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A History of The Roaring 20s Era

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Words: 721 |

Published: Dec 11, 2018

Words: 721 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited:

• Atkins, J. W. H. (2008). Martin Luther King Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Branch, T. (1989). Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954-63. Simon & Schuster.
• Carson, C., Shepard, S. A., & Garrow, D. J. (Eds.). (1998). The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Volume VI: Advocate of the social gospel, September 1948–March 1963. University of California Press.
• Fairclough, A. (1995). To redeem the soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. University of Georgia Press.
• King, M. L. (1992). The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Warner Books.
• McPherson, S. (2001). The Civil Rights Movement and the Logic of Social Change. Cambridge University Press.
• Pierce, J. R. (2017). The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther King Jr. Cambridge University Press.
• Sitkoff, H. (2008). The struggle for Black equality. Hill and Wang.
• Ward, B. (2013). The Reverend's Journey: The Making of a Civil Rights Leader. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Williams, J. M. (2004). From M.L. King Jr. to Barack Obama: African American history and its meanings for the twenty-first century. Journal of African American History, 89(2), 118-126.

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The Roaring Twenties

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: April 14, 2010

The Roaring Twenties was a period in American history of dramatic social, economic and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and gross national product (GNP) expanded by 40 percent from 1922 to 1929. This economic engine swept many Americans into an affluent “consumer culture” in which people nationwide saw the same advertisements, bought the same goods, listened to the same music and did the same dances. Many Americans, however, were uncomfortable with this racy urban lifestyle, and the decade of Prohibition brought more conflict than celebration. But for some, the Jazz Age of the 1920s roared loud and long, until the excesses of the Roaring Twenties came crashing down as the economy tanked at the decade’s end.

Flappers: The 'New Woman'

Perhaps the most familiar symbol of the “Roaring Twenties” is probably the flapper : a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said “unladylike” things, in addition to being more sexually “free” than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe ), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms.

They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920, though it would be decades before Black women in the South could fully exercise their right to vote without Jim Crow segregation laws.

Millions of women worked in blue-collar jobs, as well as white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children.

In 1912, an estimated 16 percent of American households had electricity; by the mid-1920s, more than 60 percent did. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgeries of household work.

Did you know? Because the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture and sell it, many people stockpiled liquor before the ban went into effect. Rumor had it that the Yale Club in New York City had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.

Fashion, Fads and Film Stars

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend—and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, Pittsburgh’s KDKA , hit the airwaves in 1920. Two years later Warren G. Harding became the first president to address the nation by radio —and three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households.

People also swarmed to see Hollywood movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week, and actors like Charlie Chaplin , Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead became household names.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile . Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities.

By 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers’ needs—as did the burgeoning oil industry .

The Jazz Age

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them “bedrooms on wheels.”) What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago ; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the hedonism and excitement of the Jazz Age—Fitzgerald once claimed that the 1920s were “the most expensive orgy in history”—while other writers, artists, musicians and designers ushered in a new era of experimental Art Deco and modernist creativity.

Prohibition Era

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” and at 12 a.m. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any “intoxication beverages” with more than 0.5 percent alcohol.

This drove the liquor trade underground—now, instead of ordinary bars, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies, where liquor was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone . (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago’s police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation’s cities. For instance, to the so-called “Drys,” beer was known as “Kaiser brew.” Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time

Immigration and Racism in the 1920s

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. An anti- Communist “Red Scare” in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist and anti-immigrant hysteria. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924 , which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).

Immigrants were hardly the only targets in this decade. The Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of Black culture—jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance —discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people, not just in the South but across the country, joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

By the middle of the decade, the KKK had two million members, many of whom believed the Klan represented a return to all the “values” that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. More specifically, the 1920s represented economic and political uplift for Black Americans that threatened the social hierarchy of Jim Crow oppression. 

Early Civil Rights Activism

During this decade, Black Americans sought stable employment, better living conditions and political participation. Many who migrated to the North found jobs in the automobile, steel, shipbuilding and meatpacking industries. But with more work came more exploitation.

In 1925, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph founded the first predominantly Black labor union , the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters , to draw attention to the discriminatory hiring practices and working conditions for Blacks. And as housing demands increased for Black people in the North, so did discriminatory housing practices that led to a rise of urban ghettos, where Black Americans—excluded from white neighborhoods—were relegated to inadequate, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions.

Black Americans battled for political and civil rights throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. The NAACP launched investigations into Black disenfranchisement in the 1920 presidential election, as well as surges of white mob violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The NAACP also pushed for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, a law to make lynching a federal crime, but it was defeated by a Senate filibuster in 1922. A political milestone for Black Americans finally occurred when Oscar De Priest , a Chicago Republican , became the first Black congressman since Reconstruction to be elected to the House of Representatives in 1928.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in several demographic shifts, or what one historian called a “cultural Civil War” between city-dwellers and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and whites, “New Women” and advocates of old-fashioned family values.

But coming immediately after the hardships of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic , the Roaring Twenties also gave many middle-class Americans an unprecedented taste of freedom, unbridled fun and upward economic mobility unsurpassed in U.S. history.

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably). Smithsonian Magazine . The Roaring Twenties. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History . The Roaring 20s. PBS: American Experience .

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• The Nineteenth Amendment
• 1920s urbanization and immigration
• The reemergence of the KKK
• Prohibition
• Republican ascendancy: politics in the 1920s
• The presidency of Calvin Coolidge
• 1920s consumption
• Movies, radio, and sports in the 1920s
• American culture in the 1920s

Nativism and fundamentalism in the 1920s

• America in the 1920s
• The old and the new came into sharp conflict in the 1920s. While many Americans celebrated the emergence of modern technologies and less restrictive social norms, others strongly objected to the social changes of the 1920s.
• In many cases, this divide was geographic as well as philosophical; city dwellers tended to embrace the cultural changes of the era, whereas those who lived in rural towns clung to traditional norms.
• The Sacco and Vanzetti trial in Massachusetts and the Scopes trial in Tennessee revealed many Americans’ fears and suspicions about immigrants, radical politics, and the ways in which new scientific theories might challenge traditional Christian beliefs.

Transformation and backlash in the 1920s

Nativism in the early twentieth century, faith, fundamentalism, and science, what do you think, attribution, want to join the conversation.

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Politics lens.

• Why did the Republican Party dominate national politics during the decade?
• What was attractive about "normalcy"?
• What was wrong with the Democrats?
• What lesson might political parties learn from their dysfunction?
• Why do political parties periodically find it difficult to avoid this sort of internal division?
• What statistics support these conclusions?
• Must “pro-business” policies always lead to these sorts of divergent results (economic growth, maldistribution of income)? Why or why not?
• Was it the fault of Harding or of his pro-business policies? Explain.

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Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s Essay

Often, the beginnings of the American women’s suffrage movement may be traced back to a July 1848 public protest assembly in Seneca Falls, New York. The right of women to participate equally with men in the benefits and responsibilities of active, engaged citizenship was the only demand at that historic gathering that caused controversy among the one hundred women and men present. As the meeting’s chief organizer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, recalled, many in the crowd feared that the claim for fairness and justice was either too sophisticated or morally dubious about being included in the platform of the new organization (DuBois). Yet, the ability to vote was among the main causes that led to the formation of women’s movements.

Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that as of 1860, the ability to vote was not the fundamental priority of the women’s rights movements. They concentrated considerably more on the socioeconomic rights of females – particularly spouses – to work, inherit, and own property (DuBois). In addition, the traditional interpretation of the Constitution was that it was the responsibility of the states to select how to organize the election. Given this, women’s suffrage was believed to have to be battled for and gained state by state, which made the struggle complicated and to focus on the most important things – such as economic rights.

During the 1920s, women’s labor force participation increased, and there was an increasing desire to work. In addition, the notion of ‘pink collar’ employment was established during this time period (Bremner 9). The majority of people believed that women had to work in traditionally feminine occupations despite the fact that society accepted them in normal vocations. These jobs included those of secretaries and telephone operators. In addition, they were grossly underpaid for the volume of labor they performed, yet equal pay rules were not yet in force.

Another major concern within the provided scope is the battle against the physical and sexual oppression of women. When nickelodeon shorts evolved into feature movies and the first age of the cinema siren was formed, the appeal of feminine bodies took on an eerie, flickering quality. Combining the force of emancipation with the sensual potential of the film resulted in the creation of the vampire (or ‘vamp’) in the late 1910s (Bowery Boys). Such an image became a symbol of female sexual liberation, and actresses such as Theda Bara and Clara Bow exemplified this concept in an iconic manner. The latter became the prominent flapper stereotype of the 1920s, while Bara’s scandalous and exotic antics laid the scene a decade earlier.

Given the explored theme of women’s movements from the end of Reconstruction to the 1920s, the four causes females took up were investigated above. These are the restrictions for them in voting, economic rights, workload inequity, and oppression of their sexuality. It seems reasonable to state that the movements in the dimension of women’s voting eligibility, economic rights – such as the American Woman Suffrage Association – and freedom of expression. This was visible from events like the passing of the 14th Amendment and the popularity of the ‘vamps.’ However, within the scope of workload equity, they were less successful, which is justified by the fact that the ‘pink collar’ issue has been present long since that time.

It might be assumed that among the mentioned causes, the one related to the economic right was the most crucial. The reality dictates people deal with their routine issues first, and it seems that the ability to work, inherit, and own property is more important than freedom of sexuality, workload equity, or even voting. The fight for economic rights was the founding reason for the establishment of such movements in general.

Works Cited

Bowery Boys. “ Before the Flapper, the Naughty ‘Vamp’ Scandalized New York .” The Bowery Boys , Web.

Bremner, Judith. (1992) “Black Pink Collar Workers: Arduous Journey from Field and Kitchen to Office.” The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare , vol. 19, no. 3, 1992, pp. 7–27.

DuBois, Ellen. “ Reconstruction and the Battle for Woman Suffrage .” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2024, February 17). Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s. https://ivypanda.com/essays/womens-roles-during-reconstruction-and-roaring-1920s/

"Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s." IvyPanda , 17 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/womens-roles-during-reconstruction-and-roaring-1920s/.

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IvyPanda . 2024. "Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s." February 17, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/womens-roles-during-reconstruction-and-roaring-1920s/.

1. IvyPanda . "Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s." February 17, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/womens-roles-during-reconstruction-and-roaring-1920s/.

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IvyPanda . "Women’s Roles During Reconstruction and Roaring 1920s." February 17, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/womens-roles-during-reconstruction-and-roaring-1920s/.

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Essay Samples on 1920S

The evolvement of 1920s fashion and trends.

 Fifty years before the 1920s, each decade developed a persona of trends that influenced the evolvement of 1920s fashion. A continuation of the 1870s frizzy bangs or loosely piled curled locks took on the impact of hairstyles In the 1880s, skirts were narrow folded, draped,...

The Revolutionary Events of 1920s: Model T, Red Scare

The 1920’s was a decade of change that roared throughout the country but ended with one of the worst economic crisis the United States had ever seen. For the first time most Americans owned cars, radios, and telephones and in addition more citizens lived in...

The Intolerance Throughout the History of 1920s in US

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The Increase of Organised Crime in the Roaring Twenties

The 1920s are considered to be an era of dramatic socio-political changes, that essentially embodied the beginning of modern America. World War I (1914-1918) had just ended, and the country had already been through and survived the worldwide influenza epidemic (1918) with an immense number...

• Criminals in Society

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5. The Increase of Organised Crime in the Roaring Twenties

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Changing Role of Women in The 1920s Essay Example

The 1920s brought a new wave of women. In the past, women were meant to be perceived as prestigious, conservative, and modest. The 20s brought new drastic independence for women. The woman went from staying home with their nine children, to working fifty hours a week! Without this era for a new type of lady, we wouldn't be the progressive society we currently are. In the duration of the 1920s, the image of a woman was redefined to a working, loving, and free-spirited person. 

First, World War 1 brought new privileges to women allowing them to work as they pleased after the war efforts. When the war started women went into the workforce to help the common society since there were limited people to do the jobs. As “Women Go To Work” explains, once the war ended the women had a new perspective and enjoyed being independent. The women did not have everything, but they were given more opportunities. The number rose from 8.3 million women in the workforce to over 11 million by 1930 (1). Women definitely did not have the highest paying jobs, but more so “in factories or as clerical workers in offices. Significant numbers also worked as domestic servants or farmworkers'' (A Changing Society 79). African American women did not have it as easy though. They still faced discrimination because of their race, therefore if they worked it was even lower-paying jobs. Most importantly women were given a choice to work or not. In the past, this would have seemed unimaginable (A Changing Society). Due to the war in past years, there was a prominent opportunity for working women. Not only did women have freedom in the workforce, they now also have new freedom in families. 

Women in the 1920s were having fewer children and now we're focusing on forming strong relationships with their kids. In the 20s a new perspective on how a family should arise. It shifted from a large, strict, family to help around at the house, to now a smaller family who openly shares emotion. The difference from the past families to the 20s families was very drastic. Women going to work affect this change. When women went to work society shifted from a male dominant to a more equal society:

“As the country became more industrialized, though, children no longer represented an economic advantage. Most families in the 1920s were smaller, with two or three children being the norm. Both the lessened need for extra labor and the new laws abolishing child labor meant that children stayed out of the workforce longer” (A Changing Society 83). 

The role of being a mother also changed in the 20s. Previously mothers were meant to be strict and discipline their children. Instead now families were centered around forming close relationships and not just being related but displaying affection. “A Changing Society” mentions loving families becoming known as the “compassionate” family. Not everyone followed this approach but the majority did. In the 1920s families made a dramatic change for the better: “Families were smaller and were now more focused on emotions; attachment and the nurturing of children. Young people were not pressured to enter adulthood as they had been in previous years, and they spent more time in school” (A Changing Society 75). As women focused on smaller families, many focused on the prevention of kids in total. Birth control became very popular in the 1920s as well. Birth control was more accessible for wealthy white women. The ability to avoid pregnancy was huge for younger women in their 20s. They discovered something that lets them live their lives with more confidence surrounding unexpected pregnancies. During this time period, birth control became more accessible for all kinds of women which played a positive role in the economy. This empowered women to live their lives freely and confidently. Having a free and confident persona resembles what it means to be a flapper girl of the 20s. 

Flappers were now popular and they represented a free-spirited, sexual woman who held her own opinions. Jackie Hatton explains that the word “flapper” now represents a youthful woman post-wartime. This was a huge leap from Victorian values. In the Victorian era, the clothes were tight and heavy. Flappers wore loose and short dresses, they flattened their chest and cut their hair short. American Flappers wore more makeup and became less reserved. In the Victorian era, their attitudes were very modest and many of these women had not even kissed a guy before marriage (112). This is far from what a flapper girl of the 1920s was. Flappers were rebellious and bent the rules of society, they “began to drink, smoke, and talk slang” and they had sex with multiple men (Hatton 112). Flappers were sexual and promoted feminism. They did not want to be held down by the men, flappers took control of their lives. These women were newly independent rebels of the past decade.  The roles of men and women changed: “[C]loseness of contact between the two sexes in situations of danger changed the relations between men and women, at least for short periods of time” (The Evolution of the Flapper 114). These women were bold and changing and redefining what it means to be a woman of the 20s. Flappers would look into men's eyes with confidence and seductiveness. Being a Flapper wasn’t just a style but a way of life. 

The 1920s redefined what it means to be a woman. In the ’20s women could work and make more of their own decisions. These women could now use birth control and choose to have smaller families. They also were sexual and free. All of these qualities of a woman in the 1920s were very different from the preceding generations. This big leap for the independence and individuality of a woman set the stage for women currently in the 2020s.

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