American Pageant Chapter 31
The airplane- what is the importance of Charles Lindbergh?
Charles Lindbergh was a famous aviator. In 1927, he became the first man to successfully fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. He called his airplane the Spirit of St. Louis, and his courageous feat helped make Missouri a leader in the developing world of aviation.
Why is it commonly said that americans "turned inward" during the 1920s?
Because they rejected the Leauge of Nations and Americans turned inward in the 1920s shunning diplomatic commitments to foreign countries, denouncing "radical" foreign ideas, condemned "un-American" lifestyles, and clanged shut the immigration gates against foreign peoples—boom of the golden twenties showered benefits.
How did people avoid the laws of Prohibition?
Both federal and local government struggled to enforce Prohibition over the course of the 1920s. Enforcement was initially assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and was later transferred to the Justice Department. In general, Prohibition was enforced much more strongly in areas where the population was sympathetic to the legislation-mainly rural areas and small towns-and much more loosely in urban areas. Despite very early signs of success, including a decline in arrests for drunkenness and a reported 30 percent drop in alcohol consumption, those who wanted to keep drinking found ever-more inventive ways to do it. The illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor (known as "bootlegging") went on throughout the decade, along with the operation of "speakeasies" (stores or nightclubs selling alcohol), the smuggling of alcohol across state lines and the informal production of liquor ("moonshine" or "bathtub gin") in private homes.
How widespread was the KKK in the nation? What were some of their activities and actions?
By the middle of the decade, estimates for national membership in this secret organization ranged from three million to as high as eight million Klansmen. And membership was not limited to the poor and uneducated on society's fringes. Mainstream, middle-class Americans donned the white robes of the Klan too. Doctors, lawyers, and ministers became loyal supporters of the KKK. In Ohio alone their ranks surged to 300,000. Even northeastern states were not immune. In Pennsylvania, membership reached 200,000. The Klan remained a clandestine society, but it was by no means isolated or marginalized. Some of their activities and actions were cross burning, lynchings
Changes in gender roles and sexuality- Margaret Sanger, Freud
Encouraging working-class women to "think for themselves and build up a fighting character," Sanger wrote that "women cannot be on an equal footing with men until they have full and complete control over their reproductive function." Sanger also began writing on women's issues for the Call,a socialist newspaper. She developed two columns that later became popular books, What Every Mother Should Know(1914) and What Every Girl Should Know(1916). When she covered the topic of venereal disease, she went up against the US postal inspector Anthony Comstock, a one-man army against all things sexual. In 1873, Congress had passed the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material and banned contraceptives and information about contraception from the mails. Comstock censored her column, the first of many run-ins. He then seized the first few issues of the Woman Rebel from Sanger's local post office. She got around him by mailing future issues from different post offices. Thousands of women responded to the newsletter, anxious for information on contraception. Sanger's next project was an educational pamphlet, Family Limitation, which described clearly and simply what she had learned in France about birth control methods such as the condom, suppositories, and douches. She planned to print 10,000 copies, but there was great demand from labor unions, representing members from Montana copper mines to New England cotton mills. She scraped up enough money to print 100,000. Over the years, 10 million copies would be printed, and the pamphlet was translated into thirteen languages. In the 1920s in Yucatán, Mexico, feminists distributed the pamphlet to every couple requesting a marriage license. But before she could distribute Family Limitation in the United States,Sanger had to go to court for the Woman Rebel,whose distribution was the "crime" for which she had received the arrest warrant. With very little time to prepare her defense and faced with a judge who seemed hostile to her cause, she made the snap decision to jump bail and flee, alone, to England. While in Europe, she visited a birth control clinic in Holland run by midwives, where she learned about a more effective method of contraception, the diaphragm, or "pessary."/Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna,Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938, he left Austria to escape the Nazis and died in exile in the United Kingdom the following year. In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the mechanisms of repression as well as for elaboration of his theory of the unconscious. Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. Psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities. As such, it continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate with regard to its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or is detrimental to the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Auden's 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freud's death, he had become "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives."
Flappers- how do the roles of women change?
Flappers wear very risky attire like shorter dresses that show their chest and legs more and wear heavier makeup. Flappers would dance the night away recklessly. But behind all of this, their was a motive. A vivid image of the Flapper is firmly fixed in our collective cultural memory, the shocking and wild, bootleg-gin-drinking, cigarette-in-holder-smoking, necking and swearing, Charleston-dancing jazz baby; the short-haired or bobbed-hair young girl with a defiantly boyish figure, a fringed skirt, and stockings rolled and bunched below the knee as brazen witness to the fact that she wore no corset". One of the things that I learned from this was the image of a Flapper girl. During that time period, older generations frowned upon that image but in this century its ok to dress like that and show some skin. Women were suppressed to such a strict and formal lifestyle, they never really had any freedom or time to express themselves. The political changes and world events may have taken a toll on a woman's role in society. With such a depressed country because of war we lived by the attitude that we could all die tomorrow and turned to risky activities. Flappers emerged and gave women a new sense of freedom. It changed the traditional role women played because it allowed women to dress and be risky. That risky behavior involved drinking, smoking, dancing, and not even going by the old saying "if your grandma is watching it's not ok". They did not always want to stay home and do household duties but live their life like a man's life almost. Being able to create a new generation of young, wild, and free women of the 1920's changed the traditional role of women forever.
Who is Frederick Taylor and what is his big idea?
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 - March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s). Taylor summed up his efficiency techniques in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management. His pioneering work in applying engineering principles to the work done on the factory floor was instrumental in the creation and development of the branch of engineering that is now known as industrial engineering.
UNIA - Marcus Garvey: what were his goals? The Nation of Islam
Garvey's original goal was racial uplift and establishment of education and industrial opportunities for black people. Another goal of Garvey's was to unify all of the Negro people of the world into one great body and establish a country and government of their own. Garvey also helped to establish the Black Cross Nurse and Universal Motor Corps. The Black Cross Nurses were similar to the Red Cross but were based on a more local level. The Universal Motor Corps gave black women the chance to obtain ranking positions in the Paramilitary African Legion/The Nation of Islam is an Islamic religious movement founded in Detroit, United States, by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad on July 4, 1930. Its stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States and all of humanity. Critics have labeled the organization as being black supremacist and antisemitic and NOI is tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
How was Prohibition enforced?
In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson instituted a temporary wartime prohibition in order to save grain for producing food. That same year, Congress submitted the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, for state ratification. Though Congress had stipulated a seven-year time limit for the process, the amendment received the support of the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states in just 11 months. Ratified on January 29, 1919, the 18th Amendment went into effect a year later, by which time no fewer than 33 states had already enacted their own prohibition legislation. In October 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, which provided guidelines for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. Championed by Representative Andrew Volstead of Mississippi, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the legislation was more commonly known as the Volstead Act.
What happens to immigration in the 1920s? 1924 is a big year for immigration. What does the Immigration Act of 1924 do? Explain why this is a turning point in US history?
In 1921, Congress passed the an emergency immigration act, establishing a quota system by which annual immigration from any country could not exceed 3 percent of the number of persons of that nationality who had been in the United States in 1910. It cut immigration from 800,000 people to 300,00 in a single year. Congress then passed the National Origins Act completely stopping immigration from Asia to the United States.
Hollywood and silent movies- how does this change the nation?
In cinema's earliest days, the film industry was based in the nation's theatrical center, New York, and most films were made in New York or New Jersey, although a few were shot in Chicago, Florida, and elsewhere. Beginning in 1908, however, a growing number of filmmakers located in southern California, drawn by cheap land and labor, the ready accessibility of varied scenery, and a climate ideal for year-round outdoor filming. Contrary to popular mythology, moviemakers did not move to Hollywood to escape the film trust; the first studio to move to Hollywood, Selig, was actually a trusted member. By the early 1920s, Hollywood had become the world's film capital. It produced virtually all films show in the United States and received 80 percent of the revenue from films shown abroad. During the '20s, Hollywood bolstered its position as world leader by recruiting many of Europe's most talented actors and actresses, like Greta Garbo and Hedy Lamarr, directors like Ernst Lubitsch and Josef von Sternberg, as well as camera operators, lighting technicians, and set designers,By the end of the decade, Hollywood claimed to be the nation's fifth largest industry, attracting 83 cents out of every dollar Americans spent on amusement. Hollywood had also come to symbolize "the new morality" of the 1920s--a mixture of extravagance, glamour, hedonism, and fun/ many poorly literate people and immigrants learned to increase their reading skills and use of English by having to read movie subtitles. Going to the movies became, at least, a weekly activity for all but the absolutely poorest people. In fact, the big screen became an "escape" to another world for people to forget their worries for a short time.
How does the automobile become a major change in the US? How does Henry Ford catalyze major changes in the US?
It is overly simplistic to assume, however, that the automobile was the single driving force in the transformation of the countryside or the modernization of cities. In some ways, automobile transport was a crucial agent for change, but in other cases, it merely accelerated ongoing changes. In several respects, the automobile made its impact felt first in rural areas where cars were used for touring and recreation on the weekends as opposed to replacing existing transit that brought people to and from work in urban areas.
How does industrialization lead to a mass production and mass consumption economy?
Mass production, application of the principles of specialization, the division of labour, and standardization of parts to the manufacture of goods. Such manufacturing processes attain high rates of output at low unit cost, with lower costs expected as volume rises. Mass production methods are based on two general principles:the division and specialization of human labour; and the use of tools, machinery, and other equipment, usually automated, in the production of standard, interchangeable parts and products. The use of modern methods of mass production has brought such improvements in the cost, quality, quantity, and variety of goods available that the largest global population in history is now sustained at the highest general standard of living.
What were the Sacco and Vanzetti trial about? Why was it such a big issue in the US at the time? what was the outcome?
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants charged with murdering a guard and robbing a shoe factory in Braintree Mass. The trial lasted from 1920-1927. Convicted on circumstantial evidence; many believed they had been framed for the crime because of their anarchist and pro-union activities.
What was Prohibition, the 18th Amendment, the Volstead Act?
Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933/ The 18th amendment is the only amendment to be repealed from the constitution. This unpopular amendment banned the sale and drinking of alcohol in the United States. This amendment took effect in 1919 and was a huge failure/ The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation.
Why is this decade often called the "Roaring Twenties"?
The 1920s were a period of incredible economic growth coupled with the breakdown of many traditional social barriers, particularly those involving women. Largely because World War I left Europe so devastated, industry boomed in the United States to fill the worldwide demand. In addition, a lot of European money flowed into the U.S. because of the war, meaning that banks had lots of money to lend. As such, the standard of living for everyone started to rise. This was also the period where workers started enjoying better salaries, so regular people in the cities had more disposable income. It was the boom period for many forms of entertainment from Hollywood to Broadway. Whereas in 1920 the average movie might be 12 minutes long, but 1929, feature films of over 90 minutes with sound were the norm. This was also the era just after women got the vote, and partly because of that, women started doing things that were unthinkable in the 1910s, such as smoking and going out with men when they hadn't been properly introduced. Women started dressing in clothes that used to be reserved for prostitutes, like short dresses. Women would often try to emulate the women of Hollywood and Broadway, by acting more outgoing and dressing more stylishly. Prohibition did nothing to slow this down. Drinking alcohol became an act of defiance, and the top music acts played at illegal booze places like the Cotton Club in Harlem, listening to a new music form known as "Jazz" that became incredibly popular despite its roots in black America. In other words, particularly for the rich and the growing middle class, things had never been better and it looked like the party would never end.
How does the economy in the 1920s begin to shift back to favoring the rich more than the middle or poor?
The 1920s' reputation as the epitome of wretched excess may have been unduly biased by the devastatingly memorable portrait of life among the plutocrats. The Roaring Twenties were, in fact, a great time to be rich, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, himself an extremely successful investment banker, lowered the top marginal income tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 73% to just 25% while investors enjoyed one of the greatest bull markets in American history. The businesses and rich be
What was the Harlem Renaissance?
The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanned the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement," named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the Great Migration, of which Harlem was the largest. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, many francophone black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, took place between 1924 (when Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression).
What were the Palmer Raids and the [first] Red Scare? Why was there a fear of Communism [Bolshevism] in the US at this time?
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids by the United States Department of Justice intended to capture, arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer/The First Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included those such as the Russian Revolution as well as the publicly stated goal of a worldwide communist revolution/The fear of communism in the United States was a manifestation of political anxiety over the infiltration of international influences, namely tied to Soviet Russia, during the 20th century. The philosophical basis of this fear was based on the significant differences between capitalism and communism as economic systems
What was the Scopes trial about? The Monkey trial?
The Scopes trial was a Tennessee legal case involving the teaching of evolution in public schools. A statute was passed (Mar. 1925) in Tennessee that prohibited the teaching in public schools of theories contrary to the accepted interpretation of the biblical account of human creation. John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, was tried (July 1925) for teaching Darwinism in a Dayton, Tenn., public school. Clarence Darrow was one of Scopes's attorneys while William Jennings Bryan aided the state prosecutor. Darrow argued that academic freedom was being violated and claimed that the legislature had indicated a religious preference, violating the separation of church and state. He also maintained that the evolutionary theory was consistent with certain interpretations of the Bible, and in an especially dramatic session, he sharply questioned Bryan on the latter's literal interpretation. Scopes was convicted, partly because of the defense, which refused to plead any of the technical defenses available, fearing an acquittal on a technical rather than a constitutional basis. Scopes was, however, later released by the state supreme court on a technicality. Although the outcry over the case tended to discourage enactment of similar legislation in other states, the law was not repealed until 1967
Literature and Culture: What is Modernism? What are the Lost Generation and its connection to WW1?
The modern movement in architecture in the United States flourished beginning in the 1930s and encompassed individual design movements that expressed modern ideas in different ways, including the International, Expressionist, Brutalist, New Formalist, and Googie movements. Technical innovation, experimentation, and rethinking the way humans lived in and used the designed environment, whether buildings or landscapes, were hallmarks of modern architectural practice/The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume, Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. This generation included artists and writers who came of age during the war such as F. Scott Fitzgerald,T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Waldo Peirce, Isadora Duncan, Abraham Walkowitz, Alan Seeger, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Cowley, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Erich Maria Remarque and the composers Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland.
Radio- how does it change the nation?
The use of radios in the 1920s brought information to the attention of Americans far more quickly than previous methods. Americans tuning into radio stations could hear the latest updates on many issues, including spreading news of pilot Charles Lindbergh's first trans-Atlantic flight from the United States to France in the late 1920s. Radios united families, as family members gathered around radios for nightly news, and brought the nation together too. Like many new technologies, the radio had some drawbacks. Early programming proved somewhat unreliable, as radio stations competed for airwaves and frequencies. Competition led to overlapping and competing for radio stations. Some radio programs, such as "Amos 'n Andy," a Chicago show, furthered racial stereotypes. As radio gained popularity, stations began diversifying their broadcasts, and more radio stations emerged. Jobs in the radio industry emerged, as stations hired deejays, broadcasters, and other individuals to help with show productions.
What is Wall Street? What is a Bull or Bear Market?
Wall Street is a 0.7-mile-long (1.1 km) street running eight blocks, roughly northwest to southeast, from Broadway to South Street on the East River in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial sector (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or signifying New York-based financial interests. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, and the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange/ A bull market is a market in which share prices are rising, encouraging buying. a bear market is a market in which prices are falling, encouraging selling.
How and why does the KKK get reborn even stronger than before at this time? What are the many things they are anti about? What is nativism?
n 1915, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan after seeing D. W. Griffith's film Birth of A Nation, which portrayed the Klansmen as great heroes. Simmons made his living by selling memberships in fraternal organizations such as the Woodmen of the World and looked to the Klan as a new source of membership sales. In his first official act, he climbed to the top of a local mountain and set a cross on fire to mark the rebirth of the Klan. In its second incarnation, the Klan moved beyond just targeting blacks, and broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews, and foreigners. The Klan promoted fundamentalism and devout patriotism along with advocating white supremacy. They blasted bootleggers, motion pictures and espoused a return to "clean" living. Appealing to folks uncomfortable with the shifting nature of America from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation, the Klan attacked the elite, urbanites, and intellectuals.Their message struck a cord, and membership in the Klan ballooned in the 1920s/ Nativism is the policy of protecting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants.
Explain the connection between Prohibition, guns, organized crime, cities, and ethnic groups
the Prohibition era encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone, who earned a staggering $60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies. Such illegal operations fueled a corresponding rise in gang violence, including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, in which several men dressed as policemen (and believed to be have associated with Capone) shot and killed a group of men in an enemy gang.