Ch 31 Lecture: Life in the Roaring 20’s

Background: Living standards rose; new technologies, consumer products, forms of leisure, entertainment – the “Roaring 20’s -Jazz Age,” Red Scare=fear of Communism.

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1. What first time change is shown and why?

Ailing Agriculture and Migration

Early 1920's: Agricultural depressioncontributed to urban migration

U.S. farmers lost agri. markets in postwar Europe

At same time agri. efficiency increased so more food produced (more food=lower prices); fewer laborers needed

Farming no longer asprosperous;

bankers called in their loans (farms repossessed)

American farmers enter the Depression ahead of rest of society

1915: boll weevil wiped out cotton crop

White landowners went bankrupt & forced blacks off their land

Blacks moved north due to booming wartime industry = Great Migration - Black ghettoes began to form, i.e. Harlem

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2. Map What change is the map depicting?

3. Pg 721 quote: What strong opinion is being shared?

4. Pg 722 What group is being shown here and who are they against?

Fear of Communism (Red Scare)

  • Due to Bolshevik Rev. in Russia - a small Communist party formed in U.S.
  • Americans fear Communism because:

1. Against American beliefs/values

2. Against capitalism (private ownership of land and business)

3. Against1st Amendment rights

  • 1919 Palmer Raids: Workers participate in a calm and legal strike, but mayor called infederal troops to put down strike(considered revolutionary)
  • Attorney Gen Mitchell Palmer led to think people were communists. Jailed or drove out 6,000 supposed Communists or illegal aliens (only 556 actually were)
  • June 1919: Palmer’s home was mail bombed
  • May 1920: Palmer announced threat of Communist riots, but didn’t happen so Palmer lost credibility.
  • Sept. 1920: Wall Street bombed – killed 38.

Sacco and Vanzetti Case

  • Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Italian immigrantsaccused and convicted of murdering 2 men during 1920 armed robberyin Mass.
  • They were radicals and atheists.
  • Controversial trial issues due to contradictory evidence: 1) Were the men actually guilty? 2)Were the trials fair?
  • Executed on Aug 23, 1927.

KKK

  • Anti: Catholic, Black, Jewish, Pacifist, Communist, Internationalist, evolutionist, bootlegger, gambling, adultery, birth control.
  • Pro: Anglo-Saxon, “Natives”, Protestant.
  • Reaction to Red scare, rising status of Blacks, and social change.
  • Group spread quickly in Midwest and Bible Belt in South.
  • Decline of KKK:

-People disagreed with their tactics: cross burning, whips, tar/feather

-Congress investigated embezzlementby KKK member: $10 initiation fee, $4 given to organizers who recruited people.

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5. Pg 723 What is the cartoon depicting and what's it for or against?topic/people/time/location/OI

Stemming the Foreign Flood

  • 1921 Emergency Quota Act:800,000 immigrants from southern and easternEurope in 1920-1921.
  • Act restricted immigrants to 3%of people of their nationality living in the U.S.in 1910.
  • 1924 Immigration Act: Cut immigrationfrom 3% to 2%, using the year 1890.
  • FavoredWestern and Northern Europeans; againstSouthern and Eastern Europeans. (Italians, Greeks, Poles, Jews)
  • Japanese prevented from immigrating. Didn’t impact Canada and Latin Am.
  • 1931: for 1st time, more foreigners leftAmerica than arrived.
  • Cultural Pluralists - Kallen and Bourne favored immigration; helped the idea of multiculturalism grow.
  • Kallen: U.S. should be a protective area – ethnic and radical groups could preserve their cultural identity.
  • Bourne: greater interaction between immigrants so America would lead in transnationality or an interweaving of cultures.

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6. Pg 728 What is being depicted in the picture? Make two comments using OI.

7. Pg 729 Through 2 pictures, what is occurring during this era of the 1920's: write 3 details

Prohibition "Experiment"

  • 18th Amendment: Prohibited manufacture, sale, transport, and consumption of alcohol.
  • Volstead Act: imposed criminal penaltiesfor violating 18th Amendment.
  • South: favored; West: favored; East: didn’t favor
  • Difficult to enforce law: many disliked the law; didn’t feel it was a crime/officers took bribes.
  • Speakeasies: place that illegally sells alcohol; Code to get in; high profits, but often raided by police
  • Bootleggers: illegal business of transporting liquor
  • 1933 21st Amendment: repealed 18th Amendment

Golden Age of Gangsters

  • Organized Crime
  • Gangs in Big Cities:Violent wars broke out between rival gangs over selling alcohol.
  • Al Capone:Italian-American gangster, smuggler and bootlegger of liquorwho engaged in gang warfare; made millions – “public enemy #1.”
  • St. Valentine’s Day – killed 7 rival gang members, wasn’t convicted. Arrested later for income-tax evasion.

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8. Pg 731Analyze the picture: What has occurred in education?

Education

  • More states require students to stay in school until 16 – 18 years old.
  • # of 17 year olds finishing high school doubles
  • Monkey trial:TN,TeacherJohn T Scopes indicted for teaching evolution (illegal in that town). His lawyer was Clarence Darrow.

-William Jennings Bryan was the Prosecutor; he took the stand as a Bible expert. But Darrow made him look foolish.

-Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but set aside on a technicality.

Mass Consumption Economy

  • New inventions powered by cheap energy increased the productivity of labor
  • Assembly line production: helped build automobile industry - Henry Ford
  • Rise in standard of living
  • Buying on credit – the installment plan; later would be a cause of economic issues.

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9. Pg 733 Give your opinion of the very first car. Who built it?

10. Pg 734 What is the graph showing? Topic/pattern/significance/OI

Age of Automobile

  • New jobs and business due to the development of automobile – petroleum, steel, rubber, glass, fabrics.

Assembly Line

Consumerism - Consumer Products

Humans Develop Wings

  • Wright Brothers: Orville and Wilbur – 1st successful flight = 12 seconds/120 feet.
  • Charles Lindbergh: 1stnon-stop,solo flight from New York to Paris on Spirit of St. Louis(took over 30 hrs)

Radio Revolution

  • Earliest radio programs were local; improvements made long distance broadcast possible.
  • Commercials for advertising began.
  • Politicians used it to reach the public.

Women and Blacks in 1920s

Margaret Sanger: Organized movement for use of birth control. Opened 1st clinic and estabPlanned Parenthood

Alice Paul

1923 National Woman’s Party – campaigned for equal right’s amendment to the Constitution.

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11. Pics Pg 739-741 Describe three specific things that marked the era of the Roaring 20's.

Flapper: referred to a "new breed" of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.

Jazz: Music genre developed by American Blacks; (Handy “Jelly Roll” Morton and Joseph King Oliver.)

Langston Hughes: African-American poet and social activist. Wroteplays, music, poetry

duringthe Harlem Renaissance - a cultural movement.

Marcus Garvey: Jamaican born; foundedUnited Negro Improvement Association(UNIA) to promote re-settlement of Blacks to Africa

-UNIA aided Black businesses to help promote their success.

-Advocated racial separation

-Garvey convicted of mail fraud and deported

-Purchased ship to start Black Star line