beginning of the modern era 1910 - 1930. history of the time
TRANSCRIPT
Beginning of the Modern Era
1910 - 1930
History of the Time
New Technology
Opened up and Bound World Together Automobile Radio Telephone Movies Airplane Assembly line
President
Woodrow Wilson elected president Reflected popular
demands Intention was to
have the government limit the power of huge business interests
Urbanization
More Americans left rural areas to live in the cities.
World War I
August 1914 - Europe burst into war
Great Britain, France, Russia
Vs. Germany, Austria -
Hungary, Italy
U.S. Entered War
1917 - U.S. declared war on Germany Tanks, artillery, machine guns, planes,
poison gas, and trench warfare were used November 11, 1918 - Germany surrendered 115,000 Americans died 10 million (an entire generation) Europeans
died
Women’s Suffrage
1920 - Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote.
Roaring Twenties
People were repulsed by senseless slaughter of the war
Return to Normalcy - Americans attempted to withdraw from the rest of the world.
People expressed themselves in a desperate, yet creative hysteria in new jazz rhythms, outrageous fashions, wacky fads, obsessions with money and youth
End of an Era
October 29, 1929 - Stock Market crashed Countless lost all their savings
Life of the Time
Immigration
Continuation of closing of “Open Door” to America
Restrictions from 1921 - 1924 targeted Asians and Eastern Europeans
Freedom??
KKK membership surged past 4 million
They targeted African Americans, Jews, Roman Catholics, union members
Wheels and Wings
By 1927 - 20 million automobiles in the country
1927 - Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris
Fashion
Young women began wearing shorter and shorter skirts until they finally skimmed the knee
Short “bobbed” hair shocked people People were horror stricken as women paint
their lips and rouge their cheeks
Flapper
Symbol of the new woman of the 1920’s
Entertainment
Many African Americans migrated from the south to Harlem, New York
Harlem Renaissance - growth of music, art, and literature
The Jazz Singer became the first talking movie.
Jazz
Jazz music became hugely popular with musicians like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
Literature of the Time
“World War I . . . destroyed faith in progress, but it did more than that - it made clear to perceptive thinkers . . . that violence prowled underneath man’s apparent harmony and rationality.”
A New View
Artists strove for new ways to portray the world.
Pablo Picasso showed multiple perspectives
The Lost Generation Ernest Hemingway helped popularize the term
Generation of young American writers who felt alienated and spiritually empty following World War One
Some lost generation writers moved to Paris during this time
The writers created a self-imposed exile from mainstream America
Characteristics of Modern Literature
Characters were written as real people who thought in a continuous flow of ideas that went several directions at once - ‘Stream of Consciousness”
Violence was seen as an underlying part of all humans
Minorities began writing of racial identity and pride