The 1920s: CULTURAL and POLITICAL Controversies [APUSH Unit 7 Topic 8] Period 7:1898-1945

Opportunities for women

More opportunities for women living in urban centers opened up, especially in jobs like nursing and teaching. Women also worked unskilled labor jobs in factories, but only made a fraction of the wages men made for performing the same job.

Flappers

Some women also threw off convention during this era by cutting their hair short, smoking, drinking, and showing their ankles in public. They were a kind of symbol for women’s liberation in the 20s.

International immigrants

After WW1, there was another huge influx of immigrants, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia.

Nativism

The effort to protect the rights of native-born citizens against the interests of immigrants. The same thing happened in the 1840s, 1880s, and again in the 1920s. They always react strongly when people who are not like them start flooding the American shores. They feared that they would lose their jobs to immigrants who would work for lower wages, and others worried about the pollution of the white race.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

Limited immigration to 3% of the population measured by the 1910 Census. This benefited Northern and Western Europeans since most immigrants in the U.S. before 1910 were from Northern and Western Europe (e.g., Britain, Germany, Ireland), these groups were allowed to immigrate in larger numbers. Ex. If 1 million Italians were in the U.S. in 1910, then only 30,000 new Italians could immigrate per year.

National Origins Act of 1924 (or Immigration Act of 1924)

Limited immigration to 2% of the population measured by the 1890 Census. Further restricting Southern and Eastern Europeans, since fewer of them lived in the U.S. in 1890. If only 100,000 Italians were in the U.S. in 1890 → Only 2,000 new Italians could come per year.

The Great Migration

Basically a part two of the Exodusters Movement in period 6, huge numbers of the Southern black population left the south in order to settle in the North and Midwest. A big portion of them settled in New York, and especially Harlem.

Harlem Renaissance

A revival of the arts and intellectual pursuits of the recently migrated black population.

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington

Significant figures during the Harlem Renaissance, helped popularize jazz and inspired others.

Langston Hughes and Claude Mckay

Significant writers during the Harlem Renaissance, helped put words to the black experience in America.

Lost Generation

Writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, their main themes were the pervasive materialism that plagued American culture and the waste of life and resources expended in WW1.

Urban protestants/Modernists

Urban protestants considered themselves “modernists”, they believed religion and science could work together and accepted new ideas like evolution.

Rural protestants/Fundamentalists

Believed in a strict, literal interpretation of the bible. (Took everything in the bible seriously.) Rejected evolution and modern science and wanted to stick to traditional values.

Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925

In Tennessee it was illegal to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution. A teacher named John Scopes taught evolution anyways and got arrested. As America watched it unfold, the general sentiment was modernism had triumphed over fundamentalism. (modernism defeated fundamentalism in the public’s eyes)