Argumentative Essay On The 1920s

After World War 1, America was trying to return to some normalcy in the economy and in society. This period of time led into the 1920s. The decade of the 1920s was a time of modernization for the country but was also a time where Americans tried to return to their traditional values. There is still controversy on whether the 1920s should be recognized for its new values and pop culture, or whether it was just a period of Americans going back to their original values from before the war. The 1920s can’t be recognized as just one of those things, though. As a whole, the 1920s can be viewed mostly as a time of modernization because of events such as the Harlem Renaissance and important inventions like automobiles, but it was also a time when American

stuck to traditional values as evident by the red scare.
The 1920s was an era of social reform for many parts of the society. One of these groups were the African Americans.

Although they still struggled with racism and discrimination, there was also a big step forward in their culture. This became known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a period after the Great Migration when African Americans left the south and moved to areas in the north like Harlem, New York. During this time there was a lot of improvements to the culture of African Americans. Robert J Allison claims, “Between the end of World War 1 and the beginning of the great depression, African Americans musicians, writers, and performers dominated the American cultural scene” (Allison). At the time, the African culture wasn’t generally accepted, so they found the Harlem Renaissance as a way to express themselves and have pride in their culture, which was a big step forward for them. During the era, there were lots of stories, poems, songs, and artworks

that showcased the ideals of the time and made it possible to have African American people able to express themselves and their culture. Most of these pieces referred to the history of their race and their hope for the future. The Harlem Renaissance also modernized the way that the rest of America thought of African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance is said to be viewed as “an affirmation of a culture and a people, and a challenge to both African Americans and the world to change their assumptions about people of African descent”(Allison). The culture of African Americans not only changed greatly during the Harlem Renaissance, they experienced some social reform from the rest of the world. Overall, the Harlem Renaissance was a big step forward in starting to modernize the society of the African American race.
Along with social reform that came from the 1920s, there was also modernization in industry.

Factories and places of work were changed by welfare capitalism the provided workers with shorter hours, paid vacations, and sick days. The workplace also changed due to the invention of new products. One product that was developed in the 1920s was the automobile. The automobile was already invented at the time, but it was made much cheaper and more accessible to the general public. Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford motor company who “built the famous Model T car that was affordable to the middle class due in part to the efficiency of his signature assembly-line manufacturing technique”(Riggs). Not only did Ford make a model of car that was affordable to people in the middle class, he also developed techniques for manufacturing, like the assembly line, that we still use today. He was able to find a way to modernize the model and price of the cars and also the workplace that they were made in. The development of cars also made it possible for suburbs to develop. Judith Baughman says that the suburbs were developed due to the ability to get there with automobiles (Baughman). Cars made is possible for people to easily get in and out of the city, and since more people were able to afford them, the suburbs were able to expand even more. The advancement of automobiles was a step in modernizing the country because of the new methods of transportation and the new techniques used in

manufacturing the cars that we still use to this day.
Although the 1920s were a time filled with many advances in society, there were also some events in the 1920s that demonstrated Americans going back to their values from before World War 1. During the 20s a big epidemic of xenophobia swept the nation. Nationalists thought that immigrants would bring the ideas of communism with them, which started the red scare. According to Lewis Carlson, the red scare can be described as an era when “social and economic reformers were thoroughly discredited and the xenophobia of the era contributed to the anti-immigration law of the 1920s” (Carlson). The immigrants in the country caused an intense fear that the country would adopt their communistic values, so the government started to pass laws that limited the number of people allowed into the country, and they also started to deport people. Along with the laws that the red scare caused, it also caused a significant growth in a terrorist group called the Ku Klux Klan. The group grew due to the fact that Americans had xenophobia and they especially focused on the Catholic and the Jewish immigrants (Carlson). The last time that this group was at such a peak was after the Civil War when they terrorized African Americans. The rise of the group was extremely significant because it shows that there was as much racism and fear of people from other countries than there was after the Civil War. Events such as these demonstrate that the decade cannot just be remembered for all of the positive things that it consisted of showing it progressing forward, because there were other reasons that the era was also America trying to return to its values from before World War 1.
In conclusion, the decade of the 1920s can’t be viewed only as an era of modernization or only an era of traditionalism. The idea that the 1920s had both its ups and its downs were what made it such a progressive era. Modernization gave up new techniques and new products and also helped make social reform, but the traditionalism was able to show the country what needed to be done to keep the country stable. This debate is still argued to this day because the decade cannot be remembered just for its positives or just for its negatives. And although the era was a time of returning to its traditional values, it was also a huge step forward for the country, making this one of the most memorable and progressive decades in history.