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Watch the video. How did the 1920s affect how America is perceived today?

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Watch the video. How did the 1920s affect how America is perceived today?

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The Roaring 20's: Crash Course US History #32

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IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ACCESS THE VIDEO, READ THIS ARTICLE AND ANSWER: How did the 1920s affect how America is perceived today?

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IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ACCESS THE VIDEO, READ THIS ARTICLE AND ANSWER: How did the 1920s affect how America is perceived today?

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The Roaring Twenties was a period in history of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar "consumer society." People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang! Many Americans were uncomfortable with this new, urban, sometimes racy "mass culture;" in fact, for many-even most-people in the United States, the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration. However, for a small handful of young people in the nation's big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed.

The "New Woman"

The most familiar symbol of the "Roaring Twenties" is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said what might be termed "unladylike" things, in addition to being more sexually "free" than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms. They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920. Millions of women worked in white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children. And new machines and technologies like the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgery of household work.

Did you know? Because the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture and sell it, many people stockpiled liquor before the ban went into effect. Rumor had it that the Yale Club in New York City had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.

The Birth of Mass Culture

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and they spent it on consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothes and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios. The first commercial radio station in the U.S., Pittsburgh's KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920; three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households. People also went to the movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities. In 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers' needs.

The Jazz Age

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them "bedrooms on wheels.") What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom, the flea hop

Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music's "vulgarity" and "depravity" (and the "moral disasters" it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor. The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) chronicled the Jazz Age.

Prohibition

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of "intoxicating liquors," and at 12 A.M. 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 "intoxication beverages" with more than 0.5% alcohol. This drove the liquor trade underground-now, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies instead of ordinary bars-where it was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized-crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago's police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation's cities. For instance, to the so-called "Drys," beer was known as "Kaiser brew." Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time.
READ MORE: See All The Crafty Ways Americans Hid Alcohol During Prohibition
The "Cultural Civil War"

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. The Great Migration of African Americans from the Southern countryside to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of black culture-jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance-discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people in places like Indiana and Illinois joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. To them, the Klan represented a return to all the "values" that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling.

Likewise, an anti-Communist "Red Scare" in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist, or anti-immigrant, hysteria. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).

These conflicts-what one historian has called a "cultural Civil War" between city-dwellers and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, blacks and whites, "New Women" and advocates of old-fashioned family values-are perhaps the most important part of the story of the Roaring Twenties.

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The Roaring Twenties was a period in history of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar "consumer society."

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Read the poem below and answer: What are your first impressions of the poem? What concern or issue is Hughes trying to highlight?

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Read the poem below and answer: What are your first impressions of the poem? What concern or issue is Hughes trying to highlight?

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CROSS

BY LANGSTON HUGHES
My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.

If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.

My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I’m gonna die,
Being neither white nor black?

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Read the article below and answer:  WHAT FACTORS ARE WE LOOKING AT AND STUDYING IN MARXIST THEORY?

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Read the article below and answer:  WHAT FACTORS ARE WE LOOKING AT AND STUDYING IN MARXIST THEORY?

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Marxist Criticism

Whom Does It Benefit?

Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: "Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience" (Tyson 277). Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit? The elite? The middle class? Marxist critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes are oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.

The Material Dialectic

The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This belief system maintains that "...what drives historical change are the material realities of the economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art that is built upon that economic base" (Richter 1088).

Marx asserts that "...stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build into the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new society upon the old" (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must continue: there will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working) classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression - art, music, movies, etc.

The Revolution

The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics where capitalism is abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be led by the working class (others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once the elite and middle class are overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society where everyone owns everything (socialism - not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist Communism).

Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary theory, Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.

Typical questions:

Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?

What is the social class of the author?

Which class does the work claim to represent?

What values does it reinforce?

What values does it subvert?

What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?

What social classes do the characters represent?

How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

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How does this image capture the social and economic changes occurring in the 1920s? Be specific by pointing how specific things in this image are highlighting or responding to specific movements, reforms, and happenings.

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How does this image capture the social and economic changes occurring in the 1920s? Be specific by pointing how specific things in this image are highlighting or responding to specific movements, reforms, and happenings.

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City Activities with Subway, from America Today, 1930–31 / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of AXA Equitable, 2012.

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How were the 1920s a cultural reset for women?

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How were the 1920s a cultural reset for women?

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No cultural symbol of the 1920s is more recognizable than the flapper. A young woman with a short "bob" hairstyle, cigarette dangling from her painted lips, dancing to a live jazz band. Flappers romped through the Roaring Twenties, enjoying the new freedoms ushered in by the end of the First World War and the dawn of a new era of prosperity, urbanism and consumerism.

The decade kicked off with the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave white women the vote. Women also joined the workforce in increasing numbers, participated actively in the nation's new mass consumer culture, and enjoyed more freedom in their personal lives. Despite the heady freedoms embodied by the flapper, real liberation and equality for women remained elusive in the 1920s, and it would be left to later generations of women to fully benefit from the social changes the decade set in motion.

The exact origins of the word 'flapper' remain unknown.

While the exact origin of the term "flapper" is unknown, it is assumed to have originated in Britain before World War I, when it was used to describe gawky young teenage girls. After the war, the word would become synonymous with the new breed of 1920s women who bobbed their hair above their ears, wore skirts that skimmed their knees, smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol while dancing in jazz clubs, always surrounded by admiring male suitors.

Flappers were defined by how they dressed, danced and talked.

As Joshua M. Zeitz writes in Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity and the Women Who Made America Modern, flapper fashion wouldn't have been complete without the creeping hemline, which by 1925 or 1936 reached a shocking height of 14 inches above the ground. Sheer stockings, sometimes even rolled below the knees, completed the scandalous look.

Flappers wore their skirts shorter so they could show off their legs and ankles-but also so they could dance. They particularly loved the Charleston, a 1920s dance craze involving waving arms and fast-moving feet that had been pioneered by African Americans, first in the South and later in Harlem.

Dancing proved challenging in traditional women's fashion, not only with long dresses but also with traditional corsets that tightly bound a woman's midsection and accentuated her waist. Around 1923, French designer Coco Chanel introduced what became known as the "garçonne look," featuring not just high hemlines but dropped or nonexistent waistlines and straight, sleeveless tops. With lighter and more flexible undergarments that created a straight, slim silhouette, this new design allowed women to dance freely.

It wasn't just their fashion that made flappers; It was also their behavior and attitude. Flappers were young, fast-moving, fast-talking, reckless and unfazed by previous social conventions or taboos. They smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, rode in and drove cars and kissed and "petted" with different men.

Women move to cities and into the workforce, but stayed in traditional 'women's roles.'

The flapper was born out of a growing landscape in America. By 1920, for the first time in the nation's history, more Americans (51 percent) were living in cities rather than in rural areas. As part of the nation's urbanization and economic growth, more and more women were entering the workforce. By 1929, more than a quarter of all women, and more than half of single women, were gainfully employed.

For the most part, however, the increase in working women didn't represent a challenge to traditional gender roles. Nearly a third of working women in the 1920s were domestic servants, while the rest were clerical workers, factory workers, store clerks and other "feminized" professions. "Women are working, but they're working in what are called 'women's jobs,'" says Lynn Dumenil, professor emerita of history at Occidental College and author of The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I.

Even women who blazed a trail in politics faced barriers due to their gender: Most female officeholders worked primarily on what were seen as "women's issues," preventing them from acquiring too much power within their political parties. It progressed though, with a handful of women would be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (none to the Senate), and many more served at the state and local levels.

Not only were women hitting a glass ceiling with job fields, but workplace discrimination and wage inequality also ran rampant throughout the '20s. As Gail Collins writes in her book America's Women, the average weekly wage for men in 1927 was $29.35, compared to only $17.34 for women.

While their wages were not high, women joined the new mass consumer culture.

Their wages might not have matched that of their male counterparts, but working women used their purchasing power to join the nation's new mass consumer culture. "The nature of domestic life changes for urban women, certainly, in the '20s," Dumenil says. By 1927, nearly two-thirds of American homes would have electricity, and new consumer goods like the washing machine, refrigerator and vacuum cleaner were revolutionizing housework and home life. Women were the major target audience for many of the new products, including household appliances, clothing and cosmetics.

The rise of the automobile contributed to the sense of freedom and possibility that suffused the Roaring Twenties. "The car is central to Americans' lives in the 1920s, across the board," Dumenil explains. "Not everyone can afford one, but consumer credit also expands in the '20s," leading to a new generation of American debtors. Meanwhile, the information revolution brought about by the emergence of the radio allowed a newly vibrant, youth-centered, urban culture to spread across the United States.

The flapper lifestyle also affected marriages and sexuality.

Housework wasn't the only factor changing for women on the home front. "The nature of marriage starts to change," Dumenil explains. "There's more of a sense, not of equality, but more of companionship between men and women in marriage. The assumption about women's sexuality changes." Birth control was becoming more widely available, at least for more privileged women, which helped limit family size and allowed women the freedom to explore their sexuality without facing the consequences of unwanted pregnancies.

"At least for some women, there's more freedom in their personal lives [in the 1920s]," Dumenil says. "A little less restriction. And it's not just about sex, although that's part of it, but clothing, dancing, the social world and the like."

This freedom had limits, however, and marriage always remained the ultimate goal. As Collins writes, only about 10 percent of women in the 1920s kept their jobs after marriage, most of them working-class women whose family needed their paycheck.

Dumenil also points out that the fear of one's reputation still worried flappers. "There's a sense that you have to be really careful about your sexual activity, for fear that you'll lose your reputation and won't get married...So the flapper's wildness is always, I would say, contained by that."

Zelda Fitzgerald and the end of the Roaring Twenties.

Arguably the most famous flapper of all was Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, who, before meeting and marrying the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, spent her nights whirling around country club dances (and sneaking out to drink and "neck") with any number of young Alabama gentlemen. After their marriage in 1920, the hard-partying couple lived the ultimate Roaring Twenties lifestyle in both New York City and France. Though Zelda was an artist, a dancer and a writer herself, she would be best known as the muse inspiring her husband's vivid stories of life in the Jazz Age, which are often credited with creating the enduring image of the flapper. By the late '20s, however, Scott's drinking and Zelda's mental illness drove them apart. In 1930, Zelda had a nervous breakdown, and she would spend the rest of her life in sanatoriums.

In some ways, Zelda's decline paralleled that of the flapper image she embodied. The stock market crash of October 1929 effectively marked the end of the Roaring Twenties, an era F. Scott Fitzgerald would later call "the most expensive orgy in history." By the onset of the Great Depression, Hollywood and the mass media had moved on from the flappers, and in the 1930s women's fashion would revert to more traditional styles, with accentuated waists and longer hemlines.

The spirit of the flappers lives on.

Some changes that occurred in the 1920s endured. Though the Depression wiped out much of America's prosperity and consumer confidence, the nation's mass consumer culture would eventually re-emerge, stronger than ever.

In the decades to come, more and more women would pursue higher education and enter political life as activists, lobbyists or lawmakers. The transformation of sexual mores and family life that occurred in the 1920s also persisted. "Changes in the family, the movement toward smaller families, birth control, fewer restraints in private life," Dumenil says-these changes were "permanent."

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