Chapter 22: Reading/Study Guide Terms Review
The "New Woman" of the 1920s
A woman who challenged the gender roles of previous decades and demonstrated her increasing independence in such ways as working outside the home, obtaining a college education, and becoming politically active. - After suffrage was extended to women in 1920, women became more vocal on political matters but were not necessarily united in their views. Millions of 'New' women worked in white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children. And new machines and technologies like the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgery of household work.
Marcus Garvey
Black nationalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica but moved to Harlem in 1916 and began publishing the influential newspaper Negro World in 1918. His shipping company, Black Star Line, established trade between Africans in America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada and Africa. Garvey is perhaps best known for founding the Universal Negro Improvement Association, or UNIA, which advocated for "separate but equal" status for persons of African ancestry with the goal of establishing black states around the world. Garvey was famously at odds with W.E.B. DuBois, who called him "the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America." His outspoken views also made him a target of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
Christian Fundamentalism
Christian fundamentalism, was movement in American Protestantism that arose in the 1920s in reaction to theological modernism, which aimed to revise traditional Christian beliefs to accommodate new developments in the natural and social sciences, especially the theory of biological evolution. Fundamentalist Protestants felt their beliefs were being challenged in the 1920s. Secular culture of the time seemed to have little place for religion, and church attendance was in decline. A movement to defend traditional religion by emphasizing a literal interpretation of the Bible gained momentum in the '20s and especially targeted Darwin's theory of evolution as a symbol for what was wrong in modern society. By the mid‐1920s, a number of states had enacted laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The law was challenged in Tennessee by a young high school biology teacher named John Scopes. (see Scopes Trial)
Flapper
Flappers of the 1920s were young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous. Now considered the first generation of independent American women, flappers pushed barriers in economic, political and sexual freedom for women. The classic image of a flapper is that of a stylish young party girl. Flappers smoked in public, drank alcohol, danced at jazz clubs and practiced a sexual freedom that shocked the Victorian morality of their parents.
Ku Klux Klan
Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and Black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal-the reestablishment of white supremacy-fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. The KKK believed to be truly American you had to be White, Native Born, and Protestant.
National Origins Act
In the 1920s, anti-immigrant sentiment swept the U.S. and culminated in the National Origins Act of 1924. This measure sharply reduced immigration to America, and especially targeted those from southern and eastern Europe. Also called the Johnson-Reed Act after its congressional sponsors, the National Origins Act of 1924 sharply restricted the number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S., and it also set immigration quotas for each European nation. The National Origins Act of 1924 amended an earlier immigration law, the Immigration Act of 1921. The 1921 law stipulated a maximum yearly immigration at 357,000. The National Origins Act reduced that number to 164,000 per year. The National Origins Act reduced the quotas to 2% of the total number of each European nationality that was represented in the 1890 census (in 1890, there were much less southern and eastern Europeans present in the U.S., as compared to 1910). Legislators were not shy in admitting the National Origins Act was aimed at specifically limiting immigration from the countries of southern and eastern Europe. The National Origins Act also added Japan and other Asian territories to a list completely banning immigration. As well it renewed the ban on Chinese immigration, which was codified in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality.
18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution-which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors-ushered in a period in American history known as Prohibition. Prohibition was ratified by the states on January 16, 1919 and officially went into effect on January 17, 1920, with the passage of the Volstead Act. Despite the new legislation, Prohibition was difficult to enforce. The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as "bootlegging"), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and other crimes led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s. In early 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The 21st Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, ending Prohibition.
Great Migration
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that arose during the First World War. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come. As a result of housing tensions, many blacks ended up creating their own cities within big cities, fostering the growth of a new urban, African American culture. The most prominent example was Harlem in New York City, a formerly all-white neighborhood that by the 1920s housed some 200,000 African Americans. The black experience during the Great Migration became an important theme in the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era. The Great Migration also began a new era of increasing political activism among African Americans, who after being disenfranchised in the South found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art. The population shift of the Great Migration resulted in a Black Pride movement with leaders of the Harlem Renaissance like W.E.B. Du Bois working to ensure that black Americans got the credit they deserved for cultural areas of life. The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American artists, writers and musicians. It gave these artists pride in and control over how the black experience was represented in American culture and set the stage for the civil rights movement.
Jazz Age (1920s)
The Jazz Age was a cultural period and movement that took place in America during the 1920s from which both new styles of music and dance emerged. Largely credited to African Americans employing new musical techniques along with traditional African traditions, jazz soon expanded to America's white middle class. This occurred particularly in the United States, but also in Britain, France and elsewhere. Jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes during the period, and its influence on pop culture continued long afterwards. Jazz music originated mainly in New Orleans, and is/was a fusion of African and European music. The Jazz Age is often referred to in conjunction with the phenomenon referred to as the Roaring Twenties. The term "Jazz Age" was coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The music that came out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also. Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, often accompanied by elaborate floor shows.
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal (the Butler Act). The trial featured two of the best-known orators of the era, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, as opposing attorneys. The trial was a clash between these two men and the beliefs they represented. Jennings--the Bible, and Darrow--Science. It was the first ever broadcast over radio and became a national event primarily because of the notoriety of the attorneys representing each side. The trial was viewed as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, to publicly advocate for the legitimacy of Darwin's theory of evolution, and to enhance the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The high point came when Darrow called Bryan, a recognized lay authority on the Bible, as a witness, and Bryan admitted on the stand that it was possible that creation may not have taken place in six, 24‐hour days, thereby refuting a literal interpretation of the Bible. Nonetheless, the jury found Scopes guilty of violating the state's anti‐evolution statute and fined him $100. However, this verdict was appealed at the and was overturned due to a technicality. Scopes never paid the fine. Nonetheless, the ultimate result of the trial was pronounced and far-reaching: the Butler Act was never again enforced and over the next two years, laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were defeated in 22 states. Americans, for the most part, viewed the religious fundamentalist cause as the loser in the trial and became more aware of the need to legally separate the teaching of theology from scientific education; anti-evolution laws became the laughingstock of the country. The bigger question of the Scopes Trial surrounded the fundamental idea of separation of Church and State. Asking, do public schools, funded with taxpayer's money, have the right to enforce religious beliefs on students, or deny them the ability to learn scientific facts because of a single religious view?
