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