Chapter 27 - The Roaring Twenties: Sex, Alcohol, and Jazz

WWI

Produced war machines

1919

Begins

1919

Begins

1927

Sacco + Vanzetti arrested

1920

Elected president ("return to normalcy")

Fall

Leased oil fields to private developers

1923

Becomes President

1921

Secretary of the Treasury

Literary figures

Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc

John T. Scopes

Taught theory of evolution

1919

Volstead Act (enforced Prohibition)

Great Depression

Readers grew weary of Menckens writing style

WWII

Test pilot + combat pilot

Roaring Twenties

Societal change + moral & sexual revolution

Flu Epidemic

The deadliest global pandemic since the Black Death, and rare among flu viruses for striking down the young and healthy, often within days of exhibiting the first symptoms

Jazz Age

A period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the United States

Henry Ford

An American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production

Model T

The first widely available automobile powered by a gasoline engine; mass-produced by Henry Ford from 1908 to 1927

Radio

Transmit messages via radio waves

Red Scare

A period of general fear of Communists

Palmer Raids

A series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists and communists, and deport them from the United States

Sacco and Vanzetti Case

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian-Americans, were convicted of robbery and murder. Although the arguments brought against them were mostly disproven in court, the fact that the two men were known radicals (and that their trial took place during the height of the Red Scare) prejudiced the judge and jury against them.

Warren G. Harding

The 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents.

Teapot Dome Scandal

Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of a seminal investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh.

Calvin Coolidge

The 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929

Andrew Mellon

From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he established a vast business empire before moving into politics

Marcus Garvey

The founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa

Lost Generation

The social generational cohort that was in early adulthood during World War I

Scopes Monkey Trial

An American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school

Flappers

Young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous

Prohibition

The period from 1920 to 1933 when the sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the United States by a constitutional amendment

Speakeasies

A place where alcoholic beverages are illegally sold

H.L. Mencken

An American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English

Charles Lindbergh

At the age of 25, he achieved instant world fame by making the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris on May 20–21, 1927