The 1920: A Bi Polar Decade Oseas Romero APUSH Stafford High School Stafford, Texas

A Decade by Many Names  The New Era  Return to Normalcy  Jazz Age  Roaring 20’s  Harlem Renaissance

A New American Standard  U.S. developed the highest standard of living in the world  Europe would need time to recover from the devastation of World War I  America would be the only viable economy left  The 1920s and the second Industrial Revolution  Electricity replaced steam  Modern assembly introduced

Automobile Industry  Automakers stimulated sales through model changes, advertising  Modern Administrative system  GM and Alfred P Sloan  Auto industry fostered other businesses  Think vertical integration  Autos encouraged suburban sprawl

Business is here to stay  New technologies meant new industries such as radio and motion pictures  Structural change  Professional managers replaced individual entrepreneurs  Corporations became the dominant business form  Marketing and national brands spread  Big business weakened regionalism, brought uniformity to America

Some Economic Weaknesses  Railroads poorly managed  Speculation would be rampant  Coal displaced by petroleum  Dirty, expensive, and extremely limited  Farmers faced decline in exports, prices  Plight of the Farmers: use previous notes for refresher  Growing disparity between income of laborers, middle-class managers  Middle class speculated with idle money  People were not financially literate  Buying on margins

Women and the Family  Ongoing crusade for equal rights  “Flappers” sought individual freedom  Much of the feminism we know today is heavily influenced by this time  Women would no longer be afraid to try the new and unexpected  Most women remained in domestic sphere  Discovery of adolescence  Teenage children no longer needed to work  Indulged their craving for excitement  Many religious figures will point to this time when America becomes worldly and sinful

The Roaring Twenties  Sports, like golf and baseball, became much bigger part of national popular culture  Bobby Jones, Babe Ruth  Decade was notable for obsessive interest in celebrities  Charles Lindbergh Gertrude Ederle  Sex became an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainment  Sex, sex, and more sex

 Artists felt alienation from 1920s mass culture  “Exiled” American writers put U.S. at forefront of world literature primarily in Paris  T.S. Eliot  Ernest Hemingway  F. Scott Fitzgerald  Black Writers- Harlem Renaissance Writers  Zora Neale Hurston  Claude McKay  Langston Hughes  WEB Du Bois

The New Negro Movement  This term was coined by Alaine Locke  Writing and creating a new history of the American Black  In 1915, Washington is going to die  Du Bois is going to become the primary leader of the American Negro  Talented Tenth  NAACP

A New Negro  The American Negro has changed. During the 1900’s and 1910’s we see a migration of African Americans from the South to the North and North East  Harlem is a neighborhood in New York  Cultural explosion in music, literature, poetry, and arts  Shuffle Along- Josephine Baker- 1 st all Black cast in Broadway Musical  Cotton Club- popular New York nightclub. Prominent musicians would play at the club, but only white patrons were allowed  Poetry- Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”  Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”  Pan Africanism- Universal Negro Improvement Association  Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line  Goal was to unite all Blacks in America and lead them back to the motherland, where they would live as a united people under one banner

Country Folk think the city is whack  Rural Americans identified urban culture with communism, crime, immorality  Progressives attempted to force reform on the American people  Upsurge of bigotry  An era of repression  1919: “Red Scare”  Illegal roundups of innocent people  Forcible deportation of aliens  Terrorism against “radicals,” immigrants  1927: Sacco and Vanzetti executed  Supposed anarchist and communist

The New Ku Klux Klan  Many people indeed felt ostracized by the modernity of the 1920’s. Many needed to feel welcomed and so the new Ku Klux Klan was created  1925: Klan membership hit 5 million  Attack on urban culture, inhabitants  Defense of traditional rural values  Klan sought to win U.S. by persuasion  Violence, internal corruption resulted in Klan’s virtual disappearance by 1930

More Fear  1924: National Origins Act  150,000 person quota on immigration  Quotas favored northern Europeans  Mexican immigrants exempted from quota  They were needed as agriculture laborers in the American Southwest  Sounds very familiar doesn’t it

Religion what is it good for?  Fundamentalism: Stress on traditional Protestant orthodoxy, biblical literalism  Billy Sunday  1925: Scopes Trial discredited fundamentalism among intellectuals  Creationism vs. evolution  “Modernists” gained mainline churches  Decrease in the power of the Revival type churches  Fundamentalists strengthened grassroots appeal in new church  Late 20 th century an increase of conservatism throughout the world

Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover  Republican party apparently dominant  Urban wing of the Democratic party emerged as the most powerful force  Republican presidents appealed to traditional American values  Harding scandals broke after his death  Teapot Dome Scandal  Coolidge represented America in his austerity and rectitude  Hoover represented the self-made man

 Return to “normalcy”  Tariffs raised  Corporate and income taxes cut  Spending cut  Coolidge blocked Congressional aid to farmers as unwarranted interference  Government-business cooperation

Democrats make a move  1924: Urban-rural split weakened Democrats  Major shift in political loyalties  Will start seeing AA moving towards Dems and White Southerners moving towards Reps  Will become a permanent shift in Civil Rights Era  Democrats gained more Congressional seats than Republicans after 1922

Election of 1928  Democrat Al Smith carried urban vote  Governor of New York  Roman Catholic  Republican Herbert Hoover won race  Midwesterner  Protestant  Religion the campaign’s decisive issue

The 1920’s  The 1920’s is fondly remembered as a Golden Age for music, literature, movies, musicals, etc.  1920’s will lay the foundation for modern America  Increased science and technology  Political Scandals are still happening  The Great Depression is going to end the decade of prosperity and plunge America into an economic black hole