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The Roaring ’20’s

Introduction

The 1920’s were an age of dramatic social 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 this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.” People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang! Many Americans were uncomfortable with this new, urban, sometimes racy “mass culture;” in fact, for many–even most–people in the United States, the 1920’s brought more conflict than celebration. However, for a small handful of young people in the nation’s big cities, the 1920’s were roaring indeed.

The 1920’s was a decade of exciting social changes and profound cultural conflicts. For many Americans, the growth of cities, the rise of a consumer culture, the upsurge of mass entertainment, and the so-called “revolution in morals and manners” represented liberation from the restrictions of the country’s Victorian past. Sexual mores, gender roles, hair styles, and dress all changed profoundly during the 1920’s. But for many others, the United States seemed to be changing in undesirable ways. The result was a thinly veiled “cultural civil war,” in which a pluralistic society clashed bitterly over such issues as foreign immigration, evolution, the Ku Klux Klan, prohibition, women’s roles and ‘race.’

A Return to Normalcy … The Jazz Age … Flappers … Prohibition … The Harlem Renaissance … these defined the decade more commonly known as The Roaring ’20’s.

Task

You are to discover just how drastic and transformative this decade was for our nation.

Process

You will read from the above links to educate yourself about this formative decade and then, and only then, answer the following questions in Google Classroom, in complete sentences. 

  1. Watch Crash Course (at your own pace).
  2. What were the intended goals of Prohibition?
  3. What were the actual results of Prohibition?
  4. What specifically did the 18th Amendment prohibit?
  5. What two inventions helped jazz reach even remote locations of the U.S.?
  6. What fashion defined the flapper?
  7. How did the roaring twenties redefine womanhood?
  8. Use at least six slang terms of the decade to write a sentence about Prohibition.
  9. Use at least six slang terms of the decade to write a sentence about the music.
  10. Use at least six slang terms of the decade to write a sentence about the fashion.

* Due by the end of the period for points *