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Women could vote.
Historic Jazz age.
National wealth double in the 20's.
100 million phonographs sold in 1927.
Estimated 3/4 of Americans visited a movie theater weekly.
1/5 Americans owned a car.
Al Capone, the famous mafia leader.
Mass culture.
The "new woman."(Flapper)
First commercial radio station in 1920. 3 years later there were another 500.
People bought goods with credit.

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Flappers: The 'New Woman'

Perhaps 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 "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, though it would be decades before Black women in the South could fully exercise their right to vote without Jim Crow segregation laws.

Millions of women worked in blue-collar jobs, as well as 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.

In 1912, an estimated 16 percent of American households had electricity; by the mid-1920s, more than 60 percent did. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgeries 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.

Fashion, Fads and Film Stars

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend-and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, Pittsburgh's KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920. Two years later Warren G. Harding became the first president to address the nation by radio -and 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 swarmed to see Hollywood movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week, and actors like Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead became household names.

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.

By 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-as did the burgeoning oil industry.

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 and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club 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 chronicled the hedonism and excitement of the Jazz Age-Fitzgerald once claimed that the 1920s were "the most expensive orgy in history"-while other writers, artists, musicians and designers ushered in a new era of experimental Art Deco and modernist creativity.

Prohibition Era

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 percent alcohol.

This drove the liquor trade underground-now, instead of ordinary bars, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies, where liquor 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

Immigration and Racism in the 1920s

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. An anti- Communist "Red Scare" in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist and 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).

Immigrants were hardly the only targets in this decade. The Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South 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, not just in the South but across the country, joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

By the middle of the decade, the KKK had two million members, many of whom believed the Klan represented a return to all the "values" that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. More specifically, the 1920s represented economic and political uplift for Black Americans that threatened the social hierarchy of Jim Crow oppression.

Early Civil Rights Activism

During this decade, Black Americans sought stable employment, better living conditions and political participation. Many who migrated to the North found jobs in the automobile, steel, shipbuilding and meatpacking industries. But with more work came more exploitation.

In 1925, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph founded the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to draw attention to the discriminatory hiring practices and working conditions for Blacks. And as housing demands increased for Black people in the North, so did discriminatory housing practices that led to a rise of urban ghettos, where Black Americans-excluded from white neighborhoods-were relegated to inadequate, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions.

Black Americans battled for political and civil rights throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. The NAACP launched investigations into Black disenfranchisement in the 1920 presidential election, as well as surges of white mob violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The NAACP also pushed for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, a law to make lynching a federal crime, but it was defeated by a Senate filibuster in 1922. A political milestone for Black Americans finally occurred when Oscar De Priest, a Chicago Republican, became the first Black congressman since Reconstruction to be elected to the House of Representatives in 1928.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in several demographic shifts, or what one historian 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.

But coming immediately after the hardships of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic, the Roaring Twenties also gave many middle-class Americans an unprecedented taste of freedom, unbridled fun and upward economic mobility unsurpassed in U.S. history.

Sources

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably). Smithsonian Magazine.
The Roaring Twenties. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Roaring 20s. PBS: American Experience.

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Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age - HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a Jazz Age burst of prosperity and freedom for flappers and others during the Prohibition era, until the economy crashed in 1929.

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The 1920's was a time of segregation and skepticism regarding immigration.  Some of the racial tensions were spurred on by the KKK.  In 1919 the Volstead Act was passed restricting Americans from drinking Alcohol.  This period was known as Prohibition and lasted throughout the 1920's.

The 1920's, however, would see a rise in Jazz music and dance. American's also spent more money on consumer goods including electric refrigerators, radios, and most importantly the automobile.

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The Great Depression

The stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (also known as Black Tuesday) provided a dramatic end to an era of unprecedented, and unprecedentedly lopsided, prosperity.

The disaster had been brewing for years, though different historians and economists offer different explanations for the crisis: Some blame the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth and purchasing power in the 1920s, while others blame the decade's agricultural slump or the international instability caused by World War I.

In any case, the nation was woefully unprepared for the crash. For the most part, banks were unregulated and uninsured. The government offered no insurance or compensation for the unemployed, so when people stopped earning, they stopped spending. The consumer economy ground to a halt and an ordinary recession became the Great Depression, the defining event of the 1930s.

Dust Bowl

The 1930s saw natural disasters as well as manmade ones: For most of the decade, people in the Plains states suffered through the worst drought in American history, as well as hundreds of severe dust storms, or "black blizzards," that carried away the soil and made it all but impossible to plant crops.

By 1940, 2.5 million people had abandoned their farms in this Dust Bowl and headed west to California. The crisis gave the decade an unfortunate nickname: the "Dirty Thirties."

Other natural disasters struck more quickly: The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane hit the Florida Keys as the most violent hurricane to ever make landfall in the Atlantic basin. The New England Hurricane of 1938, also a Category 5 storm, caused property losses roughly equal to $5 billion in today's money.

Herbert Hoover

President Herbert Hoover was slow to respond to these events. Though he believed that the "crazy and dangerous" behavior of Wall Street speculators had contributed in a significant way to the crisis, he also believed that solving such problems was not really the federal government's job.

As a result, most of the solutions he suggested were voluntary: He asked state governments to undertake public works projects; he asked big companies to keep workers' pay steady and he asked labor unions to stop demanding raises. The shantytowns that were popping up as more and more people lost their homes were nicknamed " Hoovervilles " as an insult to the president's hands-off policies.

The crisis worsened, and life for the average American during the Great Depression was challenging. Between 1930 and 1933, more than 9,000 banks closed in the U.S., taking with them more than $2.5 billion in deposits. Meanwhile, unemployed people did whatever they could, like standing in charity breadlines and selling apples on street corners, to feed their families.

Roosevelt's New Deal

By 1932, many Americans were fed up with Hoover and what his political opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt called his "hear nothing, see nothing, do nothing government. The New York governor and Democratic presidential challenger, Roosevelt promised a change: "I pledge myself," he said, "to a New Deal for the American people."

This New Deal would use the power of the federal government to try and stop the economy's downward spiral. Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election handily.

The new president acted swiftly during his first hundred days in office to "wage a war against the emergency" just as though "we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." First, he shored up the nation's banks.

Then he began to propose more comprehensive reforms. By June, Roosevelt and Congress had passed 15 major laws-including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Home Owners' Loan Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act-that fundamentally reshaped many aspects of the American economy.

Additionally, the Civilian Conservation Corps gave millions of young men employment on environmental and public works projects. These decisive actions also did much to restore Americans' confidence that, as Roosevelt had declared in his inaugural address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

American Culture During the 1930s

During the Depression, most people did not have much money to spare. However, by 1938 about 80 percent of American households had radios-and listening to the radio was free.

The most popular broadcasts were those that distracted listeners from their everyday struggles: comedy programs like "Amos 'n' Andy," soap operas and sporting events. Swing music encouraged people to cast aside their troubles and dance.

Jazz Age bandleaders like Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie and Duke Ellington drew crowds of people to Art Deco ballrooms and dance halls around the country. And when Prohibition ended in 1933-freeing up legal sales of liquor-cocktail lounges and barrooms were happy to quench the national thirst for alcohol.

Even though money was tight, people kept going to see Hollywood movies-now being made in color. Musicals, screwball comedies and hard-boiled gangster pictures from the Golden Age of Hollywood-films like "The Wizard of Oz," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Casablanca," "King Kong," "Gone With the Wind" and the animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" from Walt Disney -offered audiences an escape from some of the grim realities of life in the 1930s.

The Second New Deal

President Roosevelt's early efforts had begun to restore Americans' confidence, but they had not ended the Depression. In the spring of 1935, he launched a second, more aggressive set of federal programs, sometimes called the Second New Deal.

The Works Progress Administration provided jobs for unemployed people and built new public works like bridges, post offices, schools, highways and parks. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, gave workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively for higher wages and fairer treatment.

The Social Security Act of 1935 guaranteed pensions to some older Americans, set up a system of unemployment insurance and stipulated that the federal government would help care for dependent children and the disabled.

Roosevelt's Second Term

In 1936, while campaigning for a second term, President Roosevelt told a roaring crowd at Madison Square Garden that "The forces of 'organized money' are unanimous in their hate for me-and I welcome their hatred."

He went on: "I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match, [and] I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces have met their master."

Roosevelt won the 1936 election by a landslide. Still, the Depression dragged on. Workers grew more militant: In December 1936, for example, the United Auto Workers started a sit-down strike at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan that lasted for 44 days and spread to some 150,000 autoworkers in 35 cities.

By 1937, to the dismay of most corporate leaders, some 8 million workers had joined unions and were loudly demanding their rights.

The Depression Ends

By the end of the 1930s, the New Deal had come to an end. Growing Congressional opposition made it difficult for President Roosevelt to introduce new programs. At the same time, as the threat of war in Europe loomed on the horizon- Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and invaded Poland in 1939 -the president turned his attention away from domestic politics.

In December 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entered World War II. The war effort stimulated American industry and the Great Depression was over.

Sources

Timeline: 1930s. Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society.
Breaking News of the 1930s. PBS: American Experience.
List of 1930's Major News Events in History. The People History.

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1930s: Music, Movies & Great Depression - HISTORY

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The 1930s were the decade of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and other problems, but also the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency and Hollywood's Golden Age.