DEPTH: 2 How far did US society change in the 1920s?

Question 1

What were the Roaring Twenties?

Answer 1

A cultural boom for young, rich city dwellers who rejected old fashioned standards of dress, morals and social behaviour.

Question 2

Why did Americans have more leisure time?

Answer 2

The average working week dropped from 47.4 to 44.2 hours and wages rose by 11%

Question 3

What was the growth in cinema audiences during the 1920s?

Answer 3

More than doubled reaching 100 million a week by the end of the decade.

Question 4

Give 5 examples of 1920s film stars

Answer 4

Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino

Question 5

When was the first ‘talkie’ feature film released?

Answer 5

The Jazz Singer in 1927 with Al Jolson

Question 6

How were films censored to stop them from corrupting public morals?

Answer 6

The Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) was adopted in 1930. It banned interracial dating, lustful kissing, sympathy for criminals

Question 7

Where did Jazz and Blues music originate?

Answer 7

In the African American community of the South. It was brought to the northern cities of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago by migrating black musicians

Question 8

What was the Cotton Club?

Answer 8

A famous nightclub in Harlem New York which launched the career of Duke Ellington

Question 9

When was the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) setup?

Answer 9

1926 following the establishment of 500 local commercial radio stations. By 1929 it was making $150 million a year.

Question 10

What percentage of American households possessed of radio by 1930?

Answer 10

40%

Question 11

What dance crazes flourished during the 1920s?

Answer 11

The Charleston, the Lindy Hop, the Shimmy, the Foxtrot

Question 12

What sports boomed during the 1920s?

Answer 12

Baseball with teams like the Red Sox and Yankees. Boxing with the world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey.

Question 13

What groups were feared and persecuted by established traditional Americans?

Answer 13

New immigrants (southern & eastern European), communists/anarchists, trade unionists, Catholics, blacks and Jews.

Question 14

What was the Red Scare, 1919-21?

Answer 14

Fear of communist and anarchist ideas after the Russian Revolution of 1917 spread to the US by immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Some immigrants held radical beliefs and published pamphlets calling for the overthrow of government but fear was spread by newspapers and local politicians and little evidence was ever found.

Question 15

What were the Palmer Raids?

Answer 15

Part of the Red Scare: After a wave of strikes and a series of bomb blasts in 1919 (April 10 killed in a Milwaukee Church, May bombs posted to 36 prominent Americans, June bombs in 7 cities plus the home of US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer) J. Edgar Hoover was appointed to build files on 60,000 suspected communists/anarchists and rounded up 10,000 for deportation. Only 556 had any basis in fact.

Question 16

Who were Sacco and Vanzetti?

Answer 16

Italian-American immigrants with radical anarchist beliefs executed in 1927 for the armed robber and murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The flimsy case led to worldwide protests that they were unfairly tried by prejudice against immigrants and radical politics. The judge referred to them as ‘anarchist bastards’.

Question 17

What was the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925?

Answer 17

High school teacher John Scopes deliberately broke Tennessee state law (Butler Act) by teaching evolution to publicly showcase the arguments for science and against religious fundamentalism.
He was defended by the famous criminal defence lawyer Clarence Darrow and the prosecution was led by the fundamentalist and three times presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.
Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 which was later overturned by the state supreme court on a technicality (jurors had to make a fine over $50 not judges). Bryan was ridiculed in his defence of biblical literalism.

Question 18

What laws were passed to reduce immigration from places outside of north-western Europe?

Answer 18

• 1917: literacy test to read basic English
• 1921: Emergency Quota Act reducing annual immigration to 357,000 (3% of nationalities living in US in 1910)
• 1924: National Origins Act reducing annual immigration to 150,000 (2% of nationalities living in US in 1890 and no Asians)
• This resulted in 85% of immigrants coming from northern Europe.

Question 19

Who were the KKK?

Answer 19

The Ku Klux Klan was a white supremacy movement that use violence, parades and lynchings to intimidate African Americans, Jews, Catholics and foreigners. Formed in the 1860s after the American Civil War it had a resurgence in the early 1920s.

Question 20

How many members did the Ku Klux Klan claim to have in 1925?

Answer 20

5 million

Question 21

Where was the clan strongest in the USA?

Answer 21

The Midwest and rural South. Dominant in Indiana it had Governor members in Oregon and Oklahoma.

Question 22

What 1915 film played by Wilson in the White House helped to revive interest in the Ku Klux Klan?

Answer 22

The Birth of a Nation

Question 23

Why did the Ku Klux Klan and decline after 1925?

Answer 23

Grand Wizard David Stephenson was convicted of the rape and murder of a woman on a train in Indiana. He became an informant on the corruption of the Klan.

Question 24

Where did many African Americans move to escape the the prejudice and discrimination of the South?

Answer 24

Northern cities like Chicago and New York where African American populations doubled during the 1920s.

Question 25

How did African Americans still suffer racial prejudice in northern cities?

Answer 25

Poorer housing, higher rents, poor education, poor health services, racism from established white residents. Many lives in ghettos like Harlem in New York.

Question 26

What laws made the manufacture, transport and sale of alcohol illegal?

Answer 26

The 18th Amendment of the American Constitution (Ratified 1919; law from 1920) and the Volstead Act defining alcoholic drinks as containing 0.5% alcohol (1919)

Question 27

What societies campaigned for the abolition of alcohol?

Answer 27

The Anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Temperance Union and the Protestant Church

Question 28

What arguments made in favour of prohibition?

Answer 28

• alcohol was the cause of poverty, crime, and ill-health
• many brewers were of German descent and WWI made alcohol unpatriotic
• it was believed that Communism and immigrants thrived on drink
• many believed that grain could be better used for making bread

Question 29

Why did politicians support prohibition?

Answer 29

They could pick up votes in small town America particularly the South and Midwest. By 1918 alcohol was already banned in 18 States.

Question 30

What were speakeasies?

Answer 30

Illegal bars. By 1925 there were more speakeasies than saloons in 1919. New York had 32,000 by 1929.

Question 31

What was ‘moonshine’?

Answer 31

Home brewed alcohol in illegal stills

Question 32

Why were federal prohibition agents so ineffective?

Answer 32

Only a few thousand agents to enforce the law, to large an area, poorly paid, privately opposed to prohibition and vulnerable to threats and bribes. ⅔ of illegal alcohol came over the vast US-Canadian border.

Question 33

Who were some famous prohibition agents?

Answer 33

Elliot Ness led the ‘Untouchables’ in Chicago to bring down Al Capone. Isadore Einstein and Mo Smith made 4,392 arrests

Question 34

Who were ‘bootleggers’?

Answer 34

Suppliers of illegal alcohol. Al Capone made around $60 million a year from speakeasies.

Question 35

How many gangland murders were there in Chicago between 1926 and 1927?

Answer 35

130 with no arrests

Question 36

What was the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929?

Answer 36

Al Capone’s gang murdered seven of his rival bugs Moran’s gang using a false police car and uniforms.

Question 37

What were the key reasons for ending prohibition?

Answer 37

• increasingly unpopular by the majority of Americans (especially in cities)
• expensive and ineffective law enforcement - increased lawlessness and made gangsters rich and powerful
• following the depression legalising alcohol would create jobs and tax revenue

Question 38

What ended the prohibition?

Answer 38

Roosevelt supported the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment in December 1933

Question 39

What was the traditional role of of women before WWI (Politics, Work, Dress and Lifestyle)?

Answer 39

• Politics: Most women couldn’t vote
• Work: unpaid house work and childcare, limited paid work in domestic service, secretaries, teaching
• Dress: restrictive modest full length dresses and corsets
• Lifestyle: no drinking, smoking going out without a chaperone.

Question 40

What were the key changes for women during the 1920s (Politics, Work, Dress and Lifestyle)?

Answer 40

• Politics: vote in all states (1920)
• Work: employment increased by 25% to 10 million by 1929
• Dress: no corsets, shorter lighter skirts and sleeveless dresses
• Lifestyle: smoking drinking kissing in public without chaperone, driving cars, short hair and makeup, divorce doubled (100,000 in 1914 to 200,000 in 1929)

Question 41

What were ‘flappers’?

Answer 41

Young wealthy middle and upper class women from large towns and cities. A loud minority of American women.

Question 42

What was the experience of a 1920s like for the majority of women?

Answer 42

Limited change; women living in smaller communities in rural areas continued their traditional roles and restricted lives managing the home and bringing up children with conservative and religious values.
By 1930 70% of households did not have a vacuum cleaner and 76% no washing machine. Women were still paid less than men and failed to achieved power in politics or industry.