the roaring twenties

• POWER - what does it stand for

  • prohibition
  • organised crime
  • women's lives
  • entertainment
  • racism
• entertainment - films

  • Movie actors like Charlie Chaplin, Rudolf Valentino, and Mary Pickford became iconic stars in the 1920s.
  • The Jazz Singer (1927) marked the advent of 'talkies,' shifting from silent to sound cinema.
  • Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse in 1928 and released Snow White in color in 1937.
  • By 1930, a staggering 100 million Americans went to the movies weekly.
  • Film production giants like United Artists and MGM churned out hundreds of films annually.
  • Movies influenced fashion and behavior, with icons like Clara Bow shaping trends, exemplifying the "It" girl persona.
• entertanment - jazz

  • Jazz originated in New Orleans, played by black musicians like Louis Armstrong.
  • Racist violence in 1917 forced many jazz musicians to move north to cities like Chicago and New York.
  • Radio and phonographs popularized jazz with the first 'race records' in 1917.
  • Jazz, played in speakeasies, became known for its wild and exciting nature.
  • Jazz influenced social trends, shaping fashion, dances, and 'jazz poetry' in the Harlem Renaissance, fostering black pride.
• entertainment - dances 

  • The Charleston was a fast dance developed in Black communities which was adopted by flappers, who danced it alone to challenge the 'drys' who wouldn't go out to clubs.   (Both Joan Crawford and Ginger Rodgers began their movie careers by winning Charleston competitions.)
  • The 'Black Bottom Stomp' was first recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and named after Black Bottom - a Black neighbourhood in Detroit.   After 1926 it became the most popular dance.
  • The dances scandalised many Americans, who thought they were immoral.  
• signficant women - work

  Many women had taken over jobs traditionally reserved for men (such as manufacturing), and 1920-29 the number of working women increased by 25%; many went to be teachers and secretaries.
• significant women - vote

  • In 1920 the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.  
  • The former suffrage campaigners formed themselves into the Woman's Joint Congressional Committee, which lobbied successfully for a Maternity and Infancy Protection Act (1921), equal nationality rights for married women (1922), and the Child Labor Amendment (1925).
• signficant women - flappers

  • dumped the old restrictive fashions, corsets etc. in favour of short skirts, short hair, and the flat-chested 'garconne' look. 
  • Many of them wore men's clothing.
  • They smoked, drank, used make-up, played tennis, and danced wildly in jazz clubs. 
  • Some were openly lesbian, others were sexually active.  
• unsignificant women - work

  • most working women were in low-paid jobs, and they were paid less than men for the same job.   
  • 10 million women were working in 1930 ... but this was still only a quarter of the females age 15 and over; the rest worked for free in the home and on the farm. 
• unsignifcant women - vote

  • Apart from exceptions such as Florence Kelley and Alice Paul, few suffrage campaigners went into politics; they gave up politics and returned to being housewives.  
  • Women campaigned in vain after 1920 for an Equal Rights Act.
• unsignficant women - flappers

  • The flappers scandalised many Americans - the Anti-Flirt Association tried to persuade young Americans to behaved decently.  
  • Most girls, especially in rural America, still behaved 'decently', got married and had babies
• race relations - HACKLE - what does it stand for

  hostility to immigrants, american government, Jim Crow Laws, Ku Klux Klan, Lynchings, even in the north
• race relations - HACKLE - (H)

  hostility to imigrants and the red scare
• race relations - HACKLE - (A)

  American Government:  refused to pass laws banning lynchings or giving Black Americans the vote.
• race relations - HACKLE - (C)

  Jim Crow Laws:  the name for laws passed in the southern states which prevented Black Americans from mixing with whites ('segregation'), denied them equality of education and civil rights, and prevented them from voting.
• race relations - HACKLE - (K)

  Ku Klux Klan: an organisation to maintain WASPs supremacy, which had 5 million members by 1925.    

  • Many supporters were poor whites, who did not want Black Americans to be their equals/fear they would take their jobs, but many were racism wealthy white Americans.  
  • They wore white sheets and hoods, and marched with burning crosses.  
  • They spoke with each other in a secret language which they called 'Klonversations'.  
  • They attacked, tortured and killed Black Americans, but also Jews and Catholics and 'immoral' people such as alcoholics.
• race relations - HACKLE - (L)

   Lynchings:  mobs of white people often hanged ('lynched') Blacks Americans whom they suspected of a crime (usually the police turned a blind eye). 
• race relations - HACKLE - (E)

  Even in the north:  Black Americans ended up with the low-paid menial jobs,  such as janitors, bootblacks, cooks, houseboys, baggage handlers, waiters, doormen, dishwashers and washroom attendants.   In 1919, white Americans in Chicago rampaged through Black neighbourhoods after a drowning black man clinging to a log had drifted into a whites-only swimming area.
• race relations - a flowering time - RHINO - what it stands for

  role models, harlem renaissance, identity, NAACP, one-and-a-half million black americans
• race relations - a flowering time - RHINO (R)

  Role models: some Black Americans became famous - the sprinter Jesse Owens, the baseball player Jackie Robinson, the dancer Josephine Baker. They were an inspiration to other Black Americans.
• race relations - a time of flowering - RHINO (H)

   Harlem Renaissance: a cultural flowering in the New York Black neighbourhood of Harlem, based on jazz, but also excellent Black architects, novelists, poets and painters. Many of these believed in 'Artistic Action' - winning equality by proving they were equal.
• race relations - a time of flowering - RHINO (I)

  Identity: in 1925 Alain Locke wrote The New Negro, who had to smash the old image of 'Uncle Tom' and 'Sambo', and develop a new identity, 'uplift' the race and fight for equality.   There were Black newspapers and magazines.   This was the time when the phrase was coined: 'Black is Beautiful'.
• race relations - a time of flowering - RHINO (N)

  NAACP: Set up in 1909, it campaigned for civil rights.
• race relations - a time of flowering - RHINO (O)

  One-and-a-half million Black Americans migrated from the south to the north. Although many of them ended up in low-paid jobs, some of them formed a new Black middle class, and were educated at university.
• prohibition - In 1919 - as the result of a long and powerful campaign - the 18th Amendment to the Constitution made the manufacture, transport or sale of alcoholic drinks illegal. The Volstead Act, passed at the same time, declared any drink more than 5% proof 'alcoholic'.
• prohibition - failiure - DAMAGE - what it stands for

  Drinking continued, Available, Made criminals of ordinary people, Adverse effect, Gangsterism flourished running the illegal trade, End
• prohbition faliure - DAMAGE (D)

  Drinking continued:  impossible to enforce (not enough police - only 4000 agents, many of whom were sacked for taking bribes).
• prohibition faliure - DAMAGE (A)

  Available:  the liquor trade just 'went underground'. speakeasies (illegal bars), moonshine (illegally-made alcohol), bootlegging (smuggling alcohol to sell). It is sometimes asserted that there were more speakeasies than there had been saloons (not true, but there were 200,000 speakeasies in 1933).
• prohibtion faliure - DAMAGE (M)

  Made criminals of ordinary people
• prohibition faliure - DAMAGE (A)

  Adverse effects: moonshine was poor quality and sometimes killed people.   'Jackass brandy' caused internal bleeding, 'Soda Pop Moon' contained poisonous alcohol.
• prohibition falure - DAMAGE (G)

   Gangsterism flourished running the illegal trade:  It became hugely profitable, and led to a growth of violence, protection rackets etc. associated with the illegal trade. The general flouting brought the rule of law in general into disrepute as police 'turned a blind eye. Corruption grew.
• prohibition faliure - DAMAGE (E)

  End: in 1933 the 21st Amendment abolished Prohibition (= 'proved' that it failed).
• prohbition success - ALE - what does it stand for

  Alcohol destroyed, Legacy, Eliot ness and the untouchables
• prohibition succes - ALE (A)

  Alcohol destroyed:  in 1929, 50 million litres of illegal alcohol were discovered and destroyed.
• prohibition succes - ALE (L)

  Legacy: the actual consumption of alcohol fell, not just during prohibition, but for many years after - did not reach pre-1914 levels until 1971.
• prohibiton success - ALE (E)

  Eliot Ness and the Untouchables:  became famous as examples of the high standards police SHOULD achieve.
• organised crime -

  • They ran the speakeasies, and bootlegging.
  • They also ran protection rackets, prostitution and drug-running.
  • They bribed trade union leaders, police, lawyers, judges and even Senators.
• organised crime - al capone

  The most famous gangster was Al Capone, who earned $100,000 a year from beer sales alone, ran a private army of more than 700 mobsters, and is thought to have murdered more than 200 opponents.
• organised crime - st valentines day massacre

  They fought with each other for control of their 'territory' - the most famous incident was the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when 'torpedoes' from Capone's gang shot dead 7 members of Bugs Moran's gang.
• why did prohibition occur - ACRIME what it stands for

  anti-saloon league, christian organisation, rural american, isolationism, madness, easy street
• why did prohibition occur - ACRIME (A)

  Anti-Saloon League - campaigned that drink hurt families because men wasted money on beer, that it ruined their health and lost them their jobs, and that it led to domestic violence and neglect.