Life in the Roaring TwentiesChapter 13: pp. 434 – 457Ms. Garratt – American History

Triumph of Temperance Movement: Prohibition

•18th amendment•Volstead Act – difficult to enforce•Speakeasies•Led to lawlessness

▫Bootleggers▫Organized crime – Al Capone

•By mid-1920s only 19% supported Prohibition•The rest felt it caused more problems than it

solved•Was repealed in 1933 by the 21st amendment

Religion: Fundamentalism

•Literal interpretation of the Bible•Skeptical of scientific discoveries such as

evolution•Religious revivals in the South & West•Evangelists “revived” spirituality

▫Billy Sunday▫Aimee Semple McPherson

Billy Sunday

Aimee Semple McPherson

Scopes Trial 1925

•John Scopes deliberately violated the Butler Act which made it illegal to teach evolution

•ACLA challenged it in the courts.

•Called “trial of the century” - broadcast over the radio

•Clarence Darrow & Wm Bryan Jennings

Twenties Woman•More independent•Rebellious•Flappers•New roles for

women•New appliances &

inventions lightened the load at home

•Marriage romance-based

From Gibson Girl to Flapper

Public Education

•Prior to 1920s education was for college-bound students

•Now vocational training was offered•Enrollment skyrocketed•Americanization

Rise of Print Media

• Increased leisure & literacy led to new magazines (Reader’s Digest, New Yorker)

• Syndicates (chains of newspapers under centralized direction) proliferated

• Tabloids (larger print ideal for subways)

• Tabloids competed for readers which led to sensationalizing news & events.

• Birth of major American publishing companies (Simon & Schuster, Morrow, Viking, Harcourt & Brace,

• Book of the Month club

New Leisure Pastimes

Lindbergh

• 1st person to fly across the Atlantic – 33 ½ hours

• Became hero overnight

• Son kidnapped & ransomed.

• Became another “trial of the century

• Lindbergh anti-Semitic and sympathetic to Nazis

• Received a medal from Hitler

Lindbergh’s Solo Flight 1927

Entertainment of the 1920s

•With more leisure came more entertainment▫The Jazz Age▫Movies▫Sports▫Dance Marathons and Charleston▫Blues & Jazz▫New board games – Monopoly▫Harlem Renaissance

Movies 1920s

Harlem Renaissance

• Black artistic expression of their own identity & anger toward racism.

• Literary & artistic movement expressed itself in cafes & clubs in Harlem – would no longer accept 2nd-class citizenship

• Notable AA writers emerged:▫Langston Hughes, Claude McKay▫Zora Neale Hurston

Harlem Renaissance

The Lost Generation•Writers began to attack materialism

(more importance given to $ & material goods than intellectual & spiritual concerns)

•Many writers left to live in Paris•Gertrude Stein told them “You are all a

lost generation.”•Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbit” about a

businessperson whose deepest obsessions are determined by advertising

•Great Gatsby – about empty lives of those with too much $ who are purposeless

African-American Goals• Nat’l Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fought for civil rights & anti-lynching laws

• Founded by W.E.B du Bois

Marcus Garvey

• UNIA

African American Performers

Prejudice + Hatred = KKK

Ku Klux Klan rises again

•KKK flourished in small towns where prohibition & fundamentalism was strong

•KKK added Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, Asians to its list

•Cross burnings, tar & feathering•“Klan mainly provided a fellowship of

prejudice for ill-educated men whose lives offered few other satisfactions.”

•Klan was similar to fascist movements in Germany & Italy which emphasized nat’lm & racial purity