Download Changing Roles in the 20s PPT

Quote of the Day
9.04 Describe challenges to
traditional practices in
religion, race, and gender.
Changing Minority Roles
What do you know about
the Renaissance?
Harlem Renaissance


African-American cultural
movement of the 1920s
and 1930s, centered
around the Harlem
neighborhood of NYC
Included new literary,
artistic, and musical
styles which would go on
to heavily influence
American culture of the
mid and late 20th century
Langston Hughes

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
1902 – 1967
American novelist,
playwright, short story
writer, and magazine
columnist
Pioneered new form of
poetry known as “jazz
poetry”
Much of his work focuses
on the theme “black is
beautiful” and takes
pride in the diversity of
African-American culture
Zora Neale Hurston
American folklorist, anthr
opologist, and author
during the Harlem
Renaissance.
 Of Hurston's four novels
and more than 50
published short stories,
plays, and essays, she is
best known for her 1937
novel Their Eyes Were
Watching God.

The Cotton Club
1920 – 1940
 Famous Harlem
nightclub which
featured jazz and
blues music
 Catered to a mostly
white audience, so
marked the first
significant exposure
for many whites to
black musical styles

The Apollo Theater
Harlem theater which
originally opened in
1914, but didn’t become
a predominantly black
venue until 1934
 Fell into decline in the
1960s and even became
just a simple movie
theater before being
revived in 1983; today it
has protected federal
landmark status

Changing perceptions of
immigration
Nativism
• After WWI over a million
immigrants came from
eastern and southern
Europe; they were mainly
Catholic and Jews…
• Once again native born
Protestants feared job
competition and radical
socialist beliefs.
• Congress passed two quota
laws to limit immigration
• Quota Act of 1921 and 1924
The Red Scare
A wave of mass fear of
suspected communists
radicals
 Radicals thought to be
plotting a revolution within
the US
 April 1919: dozens of
bombs were sent through
the US Mail to important
government officials and
business leaders, further
encouraging the belief that
communists were plotting
against the US

The Palmer Raids
Federal agents raided the
headquarters of various
radical organizations, trying
to identify the terror
bombers
 No evidence was ever
found, but hundreds of
immigrants were deported
due to suspicion
 Agents entered homes
without search warrants,
jailed individuals without
charges, and refused
lawyers – all violations of
basic civil rights

A. Mitchell Palmer


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
1872 – 1936
US Attorney General
Became an assassination
target of anarchists,
survived two bomb
attacks
Organized a new branch
of the Justice Department
– the General Intelligence
Unit (GIU) – to
investigate “radical”
organizations
J. Edgar Hoover
1895 – 1972
 Hand picked by
Palmer to head the
GIU, remained in
charge until his death
in 1972 (the GIU
became the FBI in
1935)
 Well known for using
extralegal methods

Sacco & Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (1891–
1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
(1888–1927)
 1920: Convicted of armed
robbery and murder in a highly
controversial trial, many believed
they were blamed simply due to
the fact that they were
immigrants and associated with
anarchists
 Executed in 1927, despite a
confession to the crime by
another individual
 Reveals Nativism within
Government

Changing roles for women
Women in the Workforce


Thousands of women
began to enter the
workforce during the
1920s, primarily in lowwage, low-skill jobs such
as secretarial work, and
as sales clerks and
telephone operators
Most of these workers
were single women
seeking financial
independence from their
restrictive parents
Flappers
Many young women
rebelled against the
morals of their parents
by wearing shorter
skirts, shorter hairstyles,
smoking, drinking,
dancing, and dating
without “adult”
chaperones
 Also referred to as
“Vamps”.

The New Morality
Marriage began to be
redefined among the younger
generation – they began to
believe that a successful
marriage required romance,
friendship, and sexual
compatibility rather than just a
sense of duty to one’s family
 Young people also began to
focus on having fun,
something that became more
available to them with the
increased mobility offered by
automobiles

Margaret Sanger
1879 – 1966
Nurse
Believed that large families
led to poverty and to fewer
opportunities for women
 Began to promote use of
birth control, especially
amongst the poor and
minorities
 Opened her own chain of
birth control clinics, mostly
in poor ghettos
 Founded American Birth
Control League

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
Changing roles of religion
Religious Fundamentalism
The relaxed morality and
growing materialism of
the US during the 1920s
led many people,
especially the older and
more rural population,
to embrace a new wave
of religious
fundamentalism
 Fundamentalists placed
much of the blame on
immigration, alcohol,
science, and new
technologies for
America’s slide into
immorality

Billy Sunday



1862 – 1935
Former Major League
baseball player who left
sports to become a wildly
popular revivalist
minister, preaching to
over 1 million people
during his career
One of the driving forces
behind Prohibition, he
also opposed unrestricted
immigration and the
teaching of evolution in
schools
Aimee Semple McPherson




1890 – 1944
Revivalist minister who
sometimes engaged in faith
healing and speaking in
tongues, she operated her own
5000 seat church in LA and
broadcast her sermons over
the radio
Lifelong opponent of the
teaching of evolution
Complicated personal life
included several marriages, a
faked kidnapping publicity
stunt, and death by accidental
overdose of sedatives
Tennessee’s Butler Act

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
Passed in 1925
The state of Tennessee
banned all schools,
including universities,
from teaching human
evolution and required
the teaching of
creationism
Punishment for breaking
the law was a fine of
$100 - $500 per offense
ACLU
The American Civil Liberties
Union had been founded in
1920 "to defend and
preserve the individual
rights and liberties
guaranteed to every person
in this country by the
Constitution and laws of the
United States.“
 In 1925, the ACLU sought
out a teacher who would be
willing to intentionally
violate the Butler Act in
order to test the
constitutionality of the Act

John Scopes
1900 – 1970
Tennessee high school
teacher who agreed to be
the ACLU’s test case
 Used the state-approved
biology textbook (which
contained a chapter on
evolution) to teach the
subject, thereby breaking
the law and triggering the
Scopes Monkey Trial
 Encouraged his own
students to testify against
him!


Scopes Monkey Trial
Tried in July 1925
 Case drew high-profile
coverage from all over the
world as science faced off
against religious
fundamentalism
 Defense would argue both
that evolution was not
necessarily in conflict with
creationism and that the
law was unconstitutional on
the grounds that it was
designed to benefit the
beliefs of a specific religious
group

William Jennings Bryan
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1860 – 1925
3-time candidate for
president and former
Secretary of State
Served as a special
prosecutor for the state
during the Scopes trial and
even testified as an
“expert witness” (his
testimony was largely
damaging to his own case
and was struck from the
record)
Died 5 days after the trial
ended
Clarence Darrow

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
1857 – 1938
Celebrity criminal lawyer,
fresh off a nationally
covered murder case in
Chicago where he had
saved the lives of his
teenage clients
Brought in as a “hired
gun” by the ACLU both
for his skill as a lawyer
and for the publicity his
reputation would bring
The Decision


Scopes was found
guilty by a jury and
fined $100 by the judge
On appeal, his conviction
was overturned on a
technicality, but the
constitutionality of the
Butler Act was upheld (it
was repealed in 1967 and
laws like it were declared
unconstitutional by the
US Supreme Court in
1968)