Key ID’s 

Chapter 24: The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation, 1919-1929

1. Census of 1920 (NOT in OpenStax)

• 1920 was the first year that most Americans lived, not in the country, but in urban areas. This geographic fact also represents the tension between traditional and modern culture in the 1920’s. 

2. The Jazz Singer—1927

• This was the first feature-length talkie, a motion picture with sound. It starred Al Jolson, a white man wearing blackface. 

• Jolson was born in the Russian Empire and emigrated to the U.S. 

• I wonder if Al Jolson knew how to moonwalk? 

3. The Big Five 

• Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were the major motion-picture studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

4. Will C. Hays & the Movie Code (NOT in OpenStax)

• Another area that revealed the tension between traditional and modern culture was the movies. Appalled by nudity and sexuality in early films, conservatives pressured the movie industry to change. In 1930 film studios adopted a code, known as the Hays Code for the person who enforced it, that banned a long list of morally inappropriate actions. For example, excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, and suggestive postures were forbidden. The Hays code stayed in effect until 1966.  

5. Henry Ford 

• Though Henry Ford did not invent the assembly line, he applied it to auto manufacturing where it helped him lower the price of cars to the point where many in the working class could afford his Model T. Along with scientific management and time-motion studies, Ford was able to lower the cost to $300 by 1924. By the end of the 1920s, 23 million Americans owned an automobile. 

• Ford also was known for raising wages to $5 a day, more than double the going rate. He did this to limit turnover on the assembly line where as many as 60% of the workers had been quitting every year due to the fast pace of the work. An added benefit is now the workers can afford the products they have made. 

• Ford was insane (no joke…). He bought a plot in the Amazon twice the size of Delaware and named it Fordlandia. There he constructed a replica of an American industrial town. Ford was so keen on this being an American town, American food was shipped to Fortlandia and was the only thing available to eat. One of the first revolts in Fordlandia occurred over the fact that traditional Brazilian/Amazonian food was not allowed… Check out this podcast for more information on Fordlandia. 

6. Impact of the Automobile 

• By the late 1920’s more Americans owned cars than owned bathtubs. This brought significant social changes.

• The auto industry stimulated the steel, petroleum, rubber, and glass industries while railroads languished. 

• Road construction boomed and Americans increasingly moved to suburbs.

• Family life changed as people moved away from home. The car smashed old courtship patterns; one conservative condemned the auto as “a house of prostitution on wheels.” 

7. Bessie Coleman

• Coleman was the first African-American woman to earn an international pilot’s license. After facing Jim Crow and sexist discrimination in America, she learned French and then attended a French flight school. After earning her pilot’s license, she became an expert in stunt flying and parachuting. 

• She returned to the US with the hopes of becoming a commercial pilot. This was met with continued discrimination and so she was left with the only career option of being a stunt pilot. Coleman died in 1926 when she fell out of her plane during a rehearsal. 

8. Charles A. Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis —1927

• Although other pilots had crossed the ocean, Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. A genuinely modest person who displayed traditional virtues, Lindbergh was the subject of perhaps the most intense hero worship since George Washington. One could say he was the James Dean of the 1920s. 

9. The Lindbergh Law—1932 (NOT in OpenStax)

• This made interstate kidnapping a death penalty offense after Charles Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped for ransom and eventually murdered.

• The trial of the kidnappers was that decade’s “trial of the century.”

10. Radio

• The 1920’s brought commercial radio into many American homes. Unlike the auto that pulled families apart, radio brought people back into the living room.

• Radio also served to expose the entire nation to the same entertainment, news, and advertisements. It served to homogenize the culture.

11. Household Technology Advancements = Lightning and Thunder 

• One way to think about historical occurrences is through the metaphor of lightning and thunder. Lightning is bright and happens in a flash. Thunder follows lightning and not only lasts for a comparatively longer period of time, but it is also dull and booming. 

• This applies to the technological advancements in domestic household items, such as toaster, dishwasher, refrigerator, vacuum, etc. Although these advancements provided women with extra free time to explore occupations and activities outside of the house, these advancements also cemented the role of the domestic housewife.  

12. Advertising & Consumers

• American manufacturers became concerned about their ability to sell all they could produce. Advertising was one response to this. Americans were encouraged to see themselves as consumers rather than as citizens, to be perpetually dissatisfied with their possessions. 

• Buying on credit and planned obsolescence (making products with an intentionally limited life span and bringing out “new, improved” models every year) were two techniques to encourage increased purchasing.

• Bruce Barton, a leading advertising executive, applied advertising concepts to religion. His book about the life of Christ, The Man Nobody Knows, argued that Christ was a terrific ad man.

• Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, used psychoanalysis to develop advertising campaigns. After WWI, he determined propaganda to be too aggressive and instead referred to the tactics as “public relations.” His first major advertising campaign was getting women to smoke by suggesting cigarettes were “torches of freedom.” He also worked for the United Fruit Company during the time the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan government. 

  • If any of you are interested in public relations, advertising, psychology, and/or psychoanalysis, check out this documentary! 

13. Resurgence of Nativism 

• Nativism is the sentiment and ideology that favors native inhabitants (WASPs) and residents as opposed to immigrants. 

• The Red Scare following the end of the Great War, combined with the exponential increase in immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe caused this resurgence in nativism.

• This resurgence also resulted in minor efforts and movements by “nativist” whites to research their family tree to prove their native-born background…. s

14. Hysteria of the Red Scare

• 1919 saw communist attempts to overthrow the governments of Germany and Hungary. Also in 1919 the Third Communist International met in Moscow, advocating worldwide revolution to overthrow capitalism. 

• The US socialist movement was splintered and weak, but many in the US saw socialism and labor unions as part of an international communist conspiracy. 

15. Sacco & Vanzetti Case

• Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists who avoided the draft during WWI. In 1920, they were arrested in a payroll robbery in which two men were killed. They were found guilty and sentenced to death, and the state supreme court refused to give them a new trial. The execution was postponed while a committee of three citizens reexamined the case. 

• Although later studies dispute the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, they were convicted in an unfair trial. Their judge, for example, referred to them privately as “those anarchist bastards.” Very little solid evidence against them was presented at their trial. But the fact that they were immigrants and anarchists and that the country was in the middle of the Red Scare was enough to convict them. The conviction was upheld. They were electrocuted in 1927. 

16. Emergency Quota Act of 1921 

• This limited the yearly number of immigrants from each nation to 3% of the foreign-born persons from that nation living in the US in 1910. The law tended to favor immigrants from southern and eastern Europe since huge numbers from those countries had arrived by 1910. 

17. Immigration Act of 1924

• This law cut quotas from 3% to 2% and shifted the base year from 1910 to 1890. This effectively cut back on immigration from eastern and southern Europe (the new immigrants).

• In addition, the Immigration Act of 1924 completely blocked immigration from Japan.

• Immigration from Canada and Latin America was not limited.

18. Immigration Act of 1929  

• Also known as the National Origins Plan, this capped immigration at 150,000 per year, imposed a quota for each country based on the number of people having that national origin in 1920, and banned all immigration from Asian nations. Again immigration from Canada and Latin America was not limited.

• These three acts all were efforts to restrict immigration and maintain America’s ethnic and racial composition. They marked an end to the era of almost unlimited immigration. 

19. The Birth of a Nation – 1915 

• This was NOT the first film ever made; however, it was the first Hollywood blockbuster and also considered to be the most artistically and technologically advanced film in 1915. 

• The film was praised, despite its inherent racism and heroic portrayal of the KKK. White actors portrayed African Americans in blackface. Woodrow Wilson held a private screening of where he has allegedly said, “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

20. The New Ku Klux Klan—1915-1929

• In 1915 the KKK was revived. Several hundred thousand blacks had moved north in the Great Migration to take jobs in wartime industries. In addition, blacks who had served in the military during WWI were increasingly likely to demand their democratic rights.    

• KKK peak membership was reached in 1924 with 4.5 million members. It focused not simply on keeping blacks in their place, but also repressing Catholics, Jews, and foreigners. It enforced Prohibition and opposed union organizers.  

• Grand Wizard Hiram Evans claimed the Klan members felt threatened by the changes in American society and their moral values were being attacked. Job competition between immigrants increased their fears.

• (The Klan was also very powerful in Oregon, primarily targeting Catholics. The Gazette-Times was the first newspaper in Oregon to speak out against the KKK.)

21. Scopes Monkey Trial—1925

• John Scopes taught high school biology in Dayton, Tennessee, using a book that presented Darwin’s view of evolution. A state law forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. Scopes agreed to serve as a test case. He had been teaching out of the only state-approved biology text in Tennessee, but he later said he could not remember if he had actually talked about evolution in his classroom. The city fathers of Dayton thought the trial would be a good opportunity to bring visitors and tourist dollars to Dayton. 

• Clarence Darrow was Scopes’ defense lawyer appointed by the ACLU.  William Jennings Bryan led the prosecution.

• After Scopes was found guilty and fined, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case on a technicality. 

• The trial was an example of the cultural divide between rural and urban America (aka Fundamentalism v. Modernism). 

22. H. L. Mencken

• Mencken edited the literary journals the Smart Set and the American Mercury.  He promoted writers of talent and mercilessly attacked hack writers, pretension, provincialism, and prudery. Mencken blasted organized religion, business, and the middle class (what he called the booboisie).    

23. Billy Sunday

• Sunday was an orphan who would become a professional baseball player in 1883. He left baseball in 1891 and by 1896 was conducting religious revivals in major American cities. 

• Sunday was a Fundamentalist evangelical Christian and is another example of the 1920s Cultural Divide, despite his waning support following WWI and the majority of his followers turning to radio evangelists. Sunday was also a proponent of prohibition.  

24. Flappers

• A flapper was a young modern woman who went on dates without a chaperone, wore fashionable clothes, wore make-up, and perhaps smoked cigarettes. Another symbol of cultural tension in the 1920’s. 

25. Sigmund Freud

• A Viennese physician and psychologist, Freud argued that sexual repression caused a variety of nervous and emotional ills.  His theories were used to justify the new sexual liberation.  

26. Margaret Sanger

• Sanger was a crusader for birth control and family planning. In 1916 she opened the first family-planning clinic in the US (Planned Parenthood!). She was often jailed for her actions and words. Another symbol of cultural tension in the 1920’s.  

27. Jazz

• This distinctively American musical form became widely popular in the 1920’s. It was condemned for its reliance on improvisation (civilization demands that one follow rules), its African-American origins, and its effect on the morals of those who listened and danced to it. Another symbol of cultural tension in the 1920’s.  

28. Sheppard-Towner Act - 1921

• Also known as the Maternity Act, the purpose of the Act was to reduce maternal and infant mortality.” 

• Although the Progressive Movement may have ended in 1920, the Sheppard-Towner Act could be seen as Progressive; the act wanted to use scientific principles to extend education and medical services to women and children, especially those who are poor. 

29. Alice Paul and the Equal Rights Amendment 

• Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 (which she named “The Lucretia Mott Amendment”). She submitted the amendment’s proposal EVERY YEAR until Congress passed it in 1972. 

• Congress gave states until 1979 to ratify the amendment. Only 35 states ratified the amendment by 1977. After a contentious showdown, Congress and the Supreme Court allowed for an extension until 1982. Regardless, five states rescinded their ratification and the amendment technically died (per the Congressional timeline). 

• Recently, however, Illinois ratified the ERA in 2018. 

  • Here are two articles from the “failing, enemy of the people” New York Times on the history of the ERA Amendment (yes, that is sarcastic…):

    • “Do American Women Still Need an Equal Rights Amendment?”

    • “The Equal Rights Amendment Was Just Ratified by Illinois. What Does That Mean?”

30. Adkins v. Children’s Hospital —1923 (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

• This case overturned the Muller v. Oregon decision. In Adkins, the Supreme Court ruled that women were not entitled to special protection in the workplace and that a minimum-wage law for women was unconstitutional.

• The Court’s ruling was based on the fact that the Nineteenth Amendment had granted women the right to vote. As the legal equals of men, they could not receive preferential treatment.

31. The Great Migration

• The Great Migration was a mass movement of African Americans from the rural South primarily to the industrial North beginning around the time of World War I. Seeking jobs in Northern cities and an escape from de jure racism (discrimination sanctioned by law), over one million blacks left the South by 1919.

• The Great Migration was one factor leading to the Harlem Renaissance. (See below.)

• At times, this huge influx of newcomers led to tensions with Northern whites. White workers especially resented blacks hired as scabs or strikebreakers. Racial tensions erupted in the summer of 1919; there were twenty-six race riots across the country. More than one hundred blacks were killed, and thousands were wounded or left homeless.

32. Harlem Renaissance

• The Great Migration of blacks to Northern cities helped to spark the Harlem Renaissance, a burst of intellectual and cultural creativity. Not all of the best work was done in Harlem. 

• Writers James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen, actors such as Paul Robeson, musicians Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, and others enriched American culture. 

• The terminology behind referencing the revivalism as the Harlem Renaissance is contested. In fact, when the “New Negro Movement” was used by Alain Locke in 1925, there was contention over the fact that there was already a plethora of African American literature and art. Langston Hughes, one of the most prominent African American poets during the “Negro Renaissance,” referred to the movement as the “Harlem Renaissance” in 1940. This, too, caused contention because Hughes was from Harlem and African Americans NOT from Harlem were like, “What about us?” 

• I recommend this reading on how the “New Negro Movement” transformed over time. 

33. Red Summer Riots of 1919 

• Between May and October of 1919, over thirty race riots broke out across the US, with the most violent occurring in Chicago, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. At Elaine, roughly 100 African Americans were killed, while five whites were killed. 

34. Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” 

• “If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Oh, Kinsmen!  We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

35. Marcus Garvey and Negro Nationalism 

• Garvey was one of the first prominent black nationalists in the US. An immigrant from Jamaica, Garvey started the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. One of the goals of this group was to found and build a black-governed nation. 

• By 1919, “Black Moses” had set up chapters of UNIA in Harlem and other Northern ghettos, and claimed a following of 2,000,000 people. He also started various business ventures and a newspaper (Negro World) which furthered rejected integrationist. 

• Garvey lost support in 1922 when he and others near him were convicted of mail fraud. He was deported back to Jamaica in 1927. 

36. Volstead Act—1919

• This law implemented the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, also known as the Noble Experiment.

37. Speakeasies

• These were illegal bars serving alcohol during Prohibition. So many illegal bars opened up during Prohibition that at one point there were more speakeasies than legal bars before Prohibition. . 

38. F. Scott Fitzgerald

• One of a promising generation of young writers, Fitzgerald’s books described the life of modern young people during the Jazz Age (This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby).

39. Ernest Hemingway

• Hemingway, a member of the Lost Generation who left America for Paris, wrote with weary disillusionment about war (A Farewell to Arms). He was known for his view that one must respond to the trials of life with grace under pressure (The Old Man and the Sea).

40. Sinclair Lewis

• Lewis attacked many aspects of American life in the 1920’s: small-town provincialism (Main Street), middle-class materialism (Babbitt), and religious hypocrisy (Elmer Gantry)

41. Willa Cather (NOT in OpenStax)

• A prominent novelist in the 1920’s, Cather wrote books with strong female characters (My Antonia). She criticized the growing mechanization and mass-produced quality of American society. 

42.  Frank Lloyd Wright (NOT in OpenStax)

• Wright sought to create a distinctly American architecture, one that did not follow Greek and Roman models. He advocated “organic architecture” that was in harmony with its setting and based on natural forms. His best-known example was Fallingwater, a house built astride a waterfall in Pennsylvania.

43. Art Deco (NOT in OpenStax) 

• Also known as style moderne, Art Deco design represented modernism turned into fashion. The intention of the style was to create a sleek and antitraditional elegance that symbolized wealth and sophistication.

44. Normalcy

• Following the end of WWI, America retreated from two decades of idealism and reform. The country had entered WWI, hoping this would be a “war to end all wars,” to “make the world safe for democracy.” Clearly, that was not to be.

• In the 1920 campaign, Republican Warren G. Harding promised a disillusioned and weary nation a “return to normalcy,” a respite from idealism.

45. Teapot Dome & Elk Hills scandals—1921

• There were several scandals involving President Harding’s friends. Teapot Dome was the worst. Progressives had pressed for conservation of resources; oil fields at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and at Elk Hills, California, had been set aside for use by the Navy. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall secretly leased the land to two private oil companies. Fall soon received $325,000 and a large herd of cattle. Fall was convicted of bribery and sent to prison. The oil company executives went free. The oil reserves were returned to government control.

• In an unrelated scandal, Harding’s Attorney General Harry Daugherty was prosecuted but not convicted for the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits.

46. Presidential Election of 1928  

• The Democrats nominated New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic and an opponent of Prohibition. Smith’s religion and his New York accent hurt him with rural and conservative voters.

• The Republicans nominated Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, a skilled administrator who attacked socialism and praised rugged individualism. Hoover won easily.

Political, Economic, and Foreign Policy Events during the 1920s (NOT in OpenStax)

47. Washington Disarmament Conference—1921-1922

• At this conference Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes proposed a halt to the naval arms race. Several agreements were signed. 

• The Five Power Treaty set limits for battleships and aircraft carriers in the following ratios—5 (US & Britain): 3 (Japan): 1.75 (Italy & France). In addition, the nations agreed to halt battleship construction for ten years. Britain and the US agreed to refrain from fortifying their Far East possessions (as compensation to the Japanese).

• The Four Power Treaty obligated the US, Britain, Japan, and France to respect each other’s territorial possessions in the Pacific and to refer any disputes among them to a conference for negotiation. 

48. The Kellogg-Briand Pact (Pact of Paris)—1928

• In this agreement, the US and sixty-one other nations pledged to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. The only problem was that, except for the pressure of world opinion, there was no way to enforce it.

49. Fordney-McCumber Tariff—1922

• This raised tariffs from an average of 27% under Wilson’s Underwood Tariff to an average of 38.5%. 

• It also allowed the president, with the advice of a tariff commission, to raise or lower rates on specific products. Harding and Coolidge raised rates thirty-two times in six years but lowered rates in only five cases.

• As a result, Europeans found it harder to sell goods to the US to earn the dollars needed to pay back their war debts. In addition, Europeans raised tariff rates to protect their own industries, cutting sales of US goods. 

50. The McNary-Haugen Bill—1924-1928

• With the end of WWI, prices for farm crops dropped. At the same time, farmers were expanding production, thanks to the replacement of mules with tractors, driving prices still lower. As a result, one in four farms was sold to cover mortgages or taxes.  

• The McNary-Haugen Bill called for the federal government to buy extra wheat, corn, cotton, and tobacco at a fair price, setting a minimum price above the world market price. A special tax would be placed on farm crops. Farmers would lose something by paying the tax, but on balance they would be better off. President Coolidge vetoed the bill as an unconstitutional use of federal power every time Congress passed it from 1924-1928. 

51. War Debts and the Dawes Plan—1924

• The Allies owed the US huge debts from the war. Britain owed $4 billion and France $3.5 billion. Germany owed Britain and France $32 billion in reparations. With German economy in tatters, the Allies weren’t receiving their reparations and were having trouble paying their own debts.

• The Dawes Plan had US banks lend money to Germany. Germany then paid reparations to the Allies who made payments on their war debts to the US Treasury. 

• When the Depression struck, US bankers could afford no more loans to Germany. The Allies, except for Finland, defaulted on their loans.