The Social Change of the 1920’s

Chapter 24

1920-1929

Manners and Morals change

• 1920’s slang:• Applesauce means:• nonsense• Bee’s knees:• something that is wonderful• Big Cheese:• an important person• Cat’s Meow:• something good• Flat tire:• dull individual• Giggle water:• Alcohol• Main Drag-• important street• Punch-arrest• Stuck on-• in love

Two ways of life exist

• City dwellers-more relaxed morals

• small town folk-city dwellers are in moral decay

• City was lively and stimulating

• Song- ”How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”

• <The Dancing Fools

The Scopes Monkey Trial

• Held in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925

• <John T. Scopes-teacher-high school Biology-used a textbook that outlined Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

• accepted by a majority of scientists but rejected by fundamentalists

• did not want the theory taught to their children

• Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of evolution

Scopes Monkey Trial

• American Civil Liberty Union hired Clarence V. Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer in the United States at the time, to defend Scopes

• William Jennings Bryan, 3 time Presidential Candidate, appeared as a special prosecutor

• no question of guilt, Scopes had broken the law

• became a battle between Darrow and Bryan

• became a circus-labelled the trial of the century

• Scopes guilty and fined $100

• overturned in appellate court

• <Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

The Noble Experiment

• January 16, 1920- Eighteenth Amendment (Volstead Act)goes into effect

• prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages

• Progressives saw corruption

• Anti-Saloon League (church affiliated) and Women’s Christian Temperance League to get amendment

• Called Prohibition

• Drunkenness and alcoholism declined

The Noble Experiment

• Speakeasies-Sold liquor illegally

• Bootlegging flourishes

• providers of illegal liquor

• controlled by hoodlums like <Al Capone

• bribed police and judges

• disrespect for the law increased

• Prohibition repealed

• organized crime had increased

• taxes had gone up

• Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty First Amendment-1933

Women’s Suffrage

• Women began the decade with the right to vote

• During WWI, women became steel workers, chemical workers, munitions workers.

• Some even went over seas to be nurses in the Army Corps of Nurses

• 1914-<Alice Paul and Lucy Burns form the National Women’s Party

• parades and picketing, stood for almost a year outside the White House

Women’s Suffrage

• January 9, 1918-President Wilson declared himself in favor of Women’s Suffrage

• January 10, 1918-The Anthony Amendment passed the House by 2/3rds majority(slim)

• Took another year and a half to pass through the Senate

• August 26, 1920-37 states ratified the 19th Amendment

• Suffragette on parade

Women in the 1920’s

• Some wore short skirts, cut their hair(bob or boyish bob if very short), painted their face, smoked and drank in public

• some symptom of moral decay

• some symbol of freedom and progress

• skirt lines moved slightly above the knee, corsets were thrown in the garbage along with layers of petticoats

• sensible, healthy and neat-and caused public outcry

• <stylish women of the 1920’s

Black Renaissance

• Beginning in 1910-black population became more urban than white

• shifted from south to north

• the Great Migration-1910-1920-1 million move north, 1920’s-800,000

• considerable prejudice-partly economic-competed with unskilled whites for jobs

• partly racial-tried to assert white superiority over blacks

• <fighting job discrimination

Black Renaissance

• Sometimes racial prejudice turned violent

• worst race riot in United States History occurred in 1919 in Chicago

• 10,000 people involved, 38 killed (23 blacks), 520 injured (342 blacks), 1,000 left homeless

• started when a black bather in Lake Michigan wondered into the white section, whites threw rocks at him until he drowned, blacks retaliated-took three days to restore order

• <Cartoon “The Cure” depicting what should be done to the ringleaders of the riots

Black Renaissance

• <W.E.B. DuBois founded the Niagara Movement in 1905

• first movement to address the treatment of Blacks since Reconstruction

• helped found the N.A.A.C.P. in 1909

• disagreed with Booker T. Washington, accused Washington of only educating blacks to be artisans and farmers

• strive for more education

• more militant than Washington

1920’s pictures and topics

• 1920’s link

• another 1920’s link

Black Renaissance

• “Black is beautiful”• <Marcus Garvey-Universal Negro

Improvement Association in Jamaica in 1914

• moved to New York in 1916• 500,000 blacks by the mid-1920’s• based on two ideas• 1. Blacks should go back to Africa

and build a country of their own (ie. Liberia in 1815)

• 2. Blacks should not envy or imitates whites, be proud, “Black is Beautiful”

• Marcus Garvey Speaks

Black Renaissance

• Financed his colonization by starting a newspaper, The Negro World

• The Black Line steamship company was a failure and was thrown in prison for mail fraud

• deported to England when released

• Blacks and the NAACP decides to redeem their own country

• 1919-<James Weldon Johnson managed to get an anti-lynching law introduced into Congress

Black Renaissance

• Between 1889-1919-3224 black men and women had been shot, burned or hanged without trial

• Between 1919-1927-400 blacks were lynched, 10 while wearing their WWI uniforms

• bill passed House, but was filibustered to death in Senate

• organization for anti-lynching laws continued to pressure led by <Ida B. Wells-Barnett

• No Republican party in the South-Democrats barred blacks from joining until 1927 when courts called it illegal-found other ways around it

• Lynching Photography

Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem in New York City was the center of the nation’s black intellectual and cultural life

• achievements in literature, music, drama, dance, and painting

• WRITERS: Poetry-James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen

• ACTORS: Roland Hayes-tenor, <Paul Robeson-actor (Rutgers Graduate), Columbia Law School Grad

Harlem Renaissance

• MUSIC: Jazz-King Oliver and a small group that included trumpeter <Louis Armstrong played the first jazz north of the Mason-Dixon Line in Chicago

• spread all over

• Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker (in France)

• Listen to Louis Armstrong’s Work

Education

• American Education is growing in the 1920’s, especially in the High Schools

• It was a financial sacrifice

• 1914-500,000 are in High School, 1926-4 million

• steep increase in taxes-doubled from 1913-1920 and again doubled to 1926

• challenge of the school was educating immigrants-many did not speak English

• higher proportion of immigrants learned to read and write than native born whites

• <class photo at Oberlin High School

The News

• Introduced Time in 1923, first weekly magazine

• Newspapers become huge-Sunday supplements, radio stations, 2 cents on weekdays and 10 cents on Sunday

• tabloids are introduced

• sensationalized newspapers, half the size of the regular newspapers and liberal use of pictures

• Daily News and Daily Mirror both in New York were imitated

Ballyhoo

• Because of tabloids-the twenties produced media hype

• called ballyhoo

• May 27, 1927-<Charles A. Lindbergh began a solo flight across the Atlantic on the Spirit of St. Louis

• flew nonstop 33 1/2 hours New York to Paris

• Lucky Lindy, the Flying Fool, press made him a surprise

The National Pastime

• Baseball becomes the National Past time-

• <Babe Ruth-George Herman Ruth-hard drinking, salty-talking character

• 60 homers in a season, 1927-led Yankees to 7 world series championships between 1921 and ‘37

• Yankee Stadium is called the House that Ruth Built-1923

• work with children makes him a legend

College Football

• College Football becomes huge-

• <Red Grange- “The Galloping Ghost”-University of Illinois-scored 5 and passed for a 6th touchdowns in a game against Michigan-4 tds in 12 minutes

• Knute Rockne-Notre Dame’s legendary coach

• College football appealed to those who would not graduate high school

• moved to Midwest with popularity

Boxing and other Sports Idols

• <Jack Dempsey-”The Manassa Mauler-Heavyweight Boxer

• 1927 Championship rematch with Gene Tunney rakes in $2.65 Million

• Big Bill Tilden in Tennis

• Helen Wills in Tennis

• Bobby Jones in Golf-Grand Slam

• Man-of-War-Horse racing

Movies and Theaters

• Hollywood becomes film capital of the world

• <Charlie Chaplin-creates the tramp

• Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, first major film with sound in 1927

• Yiddish Theater flourished in New York City-Combination of languages of Eastern European Jews

Writers

• Theme is opposition to materialism

• <F. Scott Fitzgerald-1920-This Side of Paradise, confusion and tragedy of a frantic search for success

• Sinclair Lewis-Babbitt and Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry

• Ernest Hemingway-The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms-against war

• Poet-T.S. Eliot-The Waste Land-dehumanization during machine age