Photo Credit: sapiensman/old_pictures/New_York4%20(Woolworth).JPG

Photo Credit: http://www.sapiensman.com/old_pictures/New_York4%20(Woolworth).JPG

American Society in the 1920s

For the first time in American history, more

people lived in urban areas than rural areas. Change centered in the

cities, then “trickled down” to rural society.

New York CityCirca 1920

Photo Credit: http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/doc-content/images/edison-patent-light-bulb-m.jpg and

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am485_98/brady/Edison/miracle.html

Original Edison light bulb.

• Technological advances changed

our behavior and our expectations.

• Electric lights allowed people to

work late and go out for entertainment.

Photo Credit: http://www.pastforward.ca/images/radio.jpg and http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/jb/jazz/jb_jazz_radio_3_m.jpg

• Radio led to the creation of a “mass media” society where everyone

received the same information at the same time. “NBC” and “CBS” were

born at this time.

• Some say this destroyed individuality and turned us into a society of conformists

– a group of people that think and act the same.

Photo Credit: http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Engineering_Graphics/_EG2000/vacuum/History.htm

Air-Way Sanitizer, 1920

Hoover Model 700, 1926

• Household appliances – made it easier to cook and

clean, but also changed our standards for cooking

and cleanliness.

Photo Credits: http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/modern/fridge.html

Photo Credits: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug00/rekas/attic/wash.htm , http://www.mondakheritagecenter.org/images/history/toast20s.jpg and

http://www.toaster.org/images/toasters/perc-o-toaster.jpeg

Armstrong Electrical Co. Perc-o-Toaster

The aviation industry grew rapidly after the Wright brothers’ successful flight at Kitty

Hawk in 1903.

Photo Credit: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/3%20men%20starting%20airmail%20plane.jpg

After WWI the government supported

the development of airplanes and airports

for use in delivering the mail. Air mail plane of

the 1920s

Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis

Photo Credit: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/Time/1929/lindbergh.jpg

The successful trans-Atlantic flight of

Charles Lindbergh led to popular

support for commercial flying.

Photo Credit: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/Time/1929/lindbergh.jpg

Charles Lindbergh’s May 20-21, 1927 transatlantic flight simply seemed to sum up this decade of tremendous societal change.

The adoption of the moving assembly line by carmaker Henry Ford divided the

manufacture of the car into single, simple tasks that any unskilled worker could do.

● The first Model T sold in 1908 for $850. By 1925, one Model T was produced every

10 seconds and the price was reduced to $295.

● The Model T was also called the “Tin Lizzie.”

Photo Credit: http://www.themediadrome.com/content/articles/history_articles/ford.htm

Henry Ford with the Model T.

1908 Model T

Ford’s first factory.

.

Automobiles led to growth of the suburbs as people could live farther from their jobs. This also led to traffic “congestion” in the cities as people traveled to and from work.

The “automobile” created millions of jobs, not just in the automobile factory …

-aluminum production - glass production - car sales - service stations - road

materials - road building - tourist stops - mo-tels … just to name a few!!!

Photo Credit: http://www.themediadrome.com/content/articles/history_articles/ford.htm and http://www.knowitall.org/schistory/Images/HistoryPics/SC-E40key.jpg and

http://www.isennockauction.com/2006/june/17/Mail0002.JPG

Model T assembly line in 1913. (Highland Park,

Michigan)

1920s traffic

Photo Credit: http://www.laheritage.org/AgeOfMechanization/Color/Mech53.jpg and http://www.artistsdomain.com/dev/eere/web/images/timeline/1920/motel.jpg

The mass production and consumption of consumer goods greatly increased societal wealth. Consumer credit (charging things) increased the feeling of prosperity as consumers bought things

and planned to pay for them in the future.

Advertisements played upon the emotions of consumers and manipulated them into purchasing

even more.

Photo Credit: http://bss.sfsu.edu/tygiel/Hist427/427ads/listerine.jpg and http://homepage.ntlworld.com/munwai/lhtoaster%201931.jpg

Photo Credit: http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Arrow-Shirts-Advertising-c-1920-Posters_i844819_.htm and http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/BH/BH06/BH0645-72dpi.jpeg and

http://istil.univ-lyon1.fr/images/productique/lizzie.jpg

Even workers in the factories prospered as their wages grew during the decade and they began to

buy stock and receive benefits at work.

As Americans began to work less hours, yet earn more pay, they had time to

pursue entertainment (each with its own particular hero) .

Photo Credit: http://www.turtletrader.com/images/babe-ruth-swing.jpg and http://www.espace-martial.com/album/data/media/19/jack_dempsey.jpg

Jack Dempsey

Babe Ruth

Photo Credit: http://www.prcc.edu/history/sports/1923football_2.jpg and http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/whq/35.4/images/rader_fig01b.jpg

1920s Football

The writers of the 1920s were often critical of the modern world and modern man, which they viewed

with disillusion as empty, hollow, tragic, conforming or “lost.” Some of these writers left America to live in

Europe and are called “The Lost Generation.”

Writers to know are

Author Ernest HemingwayAuthor F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author Gertrude SteinPoet T. S. Eliot

Playwright Eugene O’Neill

Photo Credit: http://catalog.knox.edu/archives/rare_books/hemingway.jpg and http://www.thirdfactory.net/images/stein.jpg

Gertrude Stein

Ernest Hemingway

Movies … were new …

Photo Credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/ThedaBara-Cleopatra.jpg/290px-ThedaBara-Cleopatra.jpg

… and there was little

censorship, so they were very

risque.

Silent film “megastar” Theda Bara as Cleopatra in “dubious costume.”

Photo Credit: http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html

Movie scenes such as these from Rudolph Valentino’s “Sheik” and “The Son of the Sheik” were very

“racy.”

Photo Credit: http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/media/Jp7QWpHA2GZ.jpg and http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/thc/5a43000/5a43600/5a43609r.jpg

Telephone OperatorCirca 1920

Secretary typing documents.Circa 1920

Some women went to work – most jobs were “lower” level white collar, clerical jobs.

Some women went to college.

“In 1921 there 4 women in the Physics department <at MIT>, Evelyn (Clift) McKnight, Elzura Chandler,

Louise Eyre, and Dorothy Weeks …”

See http://www.mit-amita.org/esr/prewar.html

The 19th Amendment

gave women the right to vote.

Photo Credit: http://www2.una.edu/womensstudies/images/suffragettes.jpg

Suffragettes celebrating the 19th Amendment,

August 31, 1920

Photo Credit: http://digilander.libero.it/twenties/Immagini/JPG/jazzbaby.jpg

Women had more disposable income, thus more freedom.

“Flappers” represented the new, modern young woman who earned her own money

and had fun.

Traditionalists viewed the flappers as morally “loose”

and the fundamentalist movement used the flapper

movement as one of the potential danger of “social

progress”

Photo Credit: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/iseriouslyhateyou/flappers.jpg

However, the modern girl’s ultimate goal was still …

to find a husband.

African Americans

• continued the Great Migration North after WWI, mainly to Chicago, St. Louis, New

York City, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Washington DC, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Boston, doubling the

African American population of these cities by 1920.

• African Americans who remained in the South continued to farm as farm owners,

tenants or share croppers.

African Americans

• Some African Americans attended college, held higher paying jobs and were elected to public office. Most held undesirable low paying jobs and lived in substandard housing.

• Race riots increased as African Americans moved Northward.

• For protection, African Americans formed “cities within cities” (such as Harlem).

African Americans

Text Credit: http://www.africanamericans.com/HarlemRenaissance.htm

"From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African Americans occurred in

all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper

Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem

Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem

Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African Americans and redefined African American expression.”

Photo Credit: http://images.amazon.com/images/G/covers/0/81/098/128/0810981289.l.gif http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/motley.html

“Blues” (1929) Archibald Motley

Photo Credit: http://www.queenslibrary.org/branches/Langston_Hughes/Images/6.jpg http://drlarryross.bizland.com/Josephine_Baker.jpg

http://www.yellow-springs.k12.oh.us/ys-mls/_borders/armstrong.jpg

Poet Langston HughesEntertainer Josephine BakerMusician Louis Armstrong

Text Credit: http://www.empire.k12.ca.us/capistrano/Mike/capmusic/modern/american%20composers/ellington/elld006.jpg and

http://image.com.com/mp3/images/cover/200/drg700/g729/g72939zh2ls.jpg and http://nfo.net/usa/cotton.jpg

WWI showed African Americans that blacks had rights in other countries.

“African Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become

the “New Negro” – someone who exhibited cultural pride and determination to be assertive in work, politics, the military,

arts and letters.

Text Credit: http://www.ashp.cuny.edu/video/images/up10-11_demo.jpg

Spurred into action, the NAACP lobbied for Congress to pass an anti-lynching law.

Though Congress failed to pass the law, the continued efforts of the NAACP did raise

public awareness of the issue and reduce the number of lynchings that took place.

Photo Credit: http://www.ladedios.com.ar/images/MARCUS-GARVEY_0.jpg

Intellectual Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro

Improvement Association (UNIA) which promoted black

pride and unity. Garvey advocated education and separation from whites.

Photo Credit: http://www.ladedios.com.ar/images/MARCUS-GARVEY_0.jpg

Believing that justice would always be denied to blacks in America, Garvey proposed to lead his followers to Liberia,

Africa.

Though Garvey’s proposals were not widely accepted, he did

inspire African Americans with a sense of pride which played a

vital role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and

1960s.

As during the Progressive Era, advancements for African Americans were motivated and

achieved by African Americans within African American communities. The U.S. government

did not officially play a role in protecting or assisting African Americans.

Mexican Americans

• Some Mexican Americans attended college, held higher paying jobs and were elected to public office. In Texas, about 15% of Tejanos were considered “middle class.” Most, however, held undesirable low paying jobs, lived in poor housing and had little ability to move.

• A small group of Mexican American bourgeoisie (professionals) encouraged the celebration of Mexican heritage and culture. (This did not grow like the Harlem Renaissance.)

Mexican Americans

Photo Credit: http://www.lib.msu.edu/coll/main/chavez/mlmv.htm http://www.ilstu.edu/~keciani/Assignments/History%20262%20Assignments.htm

Mexican American women working in a cannery.

Industrial Workers

• did not initially prosper but did so as the decade progressed.

• The production of consumer goods could not keep up with demand in the early 1920s. Prices rose but wages did not keep up with prices. Workers went on strike for higher wages.

• Mainstream America blamed the strikes on the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia leading to a widespread fear of communist revolution in America (the Red Scare).

European Americans

• The Red Scare made European Americans targets of racism and discrimination.

• Laws (such as the Johnson Reed Immigration Act of 1924) were passed to limit their immigration and suppress their cultures.

• European immigrants determined to fight discrimination earned citizenship in great numbers and began voting.

Photo Credit: http://www.darienps.org/teachers/jburt/apus/approject2/1920a/bad_files/image004.jpg

Farmers

• Though prosperous early in the decade, farmers became less so as the decade progressed.

• Farm production remained high (due to mechanization) though the demand for food from Europe decreased.

• Too much supply = low prices. No profit for the farmer.