Roaring Twenties
American culture and society in the 1920s were marked by a wave of new lifestyles and ideas. While the movie industry produced new celebrities and jazz music became popular, literature flourished and flappers defined a social trend. Amidst the speakeasies, jazz, and jitterbugs, Americans began to stray from traditional values as the culture changed.
United States History: Unit 4 Roaring 20s to Cold War SSUSH16 1) increased production and decreased prices by perfecting the assembly line and the mass production of automobiles; model-T car for the masses not the classes 2) was an African-American jazz musician associated with the Harlem Renaissance; noted for his unique improvisation/solos 3) term that describes the mass. The Roaring Twenties was a period in history of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled.
Prosperity: This is a term that refers to the economic stability and opportunity experienced during the 1920s. The inventions of new consumer goods and home electrical products contributed to this prosperity. The economy during this time was stimulated by the new and booming electrical industry. A growth oriented business climate of the time was expansionist regarding American capitalism. This boom also was started with the invention of the affordable automobile.
KDKA, Pittsburgh: This was the first successful radio station in the U.S. to start broadcasting on Nov 2, 1920. It began the radio era when KDKA, based in Pittsburgh, broadcast the news of President Harding’s election. This radio station also influenced the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission.
Federal Radio Commission, 1927: The FRC was created by Congress and extended the principle of governmental regulation of business activity to the new radio industry. This can be seen as an example of the progressive spirit that still survived in the legislative branch and its effect on society.
Women’s Christian Temperance Movement: Formed in 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance movement grew in momentum during the progressive era. This occurred because the war with Germany fermented wider support for the movement. By 1917 it successfully established prohibition in 19 states.
Anti-Saloon League: Another organization formed during the progressive era, the Anti-Saloon league was spurred by the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement in 1893. Progressives encouraged the legal abolition of alcohol. The result of the efforts of the ASL was the 18th amendment passed in 1918.
National Women’s Party, Alice Paul: During the twenties, feminist Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party lobbied for an equal-rights amendment to the Constitution. Other feminists, radicals, and labor activists condemned Paul’s stance on this issue. Unfortunately, the proposed amendment never succeeded through the party.
Garvey, Marcus, Universal Negro Improvement Association: Garvey was a black nationalist leader who created the 'Back to Africa' movement in the U.S. In 1907, he led a printers’ strike for higher wages at a printing company in Kingston. In 1914 he founded the UNIA and in 1916, he started a weekly newspaper called the Negro World.
Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes: Hughes was an American writer known for the use of jazz and black folk rhythms in his poetry. He used musical rhythms and the traditions of African American culture in his poetry. In the 1920s he was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance and was the Poet Laureate of Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance refers to the black cultural development during the 1920s. However, the movement depended on the patronage of white people.
de Mille, Cecil B.: He was an American motion picture director and producer who in 1913 joined with Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. De Mille produced and directed the first feature film made in Hollywood called The Squaw Man in 1914.
Valentino, Rudolph, Chaplin, Charlie: Valentino was an actor who was idolized by female fans of the 1920s. His first silent film was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) but his peak was with The Sheik (1921). Charlie Chaplin was a silent film actor who appeared in 1914 with the Keystone Film Company.
Ford, Henry, the Model T, Sloan, Alfred P.: In 1893, Ford completed the construction of his first automobile and in 1903 he founded the Ford Motor Company. In 1908 he started production of the Model-T. In 1913 Ford began using standardized interchangeable parts and assembly-lines in his plants.
Johnson, James Weldon: American author, lawyer, and diplomat who reflected his deep consideration of black life in the United States, James Weldon Johnson served as field secretary of the NAACP from 1916-1920. In 1920 he became the NAACP’s first black executive secretary.
Ruth, Babe, Dempsey, Jack: Babe Ruth was the most popular player in the history of baseball. He began in 1914 on the Baltimore team of the International League. Jack Dempsey was an American professional boxer who became world heavyweight champion in 1919 but lost the title in 1926.
Lindbergh, Charles, Spirit of St. Louis: Lindbergh was an American aviator, engineer , and Pulitzer Prize winner. On May 20, 1927, he was the first person to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. Flying in his single engine plane, Spirit of St. Louis, he flew from New York City to Paris.
Dmg mori clothing. The Jazz Singer: The Jazz Singer was a movie, made in 1927, that started a demand for dancers who could fulfill the expectations of the 1920s. Fred Astaire was involved with the choreography in the movie along with other famous dancers such as Berkeley, Balanchine, and De Mille.
the Jazz Age: The Jazz Age is the general label of what the twenties represented. Such a title reflects the revolution in music during the time, when jazz music became popular and in style. This name also refers to the general prosperity and liberation of the people during the time; those were the 'good times.'
Freud’s, Sigmund theories: Freud was a Viennese physician whose studies of human sexuality and human psychology first appeared in the 1890s. However, his ideas became popular during the 1920s. His lectures in 1909 at Clark University advanced psychoanalysis in the United States.
Barton, Bruce, The Man Nobody Knows 1925: Barton was an advertising executive that described Jesus Christ as a managerial genius who 'picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world.' By this he referred to the public’s admiration of leaders like President Harding.
'the Lost Generation': This term refers to a group of American writers who lived primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. Bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with different aspects of American society, these writers were seen to be ex-patriots. The writers include: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Carlos Williams. They never formed a formal literary movement, but individually they were all influential writers.
Lewis, Sinclair, Main Street, Babbitt: Main Street was written in 1920 and is where Lewis first developed the theme of the monotony, emotional frustration, and lack of values in American middle-class life. Babbitt, written in 1922, comments on how people conform blindly to the standards of their environment.
Mencken, H.L., editor of the magazine, The American Mercury: Mencken founded the magazine The American Mercury in 1924. Mencken remained the editor until 1933. He targeted his work at the shortcomings of democracy and the middle-class American culture.
Eliot, T.S., The Waste Land: Eliot won the Nobel Prize for literature for his poem The Waste Land. This poem that is one of the most widely discussed literary works. Written in 1922, The Waste Land expresses Eliot’s conception of the contrast between modern society and societies of the past.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald wrote this book in five months and completed it in 1925. The plot was a sensitive and satiric story of the pursuit of success and the collapse of the American dream. Being one of the writers of the Lost Generation, Fitzgerald was bitter because of the effects of the war.
Dreiser, Theodore, An American Tragedy: In 1925, An American Tragedy had great success. Dreiser believed in representing life honestly in his fiction and accomplished this through accurate detail and descriptions of the urban settings of his stories. He also portrays his characters as victims of social and economic forces.
Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms: In Hemingway’s novels, he usually depicted the lives of two types of people: men and women deprived of faith in their values by World War I, and men of simple character and primitive emotions. This was Hemingway’s second most important novel next to The Sun Also Rises (1926).
New woman: During the 1920s changes in postwar behavior had a liberating effect on women. Women of the twenties were noticed more for their sex appeal and presented as thus in the advertising industry. The burden of domestic chores were alleviated with new technology, while women themselves turned to a more liberated attitude.
Flappers: Called a flapper because they would leave their boot flaps open, the flapper was the stereotype of a woman in the 1920s. Independent and representing the rebellious youth of the age, the flapper was usually characterized by her 'bobbed' hair, dangling cigarette, heavy make-up, and her ever shortening skirt length.
If you're looking for stories with plenty of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, you can't go wrong reading novels set in the 1920s. The Roaring Twenties were a gilded age of dance and debauchery, sandwiched between the First World War and the Great Depression.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this anomalous period in U.S. history and literature is that the country's most famous writers of the period — including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway — weren't living there at the time. Instead, the Lost Generation were traipsing around Europe, spending money on wine and writing romans à clef.
While many white authors expatriated to Europe, black authors, musicians, and artists sparked a cultural explosion in Harlem. Between 1920 and 1930, central Harlem's black population more than doubled, skyrocketing from 32.43 percent to 70.18 percent. Thanks in no small part to the Harlem Renaissance, the Manhattan neighborhood became synonymous with blackness, and with pro-black politics and art.
In choosing the 12 novels on this list, every effort has been made to incorporate books that show what life was like around the globe in the 1920s. With such a wealth of subject matter to pull from, however, this list is not at all exhaustive. Please be sure to share your favorite novels set in the 1920s with me on Twitter.
1. Harlem Redux by Persia Walker
This murder mystery follows Harlem attorney David McKay as he investigates the suspicious death of his sister, Lilian, whose favorite haunts paint a different character than the conservative woman he once knew.
2. Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai
Set in Sri Lanka, Cinnamon Gardens focuses on the conflicts of an unmarried schoolteacher who wants both independence and companionship and a married, closeted gay man whose sexuality might cause an uproar.
3. Z by Therese Anne Fowler
In Therese Anne Fowler's novelization of her life, Zelda Fitzgerald shines as a conflicted young woman caught between supporting the whims of her demanding husband and asserting her own identity to climb out of his shadow.
4. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Similar to Z, The Paris Wife tells the story of another literary wife who found herself whisked away to Europe: Hadley Richardson, the first Mrs. Ernest Hemingway.
5. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell
A transcriptionist working in a New York City police precinct finds herself falling hard when another woman comes into the office. But her friendship soon turns obsessive, and she finds herself wondering who, exactly, the other typist really is. Beginning crossword clue answer.
6. Yellow Rose by Yoshiya Nobuko
Yoshiya Nobuko's short stories are often credited with the launch of shōjo literature in Japan. In 2015, Expanded Editions published 'Yellow Rose' for the first time in English, complete with a recommended reading list and a translator's introduction.
7. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
In 1922 London, circumstances force the formerly wealthy Mrs. Wray and her daughter, Frances, to take on boarders. When a young couple around Frances' age moves in, the spinster begins a scandalous love affair that might have fatal consequences.
8. The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
A German WWI veteran marries his late best friend's pregnant widow, packs up meats and knives, and sails for the U.S. After resettling in North Dakota, he sets up a successful business, forms a local choir, and soon finds himself involved in several relationship triangles.
9. The Diviners by Libba Bray
Shipped off to live with her occult-obsessed uncle in booming New York City, Evie worries he'll discover her secret gift. When a local murder overlaps with her uncle's interests, however, Evie wonders if her gift might be of some assistance in cracking the case.
10. Jazz by Toni Morrison
After her husband shoots and kills his young lover, a woman attempts to sort out her grief by befriending the dead girl's aunt in this gorgeous novel set in Harlem.
11. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
To escape the dreadful English weather, dreadful husbands, and dreadful futures, four unrelated women rent out an Italian villa for a month. Although they're all different in circumstance and personality, each of them will find her life changed in some way by the April abroad.
12. Home to Harlem by Claude McKay
Ssush16: Roaring 20's Us History Timeline
Home to Harlem follows Jake, a WWI deserter who returns to New York in the wake of a London riot. What follows is a glorious, carousing ride through Harlem and the surrounding area, as Claude McKay digs into the seedier fares that the 1920s had to offer young men.
Ssush16: Roaring 20's Us History Names
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