Cover Slide Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Maps and Images for US...

Cover Slide

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Maps and Images for US History

Chapter 11

The 1920s, 1920-1929

Al Smith campaigning in Denver, election of 1928With his trademark derby hat in hand, Smith greets Denver politicians in his unsuccessful 1928 race for the presidency. ()

Al Smith campaigning in Denver, election of 1928


Babe RuthBabe Ruth had widespread appeal as one of the country's first sports superstars. Here a photograph of his mighty home run swing appears on a school notebook, showing the new link between sports and consumerism. (Private Collection)

Babe Ruth


Blues by Archibald Motley, 1929This painting by the African American artist Archibald Motley represented the "Ash-Can" style, which considered no subject too undignified to paint, as well as the sensual relationship between jazz music and dancing within African American culture. (Collection of Archie Motley and Valerie Gerrard Browne. Photo courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.)

Blues by Archibald Motley, 1929


Christmas in ConsumerlandGiving a modern twist to an ancient symbol, this advertising catalog of the 1920s offered an enticing array of new electric products for the home. (Strong Museum)

Christmas in Consumerland


Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Evolution trial

Clarence Darrow's (at left) passionate devotion to freedom of thought, led him to the courtroom pictured here, in defense of John Thomas Scopes, a teacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution. (Library of Congress)

Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Evolution trial


Coolidge cartoonBasically shy and introverted, Calvin Coolidge was content to let business have free rein in the pursuit of profits. This ironic cartoon, from the December 10, 1925 edition of Life, shows the president accompanying the lively performance of big business with a saxophone and a song of praise. (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

Coolidge cartoon


Culver City populationWide highways, cheap land, and affordable housing allowed automobile commuters to move to the urban periphery. In this photo, young women wearing 1920s flapper-style outfits celebrate the phenomenal growth of Culver City, outside Los Angeles. Notice the strong presence of the motor car. (Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library)

Culver City population


Dolly making radio history, 1925In 1925, to promote the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, radio station WJZ in New York City offered an hour-long broadcast of circus sounds, including the bellowing of Dolly, a 2-year-old elephant. ()

Dolly making radio history, 1925


"The Dunes Beaches"

()

"The Dunes Beaches"


F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on the Riviera, 1926While Fitzgerald chronicled the 1920s in his fiction, he and Zelda lived the high life in New York and in Europe. (Stock Montage)

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on the Riviera, 1926


Flapper sheet music: Oh! You Have No IdeaThis 1928 novelty song, arranged for the newly popular Hawaiian ukulele, included the lyrics: "Has she the lips the boys adore? Does she know what she's got'm for? Oh! You have no idea." (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

Flapper sheet music: Oh! You Have No Idea


Ford adHenry Ford constantly worked to reduce car prices on his cars. He also promoted installment buying, promising in this ad that "with even the most modest income, [every family] can now afford a car of their own." This ad also encouraged impulse buying: "You live but once and the years roll by quickly. Why wait for tomorrow for things that you rightfully should enjoy today?" (Library of Congress)

Ford ad


Ford Highland Park assembly line, 1928Pictured here is the assembly line for Model-A Fords, at Ford's main assembly plant in 1928. Assembly line workers quickly perform the same task on car after car as the chassis moves past them at the rate of six feet per minute. Ford pioneered the assembly line as a way to reduce both cost and dependence on skilled workers. He paid the highest wages in Detroit but required complete obedience from his workers, even to the point of prohibiting whistling while at work. (From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village)

Ford Highland Park assembly line, 1928


Gastonia strikeTwo women textile workers confront an armed guard in a bitter strike that took several lives. (Walter P. Reuther Library/ Wayne State University)

Gastonia strike


General Electric adElectric appliances became commonplace in the 1920s and advanced the consumer economy. Note here the obvious link between a daughter and her mother, whose domestic tasks appear to be made easier and more appealing by an electric range, a vacuum cleaner, and an iron. (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

General Electric ad


Harding with Laddie, June 13, 1922As politicians learned the arts of publicity, posed scenes like this became more common. ()

Harding with Laddie, June 13, 1922


July 4 at Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, early 1920sHundreds of identical Fords jam Nantasket Beach near Boston on a Fourth of July in the early 1920s. ()

July 4 at Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, early 1920s


Ku Klux Klan pamphlet: "America for Americans"This image is from a Ku Klux Klan pamphlet published in the mid-1920s, when the Klan claimed as many as five million members nationwide. The Klan portrayed itself as defending traditional, white, Protestant America against Jews, Catholics, and African Americans. (Private Collection)

Ku Klux Klan pamphlet: "America for Americans"


Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., September 13, 1926In a brazen display of power, the Ku Klux Klan organized a march in the nation's capital in 1926. By this time, the Klan was already in decline. ()

Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., September 13, 1926


Life cover, July 1, 1926On the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Life magazine presented this cover, which parodied the famous painting, the Spirit of '76. The Spirit of ‘26 depicts an uninhibited flapper, a jazz saxophonist and drummer, and banners with the snappy sayings of the day. The caption reads: "One Hundred and Forty-three Years of LIBERTY and Seven Years of PROHIBITION." (Private Collection)

Life cover, July 1, 1926


LindberghIn a celebrity-obsessed decade, Lindbergh rocketed to instant fame after his 1927 solo transatlantic flight. (National Archives)

Lindbergh


Listerine adAdvertising promised that those who used Listerine to eliminate halitosis would gain friends and even romance. (Courtesy Warner-Lambert Company)

Listerine ad


Los Angeles with carsIn the 1920s, civic leaders in Los Angeles cultivated an image of perpetual sunshine, warm weather year-round, and abundant water. This photo from the late 1920s includes some of these and more--the personal automobile, a sporty touring car with its top down, and wide boulevards lined with palm trees and other semitropical vegetation to emphasize the warm climate. (Los Angeles Public Library)

Los Angeles with cars


Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong, born in 1900, first began to play the trumpet in New Orleans but emerged as a leading innovator in jazz after 1924, when he joined Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in New York. Some of his recordings from the 1920s are among the most original and imaginative contributions to jazz. (Frank Driggs Collection)

Louis Armstrong


Lynching protest parade, Washington, D.C., 1922African Americans intensified their efforts to put an end to lynching. This protest parade was held in Washington, D.C., in 1922. The NAACP's efforts to secure a federal antilynching law, however, were repeatedly defeated by southerners in Congress. (UPI/Bettmann)

Lynching protest parade, Washington, D.C., 1922


Mexican Americans enjoying their automobile rideThe spread of automobile culture in the early twentieth century gave a new freedom and mobility to many women, particularly the young and urban. (Courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society/ Tuscon AHS#62669)

Mexican Americans enjoying their automobile ride


Mexican workers in CaliforniaThis photo, taken around 1920, depicts Mexican American workers laying irrigation pipe in Ventura County, California. Immigration from Mexico increased significantly during the 1910s and 1920s, due to improvements in transportation within Mexico and to the social and economic dislocations produced by revolution and civil war in Mexico. By the 1920s, Mexicans made up much of the workforce in California agriculture. (Los Angeles Public Library)

Mexican workers in California


Moviemaking at Warner BrothersPioneering in sound films in a movie-mad decade, Warner Brothers Pictures earned profits of more than $17 million in 1929. ()

Moviemaking at Warner Brothers


Radio adBetween 1922 and 1930, the number of families owning radios swelled from 60,000 to almost 14 million. Manufacturers such as RCA produced a variety of sizes and shapes and took out full-page advertisements in popular publications to inform the public about the latest development in design and technology. (Library of American Broadcasting, University of Maryland at College Park)

Radio ad


Sheet music: O! Close the GatesAnti-immigrationists used songs, as well as speeches and posters, to promote their cause. This 1923 tune urges the government to "Close the Gates" lest foreigners betray the hard-won rights of Americans and "drag our Colors down." (National Park Service Collection, Ellis Island Immigration Museum)

Sheet music: O! Close the Gates


Stock Market crash--curb scene October 24, 1929As the stock market tumbled on October 24, 1929, a crowd of concerned investors gathered outside the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, unprepared for an unprecedented economic decline that would send the country into a tailspin for the next decade. (Corbis-Bettmann)

Stock Market crash--curb scene October 24, 1929


Survey Graphic cover, March, 1925This was the cover of a special issue of Survey Graphic published in March of 1925. A popular magazine of the period, Survey Graphic devoted the entire issue to Harlem and the emergence of a new consciousness among its African-American residents. (Survey Graphic 1925)

Survey Graphic cover, March, 1925


Teapot Dome Window HangerIn 1924, the Democrats tried to capitalize on the Republicans' embarrassment over the Teapot Dome scandal. They received little response because the death of Harding brought Calvin Coolidge to the presidency, and Coolidge's personal honesty and morality were unquestioned. (Collection of David J. and Janice L. Frent)

Teapot Dome Window Hanger


The Desso family of Beaumont and their touring car, 1920During the 1920s, the desire to own an automobile spread to members of all classes, races, and ethnic groups. Low prices and available credit enabled this family from Beaumont, Texas, to own a "touring car." (Tyrrell Historical Library)

The Desso family of Beaumont and their touring car, 1920


The Weary BluesThis is the original cover for The Weary Blues, the first book of poetry by Langston Hughes, published in 1926. Hughes later wrote that the book included some of the first blues that he had ever heard, dating to his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas. Both the reference to the blues in Hughes's poetry and the cover design for the book evoke the connection between music and poetry that was part of the Harlem Renaissance. (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

The Weary Blues


Valentino in Son of the SheikRudolph Valentino, the leading male movie star of the 1920s, starred in such costume epics as The Sheik and Son of the Sheik. This poster advertises Son of the Sheik, which appeared after Valentino's death in 1926, at the age of 31, from complications following the removal of his appendix. (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library)

Valentino in Son of the Sheik


Map: Election of 1924

Election of 1924The presidential election of 1924 was complicated by the campaign of Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, who ran as a Progressive. As you can see, much of his support came from republicans living in the north-central and northwestern regions where the agricultural economy was most hard hit.


Map: The Election of 1928

The Election of 1928


Model T Films(1913. Archive Films.)

Video: Model T Ford


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The Ideal Republic(1923. Great Speeches of the 20th Century, Rhino Records, Los Angeles, CA, 1991)

Audio: The Ideal Republic


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