❤️❤️ CH 22 The New Era

Introduction

In March 1921, Warren G. Harding became the 29th President, promising a "return to normalcy".
He emphasized healing, normalcy, and restoration after World War I, racial violence, political repression, and the Red Scare.
The nation was reeling from:
- Over 115,000 American soldiers' deaths in Europe.
- A flu epidemic between 1918 and 1920, killing nearly 700,000 Americans (20% of the population).
- Labor strikes after the war.
- Radical and anarchist bombings.
- Post-war economic tanking with 20% unemployment.
- Skyrocketing farmer bankruptcy rates.
Harding's message of stability resonated despite the unlikelihood of achieving true "normalcy".
The 1920s were called the New Era, Jazz Age, Age of the Flapper, Prosperity Decade, and Roaring Twenties.
The decade was characterized by:
- Mass production and consumption of automobiles, appliances, film, and radio.
- New economy and living standards.
- Talking films and jazz.
- Loosening sexual and social restraints.
- Rejection of political and economic reform by some.
- Denouncement of shifting demographics and stifling of immigration.
- Revival of "old-time religion" and the Ku Klux Klan.
- Fights for equal rights and the emergence of "New Woman" and "New Negro" figures.
- Immigrant communities holding onto their cultures and faiths.

Republican White House, 1921-1933

Harding aimed to deliver stability and prosperity by:
- Restoring high protective tariffs.
- Dismantling wartime industry controls.
Congress focused on immigration and foreign populations due to:
- America's involvement in World War I.
- Propaganda.
- Suspicion of anything less than "100 percent American".
Post-war economy led to fears of the Russian Revolution, sidelining socialist, anarchist organizations, and union activism.
The labor movement declined with loss of bargaining power and support from courts, politicians, and the public.
Harding's presidency was considered corrupt.
Cabinet appointments included:
- Henry C. Wallace (Secretary of Agriculture): Advocated for scientific farming.
- Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce): Head of wartime Food Administration.
- Andrew Mellon (Secretary of the Treasury): Conservative businessman.
The "Ohio gang" appointments led to trouble, including the Teapot Dome scandal.
The Teapot Dome scandal involved leasing government land in Wyoming to oil companies for cash.
- Interior Secretary Albert Fall and Navy Secretary Edwin Denby resigned; Fall was convicted and jailed.
Harding died suddenly of a heart attack in August 1923. Calvin Coolidge became president.
Coolidge continued Harding's economic approach, favoring business over workers and consumers.
Coolidge believed "The chief business of the American people is business."
Coolidge lowered taxes for the wealthy (from wartime 66% to 20%) and maintained high tariff rates.
Women's activism continued after winning the vote with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
- Women pursued interests such as prohibition (Eighteenth Amendment), addressing squalor, poverty, and domestic violence.
- Reformers urged government action for infant and child mortality rates, federal aid for education, peace, and disarmament.
- Some supported protective legislation for women and children, while Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party advocated for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
The National Woman’s Party fought for women's rights beyond suffrage.
The 1920s national politics were dominated by the Republican Party.
Coolidge did not seek a second term in 1928.
The 1928 election was between:
- Al Smith (Democrat): Catholic, immigrant background, associated with Tammany Hall and anti-Prohibition politics.
- Herbert Hoover (Republican): All-American, Midwestern, Protestant, experienced in World War I management.
Hoover focused on economic growth and prosperity, claiming the US was near triumph over poverty.
The election centered on Smith’s religion and opposition to Prohibition.
Hoover won in a landslide, even taking some traditionally Democratic southern states.

Culture of Consumption

Christine Frederick (marketing expert) noted that "consumer changes are the very bricks out of which we are building our new kind of civilization".
Frederick advised advertisers to capture women's purchasing power, accounting for 90% of household expenditures.
Industrial expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to abundant consumer products.
Businesses developed new merchandising and marketing strategies to stimulate consumer desire.
Department stores were central to the consumer revolution, concentrating a variety of goods under one roof.
They offered innovations in service (restaurants, writing rooms, babysitting) and spectacle (store windows, fashion shows).
Marshall Field & Co. pioneered these strategies, including establishing a tearoom for female shoppers.
Mail-order catalogs, mass-circulation magazines, and national branding further fueled consumer desire.
The automobile industry promoted credit use. By 1927, over 60% of cars were sold on credit.
Consumer expenditures for household appliances increased by over 120% between 1919 and 1929.
Henry Ford’s assembly line made automobiles affordable for middle-income Americans.
Car registrations increased from 9 million in 1920 to nearly 27 million by the end of the decade.
The US owned more cars than Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy combined. In the late 1920s, 80% of the world’s cars drove on American roads.

Culture of Escape

Gasoline and electricity drove consumption and popular culture through automobiles, film, and radio.
Edgar Burroughs (Tarzan author) sought to challenge and escape societal constraints.
Americans escaped through automobiles, Hollywood films, jazz records, and radio broadcasts.
Automobiles facilitated travel. Women increasingly drove themselves. People vacationed and traveled to escape.
Gas stations, diners, motels, and billboards were built along roadsides.
Automobile races became popular, with events such as the Indianapolis 500 drawing large crowds.
The United States dominated the global film industry. Immigrants, primarily of Jewish heritage, originally "invented Hollywood" due to cinema being viewed as lower-class entertainment.
Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount, Columbia, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) were founded or led by Jewish executives.
Filmmakers blended traditional and modern values to capture middle and upper classes while maintaining working-class moviegoers.
Picture palaces, such as Samuel Rothafel’s Roxy Theater, were constructed.
The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first movie with synchronized sound.
Weekly movie attendance increased from sixteen million in 1912 to forty million in the early 1920s.
Hungarian immigrant William Fox declared that "the motion picture is a distinctly American institution."
One-price admission made movies accessible for nearly all Americans (though African Americans were often excluded or segregated).
Women represented over 60% of moviegoers, admiring stars like Mary Pickford.
Pickford and other female stars popularized the "flapper" image.
Radios became popular in homes around 1920, with about half of American homes owning one by 1930.
Radio stations brought entertainment into homes through advertisements and sponsorships.
“Soap operas” emerged, sponsored by soap companies.
Radio programs spread popular culture nationally despite corporate control.
Radio exposed Americans to jazz, which originated in the African-American community in New Orleans.
Jazz was seen as “savage” by some but represented cultural independence to others.
Jazz became a national sensation played and heard by both white and Black Americans.
The 1920s witnessed the maturation of professional sports.
Play-by-play radio broadcasts marked a new era for sports, though racial segregation remained.
Jack Dempsey (boxing) and Red Grange (football) became popular sports figures.
Babe Ruth transformed baseball's popularity after the Black Sox Scandal.
Charles Lindbergh completed the first nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927.
Lindbergh was dubbed the "hero of the decade" for restoring faith in individual effort and technological advancement.
Popular culture included Coney Island, major motion pictures, jazz music, soap operas, and sports.

The New Woman

The "new breed" of women, known as the flapper, challenged gender norms by:
- Bobbing their hair.
- Wearing short dresses.
- Listening to jazz.
- Flouting social and sexual norms.
These behaviors reinforced stereotypes of female carelessness and consumerism.
The emphasis on spending and accumulation fostered materialism and individual pleasure.
Flappers rejected Victorian values and embraced public pleasures like dance halls and speakeasies.
Women gained independence, freedom of movement, and access to urban living.
The "New Woman" was contradictory:
- Only 10% of married women worked outside the home.
- Technology reduced household chores, but cleanliness standards increased.
- Women gained the right to vote, but coalitions splintered.
- The “flapper” image was often inaccessible to women of certain races, ages, and socioeconomic classes.
The number of professional women increased, but limits existed in fields like law and medicine.
A woman’s race, class, ethnicity, and marital status impacted opportunities.
Minority women often worked out of financial necessity, in low-paying domestic service.
Young, working-class white women worked to support their families.
Young, middle-class white women became clerks, but higher-level jobs remained male-dominated.
Positions became coded as "women’s work."
Married women were expected to remain in the domestic sphere.
New consumption patterns gave women more power but increased expectations.
Attitudes toward sex changed, with increased premarital sexual activity among young, college-educated white women.
Gay communities flourished in urban centers, though lesbians faced increased scrutiny.
The flapper remains the enduring symbol of changing gender notions but represents only one aspect of womanhood in the 1920s.

The New Negro

The injustices of Jim Crow, lynching, and the Red Summer weighed heavily on Black Americans.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood District (“Black Wall Street”) was destroyed on May 31, 1921.
- A white mob mobilized and destroyed the neighborhood after a false claim of sexual assault against a young Black man.
- Mobs burned homes and killed Black Tulsans. Victims were buried in mass graves.
Racial violence led to new alternatives for Black Americans.
The Great Migration led to self-reflection among African Americans, especially in northern cities.
New York City's Black population grew significantly, with nearly half residing in Harlem.
Harlem became the "Culture Capital" and fostered the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement.
Alain Locke popularized the term New Negro, emphasizing spiritual emancipation.
Popular Harlem Renaissance writers published novels, poetry, and short stories exploring and countering racial prejudice.
The Harlem Renaissance manifested in theater, art, and music.
Broadway presented Black actors in serious roles.
Artists showcased Black cultural heritage and current experiences.
Jazz became popular, with whites traveling to Harlem's Cotton Club and Smalls.
Harlem's nightclubs and speakeasies presented sexual freedom and gay life, but Black communities were often excluded.
Marcus Garvey built the largest Black nationalist organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
Garvey promoted racial pride, Black economic independence, and sought to end racial oppression.
The UNIA published a newspaper, Negro World, and organized parades.
In 1919, the UNIA announced plans for the Black Star Line to encourage Black Americans to "return to Africa."
Garvey was criticized and eventually deported for “using the mails for fraudulent purposes.”
Garvey’s movement made a lasting impact on Black consciousness.

Culture War

The 1920s were difficult for radicals, immigrants, and anything "modern."
The executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists, in 1927, exemplified fears of foreign radicals.
Many Americans worried about changes and scapegoated immigrants, African Americans, and Catholics.
Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act in 1921 and the National Origins Act in 1924.
- The National Origins Act restricted immigration based on country-of-origin quotas from 1890 and excluded Asians.
The Sacco and Vanzetti trial and sweeping immigration restrictions pointed to rampant nativism.

Fundamentalist Christianity

Christian fundamentalists were concerned about relaxed sexual mores and social freedoms.
They opposed what they saw as sagging public morality, challenged Protestantism, growing sexual freedoms for women, public amusements, and critics of Prohibition.
Christian Fundamentalism arose from a doctrinal dispute among Protestant leaders.
Liberal theologians sought to intertwine religion with science.
The Fundamentals became the foundational documents of Christian fundamentalism, emphasizing literal truths and the inerrant word of God.
On March 21, 1925, John T. Scopes was tried for teaching evolutionary theory in violation of the Butler Act in Tennessee.
The ACLU sought a test case, hoping to challenge the constitutionality of the law.
Clarence Darrow defended Scopes, and William Jennings Bryan argued for biblical literalism.
The case became a public spectacle, with national broadcasts and coverage.
Bryan took the stand as an "expert witness" on the Bible but struggled under Darrow’s questioning.
Scopes was found guilty, but the case was later thrown out on a technicality.
Fundamentalists retreated from the public sphere but reemerged stronger decades later.

Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Suspicions of immigrants, Catholics, and modernists contributed to reactionary organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
The KKK expanded beyond anti-Black politics to target feminists, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, atheists, bootleggers, and others.
Two events inspired the rebirth of the Klan in 1915:
- The lynching of Leo Frank.
- The release of The Birth of a Nation.
Colonel William Joseph Simmons organized the "second" Ku Klux Klan in Georgia in late 1915.
The Klan expanded above the Mason-Dixon Line, with membership soaring in northern cities.
The Klan often recruited through fraternal organizations and Protestant churches.
The Klan established a women’s auxiliary in 1923.
The second Klan had a national reach composed largely of middle-class people.
The Klan dominated politics in many states and localities.
The Klan is remembered for violent vigilante acts, including lynching and harassment.
Klan violence was extensive enough in Oklahoma that the governor placed the state under martial law in 1923.
The Klan dwindled in the face of scandal and diminished energy over the last years of the 1920s.

Conclusion

Herbert Hoover claimed prosperity due to the Republican Party in his 1929 inauguration speech.
An economy built on credit exposed the nation to tremendous risk.
Flailing European economies, high tariffs, wealth inequality, a construction bubble, and an ever-more flooded consumer market loomed dangerously.
The Great Depression loomed.