BOOM-and-BUST1920’s

5-4.1

The Economic Boom Period

• The economic boom period of the 1920’s had a significant effect on the daily lives of many but all Americans.

• The 1920’s were often known as “the roaring twenties”

• However, it was not a good time for all Americans

Economic Boom Period-continued

• Standard of living rose as NEW TECHNOLOGY such as AUTOMOBILES, AIRPLANES, RADIO, and MOVIES became available

• New appliances changed daily lives of many Americans, especially women

• Increased reliance on electricity to run the appliances

Economic Boom Period-continued

• Sharecroppers, farmers and underpaid factory workers were not able to enjoy the rising standard of living

• They could not afford to buy automobiles and appliances that they helped to manufacture.

• Only wealthy people were able to take advantage of air travel

• American culture became more standardized as people embraced the mass culture offered by movies and radio

The Great Migration

• The Great Migration of African Americans from southern rural to northern urban areas was the result of push and pull factors.

• Jim Crow laws and lynchings as well as the economic hardship of sharecropping, the effects of the boll weevil and lack of alternative economic opportunities prompted many to leave the South.

• Job opportunities in the factories, especially during World War I, brought African Americans the cities of the North and Midwest.

Harlem Renaissance

• Result of the migration• As African Americans migrated, they took their

culture with them• Allowed their culture to flourish• Writers, artists, and musicians celebrated the

African contributions to American life in their art• Jazz music, which grew out of the African

American musical tradition, and had become the rage in France during World War I, now became popular among whites in the US as well as African Americans

Racial and Ethnic Conflict

• Segregation was not enforced BY LAW in the northern cities, but it was widely practiced.

• African Americans were often the last hired and the first fired

• Some riots in the cities targeted African Americans, especially immediately after World War I when racial violence reached a peak during the Red Scare of 1919.

• White Americans in both the North and the South were determined to dilute African American aspirations for participation on a more equitable basis even though many African American soldiers had fought in the “war to make the world safe for democracy.

Racial and Ethnic conflict-continued

• Anti-immigrant feelings which had started in the early part of the 1900s got worse.

• More Catholics and Jewish immigrants came from the southern and eastern parts of Europe and became additional targets of a new Ku Klux Klan.

• Laws were established that limited the amount of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.

• Prohibition outlawed the production and distribution of alcohol and was intended to control the immigrant population, people the native-born Americans thought drank too much

• Law was ignored and speakeasies and bootleg liquor gave rise to crime.

• The amendment was repealed in the early 1930s.