Cultures Collide: 1920s America Unmasked

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

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

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