Transcript Cultural Changes in America

Cultural Changes in
America
Unit 8: Prosperity and Depression
Chp. 9-12
New Roles for Women
New Opportunities
• The 19th Amendment allowed
women to vote, and some were
elected to state and local office.
• In general, however, women
voted about as much as the men
in their lives.
• Many women had taken jobs
during World War I but lost them
when men came home.
New Family Roles
• The 1920s brought a shift in
many people’s attitudes
toward men and women’s
relationships.
• The basic rules defining
female behavior were
beginning to change.
• During the 1920s women joined
the workforce in large numbers,
though mostly in the lowestpaying professions.
• American women continued to
have primary responsibility
for caring for the home, and
most still depended on men
for financial support.
• Women attended college in
greater numbers.
• More, however, sought
greater equality.
The Flapper
One popular image that reflects changes for women in the Roaring
Twenties was the flapper, a young woman of the era who defied
traditional ideas of proper dress and behavior.
Flappers
Other Women
• Flappers shocked society by
cutting their hair, raising
hemlines, wearing makeup,
smoking, drinking, and dancing.
• In much of the U.S., women
only read about flappers in
magazines, and many
disapproved of flappers or
wouldn’t dare to be so
reckless.
• The dress style was popular
among young, rebellious girls.
• .The term flapper suggested an
independent, free lifestyle.
• Some older women’s rights
reformers thought flappers
were only interested in fun.
• Flappers mostly lived in cities,
though rural people read about
them in magazines.
• Many did not take flappers
seriously.
The flapper craze took hold mainly in American cities, but in many
ways the flappers represented the rift between cities and rural areas.
Conflicts over Values
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Americans lived in larger communities, which produced a shift in values,
or a person’s key beliefs and ideas.
In the 1920s, many people in urban areas had values that differed from
those in rural areas.
a. Rural America represented the traditional spirit of hard work, selfreliance, religion, and independence.
b. Cities represented changes that threatened those values.
The Ku Klux Klan grew dramatically in the 1920s, and many of its
members were people from rural America who saw their status
declining.
a. Members of the Klan continued to use violence, targeting African
Americans, Catholics, Jews, and all immigrants.
b. In the 1920s, the Klan focused on influencing politics.
c. The Klan’s membership was mostly in the South but spread
nationwide.
d. The Klan’s peak membership was in the millions, many from
Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio.
e. Membership declined in the late 1920s because of a series of
scandals affecting Klan leaders.
The Rise of Fundamentalism
Billy Sunday
Aimee Semple McPherson
• Changing times caused uncertainty,
turning many to religion for answers.
• Another fundamentalist preacher of the
time
• One key religious figure of the time
was former ballplayer and ordained
minister Billy Sunday.
• Seemed to embrace the glamour that other
fundamentalists warned about
• Sunday condemned radicals, rampant
greed and criticized the changing
attitudes toward women, reflecting
much of white, rural America’s ideals.
• Preached a simple message of faith
and Christian life—forgiveness and rebirth in a new life
• Sunday’s Christian beliefs were based
on a literal translation of the Bible
called fundamentalism.
• Her religion, however, was purely
fundamentalist.
• She was especially well known for healing
the sick through prayer.
• Controversial figure—fund-raising efforts
were questionable—scandals
Scopes Trial
• Focused attention on fundamentalism vs.
science
• Led to efforts to limit the public discussion
of religious concepts—American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU)
Prohibition
The Eighteenth Amendment banning alcohol was proposed
in 1917 and ratified in 1919. The Volstead Act enforced the
amendment.
• Groups like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
worked to outlaw alcohol, but the drive strengthened in
the early 1900s, as Progressives joined the effort.
• World War I helped the cause when grain and grapes,
which most alcohol is made from, needed to feed troops.
• Protestant religious groups and fundamentalists also
favored a liquor ban because they thought alcohol
contributed to society’s evils and sins, especially in cities.
• By 1917 more than half the states had passed a law
restricting alcohol.
Prohibition in Practice
• Enforcing the new Prohibition law proved to be virtually impossible, as
making, transporting, and selling alcohol was illegal, but drinking it was
not.
• Prohibition gave rise to huge smuggling operations, as alcohol slipped
into the country through states like Michigan on the Canadian border.
• Federal officials estimated that in 1925 they caught only 5 percent of
all the illegal liquor entering the country.
• Many people also made their own liquor using homemade equipment,
or got alcohol from doctors as medicine.
• The illegal liquor business was part of organized crime—Chicago
gangster Al Capone’s crew, who smashed competition, then frightened
and bribed police and officials.
• Only 3,000 Prohibition agents nationwide worked to enforce the law.
• Millions of Americans violated the laws, but it would be many years
before Prohibition came to an end.
Harlem Performers and Musicians
The Harlem Renaissance helped create new opportunities for African
American stage performers, writers and musicians, who only began
being offered serious work in the 1920s.
Performers
Musicians
• Paul Robeson won fame onstage
and in movies.
• Harlem was a vital center for
jazz, a musical blend of
several different forms from
the Lower South with new
innovations in sound.
• Josephine Baker went on to a
remarkable career as a singer
and dancer in the U.S. and in
Europe.
Writers
• Little African American literature
was published before that era.
• Writers like Zora Neale Hurston
and James Weldon Johnson
wrote of facing white prejudice.
• Poets like Claude McKay and
Langston Hughes wrote of
black defiance and hope.
• Much of jazz was
improvised, or composed on
the spot.
• Louis Armstrong was a
leading performer on the
Harlem jazz scene.
• Other performers included
Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway,
and composers Duke
Ellington and Fats Waller.
Radio Drives Popular Culture
During the 1920s, the radio went from being a little-known
novelty to being standard equipment in every American home.
Rise of the Radio
• Guglielmo Marconi invented
the radio in the late 1800s,
and by the early 1900s the
military and ships at sea used
them.
• In 1920, most Americans still
didn’t own radios, and there
was not any programming.
• In 1920, a radio hobbyist near
Pittsburgh started playing
records over his radio, and
people started listening.
Radio Station Boom
• The growing popularity of those
simple broadcasts caught the
attention of Westinghouse, a
radio manufacturer.
• In October 1920, Westinghouse
started KDKA, the first radio
station.
• By 1922 the U.S. had 570
stations.
• Technical improvements in sound
and size helped popularity.
• Americans now had a shared
experience.
Movies
Movies exploded in popularity during the 1920s-30s for several reasons.
New Film Techniques
• In early years movies were
short, simple pieces.
• During World War I,
filmmaker D. W. Griffith
produced The Birth of a
Nation, a film some consider
racist.
• Make-up artists and actors
developed the craft of movie
acting—Lon Chaney
• Cecil B. DeMille created huge
crowd scenes and epic battle
recreations on sets in
Hollywood
Talkies and Cartoons
• Another important
innovation was the
introduction of films with
sound, or “talkies.”
• In 1927 filmgoers were
amazed by The Jazz Singer,
a hugely successful movie
that incorporated a few lines
of dialogue and helped
change the movie industry
forever.
• In 1928, Steamboat Willie
animator Walt Disney
introduced Mickey Mouse
and cartoons.
By the 1930s, Americans bought 100 million movie tickets a week,
though the entire U.S. population was about 123 million people.
1920s Film Star Heroes
• The great popularity of movies in the 1920s gave rise to a new kind of
celebrity—the movie star.
• One of the brightest stars of the 1920s was Charlie Chaplin, a comedian
whose signature character was a tramp in a derby hat and ragged clothes.
• Rudolph Valentino, a dashing leading man of romantic films, was such a
big star that his unexpected death in 1926 drew tens of thousands of
women to the funeral home where his body lay.
• Clara Bow was a movie star nicknamed the “It Girl.”
• Mary Pickford was considered “America’s Sweetheart” and was married
to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a major star of action films.
1930s Hollywood Heroes
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Gary Cooper—actor
Jimmy Stewart—actor
Bette Davis—actress
James Cagney—actor
The Marx Brothers—
comic actors
• Henry Fonda—actor
• John Ford—film director
• John Wayne—actor
• Gene Autry—singer and
actor
• Jack Benny—film and
radio star
• Frank Capra—film
director
• George Burns & Gracie
Allen—husband and wife
comedy team
Pilot Heroes of the Twenties
Charles Lindbergh
• Charles Lindbergh was a daredevil pilot who practiced his skills as an
airmail pilot, a dangerous, life-threatening job at the time.
• Lindbergh heard about a $25,000 prize for the first aviator to fly a
nonstop transatlantic flight, or a flight across the Atlantic Ocean,
and wanted to win.
• On May 21, 1927, Lindbergh succeeded by touching down in Paris,
France after a thirty-three-and-a-half-hour flight from New York.
• Lindbergh earned the name “Lucky Lindy” and became the most
beloved American hero of the time.
Amelia Earhart
• A little over a year after Lindbergh’s flight, Amelia Earhart became
the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, returning to the U.S. as a
hero.
• She went on to set numerous speed and distance records as a pilot.
• In 1937 she was most of the way through a record-breaking flight
around the world when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.
Sports Heroes
Radio helped inflame the public passion for sports, and millions of Americans tuned in to
broadcasts of ballgames and prize fights featuring their favorite athletes who gave them
something to cheer for in troubled times.
•Boxing—a means for the poor to get out of the streets—the only integrated pro sport
1. Jack Dempsey—came out of the mining camps of the west to become one of the
most beloved boxers of all time
2. James J. Braddock—overcame injury and financial ruin in the depression to
become the hero of the nation as heavyweight champ
3. Joe Louis—African American fighter who became a hero—first for his race and
then for his nation—nearly a 20 year span as champ
•Football—growing fan base after 1900 as more and more people got college degrees and
identified with college teams
1. Red Grange—Illinois star who played before huge crowds and dazzled fans with
his athleticism—turned pro after college and made the NFL a legitimate sport
2. Knute Rockne and Notre Dame—small Catholic school in the Midwest that played
powerful teams from all over the nation, creating a large loyal fan following—
American Catholics
3. Jim Thorpe—Native American who was a legendary Olympian and college star
who continued as one of the founding fathers of the NFL
Sports Heroes (cont’d.)
•Baseball—gained prominence in spite of the “Black Sox Scandal” of the
1919 World Series
1. Babe Ruth—larger than life figure whose accomplishments on the
field were legendary—changed the game forever
2. Lou Gehrig—heroic player who battled a fatal illness with public
dignity
3. Walter Johnson—re-wrote the pitching records
4. Rogers Hornsby & Dizzie Dean—Put the St. Louis Cardinals on the
baseball map
5. New York became the center of pro baseball with 3 teams (NY
Yankees, NY Giants, & Brooklyn Dodgers)
6. Negro Leagues—Segregation was extended to pro sports—these allblack teams were wildly popular and extremely talented—Josh
Gibson, Satchel Paige, and “Cool Papa” Bell
The Voice of the People
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Will Rogers
1. Cherokee cowboy, writer, commentator, actor and comedian
2. Similar to Mark Twain and Johnny Carson as someone who poked fun at people in
power—Congress, President Hoover, etc.
3. Died in a plane crash in Alaska
Jimmie Rodgers
1. RR Brakeman, guitarist, singer, and song-writer
2. Combined folk music, blues, country music, and jazz
3. “Father of Country Music”—brought the day-to-day life of the common people to a
mass audience—sang about the lives of the homeless, rural America, and the working
poor
4. Died of tuberculosis shortly after a massive recording session that preserved his music
and provided for his family
Woody Guthrie
1. Singer, guitar player, song-writer, political activist, and social commentator
2. Used his songs and performances to raise awareness and tell the story of the less
fortunate—commissioned by the US government to chronicle the WPA and PWA
projects of the New Deal
3. Became the outspoken advocate of the persecuted—inspired future singers