ASCIV Lecture 4

LMD3 (all groups).

Dr. B. Menouer

The Roaring Twenties

The 1920s heralded a dramatic break between America’s past and future. It was a
decade of deep cultural conflict.  The decade witnessed a titanic struggle between an old and a
new America. The conflicts of the 1920s were primarily cultural, pitting a developing more
cosmopolitan, modernist, urban culture against the traditional more provincial, rural culture.

 Before World War I the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the
nineteenth century, but in the 1920s America seemed to break its wistful attachments to the
recent past and usher in a more modern era.  Immigration, race, alcohol, evolution, gender
politics, and sexual morality all became major cultural battlefields during the 1920s. Wets
battled Drys, religious modernists battled religious fundamentalists, and urban ethnics battled
the Ku Klux Klan.

Scientists shattered the boundaries of space and time, aviators made men fly, and
women went to work. The country was confident—and rich.

The 1920s was also a decade of profound economic changes. The most obvious signs
of change were the rise of a consumer-oriented economy and of mass entertainment, which
helped to bring about a “revolution in morals and manners.” Sexual mores, gender roles, hair
styles, and dress all changed profoundly during the 1920s. Many Americans regarded these
changes as liberation from the country’s Victorian past. But for others, morals seemed to be
decaying, and the United States seemed to be changing in undesirable ways. The result was a
thinly veiled “cultural civil war.”

Age of Convergence

Many of the trends that converged to make the twenties distinct had been building for
years, and in some cases, decades.

We think of the twenties as an era of liberation for women. Indeed, the decade gave
rise to the flapper, described by Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “a young girl, esp. one
somewhat daring in conduct, speech and dress,” immortalized in the short stories of F. Scott
Fitzgerald and by silent film stars like Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks.

We think of the twenties as an era of prosperity, and in many respects, Americans had
never lived so well. But this trend, too, claimed earlier roots. As factories and shops
mechanized, the work week of the urban blue-collar worker fell from 55.9 hours in 1900 to
44.2 in 1929, while his or her real wages rose by 25 percent.

Age of Wonders

The decade was indeed unique in many ways.

 It was a decade of firsts. For the first time ever, more Americans (51 percent)
lived in cities than in villages or on farms.
  It was a decade of economic expansion.

 And it was a decade of technological wonder.

Return to Normalcy

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, American politics had been dominated by
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, two presidents whose outsized personalities and
dueling visions of the progressive spirit defined the tenor and tone of public life. After 1920,
Americans seemed to aspire to “normalcy.” In Warren G. Harding, they got exactly what they
bargained (and voted) for.

Silent Cal

Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, may have been the most reticent man ever to
occupy the White House. Austere, laconic, and conservative to a fault, “Silent Cal” perfectly
embodied the laissez-faire ethic that governed American politics throughout the “Jazz Age.”

The Engineer

When Herbert Hoover took the oath of office as the nation’s thirty-first president in
1929, the New York Times sounded an enthusiastic note of approval, applauding the new
chief executive for his “versatile ability,” “sterling character,” and “Progressive leanings.”

Culture Wars

The great revolution in morals, aesthetics, and everyday life that was sweeping
through America didn’t meet with uniform approval. Though the twenties are remembered
primarily as a decade of bold innovation and experimentation, they also witnessed a fierce
counter-revolutionary tendency.

More successful in the immediate term was the Ku Klux Klan, a Reconstruction-era
paramilitary group that had faded from American life until 1915, when Colonel William
Simmons re-founded the organization at a small ceremony on Stone Mountain, in Georgia. By
1925 the organization claimed at least five million members and controlled politics in Indiana,
Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado; it was enormously powerful in several other states, notably
California and Georgia. The Klan’s greatest legislative achievement came in 1924, when it
joined a broad coalition of conservative groups that won passage and approval of a draconian
anti-immigration statute. The golden door would remain closed for another forty years. The
new Klan represented diverse ideas to its polyglot membership. It was avowedly white
supremacist, but for good measure it also included Jews, Catholics, Asians, and “new women”
among its list of enemies. Its followers could be found in cities as well as in the countryside,
but as a general rule, the organization was fundamentalist and conservative in both profile and
disposition. As one sympathetic observer explained, “The Ku Klux movement seems to be
another expression of the general unrest and dissatisfaction with both local and national
conditions—the high cost of living, social injustice and inequality, poor administration of
justice, political corruption, hyphenism, disunity, unassimilated and conflicting thought and
standards—which are distressing all thoughtful men.”
 End of an Era

The twenties were always something of a gilded age. Even amid the great prosperity
and excess of the decade, America’s economy was fundamentally weak. Over 40 percent of
Americans got by on less than $1,500 each year, which economists cited as the minimum
family subsistence level. The twenties were arguably the nation’s first modern decade, but
many of its social and cultural revolutions would play themselves out in future years.  

The Great Migration-

 It refers to a period of migration of African Americans from the South to the states
in the North and West.

 It began in the early 1900s and lasted for several decades.  During this time,
African Americans fled racial discrimination and a lack of economic opportunities in the
South and moved in massive numbers.

Lost Generation

The Lost Generation refers to the generation of writers, artists, musicians, and

intellectuals that came of age during the First World War and the “Roaring Twenties.” The
unprecedented carnage and destruction of the war stripped this generation of their illusions
about democracy, peace, and prosperity, and many expressed doubt and cynicism in their
artistic endeavors. Some of the most famous Lost Generation writers were F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and John Steinbeck. Many of
these writers lived as expatriates in Paris, which played host to a flourishing artistic and
cultural scene.^22squared The themes of moral degeneracy, corruption, and decadence were
prominent in many of their works. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a classic of
the genre.

The Harlem Renaissance-

The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing of African American art, music, literature,

and poetry, centered in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Zora Neale Hurston, Countee
Cullen, and Langston Hughes were among the most famous African American authors
associated with this movement. African Americans also dominated the jazz scene in the
1920s. Duke Ellington, who frequently performed at the Cotton Club, was one of the most
influential jazz bandleaders and composers of all time.^55start superscript, 5, end superscript

The Roaring Twenties screeched to a halt on October 29, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday,
when the collapse of stock prices on Wall Street ushered in the period of US history known as
the Great Depression.

 An intellectual movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

  The movement was seen in art, literature, drama, and music.

  Themes associated with the Harlem Renaissance included increased feelings of

racial pride in many African Americans as well as a feeling of unity to a greater African
culture in general.
 The Jazz Age-

 A post WWI movement in the 1920s, from which Jazz music and dance emerged.

 The birth of Jazz music is credited to African-Americans, but both black and white
Americans alike are responsible for its immense rise in popularity.

  Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the
“moral disaster” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the
freedom they felt on the dance floor.

Glossary

Normalcy

 A word made up by President Harding and referring to the way life was in the
United States before World War I.

Women’s changing roles

 Women in the 1920s were becoming more independent.

  They were rejecting conservatism and society norms.

  They smoked, drank, swore, danced, dated, purchased cosmetics.

 They voted and got divorced more often.

  Started taking birth control and fighting for more rights that were equal to men.

Equal Rights Amendment-

 Unfinished business of the 19th amendment.

  Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any sate on account of sex.

  Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate

legislation, the provisions of this article.

 Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of
ratification.

Flapper

The 1920s, known as the “Roaring Twenties,” were a care-free time of economic
prosperity and social change.
   One iconic image often associated with the 1920s is the flapper. The flapper was a
woman with short, bobbed hair who wore short dresses and danced in dance halls. This image
added to the belief that the 1920s as a decade was a time when people had few worries.

Temperance Movement

 Various temperance organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance

Union were formed in the late 1800s as people worked to decrease alcohol consumption in the
U.S.

  People in the temperance movement blamed social problems like crime and
poverty on alcohol consumption.

 Prohibition- is the era that was known as the time that alcohol was banned in
America.

 The 18th amendment was passed in 1919. This made it law that you could not
manufacture, sell or transport alcohol in the U.S.

Organized crime

 A negative consequence of Prohibition was the rise in organized crime.

 Consisted of businesses that supplied illegal goods or services.

  The mob would be one of the best examples that would fit this description.

 “Gangster” is a term that was coined during this time.

Speakeasies-

  An illegal bar where drinks were sold, during the time of prohibition. It was called
a Speakeasy because people literally had to speak easy so they were not caught drinking
alcohol by the police.

Bootlegging-

 The act of making and transporting alcoholic liquor for sale illegally.

The Jazz Age

 Is characterized as a time of change for American society.

Jim Crow Laws-

 Series of laws passed in southern states that segregated the races in many facets of
life, including public spaces, waiting areas, bathrooms, and theatres.

 These laws legalized segregation and was upheld as constitutional by Plessy v.

Ferguson.
 Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-

 A major rebirth of the KKK in 1920s. They were unhappy with the changing of
traditional American culture.

  The new Klan was anti-foreign, catholic, black, Jewish, pacifist, gambling,
communist, adultery, birth control, internationalist, and evolutionist.

  The 1920s membership far suppressed that of the mid 1850s.

Marcus Garvey-

  The Jamaican-born Black nationalist political leader who founded the Universal
Negro Improvement Association, was both praised as a visionary leader and dismissed as a
dangerous subversive during this lifetime. Urged blacks to return to Africa because, he
reasoned, blacks would never be treated justly in countries ruled by whites.

 Zimmermann Note

A secret telegram sent by the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the
German embassy in Mexico City in February 1917. It instructed the ambassador to convince
Mexico to go to war with the United States. The message was intercepted and caused the
United States to mobilize against Germany.