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U.S. History – A Chapter 13

Roaring Life

of the 1920s

432 C

HAPTER 13

Louis

Armstrong plays

for King Oliver’s

Creole Jazz Band

in Chicago.

1922

Calvin

Coolidge is

elected

president.

1924

USA

WORLD

Nineteenth

Amendment gives women

the right to vote.

1920

Time

magazine

begins

publication.

1923

China’s

Communist Party

is founded.

1921

King Tut’s

tomb is discovered

in Egypt.

1922

Mustafa Kemal

becomes first president of

new Republic of Turkey.

1923

Blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey performs with her

Georgia Jazz Band in Chicago, Illinois, 1923.

1920

1924

1922

1924

1920

1922

432-433-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 432

Page 1 of 2

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 433

The

Scopes trial

takes place in

Tennessee.

1925

Charles Lindbergh

makes the first nonstop

solo transatlantic flight.

1927

President Álvaro

Obregón of Mexico is

assassinated.

1928

Hirohito

becomes emperor

of Japan.

1926

Herbert Hoover

is elected president.

1928

INTERACT

WITH HISTORY

The year is 1920. The World War has

just ended. Boosted by the growth of

the wartime industry, the U.S. econo-

my is flourishing. Americans live life

to the fullest as new social and cultur-

al trends sweep the nation.

How might the

new prosperity

affect your

everyday life?

Examine the Issues

• As Americans leave farms and

small towns to take jobs in the

cities, how might their lives

change?

• How will economic prosperity

affect married and unmarried

women?

• How might rural and urban areas

change as more and more families

acquire automobiles?

1926

1928 1930

1926

1928 1930

Visit the Chapter 13 links for more information

about The Roaring Life of the 1920s.

RESEARCH LINKS CLASSZONE.COM

432-433-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 433

Page 2 of 2

434 C

HAPTER 13

Terms & Names

MAIN IDEA

One American's Story

Changing Ways

of Life

•Prohibition

•speakeasy

•bootlegger

•fundamentalism

•Clarence Darrow

•Scopes trial

Americans experienced

cultural conﬂicts as customs

and values changed in the

1920s.

The way in which different

groups react to change

continues to cause conﬂict

today.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

As the 1920s dawned, social reformers who hoped to ban

alcohol—and the evils associated with it—rejoiced. The

Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning the

manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol, took

effect in January of 1920. Billy Sunday, an evangelist who

preached against the evils of drinking, predicted a new age

of virtue and religion.

A PERSONAL

VOICE BILLY SUNDAY

“ The reign of tears is over! The slums will soon be only a memory.

We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and

corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children

will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent!

”

—quoted in How Dry We Were: Prohibition Revisited

Sunday’s dream was not to be realized in the 1920s, as the law

proved unenforceable. The failure of Prohibition was a sign of cultural

conﬂicts most evident in the nation’s cities. Lured by jobs and by the

challenge and freedom that the city represented, millions of people

rode excitedly out of America’s rural past and into its urban future.

Rural and Urban Differences

America changed dramatically in the years before 1920, as was revealed in the

1920 census. According to ﬁgures that year, 51.2 percent of Americans lived in

communities with populations of 2,500 to more than 1 million. Between 1922

and 1929, migration to the cities accelerated, with nearly 2 million people leav-

ing farms and towns each year. “Cities were the place to be, not to get away

from,” said one historian. The agricultural world that millions of Americans left

behind was largely unchanged from the 19th century—that world was one of

small towns and farms bound together by conservative moral values and close

social relationships. Yet small-town attitudes began to lose their hold on the

American mind as the city rose to prominence.

▼

1920s evangelist

Billy Sunday

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 434

Page 1 of 6

THE NEW URBAN SCENE

At the beginning of the 1920s, New York, with a

population of 5.6 million people, topped the list of big cities. Next came Chicago,

with nearly 3 million, and Philadelphia, with nearly 2 million. Another 65 cities

claimed populations of 100,000 or more, and they grew more crowded by the day.

Life in these booming cities was far different from the slow-paced, inti-

mate life in America’s small towns. Chicago, for instance, was an indus-

trial powerhouse, home to native-born whites and African Americans,

immigrant Poles, Irish, Russians, Italians, Swedes, Arabs, French, and

Chinese. Each day, an estimated 300,000 workers, 150,000 cars and

buses, and 20,000 trolleys ﬁlled the pulsing downtown. At night people

crowded into ornate movie theaters and vaudeville houses offering live

variety shows.

For small-town migrants, adapting to the urban environment demanded

changes in thinking as well as in everyday living. The city was a world of compe-

tition and change. City dwellers read and argued about current scientiﬁc and

social ideas. They judged one another by accomplishment more often than by

background. City dwellers also tolerated drinking, gambling, and casual dating—

worldly behaviors considered shocking and sinful in small towns.

For all its color and challenge, though, the city could be impersonal and

frightening. Streets were ﬁlled with strangers, not friends and neighbors. Life was

fast-paced, not leisurely. The city demanded endurance, as a foreign visitor to

Chicago observed.

A PERSONAL VOICE WALTER L. GEORGE

“ It is not for nothing that the predominating color of Chicago is orange. It is as

if the city, in its taxicabs, in its shop fronts, in the wrappings of its parcels, chose

the color of ﬂame that goes with the smoky black of its factories. It is not for

nothing that it has repelled the geometric street arrangement of New York and

substituted . . . great ways with names that a stranger must learn if he can. . . .

He is in a [crowded] city, and if he has business there, he tells himself, ‘If I

weaken I shan’t last long.’

”

—Hail Columbia!

“ How ya gonna

keep ’em down

on the farm,

after they’ve

seen Paree?”

POPULAR SONG OF THE 1920s

History Through

SONG OF THE TOWERS

This mural by Aaron Douglas is part of a series

he painted inside the 135th Street Branch of

the New York Public Library to symbolize differ-

ent aspects of African-American life during the

1920s. In this panel, Song of the Towers, he

depicts ﬁgures before a city backdrop. As seen

here, much of Douglas’s style was inﬂuenced

by jazz music and geometric shapes.

SKILLBUILDER

Analyzing Visual Sources

What is the focal point of this panel?

What parts of this painting might be symbolic

of African Americans’ move north?

How does Douglas represent new freedoms

in this mural? Support your answer with

examples.

SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK,

PAGE R23.

A. Answer Small

towns were

bound by tradi-

tional morals and

close ties of fam-

ily, friends, and

religion. Cities

offered varied

perspectives and

options because

of their large,

mixed popula-

tions; cultural

variety; and

greater toler-

ance of values

and ideas.

Skillbuilder

Answers

1. Possible

Answer: The

person in the

center with the

saxophone is

the focal point.

2. Possible

Answer: The ﬁg-

ure on the right

is running

toward the big

city buildings.

3. Possible

Answer: The ﬁg-

ure in the center

appears to be

joyous as he

raises his arms

upwards.

MAIN IDEA

Contrasting

How did

small-town life and

city life differ?

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 435

Page 2 of 6

A young woman demonstrates one of the means used to conceal alcohol—hiding it

in containers strapped to one’s legs.

In the city, lonely migrants from the country often ached

for home. Throughout the 1920s, Americans found them-

selves caught between rural and urban cultures—a tug that

pitted what seemed to be a safe, small-town world of close

ties, hard work, and strict morals against a big-city world of

anonymous crowds, moneymakers, and pleasure seekers.

THE PROHIBITION EXPERIMENT

One vigorous clash

between small-town and big-city Americans began in

earnest in January 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment

went into effect. This amendment launched the era known

as Prohibition, during which the manufacture, sale, and

transportation of alcoholic beverages were legally prohibited.

Reformers had long considered liquor a prime cause of

corruption. They thought that too much drinking led to

crime, wife and child abuse, accidents on the job, and other

serious social problems. Support for Prohibition came largely

from the rural South and West, areas with large populations

of native-born Protestants. The church-afﬁliated Anti-Saloon

League had led the drive to pass the Prohibition amendment.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which consid-

ered drinking a sin, had helped push the measure through.

At ﬁrst, saloons closed their doors, and arrests for

drunkenness declined. But in the aftermath of World War I,

many Americans were tired of making sacriﬁces; they want-

ed to enjoy life. Most immigrant groups did not consider

drinking a sin but a natural part of socializing, and they

resented government meddling.

Eventually, Prohibition’s fate was sealed by the government, which failed to

budget enough money to enforce the law. The Volstead Act established a

Prohibition Bureau in the Treasury Department in 1919, but the agency was

underfunded. The job of enforcement involved patrolling 18,700 miles

of coastline as well as inland borders, tracking down illegal stills (equip-

ment for distilling liquor), monitoring highways for truckloads of

illegal alcohol, and overseeing all the industries that legally used

alcohol to be sure none was siphoned off for illegal purposes. The

task fell to approximately 1,500 poorly paid federal agents and

local police—clearly an impossible job.

SPEAKEASIES AND BOOTLEGGERS

To obtain liquor ille-

gally, drinkers went underground to hidden saloons and

nightclubs known as speakeasies—so called because when

inside, one spoke quietly, or “easily,” to avoid detection.

Speakeasies could be found everywhere—in penthouses, cel-

lars, ofﬁce buildings, rooming houses, tenements, hardware

stores, and tearooms. To be admitted to a speakeasy, one had to

present a card or use a password. Inside, one would ﬁnd a mix of

fashionable middle-class and upper-middle-class men and

women.

Before long, people grew bolder in getting around the law.

They learned to distill alcohol and built their own stills. Since alco-

hol was allowed for medicinal and religious purposes, prescriptions

436 C

HAPTER 13

DIFFICULT

TO PROHIBIT

ALCOHOL OR NOT?

The question of whether to out-

law alcohol divided Americans.

Many believed the government

should make alcohol illegal to

protect the public, while others

believed it was a personal deci-

sion, and not morally wrong.

1. Examine the pros and cons of

each position. Which do you

agree with? What other fac-

tors, if any, do you think would

inﬂuence your position?

2. If you had been a legislator

asked to vote for the

Eighteenth Amendment, what

would you have said? Explain.

3. What happens when the gov-

ernment legislates moral val-

ues? Give contemporary

examples to support your

answer.

▼

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 436

Page 3 of 6

for alcohol and sales of sacramental wine (intended for

church services) skyrocketed. People also bought liquor

from bootleggers (named for a smuggler’s practice of car-

rying liquor in the legs of boots), who smuggled it in from

Canada, Cuba, and the West Indies. “The business of evad-

ing [the law] and making a mock of it has ceased to wear

any aspects of crime and has become a sort of national

sport,” wrote the journalist H. L. Mencken.

ORGANIZED CRIME

Prohibition not only generated dis-

respect for the law, it also contributed to organized crime in

nearly every major city. Chicago became notorious as the

home of Al Capone, a gangster whose bootlegging empire

netted over $60 million a year. Capone took control of the

Chicago liquor business by killing off his competition.

During the 1920s, headlines reported 522 bloody gang

killings and made the image of ﬂashy Al Capone part of the

folklore of the period. In 1940, the writer Herbert Asbury

recalled the Capone era in Chicago.

A PERSONAL VOICE HERBERT ASBURY

“ The famous seven-ton armored car, with the pudgy gang-

ster lolling on silken cushions in its darkened recesses, a

big cigar in his fat face, and a $50,000 diamond ring blaz-

ing from his left hand, was one of the sights of the city; the

average tourist felt that his trip to Chicago was a failure

unless it included a view of Capone out for a spin. The

mere whisper: ‘Here comes Al,’ was sufﬁcient to stop traf-

ﬁc and to set thousands of curious citizens craning their

necks along the curbing.

”

—Gem of the Prairie

By the mid-1920s, only 19 percent of Americans sup-

ported Prohibition. The rest, who wanted the amendment

changed or repealed, believed that Prohibition caused

worse effects than the initial problem. Rural Protestant

Americans, however, defended a law that they felt strengthened moral values. The

Eighteenth Amendment remained in force until 1933, when it was repealed by

the Twenty-ﬁrst Amendment.

AL CAPONE

By age 26, Al Capone headed a

criminal empire in Chicago, which

he controlled through the use of

bribes and violence. From 1925 to

1931, Capone bootlegged whiskey

from Canada, operated illegal

breweries in Chicago, and ran a

network of 10,000 speakeasies.

In 1927, the “Big Fellow,” as he

liked to be called, was worth an

estimated $100 million.

The end came quickly for

Capone, though. In 1931, the

gangster chief was arrested for

tax evasion and went to jail.

That was the only crime of which

the authorities were ever able

to convict him. Capone was later

released from jail, but he died

several years later at age 48.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 437

HISTORICAL

B. Possible

Answers The

consumption of

alcohol was a

traditional part

of many cul-

tures; the gov-

ernment failed

to provide sufﬁ-

cient staff and

resources to

enforce the law;

the means of

manufacturing,

selling, and

transporting

liquor were

many and could

easily be con-

cealed.

C. Answer

Criminals broke

the law by

smuggling, as

well as by mak-

ing alcohol and

selling it for

proﬁt.

MAIN IDEA

Developing

Historical

Perspective

Why do you

think the

Eighteenth

Amendment failed

to eliminate

alcohol

consumption?

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Effects

How did

criminals take

advantage of

Prohibition?

Prohibition, 1920–1933

Causes

•Various religious groups thought drinking

alcohol was sinful.

•Reformers believed that the government

should protect the public’s health.

•Reformers believed that alcohol led to

crime, wife and child abuse, and accidents

on the job.

• During World War I, native-born Americans

developed a hostility to German-American

brewers and toward other immigrant

groups that used alcohol.

Effects

•Consumption of alcohol declined.

•Disrespect for the law developed.

•An increase in lawlessness,such

as smuggling and bootlegging, was

evident.

•Criminals found a new source of

income.

•Organized crime grew.

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 437

Page 4 of 6

Science and Religion Clash

Another bitter controversy highlighted the growing

rift between traditional and modern ideas during

the 1920s. This battle raged between fundamentalist reli-

gious groups and secular thinkers over the truths of science.

AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM

The Protestant movement

grounded in a literal, or nonsymbolic, interpretation of the

Bible was known as fundamentalism. Fundamentalists

were skeptical of scientiﬁc knowledge; they argued that all

important knowledge could be found in the Bible. They believed

that the Bible was inspired by God, and that therefore its stories in

all their details were true.

Their beliefs led fundamentalists to reject the theory of evolu-

tion advanced by Charles Darwin in the 19th century—a theory

stating that plant and animal species had developed and changed

over millions of years. The claim they found most unbelievable

was that humans had evolved from apes. They pointed instead to

the Bible’s account of creation, in which God made the world and

all its life forms, including humans, in six days.

Fundamentalism expressed itself in several ways. In the South

and West, preachers led religious revivals based on the authority of

the Scriptures. One of the most powerful revivalists was Billy

Sunday, a baseball player turned preacher who staged emotional meetings across the

South. In Los Angeles, Aimee Semple McPherson, a theatrical woman who dressed

in ﬂowing white satin robes, used Hollywood showmanship to preach the word to

homesick Midwestern migrants and devoted followers of her radio broadcasts. In the

1920s, fundamentalism gained followers who began to call for laws prohibiting the

teaching of evolution.

THE SCOPES TRIAL

In March 1925, Tennessee passed the

nation’s ﬁrst law that made it a crime to teach evolution.

Immediately, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

promised to defend any teacher who would challenge the

law. John T. Scopes, a young biology teacher in Dayton,

Tennessee, accepted the challenge. In his biology class,

Scopes read this passage from Civic Biology: “We have now

learned that animal forms may be arranged so as to begin

with the simple one-celled forms and culminate with a

group which includes man himself.” Scopes was promptly

arrested, and his trial was set for July.

The ACLU hired Clarence Darrow, the most famous

trial lawyer of the day, to defend Scopes. William Jennings

Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for president and a

devout fundamentalist, served as a special prosecutor. There

was no real question of guilt or innocence: Scopes was hon-

est about his action. The Scopes trial was a ﬁght over evo-

lution and the role of science and religion in public schools

and in American society.

The trial opened on July 10, 1925, and almost overnight

became a national sensation. Darrow called Bryan as an

expert on the Bible—the contest that everyone had been

waiting for. To handle the throngs of Bryan supporters,

Judge Raulston moved the court outside, to a platform built

under the maple trees. There, before a crowd of several

438 C

HAPTER 13

▼

The evangelist Aimee

Semple McPherson

in 1922

EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM,

AND EDUCATION

There is still great controversy

today over the teaching of evolu-

tion in the public schools. Some

people believe that creation theo-

ry should be taught as a theory of

the origin of life, along with evolu-

tion. As recently as 1999, the

Kansas State School Board voted

to eliminate the teaching of evolu-

tion from the curriculum.

The issue of what should be

taught about the origin of life—

and who should decide this

issue—continues to stir up

debate. Some have suggested

that science and religion are not

necessarily incompatible. They

believe that a theory of the origin

of life can accommodate both the

scientiﬁc theory of evolution and

religious beliefs.

Vocabular y

culminate:

to come to

completion; end

D. Answer

Fundamentalists

believed that all

important

knowledge

could be found

in the Bible and

that what was in

the Bible was

true. They

rejected

Darwin’s theory

of evolution.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

Summarize

the beliefs of

fundamentalism.

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 438

Page 5 of 6

thousand, Darrow relentlessly questioned Bryan about

his beliefs. Bryan stood ﬁrm, a smile on his face.

A PERSONAL VOICE

CLARENCE DARROW

AND WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

Mr. Darrow—

“ You claim that ever ything in the

Bible should be literally interpreted?

”

Mr. Bryan—“ I believe everything in the Bible should

be accepted as it is given there. Some of the Bible

is given illustratively. For instance: ‘Ye are the salt of

the earth.’ I would not insist that man was actually

salt, or that he had ﬂesh of salt, but it is used in the

sense of salt as saving God’s people.

”

—quoted in Bryan and Darrow at Dayton

Darrow asked Bryan if he agreed with Bishop

James Ussher’s calculation that, according to the

Bible, Creation happened in 4004

B.C.Had every liv-

ing thing on earth appeared since that time? Did

Bryan know that ancient civilizations had thrived

before 4004

B.C.? Did he know the age of the earth?

Bryan grew edgy but stuck to his guns. Finally, Darrow asked Bryan, “Do you

think the earth was made in six days?” Bryan answered, “Not six days of 24

hours.” People sitting on the lawn gasped.

With this answer, Bryan admitted that the Bible might be interpreted in

different ways. But in spite of this admission, Scopes was found guilty and

ﬁned $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later changed the verdict on a tech-

nicality, but the law outlawing the teaching of evolution remained in effect.

This clash over evolution, the Prohibition experiment, and the emerging

urban scene all were evidence of the changes and conﬂicts occurring during the

1920s. During that period, women also experienced conﬂict as they redeﬁned

their roles and pursued new lifestyles.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 439

▼

A 1925 newspaper

cartoon portrays

Bryan (left) and

Darrow (right) at the

close of the Scopes

"monkey" trial on the

teaching of evolution,

so-called because of

a theory of evolution

that humans evolved

from apes.

MAIN IDEA

2. TAKING NOTES

Create two diagrams like the one

below. Show how government

attempted to deal with (a) problems

thought to stem from alcohol use

and (b) the teaching of evolution.

Was the legislation effective?

Explain.

CRITICAL THINKING

3. ANALYZING ISSUES

How might the overall atmosphere

of the 1920s have contributed to

the failure of Prohibition?

4. ANALYZING CAUSES

Why do you think organized crime

spread so quickly through the cities

during the 1920s? Explain your

answer.

5. EVALUATING

Do you think the passage of the

Volstead Act and the ruling in the

Scopes trial represented genuine

triumphs for traditional values?

Think About:

• changes in urban life in the

1920s

• the effects of Prohibition

• the legacy of the Scopes trial

Issue

Legislation

Outcome

E. Answer

Fundamentalists

believed that

God created the

world in six

days, whereas

evolutionists

argued that

modern species

developed from

earlier forms of

life over millions

of years.

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Issues

What was the

conﬂict between

fundamentalists

and those who

accepted

evolution?

•Prohibition

•speakeasy

•bootlegger

•fundamentalism

•Clarence Darrow

•Scopes trial

1. TERMS & NAMES For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its signiﬁcance.

434-439-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:20 PM Page 439

Page 6 of 6

440 C

HAPTER 13

Terms & Names

MAIN IDEA

One American's Story

The Twenties Woman

•ﬂapper •double standard

American women pursued

new lifestyles and assumed

new jobs and different roles

in society during the 1920s.

Workplace opportunities and

trends in family life are still

major issues for women today.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

When Zelda Sayre broke off her engagement with would-be writer F.

Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, she told him that he would have to become

successful on his own. Later, she wrote about how a woman can

achieve greatness.

A PERSONAL VOICE ZELDA SAYRE FITZGERALD

“ Rouge means that women want to choose their man—not take

what lives in the next house. . . . Look back over the pages of history

and see how the loveliness of women has always stirred men—and

nations—on to great achievement! There have been women who were

not pretty, who have swayed hearts and empires, but these women . . .

did not disdain that thing for which paint and powder stands. They wanted to

choose their destinies—to be successful competitors in the great game of life.

”

—“Paint and Powder,” The Smart Set, May 1929

Zelda Sayre and F. Scott Fitzgerald married one week after Scott published his

ﬁrst novel, and Zelda continued to be the model for Scott’s independent, uncon-

ventional, ambitious female characters. He even copied from her letters and other

writings. Ironically, Zelda’s devotion to her marriage and to motherhood stiﬂed

her career ambitions. Nevertheless, she became a model for a generation of young

American women who wanted to break away from traditions and forget the hard-

ships of the war years.

Yo u ng Wo m e n C h a n g e t h e R u l e s

By the 1920s, the experiences of World War I, the pull of cities, and changing atti-

tudes had opened up a new world for many young Americans. These “wild young

people,” wrote John F. Carter, Jr., in a 1920 issue of Atlantic Monthly, were experi-

encing a world unknown to their parents: “We have seen man at his lowest,

woman at her lightest, in the terrible moral chaos of Europe. We have been forced

to question, and in many cases to discard, the religion of our fathers. . . .We have

been forced to live in an atmosphere of ‘tomorrow we die,’ and so, naturally, we

drank and were merry.” In the rebellious, pleasure-loving atmosphere of the twen-

ties, many women began to assert their independence, reject the values of the

19th century, and demand the same freedoms as men.

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

440-443-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:21 PM Page 440

Page 1 of 4

THE FLAPPER

During the twenties, a new ideal emerged for some women: the

ﬂapper, an emancipated young woman who embraced the new fashions and

urban attitudes of the day. Close-ﬁtting felt hats, bright waistless dresses an inch

above the knees, skin-toned silk stockings, sleek pumps, and strings of beads

replaced the dark and prim ankle-length dresses, whalebone corsets, and petti-

coats of Victorian days. Young women clipped their long hair into boyish bobs

and dyed it jet black.

Many young women became more assertive. In their bid for equal status with

men, some began smoking cigarettes, drinking in public, and talking openly

about sex—actions that would have ruined their reputations not many years

before. They danced the fox trot, camel walk, tango, Charleston, and shimmy

with abandon.

Attitudes toward marriage changed as well. Many middle-class men and

women began to view marriage as more of an equal partnership, although both

agreed that housework and child-rearing remained a woman’s job.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD

Magazines, newspapers, and advertisements promot-

ed the image of the ﬂapper, and young people openly discussed courtship and

relationships in ways that scandalized their elders. Although many young women

donned the new outﬁts and ﬂouted tradition, the ﬂapper was more an image of

rebellious youth than a widespread reality; it did not reﬂect the attitudes and val-

ues of many young people. During the 1920s, morals loosened only so far.

Traditionalists in churches and schools protested the new casual dances and

women’s acceptance of smoking and drinking.

In the years before World War I, when men “courted” women, they pursued

only women they intended to marry. In the 1920s, however, casual dating became

increasingly accepted. Even so, a double standard—a set of principles granting

greater sexual freedom to men than to women—required women to observe

stricter standards of behavior than men did. As a result, many women were pulled

back and forth between the old standards and the new.

Women Shed Old Roles at Home and at Work

The fast-changing world of the 1920s produced new roles for women in the

workplace and new trends in family life. A booming industrial economy opened

new work opportunities for women in ofﬁces, factories, stores, and professions.

The same economy churned out time-saving appliances and products that

reshaped the roles of housewives and mothers.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 441

Flappers compete

in a Charleston

dance

competition in

1926.

▼

A. Possible

Answer

Like: Flappers

used clothing,

hairstyles, and

behavior to

claim a new

freedom.

Unlike: To day’s

women have

more freedoms.

MAIN IDEA

Evaluating

How was the

ﬂapper like and

unlike women of

today?

440-443-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:21 PM Page 441

Page 2 of 4

NEW WORK OPPORTUNITIES

Although women had worked

successfully during the war, afterwards employers who believed

that men had the responsibility to support their families ﬁnan-

cially often replaced female workers with men. Women con-

tinued to seek paid employment, but their opportunities

changed. Many female college graduates turned to “women’s

professions” and became teachers, nurses, and librarians. Big

businesses required extensive correspondence and record keep-

ing, creating a huge demand for clerical workers such as typists,

ﬁling clerks, secretaries, stenographers, and ofﬁce-machine

operators. Others became clerks in stores or held jobs on assem-

bly lines. A handful of women broke the old stereotypes by

doing work once reserved for men, such as ﬂying airplanes, dri-

ving taxis, and drilling oil wells.

By 1930, 10 million women were earning wages; however,

few rose to managerial jobs, and wherever they worked, women

earned less than men. Fearing competition for jobs, men argued

that women were just temporary workers whose real job was at home. Between

1900 and 1930, the patterns of discrimination and inequality for women in the

business world were established.

THE CHANGING FAMILY

Widespread social and economic changes reshaped the

family. The birthrate had been declining for several decades, and it dropped at a

slightly faster rate in the 1920s. This decline was due in part to the wider avail-

ability of birth-control information. Margaret Sanger, who had opened the ﬁrst

birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, founded the American Birth

Control League in 1921 and fought for the legal rights of physicians to give birth-

control information to their patients.

At the same time, social and technological innovations simpliﬁed household

labor and family life. Stores overﬂowed with ready-made clothes, sliced bread,

and canned foods. Public agencies provided services for the elderly, public health

clinics served the sick, and workers’ compensation assisted those who could no

longer work. These innovations and institutions had the effect of freeing home-

makers from some of their traditional family responsibilities. Many middle-class

housewives, the main shoppers and money managers, focused their attention on

their homes, husbands, children, and pastimes. “I consider time for reading clubs

and my children more important than . . . careful housework and I just don’t do

it,” said an Indiana woman in the 1920s.

442 C

HAPTER 13

▼

A young woman

works as a

typesetter in a

publishing house

in 1920.

B. Answer

Big business

and industry

produced time-

saving appli-

ances that freed

women from

some household

chores, and

business growth

also created

jobs for millions

of women, but

most women

were conﬁned

to traditional

jobs.

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Effects

How did the

growth of business

and industry affect

women?

Women’s Changing Employment, 1910–1930

1910 1920 1930

Professional

9.1%

Domestic

31.3%

Source: Grace Hutchins, Women Who Work

Transportation

& Communication

1.3%

Trade

5.9%

Clerical

7.3%

Agriculture

22.4%

Manufacturing

& Mechanical

22.6%

Includes restaurant workers and beauticians.

Includes sales clerks.

Includes forestry and fishing.

Professional

11.9%

Domestic

25.6%

Transportation

& Communication

2.6%

Trade

7.9%

Clerical

16.6%

Agriculture

12.7%

Manufacturing

& Mechanical

22.6%

Professional

14.2%

Domestic

29.6%

Transportation

& Communication

2.6%

Trade

9.0%

Clerical

18.5%

Agriculture

8.5%

Manufacturing

& Mechanical

17.5%

440-443-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:21 PM Page 442

Page 3 of 4

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 443

As their spheres of activity and inﬂuence expanded, women experienced

greater equality in marriage. Marriages were based increasingly on romantic love

and companionship. Children, no longer thrown together with adults in factory

work, farm labor, and apprenticeships, spent most of their days at school and in

organized activities with others their own age. At the same time, parents began to

rely more heavily on manuals of child care and the advice of experts.

Working-class and college-educated women quickly discovered the pressure

of juggling work and family, but the strain on working-class women was more

severe. Helen Wright, who worked for the Women’s Bureau in Chicago, recorded

the struggle of an Irish mother of two.

A PERSONAL VOICE HELEN WRIGHT

“ She worked in one of the meat-packing companies, pasting labels from 7 a.m. to

3:30 p.m. She had entered the eldest child at school but sent her to the nursery

for lunch and after school. The youngest was in the nursery all day. She kept her

house ‘immaculately clean and in perfect order,’ but to do so worked until eleven

o’clock every night in the week and on Saturday night she worked until ﬁve

o’clock in the morning. She described her schedule as follows: on Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday she cleaned one room each night; Saturday after-

noon she ﬁnished the cleaning and put the house in order; Saturday night she

washed; Sunday she baked; Monday night she ironed.

”

—quoted in Wage-Earning Women

As women adjusted to changing roles, some also struggled with rebellious

adolescents, who put an unprecedented strain on families. Teens in the 1920s

studied and socialized with other teens and spent less time with their families. As

peer pressure intensiﬁed, some adolescents resisted parental control, much as the

ﬂappers resisted societal control.

This theme of adolescent rebelliousness can be seen in much of the popular

culture of the 1920s. Education and entertainment reﬂected the conﬂict between

traditional attitudes and modern ways of thinking.

C. Answer

The birthrate

dropped; house-

hold labor was

simpliﬁed by

technology; chil-

dren spent their

days in school;

adolescent

rebelliousness

increased.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

What changes

affected families

in the 1920s?

•ﬂapper •double standard

1. TERMS & NAMES For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its signiﬁcance.

MAIN IDEA

2. TAKING NOTES

Copy the concept web shown below

and add to it examples that illustrate

how women’s lives changed in the

1920s.

Write a paragraph explaining how

you think women’s lives changed

most dramatically in the 1920s.

CRITICAL THINKING

3. EVALUATING

During the 1920s, a double stan-

dard required women to observe

stricter codes of behavior than men.

Do you think that some women of

this decade made real progress

towards equality? Support your

answer with examples. Think About:

• the ﬂapper’s style and image

• changing views of marriage

4. ANALYZING PRIMARY SOURCES

In 1920, veteran suffragist Anna

Howard Shaw stated that equality in

the workplace would be harder for

women to achieve than the vote.

“ You younger women will have

a harder task than ours. You will

want equality in business, and it

will be even harder to get than

the vote.

”

—Anna Howard Shaw

Why do you think Shaw held this

belief? Support your answer with

evidence from the text.

lifestyles

families jobs

Changes:

Women in the

1920s

440-443-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:21 PM Page 443

Page 4 of 4

446 C

HAPTER 13

Terms & Names

MAIN IDEA

One American's Story

Education and

Popular Culture

•Charles A.

Lindbergh

•George Gershwin

•Georgia O’Keeffe

•Sinclair Lewis

•F. S c o t t

Fitzgerald

•Edna St. Vincent

Millay

•Ernest Hemingway

The mass media, movies,

and spectator sports played

important roles in creating

the popular culture of the

1920s—a culture that many

artists and writers criticized.

Much of today’s popular culture

can trace its roots to the

popular culture of the 1920s.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

On September 22, 1927, approximately 50 million Americans sat

listening to their radios as Graham McNamee, radio’s most popu-

lar announcer, breathlessly called the boxing match between the

former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey and the current title-

holder, Gene Tunney.

A PERSONAL

VOICE GRAHAM MCNAMEE

“ Good evening, Ladies & Gentlemen of the Radio Audience. This is

a big night. Three million dollars’ worth of boxing bugs are gather-

ing around a ring at Soldiers’ Field, Chicago. . . .

Here comes Jack Dempsey, climbing through the ropes . . . white

flannels, long bathrobe. . . . Here comes Tunney. . . . The announcer

shouting in the ring . . . trying to quiet 150,000 people. . . . Robes

are off.

”

—Time magazine, October 3, 1927

After punches ﬂew for seven rounds, Tunney defeated the legendary

Dempsey. So suspenseful was the brutal match that a number of radio listeners

died of heart failure. The “ﬁght of the century” was just one of a host of spec-

tacles and events that transformed American popular culture in the 1920s.

Schools and the Mass Media Shape Culture

During the 1920s, developments in education and mass media had a powerful

impact on the nation.

SCHOOL ENROLLMENTS

In 1914, approximately 1 million American students

attended high school. By 1926, that number had risen to nearly 4 million, an increase

sparked by prosperous times and higher educational standards for industry jobs.

Prior to the 1920s, high schools had catered to college-bound students. In

contrast, high schools of the 1920s began offering a broad range of courses such

as vocational training for those interested in industrial jobs.

▼

Gene Tunney, down

for the “long count,”

went on to defeat

Jack Dempsey in their

epic 1927 battle.

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 446

Page 1 of 6

The public schools met another chal-

lenge in the 1920s—teaching the children

of new immigrant families. The years

before World War I had seen the largest

stream of immigrants in the nation’s histo-

ry—close to 1 million a year. Unlike the

earlier English and Irish immigrants, many

of the new immigrants spoke no English.

By the 1920s their children ﬁlled city class-

rooms. Determined teachers met the chal-

lenge and created a large pool of literate

Americans.

Taxes to ﬁnance the schools increased

as well. School costs doubled between

1913 and 1920, then doubled again by

1926. The total cost of American educa-

tion in the mid-1920s amounted to $2.7

billion a year.

EXPANDING NEWS COVERAGE

Widespread education increased literacy in

America, but it was the growing mass media that shaped a mass culture.

Newspaper circulation rose as writers and editors learned how to hook readers by

imitating the sensational stories in the tabloids. By 1914, about 600 local papers

had shut down and 230 had been swallowed up by huge national chains, giving

readers more expansive coverage from the big cities. Mass-circulation magazines

also ﬂourished during the 1920s. Many of these magazines summarized the

week’s news, both foreign and domestic. By the end of the 1920s, ten American

magazines—including Reader’s Digest (founded in 1922) and Time (founded in

1923)—boasted a circulation of over 2 million each.

RADIO COMES OF AGE

Although major magazines and newspapers

reached big audiences, radio was the most powerful communications medi-

um to emerge in the 1920s. Americans added terms such as “airwaves,”

“radio audience,” and “tune in” to their everyday speech. By the end of the

By 1930, 40 percent of U.S.

households had radios, like

this 1927 Cosser three-

valve Melody Maker.

Radio dance parties were

common in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, radio was a

formal affair. Announcers

and musicians dressed in

their ﬁnest attire, even

without a live audience.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

How did

schools change

during the 1920s?

Radio Broadcasts of the 1920s

447

▼

A. Answer

More students

were able to

attend school

during this pros-

perous time;

schools had to

adapt to teach-

ing students of

new immigrant

families; schools

offered a broad

range of cours-

es for students

to train for

industrial jobs.

Skillbuilder

Answer

Approximately

2.1 million.

High School Enrollment, 1910–1940

Number of Students (in millions)

1910 1920 1930 1940

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States

SKILLBUILDER

Interpreting Graphs

What was the approximate increase in the number of high

school students between 1920 and 1930?

▼

Prior to the 1920s, radio broadcasts were used primarily for trans-

mitting important messages and speeches regarding World War I.

After the ﬁrst commercial radio station—KDKA Pittsburgh—

made its debut on the airwaves in 1920, the radio industry

changed forever. Listeners tuned in for news, entertainment,

and advertisements.

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 447

Page 2 of 6

decade, the radio networks had created something new in the United States—the

shared national experience of hearing the news as it happened. The wider world

had opened up to Americans, who could hear the voice of their president or listen

to the World Series live.

America Chases New Heroes and Old Dreams

During the 1920s, many people had money and the leisure time to enjoy it.

In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment, much of it on ever-

changing fads. Early in the decade, Americans engaged in new leisure pastimes

such as working crossword puzzles and playing mahjong, a Chinese game whose

playing pieces resemble dominoes. In 1922, after explorers opened the dazzling

tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen, consumers mobbed stores

for pharaoh-inspired accessories, jewelry, and furniture. In the mid-

1920s, people turned to ﬂagpole sitting and dance marathons. They also

ﬂooded athletic stadiums to see sports stars, who were gloriﬁed as super-

heroes by the mass media.

Andrew “Rube” Foster

A celebrated pitcher and team

manager, Andrew “Rube” Foster

made his greatest contribution

to black baseball in 1920

when he founded the Negro

National League. Although

previous attempts to estab-

lish a league for black

players had failed, Foster

led the league to suc-

cess, earning him the

title “The Father of

Black Baseball.”

Although the media gloriﬁed sports heroes, the Golden Age of Sports reﬂected

common aspirations. Athletes set new records, inspiring ordinary Americans.

When poor, unknown athletes rose to national fame and fortune, they restored

Americans’ belief in the power of the individual to improve his or her life.

Gertude Ederle

In 1926, at the age of 19,

Gertrude Ederle became

the ﬁrst woman to swim

the English Channel. Here,

an assistant applies heavy

grease to help ward off

the effects of the cold

Channel waters.

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Effects

Why did

radio become

so popular?

▼

Helen Wills

Helen Wills dominated

women’s tennis, winning

the singles title at the

U.S. Open seven times

and the Wimbledon title

eight times. Her nickname

was “Little Miss Poker

Face.“

▼

Sports Heroes of the 1920s

B. Answer

For the ﬁrst

time, Americans

could hear news

as it happened.

▼

Babe Ruth

New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth

smashed home run after home run

during the 1920s. When this leg-

endary star hit a record 60 home

runs in 1927, Americans went wild.

▼

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 448

Page 3 of 6

LINDBERGH’S FLIGHT

America’s most beloved hero of the time wasn’t an ath-

lete but a small-town pilot named Charles A. Lindbergh, who made the ﬁrst

nonstop solo ﬂight across the Atlantic. A handsome, modest Minnesotan,

Lindbergh decided to go after a $25,000 prize offered for the ﬁrst nonstop solo

transatlantic ﬂight. On May 20, 1927, he took off near New York City in the Spirit

of St. Louis, ﬂew up the coast to Newfoundland, and headed over the Atlantic. The

weather was so bad, Lindbergh recalled, that “the average altitude for the whole

. . . second 1,000 miles of the [Atlantic] ﬂight was less than 100 feet.” After 33

hours and 29 minutes, Lindbergh set down at Le Bourget airﬁeld outside of Paris,

France, amid beacons, searchlights, and mobs of enthusiastic people.

Paris threw a huge party. On his return to the U.S., New York showered

Lindbergh with ticker tape, the president received him at the White House, and

America made him its idol. In an age of sensationalism, excess, and crime,

Lindbergh stood for the honesty and bravery the nation seemed to have lost. The

novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, a fellow Minnesotan, caught the essence of

Lindbergh’s fame.

A PERSONAL VOICE F. S C O T T FI T Z G ERA L D

“ In the spring of 1927, something bright and alien ﬂashed across the sky.

A young Minnesotan who seemed to have nothing to do with his generation did

a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs

and speakeasies and thought of their old best dreams.

”

—quoted in The Lawless Decade

Lindbergh’s accomplishment paved the way for others. In the next decade,

Amelia Earhart was to undertake many brave aerial exploits, inspired by

Lindbergh’s example.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 449

Harbour Grace

Londonderry

Paris

New York

Cleveland

Key West

Havana

Chicago

San Francisco

IRELAND

NEWFOUNDLAND

UNITED STATES

CUBA

CANADA

FRANCE

EUROPE

AFRICA

NORTH

AMERICA

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Gulf of

Mexico

Hudson

Bay

North

Sea

Historic Flights, 1919–1932

1920 First transcontinental

airmail service in the U.S.

March 14, 1927

Pan American

Airways is founded

to handle airmail

deliveries. First

route is between

Key West, Florida,

and Havana.

May 20–21, 1932 Amelia

Earhart is the ﬁrst woman to ﬂy

solo across the Atlantic, in a

record time of about 15 hours

from Newfoundland to Ireland.

May 20–21, 1927 Charles Lindbergh

establishes a record of 33 hours 29

minutes in his 3,614–mile nonstop

solo ﬂight across the Atlantic.

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 449

Page 4 of 6

ENTERTAINMENT AND THE ARTS

Despite the

feats of real-life heroes, America’s thirst for enter-

tainment in the arts and on the screen and stage

seemed unquenchable in the 1920s.

Even before the introduction of sound, movies

became a national pastime, offering viewers a

means of escape through romance and comedy.

The ﬁrst major movie with sound, The Jazz Singer,

was released in 1927. Walt Disney’s Steamboat

Willie, the ﬁrst animated ﬁlm with sound, was

released in 1928. By 1930, the new “talkies” had

doubled movie attendance, with millions of

Americans going to the movies every week.

Both playwrights and composers of music broke

away from the European traditions of the 1920s.

Eugene O’Neill’s plays, such as The Hairy Ape,

forced Americans to reﬂect upon modern isola-

tion, confusion, and family conﬂict. Fame was

given to concert music composer George

Gershwin when he merged traditional elements

with American jazz, thus creating a new sound

that was identiﬁably American.

Painters appealed to Americans by recording an

America of realities and dreams. Edward Hopper

caught the loneliness of American life in his can-

vases of empty streets and solitary people, while

Georgia O’Keeffe produced intensely colored

canvases that captured the grandeur of New York.

WRITERS OF THE 1920s

The 1920s also brought an outpouring of fresh and

insightful writing, making it one of the richest eras in the country’s literary history.

Sinclair Lewis, the ﬁrst American to win a Nobel Prize in literature, was

among the era’s most outspoken critics. In his novel Babbitt, Lewis used the main

character of George F. Babbitt to ridicule Americans for their conformity and

materialism.

A PERSONAL VOICE SINCLAIR LEWIS

“ A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents

of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal impor-

tance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and a

silver pencil . . . which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them

he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife, silver cigar-

cutter, seven keys . . . and incidentally a good watch. . . . Last, he stuck in his

lapel the Boosters’ Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button dis-

played two words: ‘Boosters—Pep!’

”

—Babbitt

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who coined the term “Jazz Age” to describe the

1920s. In This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby, he revealed the negative side

of the period’s gaiety and freedom, portraying wealthy and attractive people lead-

ing imperiled lives in gilded surroundings. In New York City, a brilliant group of

writers routinely lunched together at the Algonquin Hotel’s “Round Table.”

Among the best known of them was Dorothy Parker, a short story writer, poet,

and essayist. Parker was famous for her wisecracking wit, expressed in such lines

as “I was the toast of two continents—Greenland and Australia.”

450 C

HAPTER 13

▼

In Radiator

Building—Night,

New York (1927),

Georgia O’Keeffe

showed the dark

buildings of

New York City

thrusting into

the night sky.

MAIN IDEA

Making

Inferences

Why were

Americans so

delighted by

movies in the

1920s?

C. Answer

Movies provided

excitement and

romance

through a medi-

um that was

new and chang-

ing; they offered

adventure to

people whose

lives were taken

up mostly with

earning a living.

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 450

Page 5 of 6

Many writers also met important issues head on. In The

Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton dramatized the clash

between traditional and modern values that had under-

mined high society 50 years earlier. Willa Cather celebrated

the simple, digniﬁed lives of people such as the immigrant

farmers of Nebraska in My Ántonia, while Edna St.

Vincent Millay wrote poems celebrating youth and a life

of independence and freedom from traditional constraints.

Some writers such as Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway,

and John Dos Passos were so soured by American culture

that they chose to settle in Europe, mainly in Paris.

Socializing in the city’s cafes, they formed a group that the

writer Gertrude Stein called the Lost Generation. They

joined other American writers already in Europe such as the

poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, whose poem The Waste

Land presented an agonized view of a society that seemed

stripped of humanity.

Several writers saw action in World War I, and their

early books denounced war. Dos Passos’s novel Three Soldiers

attacked war as a machine designed to crush human free-

dom. Later, he turned to social and political themes, using

modern techniques to capture the mood of city life and the

losses that came with success. Ernest Hemingway,

wounded in World War I, became the best-known expatriate

author. In his novels The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to

Arms, he criticized the gloriﬁcation of war. He also intro-

duced a tough, simpliﬁed style of writing that set a new lit-

erary standard, using sentences a Time reporter compared to

“round stones polished by rain and wind.”

During this rich literary era, vital developments were

also taking place in African-American society. Black

Americans of the 1920s began to voice pride in their her-

itage, and black artists and writers revealed the richness of

African-American culture.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 451

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Causes

Why did some

writers reject

American culture

and values?

Vocabular y

expatriate: a

person who has

taken up

residence in a

foreign country

F. S C O TT F I T Z GE R A L D

1900–1940

F. S c o t t F it zg e r a l d m a r ri ed viv a -

cious Zelda Sayre in 1920 after

his novel This Side of Paradise

became an instant hit. He said of

this time in his life:

“Riding in a taxi one afternoon

between very tall buildings under

a mauve and rosy sky,

I began to bawl because I had

everything I wanted and knew I

would never be so happy again.”

Flush with money, the couple

plunged into a wild social whirl

and outspent their incomes. The

years following were difﬁcult.

Zelda suffered from repeated

mental breakdowns, and Scott’s

battle with alcoholism took its toll.

•Charles A. Lindbergh

•George Gershwin

•Georgia O’Keeffe

•Sinclair Lewis

•F. Sc o t t F i t z g er al d

•Edna St. Vincent Millay

•Ernest Hemingway

1. TERMS & NAMES For each of the following names, write a sentence explaining his or her signiﬁcance.

MAIN IDEA

2. TAKING NOTES

Create a time line of key events

relating to 1920s popular culture.

Use the dates below as a guide.

In a sentence or two, explain which

of these events interests you the

most and why.

CRITICAL THINKING

3. SYNTHESIZING

In what ways do you think the mass

media and mass culture helped

Americans create a sense of

national community in the 1920s?

Support your answer with details

from the text. Think About:

• the content and readership of

newspapers and magazines

• attendance at sports events and

movie theaters

• the scope of radio broadcasts

4. EVALUATING

Do you think the popular heroes of

the 1920s were heroes in a real

sense? Why or why not?

5. SUMMARIZING

In two or three sentences,

summarize the effects of education

and mass media on society in the

1920s.

1920 19281926

19271923

D. Answer

Many American

writers found

American cul-

ture shallow and

materialistic;

they believed

society lacked

any uniﬁed

ideals.

446-451-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 451

Page 6 of 6

452 C

HAPTER 13

Terms & Names

MAIN IDEA

One American's Story

•Zora Neale Hurston

•James Weldon

Johnson

•Marcus Garvey

•Harlem

Renaissance

•Claude McKay

•Langston Hughes

•Paul Robeson

•Louis Armstrong

•Duke Ellington

•Bessie Smith

African-American ideas,

politics, art, literature, and

music ﬂourished in Harlem

and elsewhere in the United

States.

The Harlem Renaissance provided

a foundation of African-American

intellectualism to which African-

American writers, artists, and

musicians contribute today.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

When the spirited Zora Neale Hurston was a girl in Eatonville,

Florida, in the early 1900s, she loved to read adventure stories and

myths. The powerful tales struck a chord with the young, talent-

ed Hurston and made her yearn for a wider world.

A PERSONAL VOICE ZORA NEALE HURSTON

“ My soul was with the gods and my body in the village.

People just would not act like gods. . . . Raking back yards

and carrying out chamber-pots, were not the tasks of Thor. I

wanted to be away from drabness and to stretch my limbs in

some mighty struggle.

”

—quoted in The African American Encyclopedia

After spending time with a traveling theater company and

attending Howard University, Hurston ended up in New York where

she struggled to the top of African-American literary society by hard

work, ﬂamboyance, and, above all, grit. “I have seen that the

world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or

less,” Hurston wrote later. “I do not weep at [being Negro]—I am

too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” Hurston was on the move,

like millions of others. And, like them, she went after the pearl in

the oyster—the good life in America.

African-American Voices in the 1920s

During the 1920s, African Americans set new goals for themselves as they moved

north to the nation’s cities. Their migration was an expression of their changing

attitude toward themselves—an attitude perhaps best captured in a phrase ﬁrst

used around this time, “Black is beautiful.”

THE MOVE NORTH

Between 1910 and 1920, in a movement known as the

Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans had uprooted

JUMP AT THE SUN:

Zora Neale Hurston

and the Harlem

Renaissance

The Harlem

Renaissance

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 452

Page 1 of 6

themselves from their homes in the South and moved north to the big cities in

search of jobs. By the end of the decade, 5.2 million of the nation’s 12 million

African Americans—over 40 percent—lived in cities. Zora Neale Hurston docu-

mented the departure of some of these African Americans.

A PERSONAL VOICE ZORA NEALE HURSTON

“Some said goodbye cheerfully . . . others fearfully, with terrors of unknown dan-

gers in their mouths . . . others in their eagerness for distance said nothing. The

daybreak found them gone. The wind said North.”

—quoted in Sorrow’s Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston

However, Northern cities in general had not welcomed the massive inﬂux of African

Americans. Tensions had escalated in the years prior to 1920, culminating, in the

summer of 1919, in approximately 25 urban race riots.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN GOALS

Founded in 1909, The

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) urged African Americans to protest racial violence. W.

E. B. Du Bois, a founding member of the NAACP, led a parade

of 10,000 African-American men in New York to protest such

violence. Du Bois also used the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis,

as a platform for leading a struggle for civil rights.

Under the leadership of James Weldon Johnson—

poet, lawyer, and NAACP executive secretary—the organiza-

tion fought for legislation to protect African-American rights.

It made antilynching laws one of its main priorities. In 1919,

three antilynching bills were introduced in Congress,

although none was passed. The NAACP continued its cam-

paign through antilynching organizations that had been

established in 1892 by Ida B. Wells. Gradually, the number of

lynchings dropped. The NAACP represented the new, more

militant voice of African Americans.

MARCUS GARVEY AND THE UNIA

Although many

African Americans found their voice in the NAACP, they still

faced daily threats and discrimination. Marcus Garvey, an

immigrant from Jamaica, believed that African Americans

should build a separate society. His different, more radical

message of black pride aroused the hopes of many.

In 1914, Garvey founded the Universal Negro

Improvement Association (UNIA). In 1918, he moved the

UNIA to New York City and opened ofﬁces in urban ghettos

in order to recruit followers. By the mid-1920s, Garvey

claimed he had a million followers. He appealed to African

Americans with a combination of spellbinding oratory, mass

meetings, parades, and a message of pride.

A PERSONAL VOICE MARCUS GARVEY

“ In view of the fact that the black man of Africa has con-

tributed as much to the world as the white man of Europe,

and the brown man and yellow man of Asia, we of the

Universal Negro Improvement Association demand that the

white, yellow, and brown races give to the black man his

place in the civilization of the world. We ask for nothing

more than the rights of 400 million Negroes.

”

—speech at Liberty Hall, New York City, 1922

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 453

Vocabular y

oratory: the art of

public speaking

A. Answer

The movement

of millions of

African

Americans to

Northern

cities greatly

increased their

black popula-

tions, and

heightened

racial tensions

that sometimes

resulted in dis-

crimination and

violence.

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Effects

How did the

inﬂux of African

Americans change

Northern cities?

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

1871–1938

James Weldon Johnson worked

as a school principal, newspaper

editor, and lawyer in Florida. In

1900, he wrote the lyrics for “Lift

Every Voice and Sing,” the song

that became known as the black

national anthem. The ﬁrst stanza

begins as follows:

“Lift every voice and sing

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of

Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the

rolling sea.”

In the 1920s, Johnson straddled

the worlds of politics and art. He

served as executive secretary of

the NAACP,spear-

heading the ﬁght against lynching.

In addition, he wrote well-known

works, such as God’s Trombones,

a series of sermon-like poems,

and Black Manhattan,a look at

black cultural life in New York dur-

ing the Roaring Twenties.

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 453

Page 2 of 6

454 C

HAPTER 13

Garvey also lured followers with practical plans, especially his program to

promote African-American businesses. Further, Garvey encouraged his

followers to return to Africa, help native people there throw off white

colonial oppressors, and build a mighty nation. His idea struck a chord in

many African Americans, as well as in blacks in the Caribbean and Africa.

Despite the appeal of Garvey’s movement, support for it declined in the

mid-1920s, when he was convicted of mail fraud and jailed. Although

the movement dwindled, Garvey left behind a powerful legacy of

newly awakened black pride, economic independence, and reverence

for Africa.

The Harlem Renaissance

Flowers in New York

Many African Americans who migrated north moved to

Harlem, a neighborhood on the Upper West Side of New York’s Manhattan Island.

In the 1920s, Harlem became the world’s largest black urban community, with res-

idents from the South, the West Indies, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. James Weldon

Johnson described Harlem as the capital of black America.

A PERSONAL VOICE JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

“ Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a

city, the greatest Negro city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is

located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the most beautiful

. . . sections of the city. . . . It has its own churches, social and civic cen-

ters, shops, theaters, and other places of amusement. And it contains

more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth.

”

—“Harlem: The Culture Capital”

Like many other urban neighborhoods, Harlem suffered from overcrowding,

unemployment, and poverty. But its problems in the 1920s were eclipsed by a

ﬂowering of creativity called the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and artistic

movement celebrating African-American culture.

AFRICAN–AMERICAN WRITERS

Above all, the Harlem Renaissance was a lit-

erary movement led by well-educated, middle-class African Americans who

expressed a new pride in the African-American experience. They celebrated their

heritage and wrote with deﬁance and poignancy about the trials of being black in

a white world. W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson helped these young

talents along, as did the Harvard-educated former Rhodes scholar Alain Locke. In

1925, Locke published The New Negro, a landmark collection of literary works by

many promising young African-American writers.

Claude McKay, a novelist, poet, and Jamaican immigrant, was a major ﬁg-

ure whose militant verses urged African Americans to resist prejudice and dis-

crimination. His poems also expressed the pain of life in the black ghettos and the

strain of being black in a world dominated by whites. Another gifted writer of the

time was Jean Toomer. His experimental book Cane—a mix of poems and sketch-

es about blacks in the North and the South—was among the ﬁrst full-length lit-

erary publications of the Harlem Renaissance.

Missouri-born Langston Hughes was the movement’s best-known poet.

Many of Hughes’s 1920s poems described the difﬁcult lives of working-class African

Americans. Some of his poems moved to the tempo of jazz and the blues. (See

Literature in the Jazz Age on page 458.)

▼

Marcus Garvey

designed this

uniform of purple

and gold,

complete with

feathered hat, for

his role as

“Provisional

President of

Africa.”

B. Answer

Garvey believed

that African

Americans

should build

a separate

society; he

preached a

message of self-

pride and he

promoted

African-

American

businesses.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

What

approach to race

relations did

Marcus Garvey

promote?

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 454

Page 3 of 6

145th St.

140th St.

135th St.

130th St.

125th St.

Eighth Ave.

Seventh Ave.

Fifth Ave.

Madison Ave.

Park Ave.

Lenox Ave.

North

At the turn of the century, New York’s Harlem neighborhood was

overbuilt with new apartment houses. Enterprising African-American

realtors began buying and leasing property to other African

Americans who were eager to move into the prosperous neighbor-

hood. As the number of blacks in Harlem increased, many whites

began moving out. Harlem quickly grew to become the center of

black America and the birthplace of the political, social, and cultural

movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem in the 1920s

The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra became one of

the most inﬂuential jazz bands during the Harlem

Renaissance. Here, Henderson, the band’s founder,

sits at the piano, with Louis Armstrong on trumpet

(rear, center).

N EW JERSEY

Central

Park

Harlem

predominantly

black neighborhoods

1 mile

1 kilometer

Cotton Club

Savoy Theatre

Lafayette

Theatre

Marcus

Garvey home

Library

Apollo Theatre

James Weldon

Johnson home

In the mid 1920s, the Cotton Club was one of a

number of fashionable entertainment clubs in Harlem.

Although many venues like the Cotton Club were

segregated, white audiences packed the clubs to

hear the new music styles of black performers such

as Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 455

In 1927, Harlem was a bustling neighborhood.

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 455

Page 4 of 6

In many of her novels, short stories, poems, and books of folklore, Zora Neale

Hurston portrayed the lives of poor, unschooled Southern blacks—in her words,

“the greatest cultural wealth of the continent.” Much of her work celebrated what

she called the common person’s art form—the simple folkways and values of peo-

ple who had survived slavery through their ingenuity and strength.

AFRICAN–AMERICAN PERFORMERS

The spirit and talent of the Harlem

Renaissance reached far beyond the world of African-American writers and intel-

lectuals. Some observers, including Langston Hughes, thought the movement was

launched with Shufﬂe Along, a black musical comedy popular in 1921. “It gave just

the proper push . . . to that Negro vogue of the ‘20s,” he wrote. Several songs in

Shufﬂe Along, including “Love Will Find a Way,” won popularity among white

audiences. The show also spotlighted the talents of several black performers,

including the singers Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, and Mabel Mercer.

During the 1920s, African Americans in the performing arts won large fol-

lowings. The tenor Roland Hayes rose to stardom as a concert singer, and the

singer and actress Ethel Waters debuted on Broadway in the musical Africana.

Paul Robeson, the son of a one-time slave, became a major dramatic actor. His

performance in Shakespeare’s Othello, ﬁrst in London and later in New York City,

was widely acclaimed. Subsequently, Robeson struggled with the racism he expe-

rienced in the United States and the indignities inﬂicted upon him because of his

support of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. He took up residence

abroad, living for a time in England and the Soviet Union.

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND JAZZ

Jazz was

born in the early 20th century in New Orleans,

where musicians blended instrumental ragtime

and vocal blues into an exuberant new sound. In

1918, Joe “King” Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band

traveled north to Chicago, carrying jazz with

them. In 1922, a young trumpet player named

Louis Armstrong joined Oliver’s group, which

became known as the Creole Jazz Band. His tal-

ent rocketed him to stardom in the jazz world.

Famous for his astounding sense of rhythm

and his ability to improvise, Armstrong made

personal expression a key part of jazz. After two

years in Chicago, in 1924 he joined Fletcher

Henderson’s band, then the most important big

jazz band in New York City. Armstrong went on

to become perhaps the most important and

inﬂuential musician in the history of jazz. He

often talked about his anticipated funeral.

A PERSONAL VOICE LOUIS ARMSTRONG

“ They’re going to blow over me. Cats will be coming from everywhere to play.

I had a beautiful life. When I get to the Pearly Gates I’ll play a duet with Gabriel.

We’ll play ‘Sleepy Time Down South.’ He wants to be remembered for his music

just like I do.

”

—quoted in The Negro Almanac

Jazz quickly spread to such cities as Kansas City, Memphis, and New York

City, and it became the most popular music for dancing. During the 1920s,

Harlem pulsed to the sounds of jazz, which lured throngs of whites to the showy,

exotic nightclubs there, including the famed Cotton Club. In the late 1920s,

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer, led his

456 C

HAPTER 13

Background

See Historical

Spotlight on

page 617.

The Hot Five

included (from

left) Louis

Armstrong,

Johnny St. Cyr,

Johnny Dodds,

Kid Ory, and

Lil Hardin

Armstrong.

▼

C. Answer

They expressed

their pride in

African-

American expe-

rience; they cel-

ebrated their

heritage and

folklore.

MAIN IDEA

Synthesizing

In what ways

did writers of the

Harlem

Renaissance

celebrate a

“rebirth”?

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 456

Page 5 of 6

ten-piece orchestra at the Cotton Club. In a 1925 essay

titled “The Negro Spirituals,” Alain Locke seemed almost to

predict the career of the talented Ellington.

A PERSONAL VOICE ALAIN LOCKE

“ Up to the present, the resources of Negro music have been

tentatively exploited in only one direction at a time–melodi-

cally here, rhythmically there, harmonically in a third direc-

tion. A genius that would organize its distinctive elements

in a formal way would be the musical giant of his age.

”

—quoted in Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry

Through the 1920s and 1930s, Ellington won renown

as one of America’s greatest composers, with pieces such as

“Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady.”

Cab Calloway, a talented drummer, saxophonist, and

singer, formed another important jazz orchestra, which

played at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club,

alternating with Duke Ellington. Along with Louis

Armstrong, Calloway popularized “scat,” or improvised jazz

singing using sounds instead of words.

Bessie Smith, a female blues singer, was perhaps the

outstanding vocalist of the decade. She recorded on black-

oriented labels produced by the major record companies.

She achieved enormous popularity and in 1927 became the

highest-paid black artist in the world.

The Harlem Renaissance represented a portion of the

great social and cultural changes that swept America in the

1920s. The period was characterized by economic prosperi-

ty, new ideas, changing values, and personal freedom, as

well as important developments in art, literature, and

music. Most of the social changes were lasting. The eco-

nomic boom, however, was short-lived.

The Roaring Life of the 1920s 457

DUKE ELLINGTON

1899–1974

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington,

one of the greatest composers of

the 20th century, was largely a

self-taught musician. He devel-

oped his skills by playing at family

socials. He wrote his ﬁrst song,

“Soda Fountain Rag,” at age 15

and started his ﬁrst band at 22.

During the ﬁve years Ellington

played at Harlem’s glittering

Cotton Club, he set a new stan-

dard, playing mainly his own styl-

ish compositions. Through radio

and the ﬁlm short

Black and

Tan

, the Duke Ellington Orchestra

was able to reach nationwide

audiences. Billy Strayhorn,

Ellington’s long-time arranger and

collaborator, said, “Ellington plays

the piano, but his real instrument

is his band.”

Harlem Renaissance:

Areas of Achievement

D. Answer

African

Americans were

outstanding in

the performing

arts.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

Besides

literary accom-

plishments, in

what areas did

African Americans

achieve remarkable

results?

•Zora Neale Hurston

•James Weldon Johnson

•Marcus Garvey

•Harlem Renaissance

•Claude McKay

•Langston Hughes

•Paul Robeson

•Louis Armstrong

•Duke Ellington

•Bessie Smith

1. TERMS & NAMES For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its signiﬁcance.

MAIN IDEA

2. TAKING NOTES

In a tree diagram, identify three areas

of artistic achievement in the Harlem

Renaissance. For each, name two

outstanding African Americans.

Write a paragraph explaining the

impact of these achievements.

CRITICAL THINKING

3. ANALYZING CAUSES

Speculate on why an African-

American renaissance ﬂowered

during the 1920s. Support your

answer. Think About:

• racial discrimination in the South

• campaigns for equality in the

North

• Harlem’s diverse cultures

• the changing culture of all

Americans

4. FORMING GENERALIZATIONS

How did popular culture in America

change as a result of the Great

Migration?

5. DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

What did the Harlem Renaissance

contribute to both black and general

American history?

452-457-Chapter 13 10/21/02 5:22 PM Page 457

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