| Culture in the Roaring Twenties and Responses to Modernism (1908-1930) |
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Sections:- Postwar Prosperity
- The Automobile and American Culture
- Mass Culture: The Movies
- Mass Culture: Radio
- Mass Culture: Music and the Music Industry
- Literature and Poetry in the Jazz Age: The Harlem Renaissance
- Literature and Poetry in the Jazz Age: The Lost Generation
- The New Woman and the New Morality
- Prohibition, "A Noble Experiment"
- Nativism and Immigration Restrictions
- The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
- Religious Fundamentalism
- The Scopes Trial
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| Historical Context
Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a proliferation of scientific and technical innovations that came to be known by historians as the "Second Industrial Revolution." As electricity became widespread and industrial production became more efficient, a range of mass produced consumer goods became available to the public at attainable prices. For the first time, consumers across the nation were reading many of the same books and news stories and purchasing the same goods. Communication innovations in radio, advertising, and film also contributed to the homogenization of ideas that led to the advent of national popular culture.
Attached Documents
The first illustration shows the cycle that created the business boom in the 1920's: standardized mass production led to more efficient machines, which led to
higher production and wages, which led to increased demand for consumer goods,
which perpetuated more standardized mass production.
In the 1920's, industries began to employ automated machinery and "scientific management" to increase efficiency. The reorganization of work to maximize production resulted in more spare time and disposable income for average workers. New scientific management practices also led to a decline in the importance of skill and craftsmanship in favor of discipline and subordination. This image of an assembly line at Ford Motor Company demonstrates both the principles of efficient production and the proliferation of mass produced consumer goods in the 1920's.
The growth of consumerism paralleled the refinement of advertising techniques, as evidenced by this stunning Coca Cola ad.
Questions to consider
1. Why do some historians consider the 1920's to be the "second industrial revolution"?
2. How do you think the post-war economic prosperity of the 1920's impacted the daily lives of Americans?
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| Historical Context
The explosive growth of the automobile industry in the 1920's truly revolutionized American life. Henry Ford's innovative production techniques made cars affordable for average Americans and set new standards for industry. By the end of the decade, there were enough cars on the road for every one in five persons. Related industries sprang up in response to the new American Car Culture, including service facilities, filling stations, and motels.
The design of the popular Model T underwent few changes between 1908 and 1927.
Attached Documents
This 1924 Ford advertisement appeared in mass publications catering to young men and boys. Note the last line, "Let us tell you how easy it is to buy a Ford on the Weekly Purchase Plan." Part of the growth of consumerism in the 1920's can be attributed to the widespread use of installment payment plans.
The document below comes from the sociological study Middletown by Robert and Helen Lynd. The Lynd's researched the impact of industrialization on the small town of Muncie, Indiana in 1924 and 1925. The excerpt focuses on concerns that "the automobile appears to some as an 'enemy' of the home and society."
Questions to consider
1. What kinds of concerns did the residents of Middletown express in relation to the automobile?
2. List some ways that the automobile impacted life in the 1920's. Consider family life, other industries, etc. |
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| Attached Documents
The 1920's was a decade of emerging mass communication, and with mass communication came the parallel ascendancy of consumer culture and the cult of celebrity. Large studios such as Paramount, MGM, and Warner Brothers were responsible for the production and promotion of films as well the management of theaters and "movie palaces."
A new culture of youth and celebrity emerged with the popularity of the movies. Films celebrated themes like consumerism, romance, exotic locales, and new fashions. Young people emulated the glamorous Hollywood elite just as they do today, raising much concern among parents. In 1922, the film studios appointed the former post-master general Will Hays to head the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. Hays defended the industry against government censorship while simultaneously promoting a common set of standards of decency.
Attached Documents
Although it was not the first film to incorporate an element of sound, the 1927 Warner Brothers film The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson is widely credited with heralding in the age of "talkies" and the end of the silent film era. Jolson appears in blackface in the film.
Mary Pickford, known as "America's Sweetheart" in the 1910's and 1920's appears in an advertisement for beauty cream. Pickford embodied the movie icon as a marketing tool in the new era of mass culture and consumption.
Rudoph Valentino was a one of the most popular actors of the era. This poster for "The Son of the Sheik" illustrates the appeal of both exotic and sexual themes in film.
In 1933, sociologist Herbert Blumer published a study entitled Movies and Conduct in response to growing concerns over film's impact on morality. An excerpt from an account of a college student's taste in films during the 1920's appears below.
Silent film star Clara Bow was a popular sex symbol of the 1920's.
By the 1930's, the film industry published a manual of guidelines to avoid censorship.
Questions to consider
1. Explain the relationship of the culture of mass-consumption to the movies in the 1920's.
2. Compare the concerns of parents and the preoccupations of youth in relation to films in the 1920's to those of today. What has changed and what remains relevant today? |
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| Historical Context
The proliferation of radio, used primarily by the military until 1920, affected American culture as profoundly as the movies. After war-time restrictions on civilian radio use were lifted, amateurs began experimenting with broadcasting. After years of limited broadcasts by amateurs and experimental stations, large corporations such as AT&T, Westinghouse and GE began to recognize the profit potential in radio and began investing capital. As the popularity of radio expanded, advertisers began sponsoring radio shows to appeal to consumers. Programs such as variety shows, Amos and Andy, sports broadcasts, and regionally isolated music like jazz and country-western were heard nationwide. By the end of the decade, 40% of homes had radio receivers.
Attached Documents
This 1920 article from Amateur Radio News predicts the proliferation and impact of radio on society. It also alludes to the war-time restrictions.
This 1925 Radio Broadcast cover shows a man with his cumbersome radio equipment. Note the last line "Who is to Pay for Broadcasting and How." The practice of commercial broadcasting, in which a company sponsors a program in exchange for advertising, was not firmly established in the late 1920's.
The Amos and Andy radio show began in 1928 and became one of the most popular and longest running programs in radio history. The performers were white men using "negro dialect" and racial stereotypes of African Americans in 15 minute situation comedies. The following 1930 script from an Amos and Andy broadcast is an example of popular comedy and it illustrates patently racist nature of the dialogue that millions of Americans tuned into every week.
Questions to Consider
1. What modern inventions would you compare radio in the 1920's to?
2. In the 1920's, like today, people were cognizant of the influence of media on culture. What impact do you think programming like Amos and Andy had on white people's perceptions of African Americans? How do you think this type of programming impacted African Americans?
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| Historical Context
Although the phonograph first became available at the turn of the century, the device became more popular as sturdy disc recordings replaced delicate wax cylinders during World War I. As America developed mass culture through film, advertising, and radio, previously isolated musical styles blended to produce lively and often rebellious radio hits. Record companies profited as Americans snapped up dance records and new, exciting types of music.
Attached Documents
"She's Funny That Way," Ted Wallace and his Orchestra (2:45 minutes)
"Ever Since the Movies Learned to Talk," Irving Kaufman and his Orchestra (3:00 minutes)
Question to consider
1. Why would innovations in communication lead to new styles of music? List a few possible reasons.
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| Historical Context
In the wake of the black exodus from the South, known as the Great Migration, the Harlem section of New York City became home to a number of African American intellectuals, artist, and writers. The seminal magazine feature "Harlem: Mecca for the New Negro" in Survey Graphic summarized the cultural phenomena this way: "If The Survey reads the signs aright, such a dramatic flowering of a new racespirit is taking place close at home among American Negroes, and the stage of that new episode is Harlem."
Attached Documents
"Harlem: Mecca for the New Negro" was a 1925 compilation of essays and poetry in Survey Graphic magazine written by African Americans.
Countee Cullen's "Heritage" appeared in the Survey Graphic feature.
In Langston Hughes's famous 1926 essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," he entreats the "Norticized Negro Intellegencia" to celebrate the richness of their culture rather than try to assimilate into white society.
The final document is a selection of Hughes poems from the 1926 collection The Weary Blues.
The photo is of Langston Hughes.
Questions to consider
1. What thematic similarities do these selections share?
2. Link the Harlem Renaissance to other phenomena occurring in the African American community during the 1920's. What kinds of political and social movements correspond to awakening of black art and literature?
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| Historical Context
The most renowned writers of the 1920's came from a generation disillusioned by war, yet skeptical about the new era of "modernism." F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda embodied this duality. Fitzgerald often wrote critically about the illusions of wealth and fame, while at the same time partaking in the excesses of celebrity and striving for immortality in literature. His most famous work, the Great Gatsby, chronicles both the privileged lifestyle of the Jazz Age aristocracy and the ruinous consequences of a deluded and inauthentic existence. Not unlike the characters in his novels, Fitzgerald succumbed to alcoholism and his wife to mental illness after years behind the facade of glamour and celebrity.
Ernest Hemmingway emerged in the 1920's to become one of America's most influential authors. His dense, understated writing style became a model for generations of writers in his wake. Hemmingway wrote of what became known as "the lost generation," of young men who came of age in the trenches of World War I and were unable to settle back into the norms and mores of traditional society. While living in an enclave of expatriate artists and writers in Paris, Hemmingway published The Sun Also Rises in 1925 and received instant acclaim.
Attached Documents
The first photo is of the Fitzgerald's.
The first document is an excerpt from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
This 1928 photo of Hemmingway conveys his rugged, masculine persona, cultivated over years of pursuits including bullfighting and hunting.
The second document contains excerpts from In Our Time by Ernest Hemmingway.
Question to consider
1. Can you identify any connections between the lives and writings of these authors and the economic and social trends of the 1920's?
2. Discuss Hemmingway's account of warfare in the excerpt from In Our Time. Do you think the narrator is exhilarated, frightened, or ambivalent about his experiences?
3. What scandal is Fitzgerald referring to in the excerpt from The Great Gatsby? How does this scene relate to the anxieties of the "lost generation"? |
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| Historical Context
The image of the flapper and the "new woman," who bobbed her hair, wore make-up, danced to jazz music, and smoked cigarettes is synonymous with the 1920's. The emerging advertising industry and mass media promoted more sexualized images of women, thus, giving license for young women to shed some of the old sexual mores that were perceived as "Victorian."
In 1920, after an arduous battle for suffrage, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Along with newly earned political freedom, the feminist community began stirring in favor of birth control. The notable birth control activist Margaret Sanger began publishing the journal The Birth Control Review and campaigning across the country to educate women about family planning, remove the social stigma attached to contraceptives, and make safe birth control accessible to every class of women.
Attached Documents
The first reading, "Debating Bobbed Hair," contains some amusing selections from women's magazines of the 1920's. Two women (one of them Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart") give opposing perspectives on bobbed hair that cloak a broader discussion of the modern woman.
The photo shows a young Marlene Dietrich in flapper dress appears.
The light-hearted 1925 article "Flapper Jane" by Bruce Bliven addresses the shockingly revealing fashions of the day and links them to women's new independent spirit.
Margaret Sanger began her campaign for birth control after spending years as a nurse in poor communities. In 1928, she published a few of the hundreds of thousands of letters she received for women desperate for help with family planning in her book Motherhood in Bondage.
Questions to consider
1. List some of the changes in women's lives in the 1920's. What factors contributed to these changes?
2. The "Debating Bobbed Hair" and "Flapper Jane" articles, seem to be about more than women's fashions. How would you interpret the respective author's overall views on women and youth in the Jazz Age?
3. Why do you think that birth control was stigmatized in the 1920's? How do you think access to and knowledge about family planning would impact the lives of the women writing in Motherhood and Bondage?
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| Historical Context
Along with the sweeping social changes of the interwar era came reactions to those trends. Prohibition went into effect in January 1920 as a result of decades of campaigning by temperance groups, rural Protestants, and some progressives who felt that alcohol represented a scourge on family life and a catalyst to crime. Although the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act outlawed the sale, transport, and consumption of intoxicating beverages, many otherwise law-abiding Americans defied the regulations with impunity. The black market for alcohol was a boon for organized crime, with smuggling garnering much higher revenues than gambling and prostitution.
Attached Documents
The first document, "Statistics on Prohibition" shows the slight reduction in liquor consumption after the enactment of the 18th Amendment and gives some insight into the impact of the illicit alcohol market on the criminal justice system.
The second document contains the testimony of prominent New York City politicians Fiorella LaGuardia on the failure of Prohibition.
The 1926 statement to Congress by the Federal Council of Churches appeals to Americans to respect the law and gives a brief litany of the destructive effects of alcohol.
This 1926 cartoon illustrates the pervasiveness of governmental corruption and widespread disobedience of the Volstead Act.
In this photo, Detroit police discover a clandestine still.
Questions to consider
1. List some arguments for and against Prohibition. Which side of the debate is most legitimate to you and why?
2. Compare and contrast Prohibition to today's War on Drugs.
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| Historical Context
Much of the politics of the 1920's centered around regional and racial tensions. As cities underwent explosive growth, rural populations and traditionalists sometimes felt threatened by the impact of foreign cultures and modernism. As Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began to outnumber those from northern and western Europe, nativist sentiments inflamed by the war coalesced into a "100% American" movement fueled by pseudo-scientific theories of race.
In 1921, the Immigration Act limited new arrivals to 350,000 and set caps for European countries. According to the Act, the maximum number of immigrants from a given country could not exceed 3 percent of the number of its natives already in the United States as counted by the 1910 census. In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act further restricted eastern and southern European immigration by cutting the maximum total of immigrants to 164,000 and changing the caps to 2 percent from a given country, as counted by the 1890 census (when even fewer natives from these countries resided in the U.S.)
Attached Documents
The first selection contains a 1924 speech by a North Carolina Senator that employs the xenophobic theories of Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race. The Senator implores Congress to "shut the door" on immigrants.
The next selection is a speech by a Congressman from Detroit, who refutes the theories that certain races are inherently inferior and unwilling to assimilate into American culture.
"Statistics on Immigration" shows the effect of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act.
The photo depicts immigrants waiting at Ellis Island.
Questions to consider
1. What kinds of immigrants did nativists find acceptable? Unacceptable?
2. Compare the debate over immigration in the 1920's to that contemporary debate over immigration. What similarities and differences do you notice in the concerns and rhetoric on both sides?
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| Historical Context
One of the most disturbing manifestations of nativist sentiment in the United States in the 1920's was the brief resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan as a mass movement. Originated after the Civil War as an instrument of white terror against the newly freed slaves, the Klan's influence and membership faded by the 1870's. In the 1920's, the new Klan added advocacy of "100% Americanism" to its agenda, which engendered hatred of Jews, Catholics, foreign born citizens, and communists in addition to African Americans. The Klan's purported "law and order platform" made it appealing to those who rejected modernism and saw the organization as a champion of patriotism, female purity, temperance and Christian morality. In many circumstances, the Klan represented itself as an opportunity for people to socialize feel connected by ritualized gatherings. In some states like Texas and Indiana, Klan members were influential in politics and law enforcement.
The membership of the KKK rapidly declined from around 3 million in 1925 to several hundred thousand in the late 1920's, due in part to the implication of its leaders in various scandals.
Attached Documents
The first document contains excerpts from the 1925 Klan Manual.
The 1924 poster advertises a family-oriented KKK picnic.
The 1926 TIME Magazine article, "Gentlemen from Indiana" details the clandestine political dealings of Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. The disgrace of Stephenson's conviction for the brutal rape and eventual death of Madge Oberholtzer led many Klansmen to renounce their membership.
The essay "The Klan's Fight for Americanism" was authored by Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, a Dallas dentist who used modern fundraising and publicity techniques to swell the ranks of the KKK. Evans attempts to recast the Klan as a patriotic, traditional organization rather than an instrument of terror, intimidation, and vigilantism.
In response to growing disillusionment and defection by its members, the KKK staged a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in August 1928.
Questions to consider
1. Why do you think KKK membership appealed to so many Americans in the 1920's? What were such Americans responding to?
2. How did the Klan represent itself to the public? What kind of message did they try to convey?
3. What contributed to the decline in Ku Klux Klan membership in the late 1920's?
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| Historical Context
Nostalgia for the past in reaction changing social mores and a renewed focus on the literal teachings of the Bible characterized the growing influence of religious fundamentalism in the Jazz Age. Conservative Christians struggled to maintain their beliefs and the beliefs of their children in the face of the culture of consumerism, changing gender roles, the teaching of evolution, and the influence of mass media. Fundamentalism centered on belief in the literal truth of the Bible and claimed adherents in all denominations of Christianity. The tension between liberal and fundamentalist Christians, often within the same congregation, was symptomatic of the larger struggle between modernists and those who longed to "get back to basics" in interwar America. The division between these groups would become a national preoccupation with the drama of the Scopes Trial in 1925.
Attached Documents
The first document is a 1927 article on the charismatic female evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.
The ad pictured below is for famous revivalist and former baseball player Billy Sunday.
The recording of one of Sunday's sermons on demonstrates his impassioned and dramatic speaking style. (0:35 minutes- note: this recording takes a few seconds to begin after clicking "play".)
Liberal Pastor Henry Emerson Fosdick's sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" illustrates the contentions between fundamentalists and liberals.
Questions to consider
1. What social and scientific developments of the 1920's may have contributed to the rise of religious fundamentalism?
2. What is the main message of Pastor Fosdick's sermon? |
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| Historical Context
The Scopes Trial provides the most dramatic illustration of the cultural tension of the Jazz Age. It pitted secularists and modernists against traditionalists and fundamentalists in a carnival atmosphere that was tailor-made for the tabloids and new mass media.
The 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee was not a spontaneous occurrence. In response to legislation outlawing the teaching of evolution, the ACLU offered to finance the defense of any teacher willing to challenge the law. 25 year old biology teacher John Scopes agreed to participate after some urging by local townspeople. The trial was not about whether or not Scopes was guilty, nor was it about the $100 penalty he faced. Scopes' agnostic lawyer, Clarence Darrow, and the prosecution's lawyer, former Populist and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan each brought a broader agenda to the case. Darrow wanted to appeal the case the to the Supreme Court and have the law declared unconstitutional. Bryan was motivated by a need to defend Christianity and the integrity of the fundamentalist cause. Although, as expected, Bryan won the legal case, Darrow triumphed in the court of public opinion.
Attached Documents
The first document contains the provisions of the Tennessee Evolution Statues.
Hunter's Civic Biology is the actual textbook Scopes used in his class.
The photo shows Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the sweltering courtroom.
Darrow caused a sensation when he called Bryan to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. He proceeded to ridicule Bryan and fundamentalism itself as Bryan attempted to defend it.
Questions to consider
1. What is your opinion on the teaching of evolution in public schools? Do you think it is appropriate for a state legislature to get involved in the debate?
2. Bryan's testimony was not relevant to the Scopes case because Scopes admitted his guilt and the constitutionality of the law was not the subject of the trial. Why, then, did Darrow and Bryan participate in this exchange? Why did the judge allow it?
3. If you were a spectator at Darrow's examination of Bryan, what would your impression of the men and the issues themselves be? Who would you think "won" the debate? |
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