F. SCOTT FITZGERALDTHE ROARING TWENTIES

AL CAPONE

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott FitzgeraldBorn 1896- died in 1940 of a heart attack.Lived in St. Paul.Started writing when he was fifteen.He became an alcoholic due to the stress of

writing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dropped out of school to join the Army.He was stationed in Alabama.He met Zelda while in Alabama, she was the

daughter of a state supreme court judge.He later married Zelda- she was the love of

his life. He wrote The Great Gatsby in 1924 while

living in France.He critiques materialism, the Jazz Age,

wealth, and social class in The Great Gatsby.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

After The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s life began to spin out of control.

He suffered writer’s block. His wife had a severe mental breakdown. They spent most of the 1920’s moving back and

forth from the US and France. In 1937, he tried his hand at screenwriting in

Hollywood. He was a success at screenwriting, but could

never quite back to writing novels. His last novel was not completed when he died.

The Roaring Twenties

Roaring Twenties

During the 1920’s, inventions like home refrigeration and penicillin sent America into the modern age.

The twenties were an age of dramatic social and political change.

For the first time, more Americans were living in cities than on farms.

The nations total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929.

America was now a “consumer society.”

The Roaring Twenties

The 1920’s saw national advertising (thanks to the radio) and the spread of chain stores.

The entire nation was listening to the same music, doing the same dances, and using the same slang, no matter what city they lived in.

America was shifting into a new urban mass culture.

More money meant more spending on consumer goods.

Ready-to-wear clothes, home appliances, and radios-lots and lots of radios!

Mass Culture

In 1920 the first radio station was KDKA in Pittsburgh.

Three years later, there were 500 stations in the nation, and close to 12 million households with radios in them.

Movies became another facet of the twenties. By the end of the decade, three-quarters of

the American population visited a movie theatre every week.

Mass Culture

By far, the single most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile.

Low prices and generous credit made owning a car an affordable luxury.

The Model T cost just 260$ in 1924.By the end of the decade, there was one car

on the road for every five Americans. The economy prospered as well, service

stations, motels, and restaurants sprang up to meet drivers needs.

The “New Woman”

The most famous symbol of the “Roaring Twenties” was the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts.

She drank.She smoked.She participated in "unladylike” behavior. She was more “free” then previous

generations.

The “New Woman”

Not all women were flappers; however, women gained some unprecedented freedoms during this time.

Women could vote! The 19th amendment to the Constitution had

guaranteed the right for women to vote in 1920.

Women worked in white-collar jobs such as stenographers, and could afford to participate in the bustling economy.

The “New Woman”

Birth-control was readably available so women were having fewer children.

New machines and technology were becoming a house helper to women.

Washing machinesVacuum cleanersRefrigeratorsSpray and shower bathsIronsCoffee pots

The Jazz Age

Young people had more freedom, and with that Americans were free to go where they wanted and do what they wanted.

Young Americans wanted to dance. The CharlestonThe cake walkThe black bottomThe flea hophttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJC21zzkwoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqpINmqxlschttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UnEB23YCI

The “Jazz Age”

Jazz bands were everywhere. Dance halls became the social scene of the

twenties. The Savoy in NYC and The Aragon in Chicago

were the most popular places to attend. The invention of the phonograph made music easy

to listen to across the US. 100 million records were sold in 1926 alone. Older people thought that jazz music was “vulgar”

and “depraved.”Freedom on the dance floor was all that mattered.

Prohibition

18th amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, banned the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors.

At 12 am on January 16, 1920 the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar, and saloon in the United States.

From then on, it was illegal to sell any “intoxicating beverages” with more that 0.5% alcohol.

This act drove the liquor trade underground.

Prohibition

Consumers now went to illegal speakeasies instead of ordinary bars.

Bootleggers, racketeers, and other organized-crime figures controlled the speakeasies and the flow of liquor.

Chicago gangster Alphonse “Scarface” Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago's police force on his payroll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ybTyhiaVY

Prohibition

Prohibition was a way to assert control over the “unruly” immigrant masses who crowded the nation's cities.

Many middle-class white Americans were behind prohibition.

Drinking was a symbol of everything middle-class Americans disliked about the modern cities.

Eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time.

Cultural Civil War

Aside from prohibition, several other sources caused tension during the 1920s.

The Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North increased the visibility of black culture- jazz and blues music- and the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance.

These movements discomfited some white Americans.

Millions of people in states such as Illinois and Indiana joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Cultural Civil War

The KKK represented a return to all the “values” that the fast-paced city-slicker Roaring Twenties were collapsing.

An anti-communist “Red Scare” encouraged a widespread anti-immigrant hysteria.

Extremely restrictive immigration laws were passed.

The National Origins Act set immigration quotas that excluded some- Eastern Europeans and Asians- in favor of others – Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain.

Cultural Civil War

Conflicts such as:City-dwellers v small-town residentsProtestants v CatholicsBlacks v whitesUpper class v middle-classWealthy v poverty“New women” v old-fashioned family values

became the most important part of the Roaring Twenties.

Al Capone

One of the most infamous gangsters in America. Capone ran a multi-million dollar operation in

Chicago that included- bootlegging, prostitution, gambling, and racketeering.

Capone was brutal and dominated the organized crime scene.

He was most famous for his St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, in which he ordered the assassination of seven rivals.

Capone was only arrested for income-tax evasion in 1931. He served six-and-a-half years in prison.

Al Capone

Capone was born in Brooklyn NY in 1899. He was the son of Italian immigrants

Gabriele and Teresina Capone. The family came to NY to seek a better life. The family had eight children. Capone’s father was a barber. Capone’s mother was a seamstress. Nothing in his childhood predicted his rise to

fame.

Al Capone

Capone got into an altercation with his elementary school principal in the sixth grade and never went back to school.

Capone and his family moved to Park Slope- a better neighborhood.

In Park Slope he met his future wife, Mary Coughlin and his mob mentor, Johnny Torrio.

Al Capone

Torrio was a numbers runner and Capone started to run errands for him in the neighborhood.

Capone and Torrio stayed close even though Torrio moved to Chicago.

Capone stuck to legitimate employment, had some occasional scrapes but his gang activities were mostly uneventful.

In 1917, Torrio introduced Capone to the gangster Frankie Yale who employed Capone at his bar as a bartender and a bouncer.

Al Capone

At the Harvard Inn, Capone earned his nickname “Scarface” while working.

He made an indecent remark to a woman at the bar.

Her brother punched Capone in the face, then slashed him across his face.

Three scars were left inspiring his enduring nickname.

In 1920, Capone’s father died of a heart attack, and Torrio invited Capone and family to move to Chicago.

Al Capone

Torrio was presiding over a booming business in gambling.

With the enactment of the 18th Amendment, Torrio focused on a new more lucrative field: bootlegging.

As a petty thug and bookkeeper, Capone brought his skills to Torrio and Torrio promoted him to partner.

Capone was a drinker and trouble-maker. Torrio and Capone initiated an intimidation

effort on a mayoral election in Cicero to ensure their candidate, a non-reformist mayor would win.

Al Capone

In 1925, Torrio left Chicago to move back to Italy.

Capone took over the business. Capone hated being “low profile” and he

moved his headquarters to a plush suite in downtown Chicago.

Capone lived a luxurious lifestyle, spending money lavishly.

Capone’s estimated operations generated 100$ million in revenue annually.

The press loved Capone.

Al Capone

Capone was able to gain public sympathy with his personality and newspaper presence.

Many considered Capone to be a Robin Hood figure.

Capone cashed in on the anti-prohibition resentment growing, and worked as a dissident for the people.

Even though Capone was brutal, the people still respected him.

In 1926, Capone ordered his men to gun down two of his sworn enemies.

Al Capone

Unfortunately, William McSwiggin was with these men, and he was killed as well.

William McSwiggen was a prosecutor who had attempted to try Capone for a previous murder.

After this “mistake,” the people of Chicago wanted justice for the gang-dominated lawlessness.

The police had no evidence for the murders. The charges for tax-evasion were bolstered,

as the justice system needed something to hold over Capone.

Al Capone

By 1929, Capone absolutely dominated the illegal liquor trade in Chicago.

Many other gangsters wanted in on the action, especially “Bugs” Moran.

Moran tried several times to assassinate Capone.

Moran was now after Capone’s top hit man, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn.

On February 14, 1929, posing as police, McGurn’s gunmen assassinated seven of Moran’s men in cold blood.

Al Capone

Moran escaped the slaughter. Capone was in Miami at the time of the

slaughter. The public media blamed Capone for the

massacre.Capone was then dubbed “Public Enemy

Number One.”On June 5th, the US government finally

indicted Capone on 22 counts of income-tax evasion.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1927 that income gained on illegal activities was taxable.

Al Capone

The government had solid evidence against Capone.

Capone stuck a plea barging in return for a year-and-a-half sentence.

The judge in the case would not honor the plea bargain.

The case went to trial. Capone used bribery and intimidation against the

jury. The judge switched the jury at the last minute,

and the jury found Capone guilty of tax-evasion.

Al Capone

Capone spent the first two years in a federal prison in Atlanta.

He was caught bribing guards. Capone was then sent to Alcatraz in 1934. Capone's health stated to suffer when he was

moved to Alcatraz. Capone suffered from dementia compounded

from neurosyphilis. In 1939, Capone was released to a mental

hospital in Balitmore.

Al Capone

Capone was released after three years, then spent the rest of his days with his wife in Miami.

Capone died from cardiac arrest on January 25, 1947.

When Capone died, the New York Times headline read, “End of an Evil Dream.”

Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Some of the public felt that Capone had been vindicated of his participation in bootlegging.

Al Capone

Capone was a cold-blooded killer and the quintessential mobster.

Capone ordered or murdered scores of people.

Capone performed contemptible acts of violence against his enemies.

He was the most notorious gangster in American History.