alcohol consumption. This effort began in the 1800s, but it was
not until 1920 that people succeeded in passing a constitutional
amendment that banned the manufacture, sale, and
transportation of alcoholic beverages. This passage of national
Prohibition caused a major cultural clash in the 1920s between
those who favored Prohibition and those who wished to repeal
it.
Bootlegging (the illegal smuggling of alcohol) and speakeasies
(“underground” drinking clubs) were popular attempts to elude the law.
Many people made bathtub gin and home brew. The most popular
places to hide illegal liquor were heels of shoes, flasks form-fitted to
women's thighs, folds of coats, and perfume bottles.
A rise in organized crime:
Organized crime existed even before Prohibition took effect.
Gangs and mobsters (the popular term for this kind of criminal)
ran gambling rings and sold drugs. But in the 1920s the big crime
organizations realized that there were huge profits to be made
through making and selling alcoholic beverages to thirsty people
willing to break the law. As the various gangs competed with one
another, the rate of violence increased. Chicago, Illinois, gained a
reputation as one of the toughest towns, with almost four hundred
gang-related deaths yearly toward the end of the decade. It was
home to the most famous gangster of them all, Al Capone (1899–
1947), the man whose name would become permanently linked
with Prohibition and the darker side of the 1920s.
Women:
Another area of conflict was the changing role of women in
American society. Women were finally given the right to vote
on August 26th 1920. Also, more women began to work
outside the home. The transformation from a farm-based
economy to an industrial one created new work opportunities
for women, particularly single young women. Enjoying the
freedom that came from having an independent source of
income, many women created a new life for themselves that
centered on consumer culture and mass entertainment. Many,
however, considered the new woman to be a threat to social
morality and opposed the flapper, the icon of the new woman
in the 1920s, and what she represented: partying, drinking,
and loose morals.
Racial and Ethnic Conflict:
The 1920s were also marked by a high degree of racial and
ethnic conflict. One of the least-remembered facts regarding
the 1920s is that the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan
reached its peak, with roughly 5 million members. The group
persecuted African Americans, Jews, Catholics, women,
immigrants, and Communists. Violence against African
Americans was especially prevalent in the South.
In 1922, more than 50 African Americans had been lynched.
The KKK also focused much of its attention on the rising
immigrant population of the cities. (These immigrants had
come to work in America’s factories.)
Religion and Evolution:
Newspapers and magazines paid close attention to the struggle over
teaching evolution in public schools. Fundamentalist religious groups
pressured state lawmakers to ban the teaching of evolution to
schoolchildren, convinced that such teachings would weaken
students' faith and contribute to what was perceived as the generally
weakening moral tone of the nation. The effort to ban the teaching of
evolution reached its climax in Tennessee, which became to first state
to adopt this ban on evolution. From July 10-21, the trial of high
school teacher John Scopes took place in Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes
was accused of breaking the state's new law against the teaching of
evolution. Clarence Darrow, the nation's leading lawyer, defended
him. Former secretary of state and three-time presidential candidate
William Jennings Bryan lead the prosecution. Widely covered in
newspapers and by radio, the "Monkey Trial" attracted national
attention.
Urban vs. Rural: The Great
Divide
The 1920s was the decade that the US became
an urban country. More people lived in cities
than in rural, farm areas. Like the losing team,
the rural areas harbored anger towards the
urban mindset that had spread across America.
These small town communities didn’t like the
values put forth by the people living in cities.
Cities have always been the places where
cultural change begins. Museums, theaters,
universities and other cultural institutions are
the breeding grounds for new and exciting
ideas. However, new ideas aren’t always
accepted with ease. For the rural comminutes,
urban life wasn’t a symbol of progress, but of
lose morals – alcoholism, immigrants and
African Americans mingling with the white
population (specifically at jazz clubs), working
women, lively partying, and divorce.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
Cars. Henry Ford opened his assembly line in 1913, but World
War I slowed the growth of automobile ownership. During the
1920s the private car become a fixture of everyday American life.
As late as 1919 there were 6.8 million passenger cars on the road in
a country of about 105 million people. By 1929 there were 23
million cars for about 122 million people.
Airplanes. Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful
manned flight in 1903, but little progress was made until World
War I (1914-1918) provided the impetus for improved aeronautic
technology. In 1920 the airplane was still mainly a county-fair
curiosity. By the late 1920s the major U.S. cities were linked by
regularly scheduled airline service. Another fixture of modern life
had appeared. On May 21, 1927 aviator Charles Lindbergh landed
in Paris after completing the first solo flight across the Atlantic.
The flight, which began in New York, took more than thirty-three
hours.
Movies. Though it has roots in the first two decades of the
twentieth century, the modern motion picture is for the most part
a product of the 1920s. In the first decade of the century movies
were little more than video-parlor curiosities viewed by one person
at a time. In the 1910s movie houses were set up to show
flickering, jerky, silent, black-and-white motion pictures. During
the 1920s large, Art Deco motion-picture houses were constructed.
By the mid 1920s movies had started coming out in color, and
sound was added in the late 1920s.
Radio and Television.. Radio, as it is known by the public, was
born in the 1920s. The first commercial radio station went on the
air in 1920. Between 1923 and 1930, 60 percent of American
families purchased radios. Families gathered around their radios
for night-time entertainment. As radio ownership increased, so
did the number of radio stations. By 1929 there was a wellregulated
industry of hundreds of stations. Although a
commercially viable television prototype was not developed until
the 1930s, a primitive form of black-and-white television was
publicly demonstrated in the late 1920s, and active
experimentation with color television was under way.
Discovering New Galaxies. Astronomy went through a period
of rapid change in the 1920s. Before the 1920s everybody,
including scientists, thought that the Milky Way—the galaxy that
includes our solar system—was the entire universe. By the end of
the decade astronomers had found that the Milky Way was just
one ordinary galaxy among a multitude of others. (As a joke,
astronomers named one of the new galaxies "Snickers" to make
fun of a popular candy bar named after our own galaxy.)
The Big Bang Theory. Scientists also considered the universe to
be fairly static (not moving), until the Big Bang theory of the origin
of the universe was set forth in the late 1920s. Suddenly the
universe was described as rapidly expanding and ever-changing.
