal in America

Margaret Sanger (1879-
1966) in Boston, 1929.
Forbidden to speak on the
inflammatory topic of birth
control, a defiant Sanger
covered her mouth and
“lectured” in Boston by
writing on a blackboard.
Since 1912- Sanger had
devoted herself to
promoting birth control
and establishing
contraceptive clinics
throughout the United
States.

Enter: The Flapper
• Young women, "flappers," rolled
their stockings, taped their
breasts flat, and roughed their
cheeks
• Flapper- one of the free-thinking
young women who embraced the
new fashions and urban attitudes
of the 1920s.
• Women began to wear one-piece
bathing suits.

Women Before 1920
• Most women particularly white women did not
work outside the home.

• They performed traditional domestic
responsibilities of conserving food and fuel
resources in the early part of the war.

Women During World War One
• Women joined the military and took the role as
nurses.
• After men began to get drafted over 23,000
women entered war time industrial plants for the
first time.
• These jobs consisted of shipment collectors,
accountants, telephone operators, and steel mill
workers.
• Women who worked outside their homes before
the war had better job opportunities and where
able to move from domestic services to industrial
jobs.
• They were also working in dangerous day to day
jobs building a munitions and working with TNT
that was a life threatening especially to the fact
that many of these factories were enemy targets.
• Women who worked in these factories also ran a
great risk of explosions within the factory and TNT
poisoning.

The 19th Amendment

• There was a view that women should not have
the right to vote because it was not within her
intellectual capacity to make reasonable
judgment in an election.
• There was also another view that if women get
involved in politics they would stop getting
married, stop having children, and the human
race would die out. Also known as the Race
Suicide Argument.
• Finally after decades of suffrage in 1920 the 19th
amendment was passed and it gave women the
right to vote.
• After women succeeded in traditional male jobs
they began to demand better wages and more
political rights.
• 1848 the women's suffrage movement broke out
in means to fight for women's right to vote.

Women’s New Rights
• 19th amendment extended the rights
of suffrage women.
• Right to vote.
• Equal rights towards women and
men.
• Making mother joint guardians over
children.
• Raising the age of protection of
young girls to 18.

Women’s Role In Society
• 1920’s brought new and exciting
cultural innovations that shifted
women's attention from politics into
social life.
• Social life consisted of new fashion
trends, products, and sexier images.
• Political success along with having
more leisure time to spend during
this era challenged traditional ideas
of women’s role in society.
• Unmarried working women had
their own money to spend and had
greater access to mobility.

Women’s New Fashion
"There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.“ Helena Rubenstein

• New fashion became immoral to Victorian
mothers and grand mothers.
• Women's fashion became personal expressions.
• 1919 dresses uncovered 10% of woman's bodies
by 1927 women's skirts raised to knee length
leaving 25% of body bare.
• Less modest starting with shorter hem lines.
• Body images became of greater importance as
to staying thin.
• Women's hairstyle went shorter to a “shingle
bob”
• Women took on smoking which double the
number of women smokers during the decade.

The Flapper. New dance styles, like the “Charleston” flamboyantly displayed the
new social freedom of the “flapper”, whose dress and antics frequently
flummoxed the guardians of respectability.

The Guardians of Morality. Women’s new one-piece bathing suits were a
sensation in the 1920s. Here a check is carefully made to ensure that not too
much leg is showing.

Review- Evaluating 
• How was the flapper • Answer: Like: Flappers
like and unlike women used clothing,
of today? hairstyles, and
behavior to claim a
new freedom. Unlike:
Today’s women have
more freedoms.

• How did the growth of • Answer: Big business and
business and industry affect industry produced time saving
women? appliances that freed women
from some household chores,
and business groweth also
created jobs for millions of
women, but more women
were confined to traditional
jobs.

The Psychology of it All
• Dr. Sigmund Freud writings
justified this new sexual
frankness by arguing that
sexual repression was
responsible for a variety of
nervous and emotional ills.

Art and Culture of the 1920s
Learning Goal: NJCCCS 6.1.12.D.8.b
Assess the impact of artists, writers, and musicians of
the 1920s, including the Harlem Renaissance, on
American culture and values.

6.1.12.C.8.a
Analyze the push-pull factors that led to the Great
Migration.

All That Jazz
• Jazz thrived in the era of the 1920s.
• jazz n. a style of music characterized by
the use of improvisation.
• originated at the beginning of the 20th
century in black communities in the
Southern United States.
• It was born out of a mix of African and
European music traditions. Its African
pedigree is evident in its use of blue
notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syn
copation, and the swung note.
• From its early development until the
present day, jazz has also incorporated
elements from American popular
music.

The Harlem Renaissance of the
1920s

“Take The A Train”
Billy Strayhorn for the Duke Ellington Orchestra

You must take the A train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
If you miss the A train
You'll find you missed the quickest
way to Harlem
Hurry, get on, now it's coming
Listen to those rails a-humming
All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in
Harlem

•What is the tone or mood of this recording?
•Why do you think the original recording was made and for what audience?
•List two things in this sound recording that tell you about life in the United States at the
time.

What is it?
• The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of
African American social thought which was
expressed through
– Paintings
– Music
– Dance
– Theater
– Literature

Where is Harlem?
The island of Manhattan Neighborhoods

New York City is on Manhattan island

Where was the Harlem
Renaissance centered?
• Centered in the
Harlem district of
New York City, the
New Negro
Movement (as it
was called at the
time) had a major
influence across
the Unites States
and even the
world.

How does the Harlem
Renaissance connect to
the Great Migration?
• The economic opportunities of the era triggered a widespread
migration of black Americans from the rural south to the
industrial centers of the north - and especially to New York
City.
• In New York and other cities, black Americans explored new
opportunities for intellectual and social freedom.
• Black American artists, writers, and musicians began to use

their talents to work for civil rights and obtain equality.

How did it impact history?
• The Harlem Renaissance helped to redefine how
Americans and the world understood African American
culture. It integrated black and white cultures, and
marked the beginning of a black urban society.

• The Harlem Renaissance set the stage for the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Now that you’ve learned more “Take The A Train”
about the Harlem Renaissance, Billy Strayhorn for the Duke Ellington Orchestra
listen again to this song. Does it
You must take the A train
change your answers to the
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
analysis questions below?
If you miss the A train
You'll find you missed the quickest
way to Harlem
Hurry, get on, now it's coming
Listen to those rails a-humming
All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in
Harlem

•What is the tone or mood of this recording?
•Why do you think the original recording was made and for what audience?
•List two things in this sound recording that tell you about life in the United States at the
time.

Who do we associate with the
Harlem Renaissance?
• Artists such as Jacob Lawrence
• Authors such as Langston Hughes
• Musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis
Armstrong, and Bessie Smith

Jacob Lawrence
• Jacob Lawrence grew up in a settlement
house in Harlem during the Harlem
Renaissance
• Lawrence's parents were among those
who migrated between 1916-1919,
considered the first wave of the
migration.
• His own life in Harlem ,
and the struggle of other Black
Americans
inspired his earliest work

Lawrence’s Work

• Jacob Lawrence painted his Great Migration
series during the 1940s to capture the experience
of African Americans during the 1920s
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/odonnell/w
1010/edit/migration/migration.html

Painted scenes of:
•his own background in Harlem
Jacob Lawrence Painter •the hard life of black Americans
in the 1920s

The Great Migration series is his
most recognized work

Langston Hughes
• Hughes is known for his
insightful, colorful, realistic
portrayals of black life in America.
• He wrote poetry, short
stories, novels, and plays, and is
known for his involvement with the
world of jazz and the influence it
had on his writing.
• His life and work were enormously
important in shaping the artistic
contributions of the Harlem
Renaissance in the 1920s.
• He wanted to tell the stories of his
people in ways that reflected their
actual culture, including both their
suffering and their love of
music, laughter, and language
itself.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the
(1919) world and older than the
flow of human blood in human
To listen to Langston Hughes read veins.
his poem, click here. My soul has grown deep like the
rivers.
One of Hughes's poetic innovations was to draw on I bathed in the Euphrates when
the rhythms of black musical traditions such as jazz dawns were young.
and blues, but in 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' it's I built my hut near the Congo
the heritage of Negro spirituals which is recalled by and it lulled me to sleep.
the poem's majestic imagery and sonorous
repetitions. Written when Hughes was only I looked upon the Nile and
seventeen as he traveled by train across the raised the pyramids above it.
Mississippi, 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' is a I heard the singing of the
beautiful statement of strength in the history of Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
black people, which Hughes imagines stretching as went down to New
far back as ancient Egypt and further into Africa Orleans, and I've seen its
and the cradle of civilization. The poem returns at muddy
the end to America in a moment of optimistic
alchemy when he sees the "muddy bosom" of the bosom turn all golden in the
sunset.
Mississippi "turn all golden in the sunset".
I've known rivers:
From PoetryArchive.org Ancient, dusky rivers.

•What is the tone or mood of this poem? My soul has
grown deep like
•Why do you think the poem was written and for what audience? the rivers.
•List two things in this poem that tell you about life in the United States at the time.

I, too, sing America I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
(1920s)
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
To listen to Langston Hughes read
But I laugh,
his poem, click here.
And eat well,
And grow strong.
'I, Too' written just before Hughes’ return to the
States from Europe and after he'd been denied
passage on a ship because of his color, has a Tomorrow,
contemporary feel in contrast to the mythical I'll be at the table
dimension of 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'. It is no
When company comes.
less powerful however, in its expression of social
injustice. The calm clear statements of the 'I' have Nobody'll dare
an unstoppable force like the progress the poem Say to me,
envisages. Hughes's dignified introductions to
"Eat in the kitchen,“
these poems and his beautiful speaking voice
render them all the more moving. Then.

From PoetryArchive.org Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

•What is the tone or mood of this poem?
•Why do you think the poem was written and for what audience? I, too, am America.

•List two things in this poem that tell you about life in the United States at the time.

Wrote poetry, short stories,
novels, and plays.
Langston Hughes Poet and Author
Known for his colorful,
realistic portrayals of black
life in America.

Duke Ellington
• Ellington was a jazz composer,
conductor, and performer during
the Harlem Renaissance.
• During the formative Cotton Club
years, he experimented with and
developed the style that would
quickly bring him worldwide
success. Ellington would be among
the first to focus on musical form
and composition in jazz.
• Ellington wrote over 2000 pieces in
his lifetime.

The Cotton Club
• The Duke Ellington Orchestra
was the "house" orchestra for a
number of years at the Cotton
Club. The revues featured
glamorous dancing girls,
acclaimed tap dancers,
vaudeville performers, and
comics. All the white world came
to Harlem to see the show.
• The first Cotton Club revue was
in 1923. There were two new fast
paced revues produced a year
for at least 16 years.

Jazz composer, conductor,
Duke Ellington Composer/Conductor and performer during the
Harlem Renaissance

To hear Duke Ellington, click the link.

Louis “Satchmo”Armstrong

• Louis Armstrong was a jazz composer
and trumpet player during the Harlem
Renaissance.
• He is widely recognized as a founding
father of jazz.
• He appeared in 30 films and averaged
300 concerts per year, performing for
both kids on the street and heads of
state.

Composer and trumpet
player during the Harlem
Louis Armstrong Composer/Trumpeter Renaissance

Widely recognized as a
founding father of jazz

To hear Louis Armstrong, click the link.

Bessie Smith

• Bessie Smith was a famous jazz and
blues singer during the Harlem
Renaissance.

• Smith recorded with many of the
great Jazz musicians of the 1920s,
including Louis Armstrong.

• Smith was popular with both blacks
and whites

Famous jazz and blues singer
during the Harlem
Bessie Smith Jazz & Blues Renaissance
Singer
Popular with both blacks and
whites

To hear Bessie Smith, click the link.

Study the picture for 2 minutes. Form an
overall impression of the painting, then
start to focus on individual details.

Questions to think about:
1. What do you see?
2. What people do you see?
3. What objects do you see?
4. What colors do you see?
5. What actions/activities do you see?
6. What questions does this painting
raise in your mind?
7. How does this painting relate to
the Harlem Renaissance?
8. Based on what you have observed,
list what you may infer from this
painting.
“Ascent from Ethiopia”, Louis Mailou Jones. 1932

• Answer: The movement of
• How did the influx of
millions of African
African Americans change
Americans to Northern
Northern cities?
cities greatly increased
their black populations,
and heightened racial
tensions that sometimes
resulted in discrimination
and violence.

Great Migration and Racial
Tension
Learning Goal: NJCCCS: 6.1.12.D.8.a
Explain why the Great Migration led to heightened racial
tensions, restrictive laws, a rise in repressive organizations,
and an increase in violence

Marcus Garvey & the UNIA

Racial pride blossomed in the northern black communities. Marcus Garvey founded
the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to promote the resettlement of
blacks in Africa. In the United States, the UNIA also sponsored stores and other
businesses to keep blacks' dollars in black pockets.

The Black Moses Born: August 17,
• "I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but 1887
with a definite object of helping the people, St. Ann's Bay,
especially those of my race, to know, to Jamaica
understand, and to realize themselves.“ Died: June 10,
--Marcus Garvey, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1940
1937 London, England
Jamaican activist
-In the United States Garveyism was central to the and African
development of the black consciousness and pride at the core nationalist
of the twentieth-century freedom-movement.
-1910 Garvey began a series of travels that transformed him
from an average person concerned about the problems of
those with less opportunity, to an African nationalist
determined to lift an entire race from bondage.
- He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador, and worked as
an editor for several radical newspapers and that was a big part
of where his leadership began. In each country he visited, he
noted that the black man was in an inferior position, subject to
the ever-changing ideals of stronger races.

- After briefly returning home, he proceeded
to England, where contacts with African
nationalists stimulated in him a keen
interest in Africa and in black history.

- At his time Garvey met Duse Mohammed
Ali, a Sudanese-Egyptian and strong
supporter of African self-rule. Garvey
began writing for Ali's small magazines and
was introduced to other black activists.

- On his return to Jamaica in 1914 from
England, Garvey formed the Universal
Negro Improvement Association and
African Communities League (UNIA-
ACL). These organizations were intended
"to work for the general uplift of the Negro
peoples of the world," and would become
the centerpiece for his life's work.

His Place
In History
• Garvey's UNIA was bigger than the Civil Rights Movement.
• Garvey's influence extended well beyond the borders of the United States to the
Caribbean, Canada, and Africa.
• His message had a tremendous influence on later groups such as the Rastafarians and
the Nation of Islam is also important.
• Much of what he said concerning racial pride and the potential for great racial success
can be heard in later figures such as Malcolm X and even Stokely Carmichael, leader
of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee).
• Garvey, Malcolm, and Carmichael are all considered more radical than the mainstream
civil rights protesters.

The Universal Negro
Improvement Association
• A black nationalist frat organization
founded by Marcus Garvey.
• The organization was strongest in the
1920s, prior to Garvey's deportation from
the United States of America.
• Since 1949, there have been two
organizations claiming the name.
• According to the preamble of the 1929
constitution as amended, the UNIA is a
“social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable,
educational, institutional, constructive and
expansive society, and is founded by
persons desiring to do the utmost to work
for the general uplift of the people of
African Ancestry of the world.”

“One God! One Aim! One Destiny!”
- And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to
conserve the rights of their noble race and to respect the rights of all
mankind, believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the
Fatherhood of God.
- The motto of the organization is 'One God! One Aim! One Destiny!'
Therefore, let justice be done to all mankind, realizing that if the
strong oppresses the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark
the path of man but with love, faith and charity towards all the reign
of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world and the
generations of men shall be called Blessed.”

The Black Star Line
-The Black Star Steamship Line, was an enterprise intended
to provide a means for African Americans to return to Africa
while also enabling black people around the Atlantic to
exchange goods and services.

-The company had three ships (one called the SS Frederick
Douglass) that were owned and operated by black people and
made travel and trade possible between their United States,
Caribbean, Central American, and African stops.

-The economically independent Black Star Line was a symbol
of pride for blacks.

-Because of large financial obligations and managerial errors,
the Black Star Line failed in 1921 and ended operations.
Early in 1922 Garvey was indicted on mail fraud charges
regarding the Black Star Line's stock sale.

-Garvey was convicted but released after serving three years in
federal prison. He was then deported to Jamaica.

NEGROES SHOULD LINK STRENGTH MORALLY,
The Commercial Future of the Continent of Africa Pictured
FINANCIALLY, EDUCATIONALLY AND PHYSICALLY
Now that the world is organizing itself into Race groups, and men everywhere are realizing the value of

organized movements, we of the UNIA, appeal to Negroes everywhere to reorganize, link up your strength,

morally, financially, educationally, and physically, because out of this combination of strength will ultimately

come the freedom of Africa. Let us buy and build new steamships. Let us float them on the bosom of the

seven seas. Let us send them to the farthest ends of the world, carrying out commerce, and our trade. Let

us link up, America, South and Central America, and the West Indies. Let us link up America with the great

continent of Africa through the steamships of the Black Star Line. The Untold wealth of Africa is yet

unexploited. Africa still awaits the Negro explorer. Africa still has her hands outstretched beckoning to her

children scattered the world over to come to succor her, and to be the fellow citizens of the scattered sons

and daughters of Africa. The disunited units everywhere must first come together, and first pledge

themselves to support one great and noble policy, and that policy today is no other than the Universal Negro

Improvement Association. Let us support this great Organization everywhere. Let us rally to the colors of

the Black Star Steamship Company. Let us prepare today, for the tomorrows in the lives of the nations will

be so eventful that Negroes everywhere will be called upon to play their part in the survival of the fittest

human group.
Marcus Garvey
New York City, February 22, 1921

Review- Summarizing 
• What approach to race • Answer: Garvey believed
relations did Marcus that African Americans
Garvey promote? should build a separate
society, he preached a
message of self pride and
he promoted African
American businesses.

Cultural Liberation
• In the decade after WWI, a new generation of writers emerged. They gave
American literature new life, imaginativeness, and artistic quality.
• H.L. Mencken attacked marriage, patriotism, democracy, and prohibition in his
monthly American Mercury.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise in 1920 and The Great Gatsby in
1925.
• Earnest Hemingway was among the writers most affected by the war. He
responded to propaganda and the overblown appeal to patriotism. He wrote of
disillusioned, spiritually numb American expatriates in Europe in The Sun Also
Rises (1926).
• Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922).
• Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
• Architecture also became popular as materialism and functionalism increased.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and his
Wife, Zelda. The Fitzgeralds
are shown here in the happy,
early days of their stormy
marriage.

Review- Analyzing Causes 
• Why did some writers
• Answer: Many American
reject American culture
writers found American
and values?
culture shallow and
materialistic; they
believed society lacked
any unified ideals.

1920s Art
Realism (Hopper)

Regionalism (Benton)

Modernism (Stella, O’Keefe)
Learning Goal: CRN Benchmark: 12.11.C- Identify, describe and analyze the
flourishing of American literature, music and art during the Jazz Age: the Harlem
Renaissance, etc.

Edward Hopper

Chop Suey (1929) Edward Hopper was an American artist in the 1920s. Two
common characteristics in his work show facets of American life, such as
gas stations and theaters, and seascapes and rural landscapes. Because
feminism was strong in the 1920s, many of his solitary figures are women.

Automat (1927). This painting as often been associated with the
concept of urban alienation. One critic has observed that, in a pose
typical of Hopper's melancholic subjects, "the woman's eyes are
downcast and her thoughts turned inward."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat_(painting))

Georgia O’Keefe

Yellow Calla (1926)
Black Iris (1926)

Pink Tulip (1926)

Petunia (1925)

Poppy (1927)

The Modernists
Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold (1928)

Georgia O'Keefe, The Radiator Building--Night, New
York (1927)

Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge
←(1920)

Stella, New York Interpreted (1922)
↑

Thomas Hart Benton: American
Regionalism

The Yankee Driver
(1920)
Boomtown (1928)

Art Deco
• Was an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s
and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s and into the World
War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture
and interior design, industrial design, fashion and jewelry, as well as the
visual arts such as painting, graphic arts and film.
• The term "art deco" was coined in 1966, after an exhibition in Paris, 'Les
Années 25' sub-titled Art Deco, celebrating the 1925.
• At its best, art deco represented elegance, glamour, functionality and
modernity.

Art Deco: Design

A Typical Building in
Florida

Cowan Art Deco Pottery
Chickadee Green 1920s

Art Deco: Fashion

Sterling Silver-
1920s Art Deco 8-
sided Guilloche
Powder/rouge
Compact

Art Deco: Architecture

The Chrysler
Building

Broadway Building

Art Deco: Automobiles

1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom

Wall Street's Big Bull Market
• In the 1920s, the stock market became increasingly popular.
• In Washington, little was done to curtail money management.
• In 1921, the Republican Congress created the Bureau of the Budget in
order to assist the president in preparing estimates of receipts and
expenditures for submission to Congress as the annual budget. It was
designed to prevent haphazardly extravagant appropriations.
• Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's belief was that taxes forced the rich
to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in the factories that
provided prosperous payrolls. Mellon helped create a series of tax
reductions from 1921-1926 in order to help rich people. Congress
followed by abolishing the gift tax, reducing excise taxes, the surtax, the
income tax, and estate taxes. Mellon's policies shifted much of the tax
burden from the wealthy to the middle-income groups. Mellon reduced
the national debt by $10 billion.

11.1 culture of the roaring twenties 1920-1929

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11.1 culture of the roaring twenties 1920-1929