Figures of the 1920s

Calvin Coolidge

• Signed the indian citizenship act which gave natives citizenship

• Signed the immigration act

• 1924 republican presidential candidate

• “Cautious Cal”, the “Sphinx of the Potomac”

Langston Hughes

• Central figure in harlem renaissance

• Known as the “poet of the people” - work focused on lives and struggles of working black class

• Famous collection of jazz poems “the weary blues”

Richard Byrd

• First to fly over north pole and south pole in 1926 and 1929

• Naval aviator

Texas Guinan

• American actress, producer and entrepreneur

• Had irish immigrant parents

• “queen of nightclubs” who ruled over many speakeasies

• signature phrase “hello sucker!”

Clara Bow

• Famous for her silent films

• Nicknames the “it girl”

• Called the quintessential flapper of the era

George Remus

• Specialized in criminal defense

• Established a bootlegging empire

• German immigrant

• “King of the bootleggers”

Henry Ford

• Revolutionized automobile industry by perfecting the assembly line

• Established 40 hour work week for his workers

• Impacted american economy and society with his social policies and mass production

Andrew Mellon - He was the Secretary of the Treasury who viewed the burdensome taxes from the war as especially distasteful. His theory was that such high levies forced the rich to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in the factories that provided prosperous payrolls. High taxes not only discouraged business but, in doing so, also brought a smaller net return to the Treasury than moderate taxation.

Bessie Smith

• “Empress of the blues”

• rose to fame as a leading blues singer of the 1920s,

• highly successful and influential Black artist

• known for her powerful voice and emotional performances

Clarence Darrow

• Renowned defense attorney

• Gained fame for his high-profile cases, including the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" trial, where he defended John Scopes' right to teach evolution

A. Mitchell Palmer

• Oversaw the Palmer raids after someone sent a bomb to his house

• Attorney general

• Created small division to gather intelligence on the radical threat

Warren G. Harding

• Republican president from 1921-1923

• Promised a “return to normalcy”

• Harding signed the Emergency Quota Act, limiting immigration from specific countries

Rudolph Valentino

• Italian Actor nicknamed the Latin Lover

• Best known for his work in The Sheik and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Louis Armstrong

• Played the trumpet

• Rose to prominence in jazz

Jack Dempsey

• Dominated in boxing

• Transformed boxing into a mass-spectator event with large crowds and radio broadcasts

Emma Goldman

• Lithuanian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer

• Deported from the United States in 1919 (Red Scare) and spent the remainder of her life in exile, continuing her activism from Europe and Canada

William Jennings Bryan

• Devoted himself to Prohibition, religious matters, and anti-evolution activism

• Prosecutor in the 1925 Scopes trial (anti-evolution)

Charlie Chaplin

• Chaplin's iconic character, the Little Tramp, became a symbol of the underdog and the common man

• Comedic actor

Babe Ruth

• He revolutionized baseball

• Ushered in the "live-ball era" and setting records that would define baseball for decades

• The “Sultan of Swat”

Margaret Sanger

• Founded the American birth control movement and, later, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Ernest Hemingway

• Lost-generation writer

• Wrote The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms

Elliot Ness

• American Prohibition agent known for his efforts to bring down Al Capone while enforcing Prohibition

• Capone convicted of over 5,000 prohibition violations under the Volstead Act

Zora Neale Hurston

• Author of Harlem Renaissance literature

• Wrote "How It Feels to be Colored Me" and "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• considered one of the 20th centuries greatest authors

• wrote “the Great Gatsby”

• famous for depictions of the “Jazz Age”

He published This Side of Paradise in 1920, which became a kind of Bible for flappers and their ardent wooers. He found “all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.”

Coco Chanel

• french fashion designer and businesswoman

• revolutionized women's fashion in the 1920’s

• founder of Chanel

Herbert Hoover

• 31st president of the United States

• was director of US Food Administration, “food dictator”

• after WWI led the American Relief System which provided food to millions in central and eastern europe

• beleived in “rugged individualism”

• Hoover dam, reconstruction finance, etc.

• President during Great Depression!

George Gershwin

• American Composer and Pianist

• composed for broadway, films, and orchestras

• composed “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924)

Marcus Garvey

• Jamaican Political Activist

• founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

• declared himself Provisional President of Africa

Mabel Walker Willebrandt

• American Lawyer who served as assistant attorney general from 1921-29

• highest-ranking woman in the federal government under President Warren G. Harding

• nicknamed “first lady of the law” for her role in enforcing Prohibtion

Jackie Robinson

• american baseball player

• the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era

Al Capone

• American gangster and businessman who led Chicago's Italian-American crime syndicate

• also called “scarface”

• known for his ruthlessness, violence, and involvement in bootlegging, gambling, and other illegal activities

H.L. Mencken

• American journalist, essayist, satirist, and cultural critic

• commented on social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements

Sigmund Freud

• Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis

• influenced psychology and psychiatry, and changed Western views of human nature

• believed that childhood events shape personality and that hidden anxieties from past trauma can cause adult problems.

• believed that sexual repression caused nervous and emotional ills. Thus, sexual gratification was necessary for not just pleasure, but health.

J. Edgar Hoover

• American attorney and law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final Director of the Bureau of Investigation

• became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface