The Roaring 20’s OR The Jazz Age

1. The Roaring 20’sORThe Jazz Age

2. End of World War I • Presidential Campaign of 1920 • Wilson appealed to the people for a “solemn referendum” • Vote for Dems to show approval for League of Nations • Democrats nominate Gov. Cox • Republican Senate bosses meet in the historic “smoke-filled” room to decide on the nominee • Warren G. Harding

3. Election of 1920 • Newly enfranchised women finally get a vote! • Harding wins big. • Why? • Tired of idealism and professor talk • Wanted “A Return to Normalcy” and willing to take a less than stellar president to get it.

4. New National Focus • New focus away from commitments to foreign countries. • Anti radical foreign ideas • Wary of “un-American” lifestyles • Anti-immigration • New focus on domestic prosperity • Growth of incomes and living standards • New technology and consumer products • New forms of leisure and entertainment

5. Red Scare • 1919-1920 • Led by Attorney General Palmer • Rounded up 6,000 suspects – The Palmer Raids • Deported a shipload of alleged alien radicals for Russia • Bombings of Wall Street and Palmer’s home help feed the fear. • Anti-red laws passed by states • Unlawful to advocate violence to secure social change.

7. Rise of the KKK • Extremist, ultraconservative uprising. • No longer just against African Americans • Now: Antiforeign, anti-Catholic, antiblack, anti-Jewish, antipacifics, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, antievolutionist, anti-bootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control. • Spread rapidly, mostly in the Midwest and South. • At its height 5 million members

8. Immigration • New Immigrants still coming • Emergency Quota Act of 1921 • Immigration Act of 1924 • Big shift in policy – No more major immigration

9. Prohibition The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent. - Reverend Billy Sunday at the beginning of Prohibition

10. Prohibition • Most strongly supported by churches and women. • Regionally most popular in the South and West • Passed with the Volstead Act • Problem? • Had never been a federal law that a large minority was against. Also cannot make a drinking “criminal” overnight in the minds of people. • Weak enforcement officials

11. Drinkin’ in the 20’s • Speakeasies replace the “men only” corner saloons • Danger of getting amateur moonshine • Organized crime takes over the industry • Not all a failure: • Savings increase • Absenteeism at work decreases

12. The Backlash

13. Improvements in Lives • Educational strides • 17-year olds finishing high school doubles • John Dewey forwards the idea “learning by doing” • Scientific advances • Virtually wipes out hookworm • Better nutrition and heath care increases life expectancy from 50 to 59.

14. Commercial Christianity

15. Scopes Trial • Fundamentalists think Darwinian evolution was destroying faith in God and the Bible and contributing to the moral breakdown of the youth. • Want prohibitions on teaching Darwinism • Three states outlaw it, including TN • Teacher John Scopes was indicted for teaching evolution • Defended by several attorneys, including Darrow • Prosecution included William Jennings Bryan

16. Consumerism • Assembly-line production soars • New industries • Electricity • Automobile • New inventions: refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, radios, cars… • New problem – manufacturing can now make enough products, but need a mass market for their goods. • Solution: advertising! • Buy on credit – CONSPICIOUS CONSUMPTION

17. Process of Standardized Mass Production

18. Model T Assembly Line

19. Economic Impact of the Automobile • Promoted growth of other industries. • Especially oil, rubber, and steel. • Helped fuel the creation of a national system of highways. • After WWI, federal funds became available for building highways and a major industry was born. • Created new service facilities. • Filling stations, garages, motels, and roadside restaurants sprang up across the nation.

20. Social Impact of the Automobile • Created a more mobile society. Cars broke down the distinctions between urban and rural America. • City folks tour the rural countryside • Rural Americans drove into cities for shopping and entertainment. • Broke down the stability of family life. • Now far easier for individual family members to go their own way. • Broke down traditional morality. • Children could escape parental supervision as cars became a sort of "bedroom on wheels."

21. Sports • Becomes big business in this decade • Babe Ruth and the Yankees • Jack Dempsey and the heavyweight champion

22. Other Inventions • Airplane • First flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 • First transcontinental airmail route was established in 1920. • Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic in his plane Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 • Radio • Gathered families and communities around the radio and helped unite the nation.

23. Movies

24. Change in Moral Standard • Fundamentalists fought against Modernists who thought God was a “good guy” • Puritans seen as, “people that have the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.” • Women’s dress showed new freedom with short bobbed hair and short dresses. • Makeup, cigarettes, kissing, and bathing suits shock the older generation. • Dancing to jazz music • Music style started by African American musicians and often taken over by Caucasians impressionists

25. Harlem Renaissance • Harlem in NYC had a large black community and a creative culture flourished • Poet Langston Hughes • Political leader Marcus Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) advocated resettlement of Africa and the sponsoring of black owned businesses. • Jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Eubie Blake • Ideas of self-confidence and self-reliance • Celebrate heritage and define identity

26. Why Now? • Why the Harlem Renaissance? • Urban migration • Trends towards experimentation throughout the country • Rise of radical African American intellectuals • Generation removed from slavery • Helps lay the foundation for the Civil Rights movement

27. The Lost Generation • Wrote about themes of alienation, hypocrisy, and conformity. • Disillusioned by the large number of casualties in WWI. • Disdainful of the traditional notions of morality and propriety of their elders and ambivalent about traditional gender ideals. • Many went to Europe to write

28. Famous Poets in the 1920’s • Ezra Pound • Robert Frost – “The Road not Traveled” • e.e. cummings

29. Famous Writers of the 1920’s • Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms • Shows the war experiences • Kills himself • Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt • Middle class conformer to respectable materialism • William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom! • Commentary on the deep south • F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby • Shows the illusions behind the acceptance of the self-made man

30. Tender is the Night "This land here cost twenty lives a foot that summer...See that little stream--we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk it--a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation."