HIST 1493 – The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation, 1919-1929

A comprehensive set of question-and-answer flashcards covering major people, events, laws, and cultural trends of the 1920s Jazz Age as presented in the lecture notes.

What economic condition allowed many middle-class Americans to increase their consumption of entertainment and consumer goods during the 1920s?

Unprecedented prosperity and rising disposable income.

Which 1927 film ended the silent-movie era by introducing synchronized sound?

The Jazz Singer.

Who perfected assembly-line production to make the Model T affordable for average Americans?

Henry Ford.

By lowering the Model T’s price from $850 in 1908 to about $300 in 1924, what did Ford’s assembly line achieve?

Mass car ownership became possible for millions of Americans.

By 1929, approximately how many automobiles were on American roads?

Over twenty-three million.

Who became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927?

Charles Lindbergh.

What was the name of Lindbergh’s plane that completed the transatlantic flight?

Spirit of St. Louis.

Which new household technology of the 1920s broadcast news, entertainment, and advertising nationwide?

Radio.

What nationally popular radio show of the late 1920s relied on racial stereotypes of African Americans?

Amos ‘n’ Andy.

How did radio affect regional dialects and consumer tastes in the United States?

It helped homogenize them by providing identical programming coast-to-coast.

Which baseball legend nicknamed the “Sultan of Swat” became America’s first major sports hero?

Babe Ruth.

Which Native American athlete won Olympic medals, played Major League Baseball, and helped found the NFL?

Jim Thorpe.

Name the first woman to swim the English Channel (1926).

Gertrude Ederle.

Which 1924 law lowered immigration quotas to 2 percent of each nationality’s 1890 population?

National Origins Act of 1924.

What term describes the anti-immigrant, anti-foreign sentiment that grew in the early 20th century?

Nativism.

Which two Italian immigrant anarchists were controversially executed in 1927 for robbery and murder?

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Which white-supremacist organization resurged in the 1920s, reaching about six million members?

The Second Ku Klux Klan.

What 1925 Tennessee trial challenged a state law banning the teaching of evolution?

The Scopes Monkey Trial.

Who defended John Scopes and argued that “civilization is on trial”?

Clarence Darrow.

Which fundamentalist leader and former presidential candidate assisted the prosecution in the Scopes Trial?

William Jennings Bryan.

What term described the permissive youth culture that embraced new fashions, music, and sexual freedom in the 1920s?

The New Morality.

What was the popular nickname for the fashionable, liberated young women of the 1920s?

Flappers.

Which activist founded Planned Parenthood and promoted birth-control information?

Margaret Sanger.

Which genre of music, born in African American communities, came to define the “Jazz Age”?

Jazz.

Name the famous Harlem nightclub that showcased Black jazz performers to largely white audiences.

The Cotton Club.

What cultural flowering of Black literature, art, and music centered in New York City during the 1920s?

The Harlem Renaissance.

Which Harlem Renaissance writer was called the movement’s “poet laureate”?

Langston Hughes.

Which Jamaican immigrant led the “Back to Africa” movement and founded the UNIA?

Marcus Garvey.

Which 1919 constitutional amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol?

The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition).

What nickname was given to illegal bars that operated during Prohibition?

Speakeasies.

Which Chicago gangster built a multimillion-dollar bootlegging empire during Prohibition?

Al Capone.

What label was given to disillusioned writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway?

The Lost Generation.

What slogan did Warren G. Harding use to promise post-WWI stability?

“Return to normalcy.”

Which 1920s political scandal involved secret leasing of naval oil reserves in Wyoming?

The Teapot Dome scandal.

Who was the first U.S. cabinet member imprisoned for crimes committed in office?

Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall.

Which president said, “The business of America is business,” advocating minimal government interference?

Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge.