Chapter 13

Roaring 20s

Oh How they did Roar

Flappers •considered reckless rebels•short sleek hair•Short, shapeless shift dresses•wore make-up and put it on in public•exposed their legs in public•Smoked cigarettes in long holders•enjoyed doing the Charleston, in the jazz clubs

Fashion

Women received the right to vote by the 19th Amendment, but they still had little interest in politics. During the 1920s women asked guys out. They wore the new flapper style of clothing and were more assertive. They took the same jobs as men, but still fought for equality in the workplace.

NOT ALL WOMEN WERE FLAPPERS. NOT ALL WOMEN WANTED TO BE “LIBERATED.”

Jeannette Rankin

• Although women were not using their political privileges to the fullest they were finally represented in Congress. Jeannette Rankin was the 1st woman in Congress.

Looking for Heroes

With morals declining during the 1920s and the city life appearing to be free with no restrictions, some Americans wanted to

protect their values. They looked for heroes that appeared to still represent

perfect Americanism.

Charles Lindbergh

• Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Lewis from New York to Paris. The flight lasted 33.5 hours and made him a national icon.

Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first woman to fly solo. She disappeared in 1937 in an attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world. No trace of Miss Earhart or her plane have ever been found.

Important People

Red Grange was one of the greatest football players of all time. He became known as the Galloping Ghost when he scored five touchdowns on his first five carries in one game.

Babe Ruth was the greatest slugger in baseball history. His record of 714 regular-season home runs wasn't broken until 1974 by Hank Aaron. He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. The Babe was traded from the Red Sox to the New York Yankees- “The Curse of the Bambino”

Gertrude Ederle

• In 1926 American swimmer Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel, cutting almost two hours off the previous record.

Growth of Hollywood

• Made people across the country adopt a more national culture

• Mass media provided print (newspaper), film and a broadcast of information to the whole country

• Everyone was watching the movie stars and how they dressed, reading magazines and paying attention to new products

Silent movies became "talkies" when sound was finally added. Charlie Chaplin, the Little Tramp, was one of the most famous stars in motion-picture history. He wrote and directed nearly all of his films, and composed the music for all of his sound pictures.

The main form of entertainment was listening to the radio. Entire families would gather around the radio and listen to the popular shows. Popular songs included “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” “Lady-Luck Blues” by Bessie Smith, “California, Here I Come!” by Al Jolson, “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin. News, advertisements, music and sports were on the radio.

Entertainment

Magazines and Newspapers

• Fashions, scandals, and trends were found in the newspapers and magazines.

• Advertising hits a new high during this period of time.

• Advertisements of the 1920s

African Americans in the 1920s

• African Americans moved to cities during the GREAT MIGRATION. They were looking to get away from the Jim Crow laws of the South and the violence. When they went North to find work and peace, their culture followed them. The lively music called Jazz moved from the South to Northern cities like Chicago and Manhattan.

Jazz Age

• Jazz could be heard in clubs such as the Cotton Club

• Jelly Roll Morton

• Louis Armstrong

• Duke Ellington

Bessie Smith was the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of the 1920s.  During her heyday, she earned upwards of $2000 per week, a queenly sum in the 20s. By the time the decade had ended, Smith had become the most respected black singer in America and had recorded a catalog of blues that still stands as the yardstick by which all other female blues singers are measured.

In the early 1920s, Louis Armstrong joined King Oliver in Chicago--playing solos with Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York and making jazz history with the Hot Five. It was in Chicago that he initiated his "scat" singing -- singing nonsense syllables in place of words and vocally simulating instrumental sound.

The series of steps are thought to have originated with the African-Americans who were living on a small island near Charleston, South Carolina. In 1922/3, it was introduced to the theater going public at the New Amsterdam Theater in New York In the 1920's, women who did the Charleston were called "Flappers" because of the way they would flap their arms and walk like birds while doing the Charleston. Many men of the period wore raccoon coats and straw hats.

The Charleston

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was one of the great writers of the Jazz Age. F.Scott Fitzgerald began his career as a writer of stories for mass-circulation magazines. He was one of the main writers for “The Saturday Evening Post.” The publication of his novel, This Side of Paradise, made him famous overnight.

Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance was an explosion of African American culture not only of music but writers and artists

• James Weldon Johnson

• Zora Neale Hurston

• Claude McKay

• Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes• Mother to Son

by Langston Hughes• Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on,And reachin' landin's,And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the darkWhere there ain't been no light.So, boy, don't you turn back.Don't you set down on the steps.'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.Don't you fall now—For I'se still goin', honey,I'se still climbin',And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

• The African American move to the city was not a complete celebration

• Violence grew towards them as they attempted to find jobs and cities became overcrowded

• The worse riots occurred in Chicago

• Hate groups grew and the KKK returned

The KKK, American Politics and Society in the 1920s

• The 1920s Klan was a national organization, strong not only in the South but also in states like Indiana (Midwest), Colorado (West) and Oregon (Pacific Coast).

• Its aims were not only to preserve white rule but also to express hostility to Catholics, Jews and immigrant groups.

• The Klan also was involved in attempting to combat some of the modern cultural trends of the twenties.

The KKK Marches By the US Capitol

Goals of Prohibition

• Stop drunkedness and violence

• Stop immoral behavior of gambling and prostitution

• Increase job performance

• Volstead Act enforced 18th Amendment but many big cities ignored the law and the amendment

In 1919, the 18th Amendment passed the Act of Prohibition, which made the making of, the transportation of, and the selling of alcohol illegal. The intent of the Amendment was to lower the crime rate and to improve the general way of life, but the opposite happened.

Prohibition

Crime increased as people rebelled against not being able to buy alcohol and bootlegging became a way of life. People began making homemade alcohol using equipment called stills. This homemade alcohol was sometimes called bathtub gin. They were also smuggling liquor into the country from Canada.

Numerous illegal bars called speakeasies were created to provide drinks for the people who wanted alcoholic beverages. All you needed was a password or a members card to enter.

Gangsters profited during this decade by smuggling alcohol and distributing it to different illegal businesses. Al Capone from Chicago was one of these gangsters. He made $105 million a year smuggling alcohol.

William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist who was determined to make people follow the ways of the Bible. He believed that Darwin's theory evolution would make the people turn their backs on God and possibly make the U.S. a communist country. Bryan and others with the same sentiments believed that teaching evolution should be illegal so Tennessee and other southern states made it illegal to teach evolution in classrooms.

FUNDAMENTALIST

Tennessee wanted to test the law so they put out an ad for anyone who would teach evolution in the classroom. John Scopes was the first person to step up and teach the theory of evolution in the classroom. While he was teaching, he was arrested and charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The nation listened out for the verdict in what the press called the “Monkey Trial.”

In the trial, William Bryan and Clarence Darrow were on opposing sides. Bryan was determined to make Scopes guilty for teaching the theory of evolution and he believed you should take the Bible literally. Darrow was the defendant for Scopes and his point was that God gave a person a mind to develop and discover new things.

William Jennings Bryan

Clarence Darrow

Marcus Garvey and Garveyism

• One Response to American racism was to demand full inclusion and equality. This was the approach of DuBois and the NAACP.

• Another was to call for African-American nationalism. In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey led a movement officially known as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) that stressed the need to separate from white society and relate to the peoples of Africa.

• Marcus Garvey collected $10 million for the Black Star Line, a steamship company to carry members of his organization

Back to Africa. He was imprisoned for mail fraud due to corruption in the business.

The 1920's were a prosperous time known as the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, and the Age of Wonderful Nonsense.