• Thesis 1: The tension of the 1920s was caused by a split between those looking to the future and those nostalgic for the past and led to violence and conflict.

• Thesis 2: Although the 1920s are often seen as a return to “normalcy” after WWI and the Progressive era, in fact the decade marked a resurgence of reform by those who believed that the system no longer served their interests. These reformers split into those who wanted to revitalize American values and those who wanted to create a new American culture, and while neither group fulfilled its goals during the 1920s, these reforms had a profound impact on American politics and culture.• [“Although…because” / “Although…actually” thesis]

Doc A: Outside Info Sinclair Lewis Lost Generation [Gertrude Stein

(Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, on Oakland: “There is no there there”; Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms), F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)]; expatriates; rejection heroism/honor of war; rejection bourgeois values and behavior

Doc A

Babbitt (1922): town of Zenith (midwest); boosterism (see Doc C); Prohibition; adultery; youth/car culture; coerced conformity; suburbia; consumerism

A joiner (Elks: fraternal order—get together for drinks, smoke, make business deals, get away from the wife)

“fix what he believed to be his own individuality...the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom”

Doc B: Outside Info

Joseph Stella Futurism: originally Italian (immigration and

nativism); nationalistic; rejection of the past; technology; speed

"We want no part of it, the past we the young and strong Futurists!" F.T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto

Modernism

Doc C: Outside Info Butler Act (1925): illegal deny

literal Biblical Genesis of Man; ACLU looking for trial

Dayton, Tenn: boost town's profile w/lawsuit--> John Scopes (football coach) claims to have taught evolution (in textbook)

--> W. J. Bryan for prosecution; Clarence Darrow (Leopold and Loeb) for defense

Scopes convicted (at Darrow's request)--> judge fines--> appeal--> law upheld, but conviction tossed on technicality (no appeal to SC--> no ruling evolution until 1968)

Fundamentalism (1870s-1920s): begin Presbyterian Niagara Bible Conference (1870s-1890s); return to “fundamentals” + literal interpretation of Bible (tail-end 3rd Great Awakening: 1850-1900) Five Fundamentals (1910): inerrancy, virgin birth,

Christ's death atones sin, bodily resurrection, historical reality miracles

Spread to Baptists (largest group; then Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians)

Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy Harry Emerson Fosdick: “Shall the Fundamentalists

Win?” (1922); liberal/modern Christianity: struggle integrate science w/religion vs. intolerant conservatives--> “Shall Unbelief Win?”

WJ Bryan: 1900--> reborn “The same science that manufactured poisonous

gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible.” (social “Darwinism”)--> war against evolution

Evolution never central to liberal/fundamentalist split; simply where religion crossed w/politics; most fundamentalists not concerned about evolution (taught in Presbyterian-run schools while being banned in public schools)

Doc C “I am examining you on your

fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.”

Not true (even today) “Urban liberal elite”

condescension--> sense attack + deepening of split Not really an urban-rural or

rich-poor or even educated-not split--> how best understand/deal with changing world

Doc D: Outside Immigration, urbanization, WWI (arming black

soldiers), Great Migration--> 1915: 2 nd KKK founded—racism, anti-communism, anti-Catholicism, nativism, anti-Semitism (Florida: Leo Frank trial and lynching)

1stst Klan: 1865-1871; 550,000 members 2nd: 1915-1945; 4 million, 15% eligible population

(adult, white, Protestant, native-born males) Primarily urban; cross-section of white, Protestant

society (esp. working + middle class); Mid West (esp. Indiana: controlled most state gov't); 1924 Democratic Nat'l Convention

1918-27: 416 blacks lynched; also pushed education spending, prohibition, progressive reform

Based on fraternal lodges (Babbitt probably would have been a member)

Doc D

populist rhetoric “de-Americanized”: fear of end of frontier (FJ

Turner, 1893) + immigration “for most of us lack skill in language” “intellectually mongrelized 'Liberals'”: racial

mongrel; see Doc B

Doc E: Outside Harlem Renaissance/New Negro Movement: combat

racism and paternalism; uplift race through art Wide range perspectives: high culture, traditional black

modes, modernism; Commonality: “experience of slavery and the African-

American folk traditions that emerged from it on black identity, the effects of institutional racism, the dilemmas inherent in performing and writing for elite white audiences, and the question of how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North”

Ambiguity: Duke Ellington, Cotton Club—exclusively white audience

Progressive sentiment: belief reform possible

Langston Hughes The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain:

The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.

“Harlem,” 1951 What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Doc F Charles Lindbergh: “Lucky

Lindy,” “The Lone Eagle”: 1) 1927: solo-flight NYC-London

(Spirit of St. Louis); advocates commercial air

2) “Crime of the Century”: Lindbergh baby, 1932

3) Isolationist; America First; 1938: Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle (same as H Ford) P. Roth The Plot Against

America

Philippians 4:8-9 “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Doc G Frances Willard, WCTU President alcoholism result social problems not

personal weakness/failing--> general reform movement: prohibition, moral reform of prostitutes, sanitation, prison reform, woman's suffrage--> 19th--> women “would come into government and purify it, into politics and cleanse the Stygian pool." (“Home Protection Ballot”)

→ brewers oppose suffrage

Years Membership1881 22,8001891 138,3771901 158,4771911 245,2991921 344,8921931 372,3551941 216,8431951 257,548

“Noble Experiment”

18th Amendment + Volstead Act

Dries vs. Wets Al Capone, Eliot Ness Bootleggers, moonshiners,

speakeasies Economic impact on workers

(Samuel Gompers and AFL) Alcohol consumption

increased; younger

Doc H Liberalization divorce laws: not just

adultery/abuse (not all: NY; SC: no divorce) Divorce migrants: Idaho, Nevada, Arkansas

competed for dollars (housing, lawyers, subsistence); others went to France

Remarriage common (1930 census: 1% divorced)

Emotional + sexual satisfaction replaced economic security as metric of marriage--> commitment to marriage strong, diff. reasons

Conservatives feared divorce as threat to civilization and the institution of marriage (familiar?)

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson Evolution in school--> crisis of faith--> revival

meeting--> Pentecostal: evangelical, “spiritual gifts “: faith healing, speaking in tongues, “holy rollers,” etc.

→ 1913 revivalist: massively popular (10,000s attend) Billy Sunday: fire-brimstone Sister Aimee: friendly

1916: “Gospel Car” (in South breaks Jim Crow)

1918: “The Bridal Call”--women's role in Ch'y → moves to booming LA

1923: Angelus Temple 5,300 seating capacity; packed 3x day,

7days/week KFSG radio sermons → International Church of the Foursquare

Gospel (Christ: savior, baptizer, healer, king) (Rick Warren)

1926: “abduction”--> disfavor

Enormous community service in Great Depression--> revival

Helped immigrants w/o question (during period high anti-immigrant feeling; LA major base KKK)

Drug overdose, Oakland, 1944