The Twenties Brought Change

Religion

Creation v. Evolution

Scopes Monkey Trial(1925)

Clarence Darrow(ACLU) for evolution

William Jennings Bryan for creation

Started a national debate that continues today

Prohibition

Eighteenth Amendment(1920)

Pushed by the Progressives, church affiliated Anti-Saloon League and Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Use of alcohol declined

Bootlegging flourished

Smuggled from Canada or stolen from government warehouses

Often mixed with other substances

Speakeasies

Organized crime increased

Al Capone

Taxes rose to pay for law enforcement

Many felt it was an invasion of individual rights

Repealed in 1933 by the 21^st Amendment

Women

Suffrage

19^th Amendment(1920)

Flappers

Short skirts, short hair, smoking and drinking in public

Jobs

Began to become doctors, lawyers, bankers, police; but not many

Still paid less

Most still thought a woman’s place was in the home

Blacks

Great Migration

North

Increased job opportunities due to drop in immigration during WWI

Cotton fields destroyed by boll weevil

Insect from Mexico

Sharecropping not a very good life

Faced substantial prejudice and de facto segregation in the north

Leaders emerge

W.E.B. Dubois

Professor of history and economics at University of Atlanta

Helped found NAACP in 1909

Became director in 1910 and stayed 24 years

Wanted Blacks to strive toward higher education and work way into mainstream white America

NAACP tried to change things through Congress and the courts

Marcus Garvey

Back to Africa, start own country

Black is beautiful

Should not envy or imitate whites

Be proud of African heritage

Harlem Renaissance

Great cultural and artistic advances

Langston Hughes

Jazz-Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington

Education and popular culture

Increased enrollment in high school

Emergence of modern high school for those who did and did not want to attend college

Time

First weekly news magazine started in 1923

Charles Lindbergh

NY to Paris

1927

Legends in sports

Babe Ruth

60 HR

714 HR

7 world championships between 1921 and 1932

Yankee Stadium-1923

Red Grange

Galloping Ghost

University of Illinois

Made 4 touchdowns in 12 minutes, later made a fifth and passed for a sixth in a game against Michigan

Jack Dempsey-boxing

Bill Tilden and Helen Wills-tennis

Bobby Jones

Won grand slam in 1930

Increased use of radio

Movies

By 1925 the 4^th largest industry

Hollywood became movie making capitol

Charlie Chaplin

First sound movie

1927

The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson

Writers

Opposition to materialism and the business culture of the 1920's

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemmingway, T.S. Elliot

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