Essay On The 1920s

The 1920’s dramatically changed America in a heartbeat. For the first time in history, more people were living in larger cities than deep in towns. The United States was also richer than ever before. One of the first movie theaters opened in 1915 in New York City. Historians estimate that by the end of the decade, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week. This period of time was when the Eighteenth Amendment was in force and alcoholic beverages could not legally be manufactured, transported, or sold in the United States. Prohibition gave criminals a way to illegally make money. The most notorious gangster in American history was Al Capone in Chicago. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. By the end of

the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million homes.
Heath and Life Expectancy During the "Roaring Twenties" people began to become more aware of nutrition, and the existence on vitamins in food. Between 1915 and 1930 nutritionists began to emphasize to the public the need for consumption of certain foods, that contain certain nutrients and vitamins, on a daily basis. This is also the time where food companies began marketing their products on how their products contain certain amounts of your daily vitamins and are healthy. These companies were able to say almost anything they wanted due to the lack of knowledge about vitamins, for example Welch's Grape Juice marketing their product having many good nutrients and daily vitamins but failed to inform the people of the large amount of sugars used in their product as well.
Many industries were formed during this era.

Automobile In the 1920s, the United States automobile industry began an extraordinary period of growth. US History/Roaring Twenties and Prohibition 2 Social Values During this time period, new social values emerged. During this time parents began relying less on traditional ways of raising their children and began reading and listening to what "experts" had to say on the issue. An AT&T-run station in New York City broadcasted recurring advertisements and after that other stations began to air commercials. In 1927, the Columbia Broadcasting System began to broadcast. People tuned into the radio to listen to jazz music, sports and live events. movie industry began to locate in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the 1920s, and movies also grew into a popular recreation. The development of the automobile, radio, and the movies changed the popular culture of the United

States.
Prohibition Originally, the concept of Prohibition (the banning of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors) was based on religious ideology. Several groups in opposition to the consumption or sale of alcoholic beverages grew prominent in political discourse, such as the Prohibition Party (founded in 1869, making it the oldest existing third party in the United States) and lobbying organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League (formed in 1893) and the Women's Christian Temperance Union (formed in 1874). On January 16, 1920, the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, came into effect which banned drinks with alcohol content above 3.2%. US History/Roaring Twenties and Prohibition 4 Within 2 years, Capone was earning $60 million a year from alcohol sales alone. Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie and Clyde were also a famous pair of murderers and thieves in the 1920's during the prohibition era with their gang. Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.
On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas, to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois.
Three naval oil fields, Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills in California and Teapot Dome in Wyoming, were tracts of public land that were reserved by previous presidents to be emergency underground supplies to be used by the navy only when the regular oil supplies diminished. Many politicians and private oil interests had opposed the restrictions placed on the oil fields claiming that the reserves were unnecessary and that the American oil companies could provide for the U.S.
Finally, in 1927 the Supreme Court ruled that the oil leases had been corruptly obtained and invalidated the Elk Hills lease in February of that year and the Teapot lease in October of the same year. Scopes Trial In 1925 a teacher by the name of John Thomas Scopes was tried and convicted for teaching evolution in his public school classroom as an explanation to where man originated from, rather than Adam and Eve that is what the law at the time stated.
Major Cases and Laws Several laws came into play during the 1920's because of things such as prohibition, voting rights, and women's rights. Suffragettes - those who campaigned for a woman's right to vote - were successful in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, mainly due to women's manufacturing and production efforts during wartime. Encouraged women campaigned for women's rights. Although more women were becoming a part of the work force, jobs were still sex segregated which meant that women would take jobs as teachers or nurses or other jobs that men rarely wanted. Next to African women, Japanese women were the most likely to hold low paying jobs in the work force, they worked in the lowest paying jobs;
More than 1.5 million African Americans migrated to cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and the black population even grew in Western cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego. This migration of African Americans created unrest within the white community as blacks began to buy and rent property in white neighborhoods. In most cities, the only way blacks could relieve the pressure of crowding that resulted from increasing migration was to expand residential borders into surrounding previously white neighborhoods, a process that often resulted in harassment and attacked by white residents whose intolerant attitudes were intensified by fears that black neighbors would cause property values to decline.
In 1898 white citizens of Wilmington, North Carolina, resenting African Americans’ involvement in local government and incensed by an editorial in an African American newspaper accusing white women of loose sexual US History/Roaring Twenties and Prohibition 9 behavior, rioted and killed dozens of blacks. In the fury’s wake, white supremacists overthrew the city government, expelling black and white office holders, and instituted restrictions to prevent blacks from voting. In Atlanta in 1906, newspaper accounts alleging attacks by black men on white women provoked an outburst of shooting and killing that left twelve blacks dead and seventy injured. Rumors that blacks were arming themselves for an attack on whites resulted in numerous attacks by white mobs on black neighborhoods. The next day, a full scaled riot erupted which ended only after nine whites and thirty-nine blacks had been killed and over three hundred buildings were destroyed. Although African Americans were widely persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan they were not the only group of people that the KKK targeted because they believed in “Native, white, Protestant supremacy.” They also targeted groups like Mexicans, Catholics and Jews.
Stock Market Crash of 1929 On October 24, 1929, today known as Black Thursday, the stock market began its downhill drop. At this point in history, 1 out of 3 Americans live in poverty, more than half of the U.S. Population is underplayed; sadly, these major events lead to a 10 year devastating depression.
The birth of Jazz is very important during this era.

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, the flea hop. 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. Following World War I, large numbers of jazz musicians migrated from New Orleans to major northern cities such as Chicago and New York, leading to a wider dispersal of jazz as different styles developed in different cities. African-American jazz was played more frequently on urban radio stations than on their suburban counterparts. Young people of the 1920s were influenced by jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations, a rebellion that went hand-in-hand with fads such as the bold fashion statements of the flappers and new radio concerts. Due to the racial prejudice prevalent at most radio stations, white American jazz artists received much more air time than black jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Joe "King" Oliver. The surfacing of flappers—women noted for their flamboyant style of dress, progressive attitudes, and modernized morals—began to captivate society during the Jazz Age. Several famous female musicians emerged

during the 1920s, including Bessie Smith, who garnered attention not only because she was a great singer, but also because she was a black woman. Their persistence paved the way for many more female artists who came afterward. Although the Jazz Age ended as the Great Depression struck and victimized America throughout the 1930s, jazz has lived on in American popular culture and remains a vibrant musical genre to this day.