1. Reading the handout, answer the following questions in your notebooks:
(1) Why were farmers optimistic during WWI, and how did this lead to poor economic decisions by farmers?
(2) How were the Roaring Twenties unkind to rural America?
(3) Why were rural banks allowed to fail?

2. Problems with the Farms and Rural and Western Banks
[1] During WWI, prices are good
[2] Farmers invest
[3] Overproduction
[4] Crop prices drop in 1920 & 1921
[5] Hard time paying mortgages and loans
[6] Farms become foreclosed
[7] Rural banks fail

3. Bank Failures
** 600 bank failures a year between

4. Dust Bowl

5. Dust Bowl
- “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935 …
- Causes of the storms

7. Dust Bowl - Storms increase in number throughout the decade …
- Grasshopper & Jackrabbit plagues …
- Static electricity ...
- Okies …
- “Hobos” …
- Rockets to make it rain …
- Concrete …

8. 1920’s – An Era of Optimism
(1) Credit culture of America in the 1920’s
(2) “Buying on the Margin” – risky investments in stock market speculation
(3) Farmers over-invest, taking out loans for more land and farm equipment
(4) Overproduction in farm products and consumer goods

9. “Roaring Twenties” A Culture of Optimism …
By end of 1920’s, majority of homes have electricity
Impact of radio
Impact of automobile
Scopes Trial
Rise of K.K.K. &
Nativism

10. Prohibition (18th Amendment)
- State-level reforms …
- What the 18th Amendment did …
- Pro’s and Con’s
- 21st Amendment (1933)
“Speakeasy,” 1920’s

11. Harlem Renaissance (1919-1929)
A period of “national recognition” of African-American arts – music, theater, poetry, novels, etc.
Langston Hughes
“I, Too, Sing America”
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
Zora Neale Hurston
“Their Eyes Were
Watching God” and idea of
“Passing”
George Schuyler
“Black No More”

12. Harlem Renaissance (1919-1929)
Paul Robeson
World renown actor, started in “Emperor Jones” in 1933.
Josephine Baker
World renown actress and performers, started in Zouzou in 1934.
“Lost Generation”
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, and T.S. Eliot
Paul Robeson in “Emperor Jones”

13. African American Political Organization
Booker T. Washington ( )
Favored a “gradual” approach to social justice, focusing first on job skills & economic development
W.E.B. DuBois ( )
Favored immediate social justice, full civil rights, and political participation immediately
Marcus Garvey
( )
Back to Africa
Movement
“Atlanta Compromise”