The Emergence of New Values in the 1920s

Women• Women began to demonstrate

new independence &

assertiveness

• Women began to drink & smoke

in public

• Began reading Sigmund Freud

• Adopted the look of the “flapper”

– Short dresses

– Short hair & lots of makeup

Tin Pan Alley

• 1910- NYC emerged as capital

of popular music publishing

• Tin Pan Alley: (section of NYC)

where song-writing & and

musical ideas mixed together

• Blues, jazz, & ragtime melded

together

Tin Pan Alley• Vaudeville – most popular form of

stage entertainment

– Showed need for sheet music & Tin Pan

Alley publishing houses supplied them

Youth & the Lost Generation• New group of writers, the Lost Generation, rejected

desire for material wealth

• Sinclair Lewis: wrote Main Street and Babbitt, which

ridiculed hypocrisy of American life

– 1st American author to be awarded Nobel Prize in

Literature

• Ernest Hemingway: wrote A Farewell to Arms about

WWI

• F. Scott Fitzgerald: wrote The Jazz Age and The Great

Gatsby about the 20s

The Great Migration• 2 decades from 1910 to 1930

witnessed the Great Migration: 2

million African-Americans moving out

of the South to the North

• In search of jobs to escape

sharecropping & racism

The Great Migration• Still faced racism, housing

shortages, and crime

• But, found organizations such

as National Urban League

and the NAACP to help them

• Largest African-American city:

Harlem

– In Upper Manhattan of NYC

– Roughly 200,000 African-

Americans lived there in 20s

Harlem Renaissance• 1920s referred to as Jazz Age

• General awakening of African-

American culture has become known

as the Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance• Included visual art, dance, & music

• They shared an unprecedented level

of optimism & pride

Harlem Renaissance• Poets & writers expressed pride in their heritage

– Zora Neale Hurston

• One of the 1st successful female African-American authors

• Published her greatest novel, Their Eyes Were Watching

God

– Countee Cullen

• won more literary prizes than any other African-American

during the 20s

– Langston Hughes

• One of America’s best poets

• Expressed the determination to overcome racial prejudice

– Alain Locke

• Influential writer during Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance• Marcus Garvey:

– highly controversial political activist,

known for fancy uniforms. Emphasized

racial pride.

– formed Universal Negro Improvement

Association

– Goal was the total liberation of African

people around the world

– Organized the “Back-to-Africa”

movement, where African-Americans

would return to Africa (especially

Liberia)

Popular New Heroes

• Charles Lindbergh

– 1st person to fly across

Atlantic Ocean in 1927

– Single engine plane, The

Spirit of St. Louis; landed

33 hours after takeoff