Beginning of the Modern Era

History of the Time

New Technology  Opened up and Bound World Together l Automobile l Radio l Telephone l Movies l Airplane l Assembly line

President  Woodrow Wilson elected president l Reflected popular demands l Intention was to have the government limit the power of huge business interests

Urbanization  More Americans left rural areas to live in the cities.

World War I  August Europe burst into war  Great Britain, France, Russia  Vs.  Germany, Austria - Hungary, Italy

U.S. Entered War  U.S. declared war on Germany  Tanks, artillery, machine guns, planes, poison gas, and trench warfare were used  November 11, Germany surrendered  115,000 Americans died  10 million (an entire generation) Europeans died

Women’s Suffrage  Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote.

Roaring Twenties  People were repulsed by senseless slaughter of the war  Return to Normalcy - Americans attempted to withdraw from the rest of the world.  People expressed themselves in a desperate, yet creative hysteria in new jazz rhythms, outrageous fashions, wacky fads, obsessions with money and youth

End of an Era  October 29, Stock Market crashed  Countless lost all their savings

Life of the Time

Immigration  Continuation of closing of “Open Door” to America  Restrictions from targeted Asians and Eastern Europeans

Freedom??  KKK membership surged past 4 million  They targeted African Americans, Jews, Roman Catholics, union members

Wheels and Wings  By million automobiles in the country  Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris

Fashion  Young women began wearing shorter and shorter skirts until they finally skimmed the knee  Short “bobbed” hair shocked people  People were horror stricken as women paint their lips and rouge their cheeks

Flapper  Symbol of the new woman of the 1920’s

Entertainment  Many African Americans migrated from the south to Harlem, New York  Harlem Renaissance - growth of music, art, and literature  The Jazz Singer became the first talking movie.

Jazz  Jazz music became hugely popular with musicians like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong

Literature of the Time

 “World War I... destroyed faith in progress, but it did more than that - it made clear to perceptive thinkers... that violence prowled underneath man’s apparent harmony and rationality.”

A New View  Artists strove for new ways to portray the world.  Pablo Picasso showed multiple perspectives

The Lost Generation  Ernest Hemingway helped popularize the term  Generation of young American writers who felt alienated and spiritually empty following World War One  Some lost generation writers moved to Paris during this time  The writers created a self-imposed exile from mainstream America

Characteristics of Modern Literature  Characters were written as real people who thought in a continuous flow of ideas that went several directions at once - ‘Stream of Consciousness”  Violence was seen as an underlying part of all humans  Minorities began writing of racial identity and pride