The American Dream In The 1920's

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.
The decade following World War II is often described as one of the most prosperous economic times in American history. With victory under their belts and money in their pockets, Americans in the 1950s could optimistically pursue the American dream. Part of that dream included the comforts of home ownership and the opportunity to start a family. Although the housing boom began shortly after World War II, it wasn’t until 16 million veterans actually returned from the war that America

went on a full-fledged housing spree (Harlem Renaissance). While not everyone’s recollections reflect this romanticized nostalgia, there is a reason for it. For many American families, this was an era of unprecedented prosperity. During the 1950s, it was easy to see what Churchill meant. The United States was the world’s strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity–new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods–were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s were also an era of great conflict. For example, the nascent civil rights movement and the crusade against communism at home and abroad exposed the underlying divisions in American society.The Harlem Renaissance influenced future generations of black writers, but it was largely ignored by the literary establishment after it waned in the 1930s. With the advent of the civil rights movement, it again acquired wider recognition. Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self determination.” Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.” Chiefly literary, the Renaissance included the visual arts but excluded jazz, despite its parallel emergence as a black art form (Harlem Renaissance). In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money.

The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed (Jazz Age).
Born January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues in 1947, signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers (jackie robinson bio). Jackie Robinson was the youngest of five children Edgar, Frank, Mathew “ Mack “, and Willa Mae - and they all grew up in relative poverty in a well-off community in Pasadena. Jackie`s brother Mack was an athlete like Jackie and inspired Jackie to keep going with his career of sports. In 1942 Jackie was drafted into the Army. He was assigned to a segregated Army Cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. While in the Army, Robinson became friends with boxing champion Joe Louis when the heavyweight, who was stationed at Fort Riley at the time, used his celebrity to protest the delayed entry of black soldiers in an Office Candidate School (OCS). As a result, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943 (42 facts about Jackie). When Jackie got back from the Army he pursued his dream and played sports. After an incident where he refused to sit in the back of

an unsegregated bus, military police arrested Robinson at the request of a duty officer, who later requested Robinson be court-martialed. At the time of the proceedings, Robinson was prohibited from being deployed overseas to the World War 2 battlefronts. He never saw combat during the war (42 facts about robinson). Robinson was acquitted and then assigned to Camp Breckinridge in Kentucky, where he worked as an Army athletics coach until he was given an honorable discharge in 1944. During his time at the camp, Robinson was encouraged to tryout for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro National League. He made his Major League Baseball debut on April 15, 1947, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. He became the first African American baseball player in Major League history. Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese defended Robinson against violent and nasty racial slurs during his rookie season. Reese famously put his arm around him and said, “You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them,”. In 1949, Robinson was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). He was subpoenaed because of comments made about him by prominent African-American actor Paul Robson. At first, Robinson was hesitant to testify, but then was ultimately compelled to do so because he feared not doing would hurt his baseball career. At age 37, Robinson retired from Major League Baseball and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956 due to the visible effects of diabetes. Unbeknownst to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson took a position with the American coffee company Chock Full O’ Nuts and agreed to quit baseball. From 1957 to 1964, Jackie served as the vice president of personnel for Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee. He was the first African-American vice president of a major American corporation (42 Facts about Jackie). Jackie was always seen as a large figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said Robinson was “a legend and symbol in his own time who “challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration”(Jackie Bio). More than 20 years after he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President George W. Bush also posthumously awarded Jackie Robinson with the Congressional Gold Medal—the highest honor the legislative branch can bestow on a civilian and must be co-sponsored by two-thirds of members in the House and the Senate—for his contributions to American history. He became the second baseball player to receive this accolade after Pittsburgh Pirates Right-Fielder Roberto Clemente in 1973.d of the 100 greatest Major League Baseball players from the past century (Jackie Bio).
Born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. He was a civil-rights lawyer and teacher before pursuing a political career. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, serving from 1997 to 2004. He was elected to the U.S. presidency in 2008, and won re-election in 2012 against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. President Obama continues to enact policy changes in response to the issues of health care and economic crisis. His mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where her father worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the service and marched across Europe in Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, landed in Hawaii. Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama Sr. met fellow student Ann Dunham, and they married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later (Barack Obama Bio). It was during this time that Barack Obama, who said he "was not raised in a religious household," joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya, which included an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father and paternal grandfather. "For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept," Obama said. "I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away" (Barack Obama Bio).
In the 1950s the American Dream was different from today's American Dream because the blacks in the 1950s were going through poverty and segregation everywhere they went. Today`s society has changed scents the 1950s because the blacks have overcome the poverty and segregation and have the equal rights as the whites do now instead of being back down or not being able to do what the whites do or go where the whites go at the same time as them.