University City High School

AP United States History

Honors United States History

Mr. Brown

The 1920’s was the first decade to have a nickname: Roaring 20s" or "Jazz Age." It was a decade of prosperity and dissipation, and of jazz bands, bootleggers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers, flagpole sitters, bootleggers, and marathon dancers. It was, in the popular view, the Roaring 20s, when the younger generation rebelled against traditional taboos while their elders engaged in an orgy of speculation. But the 1920s was also a decade of bitter cultural conflicts, pitting religious liberals against fundamentalists, nativists against immigrants, and rural provincials against urban cosmopolitans. The 1920’s was a decade of major cultural conflicts as well as a period when many features of a modern consumer culture took root. In this chapter, you will learn about the clashes over alcohol, evolution, foreign immigration, and race, and also about the growth of cities, the rise of a consumer culture, and the revolution in morals and manners. 

1. Discuss the emergence of the following during the 1920's

    a. Ku Klux Klan

    b. Nativists and immigration reform

    c. Religious fundamentalists and the Scopes Trial

2. Explain the characteristics of each of the following, and discuss the impact of popular culture on American society during the

1920s: 

     a. Movies and Sports

     b. The "New Negro" and the Harlem Renaissance

     c. Prohibition and the 18th Amendment

     d. The "New Woman"