The 1920s

Intolerance, Prohibition and All that Jazz

Post-war recession and agricultural problems

• 1920-21 Depression– Returning labor– Deflation– High interest rates

• WWI Fixed Ag. Prices• Farmers loans to meet demand• Buried in debt

Intolerance

http://youtu.be/dNKg54bvObQScopes Monkey Trialhttp://youtu.be/xOgI0b-tEAg

Prohibition and Organized Crime

Jazz Age and Youth RebellionI, Too, Sing America by Langston HughesI, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.

Tomorrow,I’ll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody’ll dareSay to me,“Eat in the kitchen,”Then.

Besides,They’ll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed– I, too, am America.

• King Oliver• http://youtu.be/Nklm3JoAh3o

Read this excerpt from “Flapper Jane” written by Bruce Biven, published in New Republic, Sept 9, 1925.” Jane is, for one thing, a very pretty girl. Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect–pallor mortis [white as death], poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes. Jane isn’t wearing much, this summer. If you’d like to know exactly, it is: one dress, one step-in [underwear], two stockings, two shoes. Her dress is cut low where it might be high, and vice versa. The skirt comes just an inch below her knees, overlapping by a faint fraction her rolled and twisted stockings. The idea is that when she walks in a bit of a breeze, you shall now and then observe the knee. Jane’s haircut is also abbreviated [short]. She wears of course the very newest thing in bobs, even closer than last year’s shingle. It leaves her just about no hair at all in the back, and 20 percent more than that in the front. The corset is as dead as the dodo’s grandfather.”

Harding & Coolidge

• Teapot Dome Scandal• Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior• Loans from Doheny and Sinclair• Rights to drill in Wyoming and California• Coolidge Prosperity• Status Quo• "After all, the chief business of the American people is

business."

• Boom and Bust in the Market• http://media.nclive.org/play_video.php?vid=4

51• Between the Wars, Episode 4• 2:00-5:00, 7:00, 11:00-13:52, 16:45-19:07