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The 1920s

The 1920s. The Jazz Age Normalcy and Good Times The Great Depression Begins. continued on next slide. rise in racism and nativism clash of values changing status of women explosion of art and literature popular culture: sports, movies, radio, and music Harlem Renaissance

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The 1920s

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  1. The 1920s The Jazz Age Normalcy and Good Times The Great Depression Begins

  2. continued on next slide

  3. rise in racism and nativism • clash of values • changing status of women • explosion of art and literature • popular culture: sports, movies, radio, and music • Harlem Renaissance • increase in African American political activism The Jazz Age

  4. Why It Matters The 1920s was an era of rapid change and clashing values. Many Americans believed society was losing its traditional values, and they took action to preserve these values. Other Americans embraced new values associated with a freer lifestyle and the pursuit of individual goals. Writers and artists pursued distinctively American themes, and the Harlem Renaissance gave African Americans new pride.

  5. The Impact Today The 1920s left permanent legacies to American culture. • National celebrities in sports and film emerged.  • Jazz music became part of American culture.  • F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway wrote classics of American literature.

  6. Section Theme: Culture The rapid changes of the early 1900s challenged Americans who wanted to preserve traditional values. American culture in the 1920s saw a rise in both the arts and popular entertainment. African Americans played stronger political and cultural roles in the 1920s than they had in previous decades.

  7. Nativism Resurges • In the 1920s, racism and nativism increased. • Immigrants, demobilized military men, and women competed for the same jobs during a time of high unemployment and an increased cost of living.  • Ethnic prejudice was the basis of the Sacco and Vanzetticase, in which two immigrant men were accused of murder and theft.

  8. Nativism Resurges(cont.) • They were thought to be anarchists, or opposed to all forms of government.  • Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death, and in 1927 they were executed still proclaiming their innocence.

  9. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1921)

  10. “Sacco and Vanzetti” – Ben Stahm, 1927

  11. Nativism Resurges(cont.) • Nativists used the idea of eugenics, the false science of the improvement of hereditary traits, to give support to their arguments against immigration.  • Nativists emphasized that human inequalities were inherited and said that inferior people should not be allowed to breed.  • This added to the anti-immigrant feeling of the time and further promoted the idea of strict immigrant control.

  12. Nativism Resurges(cont.) • The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) led the movement to restrict immigration. • This new Klan not only targeted African- Americans but also Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and other groups believed to have “un-American” values. • Because of a publicity campaign, by 1924 the Ku Klux Klan had over 4 million members and stretched beyond the South into Northern cities.

  13. Ku Klux Klan pamphlet: “America for Americans” This image is from a Ku Klux Klan pamphlet published in the mid-1920s, when the Klan claimed as many as five million members nationwide. The Klan portrayed itself as defending traditional, white, Protestant America against Jews, Catholics, and African Americans.

  14. Ku Klux Klan Rally

  15. Nativism Resurges(cont.) • Scandals and poor leadership led to the decline of the Klan in the late 1920s.  • Politicians supported by the Klan were voted out of office.

  16. Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., September 13, 1926 In a brazen display of power, the Ku Klux Klan organized a march in the nation's capital in 1926. By this time, the Klan was already in decline.

  17. Controlling Immigration • In 1921 President Harding signed the Emergency Quota Act, limiting immigration to 3 percent of the total number of people in any ethnic group already living in the United States. • This discriminated heavily against southern and eastern Europeans.

  18. Sheet music: O! Close the Gates Anti-immigrationists used songs, as well as speeches and posters, to promote their cause. This 1923 tune urges the government to "Close the Gates" lest foreigners betray the hard-won rights of Americans and "drag our Colors down."

  19. Controlling Immigration(cont.) • The National Origins Act of 1924 made immigrant restriction a permanent policy. • The act lowered the quotas to 2 percent of each national group living in the U.S. in 1890.  • This further restricted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.  • The act exempted immigrants from the Western Hemisphere from the quotas.  • The immigration acts of 1921 and 1924 reduced the labor pool in the United States.

  20. Controlling Immigration(cont.) • Employers needed laborers for agriculture, mining, and railroad work.  • Mexican immigrants began pouring into the United States between 1914 and the end of the 1920s.  • The immigrants fled their country in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

  21. Mexican workers in California This photo, taken around 1920, depicts Mexican American workers laying irrigation pipe in Ventura County, California. Immigration from Mexico increased significantly during the 1910s and 1920s, due to improvements in transportation within Mexico and to the social and economic dislocations produced by revolution and civil war in Mexico. By the 1920s, Mexicans made up much of the workforce in California agriculture.

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  23. TheNew Morality • A “new morality” challenged traditional ideas and glorified youth and personal freedom. • New ideas about marriage, work, and pleasure affected the way people lived.  • Women broke away from families as they entered the workforce, earned their own livings, or attended college.  • The automobile gave American youth the opportunity to pursue interests away from parents.

  24. Margaret Sanger leaving court of Special Sessions after arraignment Margaret Sanger is seen here in 1916, leaving court after being charged with distributing birth control information illegally. During the Progressive Era, women worked to remove legal barriers to obtaining information on preventing conception.

  25. Life cover, July 1, 1926 On the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Life magazine presented this cover, which parodied the famous painting, the Spirit of '76. The Spirit of ‘26 depicts an uninhibited flapper, a jazz saxophonist and drummer, and banners with the snappy sayings of the day. The caption reads: "One Hundred and Forty-three Years of LIBERTY and Seven Years of PROHIBITION."

  26. Women’s Changing Roles

  27. TheNew Morality(cont.) • Women’s fashion drastically changed in the 1920s. • The flapper, a young, dramatic, stylish, and unconventional woman, exemplified the change in women’s behavior.  • Professionally, women made advances in the fields of science, medicine, law, and literature.

  28. Flapper sheet music: Oh! You Have No Idea This 1928 novelty song, arranged for the newly popular Hawaiian ukulele, included the lyrics: "Has she the lips the boys adore? Does she know what she's got'm for? Oh! You have no idea."

  29. Two flappers dancing the Charleston on the roof of Chicago’s Sherman Hotel (1926).

  30. The Fundamentalist Movement • Some Americans feared the new morality and worried about America’s social decline.  • Many of these people came from small rural towns and joined a religious movement called Fundamentalism. • Billy SundayandAimee Semple McPhersonwere two popular fundamentalist preachers of the 1920s.

  31. The Fundamentalist Movement(cont.) • Charismatic preacher Aimee Semple McPherson gained added notoriety for a five-week disappearance she claimed was a kidnapping and for the many lawsuits filed against her in the following years, often for libel or slander.

  32. Prayer during a revival meeting at a Pentecostal Church in Cambria, Illinois.

  33. The Fundamentalist Movement(cont.) • The Fundamentalists rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, which suggested that humans developed from lower forms of life over millions of years. • Instead, Fundamentalists believed in creationism–that God created the world as described in the Bible. • In 1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which made it illegal to teach anything that denied creationism and taught evolution instead.

  34. The Fundamentalist Movement(cont.) • The debate between evolutionists and creationists came to a head with the Scopes Trial. • Answering the request of the ACLU, John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, volunteered to test the Butler Act by teaching evolution in his class. • After being arrested and put on trial, Scopes was found guilty, but the case was later overturned.  • After the trial, many fundamentalists withdrew from political activism.  • Tennessee’s law against teaching evolution remained on the books until 1967.

  35. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan1925 Scopes’ Monkey Trial Clarence Darrow William Jennings Bryan

  36. Clarence Darrow at the Scopes evolution trial Clarence Darrow's (at left) passionate devotion to freedom of thought led him to the courtroom pictured here in defense of John T. Scopes, a teacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution.

  37. Attorney Clarence Darrow raises his fist while making a speech at the Scopes Trial (1925).

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