THE ROARING TWENTIESU. S. HISTORY

AMERICAN LIFE CHANGES

NEW ROLES FOR WOMEN Cultural Changes!

New Opportunities: voting, running for office, changes in the workplace

New Family Roles: more women sought equality with men

The Flapper: young women who defied traditional ideas of dress & behavior

EFFECTS OF URBANIZATION

1920’s time of great economic prosperity

Distances between rural and urban areas “shrank” with cars, education, population, communication

CONFLICTS OVER VALLUES

VALUES: key ideas and beliefs one holds

Different “values” between urban and rural America

Rise of Fundamentalism (literal interpretation of the Bible): Billy Sunday, Aimee McPherson

SCOPES TRIAL: regarding teaching evolution

PROHIBITION

Always important in American history – drive to outlaw alcohol grew in early 1900’s

18th Amendment (1919): making, transporting, selling alcohol illegal

VOLSTEAD ACT: law to enforce amendmentSmuggling, bootleggers, crime

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Many blacks migrated to Harlem, New York (also to Chicago, Detroit, other urban areas)

Racial tensions high, even in North

Deadly riots

IMPORTANT BLACK AMERICANS

In the 1920’s…W. E. B. DuBois: helped found NAACPMarcus Garvey: founded Universal

Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

Other Harlem writers, poets, artists, performers, musicians: James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith

NEW POPULAR CULTURE BORN

MASS ENTERTAINMENT in the 1920’s:RadioMovies

ERA OF HEROES:Film Stars: Charlie Chaplin, ValentinoPilots: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia EarhartSports: Red Grange, Babe RuthArts: F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Gershwin