1. Chapter 24, Section 2 “Life During the 1920s”

2. How did life change for young people after World War I?
Those in the military brought experiences from Europe and didn’t want to return to old lives
Many moved from farms to cities for work and excitement
More young people moved away from parents before they were married for freedom
Youth culture emerged – parties, dance clubs, fast cars, popular music
More finished high school and more attended college

3. How did life change for young women after the end of World War I?
More women in the work force
More with college degrees worked as nurses, teachers, librarians, and social workers
Still some careers mostly off limit to women – doctors, lawyers, etc.
More getting involved in politics with more getting elected to political office

4. Flappers Flappers were young single women mostly from urban areas
They wore make-up, short hair, and short dresses
They openly challenged traditional ideas of how women were supposed to behave
They drank, smoked, and went on un-chaperoned dates
Flappers

5. Fear and Violence
Red Scare – a time of fear of communists in the U.S. after 1917 Russian Rev. and a bomb scare in 1919 blamed on communists
Americans feared communists caused the strikes in 1919 after WWI and communists would try to take over the nation
Palmer raids – after a bomb exploded outside of the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he ordered police raids of suspected communists arresting thousands with little evidence

6. Sacco and Vanzetti Case
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian born anarchists who were arrested in 1920 for a robbery and murder in Massachusetts
They declared their innocence and public opinion in the case was strong on both sides
They were found guilty and executed despite conflicting evidence
The case is seen as an example of red scare fears and anti-immigrant feelings of the decade

7. Restricting Immigration
Americans feared immigrants as threats to jobs and democracy
Laws were passed to restrict immigration
Emergency Quota Act – restricted total number of immigrants admitted each year
National Origins Act of 1924 – limited the number of new immigrants from each nation to 2% of the total number of people in the U.S. from that nation in 1890
Restricting Immigration

8. Prohibition
18th Amendment – outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages
Prohibition was supported in small towns and rural areas, not in cities
It lasted until passage of the 21st Amendment (1920 to 1933 or 14 years)

9. How were people able to get alcohol during Prohibition?
Speakeasies – illegal bars that sold alcohol
Moonshine – homemade alcoholic beverages
Bootleggers – people who transported alcohol illegally
Gangsters -- people who built up distribution networks for alcohol and paid of police and politicians

10. Al Capone
Chicago gangster who gained control of the alcohol trade there
Murdered rival gang leaders to get this control
Made $60 million a year
Eventually was arrested and imprisoned for tax evasion

11. Fundamentalism
Protestant religious movement characterized by a belief in the literal (word-for-word) interpretation of the Bible
Especially strong in rural areas and small towns which blamed problems in society on the culture in urban areas
It was part of the push for prohibition and the bans of the teaching of evolution in schools

12. Scopes Trial
A high school science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee challenged a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools (instead of teaching creationism – that God created man and the universe)
National coverage of the trial brought attention and business to the small town