Post on 19-Jan-2016
THE ROARING THE ROARING TWENTIESTWENTIES
The American Age of BallyhooThe American Age of Ballyhoo
The Jazz AgeThe Jazz Age
Why were the 1920s the “Roaring Twenties”?
- time of rapid change
- people felt unsettled
- technological and scientific breakthroughs
- widening split between urban and rural life
- morality seemed to be changing in the disillusionment following WWI
Changes and experiments in 1920 society
-Relaxed sense of morality
- the clash over evolution; the Scopes trial
- the “Noble Experiment” – prohibition
- suffragettes
- Margaret Sanger
-Urbanization
- racial tensions; the Klun Klux Klan’s resurgence
- the Harlem Renaissance
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
King of the Bootleggers, Al Capone
Suffragettes marching infavor of the 19th Amendment
John T. Scopes
Clarence Darrow and
William Jennings Bryan
Marcus Garvey
Madame CJ WalkerDuke Ellington
W.E.B. DuBose
Zora Neal Hurston
Langston Hughes
Education and Entertainment-Changes in public schools
- the challenge of immigrant children in schools
- the popularity of silent movies
- Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino
-Important films
-1903 The Great Train Robbery
-1915 Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith)
- 1927 The Jazz Singer- Odd fads
The “It Girl” – Clara Bow
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Charlie Chaplin
The Little Tramp
-The mass media continued to expand
- more magazines and newspapers
- the importance of radio
- 1920s literature included several key themes
- materialism; F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby and Sinclair Lewis, Main Street and Babbitt
- anti-war themes; Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms
- dehumanization of modern era; T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland
1920s Heroes
Charles Lindbergh- solo flight across Atlantic Ocean
Herman “Babe” Ruth – Sultan of Swat
Red Grange – the “Galloping Ghost”
Knute Rockne- Notre Dame coach
Jack Dempsey – boxing champion
Bobby Jones – golf champion
Tennis and horse racing also popular sports
Spectator sports became an American passion
Charles Lindbergh
And
Babe Ruth