Roaring 20’s IDS

Roaring 20’s IDS

1. Flappers:
1. Carefree young women with short, "bobbed" hair, heavy makeup, and short skirts. The flapper symbolized the new "liberated" woman of the 1920s.
2. Many people saw the bold, boyish look and shocking behavior of flappers as a sign of changing morals.
3. Though hardly typical of American women, the flapper image reinforced the idea that women now had more freedom.
2. Harlem Renaissance
1. black artistic movement in New York city in the 1920s, when writers, poets, painters, and musicians came together to express feelings and experiences, especially about the injustices of Jim Crow;
2. leading figures of the movement included Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes
3. Langston Hughes
1. African American poet who described the rich culture of African American life using rhythms influenced by jazz music. he wrote of African American hope and defiance, as well as the culture of Harlem and also had a major impact on the Harlem renaissance
4. Jazz Age
1. a term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald for the postwar era (1920’s) because the young people were willing to experiment with new forms of recreation and sexuality. the music blended African and European traditions to form a new kind of music
2. music became a symbol of the new and modern culture of the cities.
5. Teapot Dome
1. Scandal of Harding administration; Secretary Albert Fall went to jail for secretly leasing gov't oil reserves in Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to 2 oilmen while accepting "loans" from them ($400,000)
2. “Teapot Dome” became a shorthand label for a tangle of presidential scandals
6. Calvin Coolidge
1. former Massachusetts governor; soft-spoken,
2. Became president when Harding died of heart attack.
3. He was known for practicing a rigid economy in money and words, and acquired the name "silent cal" for being so soft-spoken.
4. He was a true republican and industrialist.
5. Believed in the government supporting big business.
7. “Hollywood”
1. stimulated consumption with alluring images of the good life
2. mass-produced fantasies shaped behavior and values, especially of the young
8. Babe Ruth
1. See below
9. F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. part of both the jazz age and the lost generation. wrote books encouraging the flapper culture, and books scorning wealthy people being self-centered
2. “this side of paradise" and "the great Gatsby”
10. Charles Lindbergh
1. An American aviator, engineer, and Pulitzer Prize winner, daredevil stunt pilot. he was famous for flying solo across the Atlantic, paving the way for future aviation development
2. flew in his small biplane, The Spirit of St. Louis,
11. Advertising
1. In 1929 corporations spent nearly two billion dollars promoting their wares via radio, billboards, newspapers, and magazines
2. Advertising business employed some six hundred thousand people. Advertising barons ranked among the corporate elite
12. Consumer credit
1. rationalized as retailers offered installment plans with fixed payment schedule
2. In the 1920s involved mostly big-ticket items such as automobiles, furniture, and refrigerators. By 1929 credit purchases accounted for 75 percent of automobile sales
3. As farmers bought automobiles, tractors, and other mechanized equipment on credit, however, the rural debt crisis worsened
13. Radio
1. The radio era began on November 2, 1920, when Pittsburgh station KDKA reported Warren Harding’s election
2. a Newark station broadcast the World Series (the New York Giants beat the New York Yankees).
3. In 1922 five hundred new stations began operations, and radio quickly became a national obsession
4. in 1926 three big corporations—General Electric, Westinghouse, and the Radio Corporation of America—formed the first radio network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
5. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) followed in 1927
6. Americans everywhere laughed at the same jokes, hummed the same tunes, and absorbed the same commercials
14. Prohibition
1. ban on alcohol consumption by the 18th Amendment, effective in 1920; failure; when repealed in 1933, prohibition was thoroughly discredited and seemed little more than a relic of another age
2. Would-be drinkers grew bolder as enforcement faltered. For rebellious young people, alcohol’s illegality increased its appeal. “
3. Organized crime helped evade the law
4. The “drys”—usually native-born Protestants—praised it as a necessary social reform. The “wets”—liberals, alienated intellectuals, Jazz Age rebels, big-city immigrants—condemned it as moralistic meddling.
15. National Origins Act
1. limitation of immigrants to keep out the "wrong sort"
2. Act which restricted (put Quotas) immigration from any one nation to two percent of the number of people already in the US. of that national origin in 1890.
3. severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and excluded Asians entirely
4. Calvin Coolidge : “America must be kept American.”
16. Sacco-Vanzetti case
1. Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants charged with murdering a guard and robbing a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. the trial lasted from 1920-1927. Convicted on circumstantial evidence, many believed they had been framed for the crime because of their anarchist and pro-union activities.
17. Scopes “monkey trial”
1. a high school biology teacher was accused of teaching Darwinism in class instead of the biblical account of creation; the trial that pitted the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution against teaching bible creationism
2. fundamentalism: literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or sect).
18. Henry Ford and assembly-line production
1. Perfected assembly-line manufacturing techniques and democratized the automobile; paid his employees higher wages
2. He made assembly line production more efficient in his rouge river plant near Detroit- a finished car would come out every 10 seconds. he helped to make car inexpensive so more Americans could buy them

Automobile/Model T/General Motors Corporation

·         60 percent of U.S. families owned cars in 1930

·         The Ford Motor Company led the market until mid-decade, when General Motors (GM) spurted ahead by touting a range of colors (Ford’s Model T came only in black) and greater comfort

·         GM’s lowest-priced car, named for French automotive designer Louis Chevrolet, proved especially popular

Fordism/corporate consolidation

·         Synonym for worldwide for American industrial might and assembly-line methods

·         By the late 1920s, over a thousand companies a year vanished through merger.

·         Corporate giants dominated the major industries: Ford, GM, and Chrysler in automobiles; General Electric and Westinghouse in electricity

wage discrimination/ “women’s professions”

·         In 1928 the average unskilled laborer in New England earned 47 cents an hour, in contrast to 28 cents in the South.

·         Women workers, blacks, Mexican-Americans, and recent immigrants clustered at the bottom of the wage scale

·         Women workers faced wage discrimination. In 1929, , a male trimmer in the meatpacking industry received 52 cents an hour, a female trimmer, 37 cents

·         secretaries, typists, or filing clerks, nursing, library work, social work, and teaching

Warren G. Harding /Andrew Mellon

·         Warren G. Harding: A genial backslapper, he enjoyed good liquor, a good poker game, and occasional trysts with his mistress, Nan Britton. His blandness and empty oratory had a soothing appeal. His appointments (Albert Fall &Charles Forbes) made his presidency corrupt. Heart attack died during presidency.

·         Andrew W. Mellon, a Pittsburgh financier, was Harding’s treasury secretary. embraced the “trickle down” theory, which held that tax cuts for the wealthy would promote business investment, stimulate the economy, and thus benefit everyone

Washington Naval Arms Conference/Kellogg-Briand Pact/Dawes Plan

·         Washington Naval Arms Conference: called by Harding in 1921 when naval race between US, Britain, and Japan was a danger, they pledged to reduce battleships but failed to prevent WW2, US and Japan recognized each other’s territory in the pacific

·         Kellogg-Briand Pact: In 1928 the United States and France, eventually joined by sixty other nations, signed it renouncing aggression and calling for the outlawing of war. Lacking any enforcement mechanism, this high-sounding document did nothing to prevent World War II

·         Dawes Plan: the American plan to loan money to Germany, who would pay their reparations to France and Britain, who would pay back their debt to America, which created a win-win for everyone, and made they people happy and thought that peace was possible.

League of Women Voters/National Woman’s Party

·         League of Women Voters: an organization which works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and to influence public policy through education and advocacy, as well as through political lobbying of congress. Died since lost support

·         National Woman’s Party: Alice Paul party proposed an equal-rights amendment to the Constitution, but other reformers argued that such an amendment could jeopardize gender-based laws protecting women worker

·         Women of the younger generation, bombarded by ads that defined liberation in terms of consumption, rejected the prewar feminists’ civic idealism. Ridiculed “the old school of fighting feminists” for their lack of “feminine charm” and their “constant clamor about equal rights.”

Vacuum cleaners/refrigerators/washing machines/tractors/automobile suburbs

·         stimulated the economy and transformed the lives of ordinary Americans. Ingrained patterns of diet, dress, travel, entertainment, and even thought changed rapidly as the economic order evolved

·         For women, city life meant electric and gas appliances that reduced household labor

Cecil B. DeMille/The Jazz Singer/Walt Disney

·         Cecil B. DeMille : an American film director and producer of both silent and sound films Road to Yesterday , Director Cecil B. De Mille, the son of an Episcopal clergyman, pioneered lavish biblical spectacles with The Ten Commandments(1923)

·         The Jazz Singer: Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927) introduced sound to the movies, a new generation of screen idols arose, including the Western hero Gary Cooper and the aloof Scandinavian beauty Greta Garbo.

·         Walt Disney: Mickey Mouse debuted in a 1928 animated cartoon, Steamboat Willy

Babe Ruth/Ty Cobb/Jack Dempsey/Charles Lindbergh/The Spirit of St. Louis

·         Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees, who hit sixty home runs in 1927; Ruth was a coarse, heavy-drinking womanizer; “the Sultan of Swat”

·          Ty Cobb, the Detroit Tigers’ manager, whose earlier record of 4,191 hits still inspired awe; Cobb, an ill-tempered racist; “the Georgia Peach”

·         prizefighters Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, whose two heavyweight fights drew thousands of fans and massive radio audiences

Sexual revolution

·         Premarital intercourse may have increased, but it remained exceptional and widely disapproved

·         Dating without marriage increased

·         Shorter skirts and make-up, women smoked, boyish look

Sinclair Lewis/Main Street/Babbitt/H.L. Mencken/Ernest Hemingway/Willa Cather

·         Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street(1920) Lewis satirized the smugness and cultural barrenness of a fictional Midwestern farm town, Gopher Prairie, based on his native Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

·         In Babbitt(1922) Lewis skewered a mythic larger city, Zenith, in the character of George F. Babbitt, a real estate agent trapped in middle-class  conformity.

·         H.L. Mencken: The American Mercury magazine, championed writers like Lewis and Theodore Dreiser while ridiculing small-town America, Protestant fundamentalism, the middle class “Booboisie,” and all politicians

·         Ernest Hemingway: seriously wounded in July 1918 while serving in northern Italy as a youthful Red Cross volunteer. wrote In The Sun Also Rises (1926) portraying a group of American and English young people, variously damaged by the war, as they drift around Spain. His A Farewell to Arms (1929), depicts the war’s futility and politicians’ empty rhetoric.

The Cotton Club/Louis Armstrong

·         The Cotton Club, controlled by gangsters, featured black performers but barred most blacks from the audience. was a Harlem nightspot where many African American entertainers got their start

·         Louis Armstrong: Trumpeter and singer “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” groups in the late 1920s decisively influenced the future of jazz

Georgia O’Keefe/Aaron Copland/George Gershwin/Robert Goddard

·         Georgia O’Keefe: a pioneer of modernism in America, she first produced largely abstract work, adopting a more figurative style in the 1920s. Her best-known paintings depict enlarged studies, particularly of flowers, and are often regarded as being sexually symbolic.

·         Aaron Copland: America’s best known classical composer. Created an accessible style with a distinctly American identity. He used jazz influences, folk-songs, hymns, and familiar songs with 20th century techniques such as thin textures, wide intervals, and using silence.

·         George Gershwin: a twentieth-century American composer known for putting elements of jazz into forms of classical music, such as the concerto. his works include rhapsody in blue, an American in Paris, and the music to the opera porgy and bess. together with his brother, Ira, he wrote many musical comedies

·         Robert Goddard: father of modern rocketry, 1st to launch a liquid fuel rocket (march, 1926)

Billy Sunday/Aimee Semple McPherson

·         Billy Sunday: preacher and former pro baseball player- key figure in the prohibition movement

·         Aimee Semple McPherson: evangelist, founder of four square church of god, 1920s, used Hollywood like tactics to get more followers, was popular on the radio, faked death. appealed to poor white people, practiced healing, anti evolution

Ku Klux Klan/Marcus Garvey/Universal Negro Improvement Association

·         KKK: anti-modern reactionary group; wielded substantial political power in the 1920s; white supremacy, racism toward immigrants, blacks, Jews

·         Marcus Garvey: Harlem political leader, founder of the united Negro improvement association (unia), supported "back-to-Africa" movement. deported to Jamaica in 1927.

·         UNIA: foster African American economic independence and establish an independent black homeland in Africa

Volstead Act/speakeasies/Al Capone

·         Volstead Act: the act specified that "no person shall manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess any intoxicating liquor except as authorized by this act." it did not specifically prohibit the purchase or use of intoxicating liquors

·         Speakeasies: secret bars where alcohol could be purchased illegally, and rumrunners routinely smuggled liquor from Canada and the West Indies.

·         Chicago gangster Al Capone controlled a network of speakeasies that generated annual profits of $60 million

Election of 1928/Al Smith/Herbert Hoover/American Individualism

·         Election of 1928: republican: Herbert Hoover and democrat: al Smith. Republicans identified themselves with the booming economy of the 1920s, and smith's campaign, anti-catholic prejudice. Hoover won in a landslide victory

·         Al Smith: first roman catholic and Irish-American to run for president as a major party nominee. emphasized his lowly beginnings, identified himself with immigrants, and campaigned as a man of the people

·         Herbert Hoover: promising the American people prosperity and attempted to first deal with the depression by trying to restore public faith in the community. called on businesses to help solve the situation rather than the government. Americans felt he did little to help them

·         “American Individualism” : (1922) Hoover’s book that set out ideology that should drive American policy, values of public service, neighborliness, self help, volunteerism, cooperation, stressed individualism as part of American character, these values translated into American free market system. key to success was unbridled initiative. government should be small, self regulated, and should promote business