T5 Social Cultural

Question 1

Sport

Answer 1

• In the early 1920s, sport became a very important part of the lives of many US citizens, and it was
  made even more popular as a result of the radio.
• Indeed, the 1920s was officially named the ‘Golden Age of Sport’.
• Baseball, football, horse racing and tennis captured the imagination of many people.
• Baseball was the most popular game and Babe Ruth was the most popular sporting star of the
  time; he had a major influence on the younger generation because he was not shy about drinking
  and smoking in public.
• Spectators flocked to see sporting events. In 1924, 67,000 watched the football match between
  Illinois and Michigan in the Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland.
• In 1926, some 145,000 saw the boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney.

Question 2

Baseball

Answer 2

• The decade is particularly associated with baseball success, partly because it saw a significant
  number of supremely gifted players – Babe Ruth and his New York Yankee team-mate Lou Gehrig,
  for example.
• The game had been popular since the 1870s because it was easy to play on any patch of waste
  land but during the 1920s it captured the public imagination to the extent that massive stadia
  could be built such as West Side Grounds in Chicago.
• Many historians of the game agree the transformation of baseball was largely down to the
  charisma associated with Babe Ruth.
• On a more prosaic note, however, it may be equally due to the introduction of a cork-centred ball
  that was easier to hit hard.
• This transferred emphasis away from pitchers to hitters like Babe Ruth – hence the fascination
  with spectacular home runs.
• 1920 saw the formation of the Negro National Baseball League, a testament to the fact that sport
  was still largely segregated and African-American players were excluded from the major league
  teams.
• Ironically, African-American teams toured the USA playing games to mixed crowds.
• The high point of the season, the East–West All Star game, could attract crowds of 30,000.
• The players earned less than half of the salaries of their white counterparts, and committed
  themselves to exhausting circuits, some years playing up to three times a day every day.
• Nevertheless, the Negro leagues were among the biggest African-American-owned businesses in
  the USA.

Question 3

The Radio

Answer 3

• Radio grew dramatically from the time of the establishment of the first commercial radio station.
• KDKA in Pittsburgh was set up in 1920 and by 1922 there were 500 stations dotted across the
  USA. The first national network, NBC, was set up in 1926 with CBS following in 1927.
• Some critics argued that invisible energy flying through the air must be dangerous and cited dead
  birds as evidence. However, for most, the radio brought a new world into people’s living rooms.
• An estimated 50 million people listened to the 1927 boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack
  Dempsey. People held ‘radio parties’ where friends and family could listen together in their home.
• Radios were not cheap. A typical model cost $150, usually paid for on credit.
• They were often big pieces of cabinet-like furniture. By 1927, 33 per cent of all money spent on
  furniture was spent on radios.
• Between 1923 and 1930, 60 per cent of all American families purchased one. Sales grew from $60
  million in 1923 to $842 million six years later.
• Radio held huge attraction for advertising and sponsorship, which often paid for programmes.
• In August 1929, for example, the toothpaste company Pepsodent began to sponsor the popular
  comedy series Amos ‘n’ Andy on NBC; in the next few years, the audience for this show would rise
  as high as 40 million.
• Programmes ranged across the spectrum from comedies to westerns to detective serials to music
  and comedy.
• While some felt the content of programmes should be uplifting and educational, most realised
  people wanted entertainment – and if it came in the form of serials they would be hooked.
• The power of radio to broadcast important sporting events should not be forgotten either – it
  brought the nation together for the first time.
• Through the power of radio Americans could listen to the same songs, laugh at the same jokes
  and thrill to the same sporting events at the same time.

Question 4

The Cinema

Answer 4

• Cinema was even more significant. While moving picture shows had been around since the early
  years of the century, often as a novelty feature in a variety show, the 1920s saw their
  development as possibly the pre-eminent US contribution to world culture.
• By the 1920s, the cinema industry, centred in Hollywood, Los Angeles, was the fourth largest in
  terms of capital investment.
• It employed more people than either Ford or General Motors.
• Going to the movies was not simply a form of escapism. Often movies were shown in elaborate
  picture palaces that could hold thousands of customers – in any one day there could be in excess
  of 10 million people in 20,000 cinemas. The most glamorous picture palaces were on a truly epic
  scale. The Roxy in New York, which cost in the region of $7–$10 million to build, had three organs,
  a huge chandelier, a red carpet valued at $10,000 and a 118-piece orchestra.
• Movies offered escape, excitement and a chance to imagine oneself in a different world peopled
  by heroes. Actors became huge stars, the first real celebrities, and included:
• Exciting actresses such as Clara Bow, the ‘It girl’ who symbolised the modern liberated woman,
  and Theda Bara, the ‘vamp’ exuding a dangerous sexuality.
• Action heroes like Douglas Fairbanks.
• Comic geniuses such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The first sound film, The Jazz Singer,
  appeared in 1927; it served to make cinema even more popular.

Question 5

Hollywood

Answer 5

• Hollywood became the centre of movie making in the USA in the 1920s.
• The first film shot in the Hollywood area was called In Old California in 1910.
• In the following year, the first studio was opened by the New Jersey-based Centaur Company
  which wanted to make Western films in California.
• By 1915, the majority of American films were being made in the Los Angeles area.
• Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros, RKO, and Columbia, had studios in
  Hollywood. Five years later 1 million people were employed in the area in making films.
• Movie stars themselves moved to the Los Angeles area and began building themselves luxury
  homes.
• For example, Gloria Swanson had a 22-room mansion in Beverly Hills. Charlie Chaplin and Buster
  Keaton both lived in the area.

Question 6

Jazz music

Answer 6

• The 1920s is known as the ‘Jazz Age’ because the popular music of the time was jazz.
• Jazz was not new. It originated with black slaves who were encouraged to sing in order to increase
  production.
• They used washboards, cans, pickaxes, and percussion to produce their own distinctive brand of
  music.
• Their music was given various names including ‘blues’, ‘rag’ or ‘boogie-woogie’.
• By changing the beat and creating particular rhythms, it was changed into jazz.
• However, these words were taken from black sexual slang terms and, at first, were not popular
  among white people because of their links to sex and were renamed Jazz.
• Jazz, however, became popular with the white middle-class youth, especially the flappers, of the
  1920s, and was seen as another sign of a fall in moral standards.
• For example, in 1921 the Ladies Home Journal published an article with the title ‘Does Jazz put
  the Sin in Syncopation?’
• Some cities, including New York and Cleveland, prohibited the public performance of jazz in dance
  halls.
• However, this only made it more exciting to the young and increased its appeal.
• Jazz became the great attraction of the night clubs and speakeasies and was brought into homes
  through radio broadcasts.

Question 7

The impact of the First World War on Women

Answer 7

• The USA’s entry into the First World War in 1917 provided greater opportunities for women.
• By the end of the war, 2.8 million men had been drafted into the armed forces and over a million
  women helped with the war effort.
• Approximately 90,000 served in the US armed forces in Europe.
• For example, the Navy and Marine Corps enlisted women as clerks, radio electricians, chemists,
  accountants and nurses.
• The Army, unlike its sister services, was more conservative in the jobs it permitted women to fill
  in its ranks, enlisting more than 21,000 as clerks, fingerprint experts, journalists and translators.
• Women also worked in jobs traditionally done by men such as heavy industry, engineering works
  and transport.
• The war proved women could do the jobs just as well as men and encouraged greater freedom,
  especially in social habits such as smoking and drinking in public and going out unchaperoned.
• Their participation also made a powerful argument for women’s voting rights, weighing heavily in
  the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment giving American women the right to vote in 1920.
• This gave them greater political power and encouraged some to campaign for further change.
• Labour-saving devices, such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines, provided extra time
  which enabled some women to go into employment, and gave others more opportunity for leisure
  and recreational activities.

Question 8

Women’s Employment

Answer 8

• There were other changes in the position of women.
• There was certainly progress in the number of women in employment.
• By 1930, 2 million more women were employed than had been ten years earlier.
• However, these tended to be in unskilled low-paid jobs. Despite the fact that a third of university
  degrees were awarded to women in 1930, only four per cent of university professors were
  women. Medical schools allocated only five per cent of places to women.
• Consequently, the number of women doctors actually declined in the 1920s.
• Men were still paid a lot more than women for doing the same job.
• Women received no support from the Supreme Court, which banned all attempts to set minimum
  wages for women.
• In 1927, the government took the side of the employers when women textile workers in
  Tennessee went on strike for better pay.
• The strikers were arrested by the local police.
• There were some new career opportunities for women, but this was in so-called ‘women’s jobs’
  such as librarians and nurses.

Question 9

Women & 1920s Politics

Answer 9

• Women were given the vote in 1920. A few women did make progress in gaining political power.
• For example, Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first woman to be elected governor of a
  state in 1924.
• Two years later, Bertha Knight Landes became the first female mayor of a city, Seattle.
• However, these were the exception and women made little progress in politics itself.
• Political parties wanted their vote but did not see them as realistic candidates for political office.
• By 1920, there were only a handful of female politicians.
• Most women, in any case, had little interest in politics.
• The women’s movement failed in its attempt to get the Equal Rights Amendment Act passed,
  which would have given them equality in law with men.

Question 10

Women & Birth Control

Answer 10

• Margaret Sanger drew attention to the plight of poor women through her work as a nurse.
• Often lacking any means of contraception, women were forced into dangerous back-street
  abortions, which may have killed as many as 50,000 women per year.
• She began to write articles on contraception. However, widespread dissemination was difficult
  because the Comstock Act of 1873 banned the distribution of both written articles on
  contraception and items through the US mail.
• Arrested in 1916 for opening the first contraception clinic in the USA, in 1921 Sanger founded the
  American Birth Control League.
• Many supporters of eugenics supported birth control because they felt the poor should be
  discouraged from breeding because to do so would threaten race degeneration.
• This was particularly apposite regarding non-white ethnic groups. Sanger herself began to
  promote sterilisation for mentally handicapped people, and the birth control movement has
  undoubtedly been criticised for its associations with eugenics.

Question 11

The Flapper

Answer 11

• The greatest change in the position of females was experienced by women known as the flappers.
• In the 1920s, a number of women, generally from middle- and upper-class families living in the
  Northern states, decided to challenge the traditional attitudes to and appearance of women.
• These women became known as the flappers.
• However, in some respects, the flappers did not further the cause of women’s rights in the 1920s.
• They were seen as too extreme by many traditional groups, especially in rural areas, with strong
  disapproval from religious societies.
• Many of the older generation criticised the lifestyle of the flappers and formed Anti-Flirt Leagues.
• Others saw the flappers as simply pleasure-seeking women with few other attributes.
• The flappers cut their hair short and wore make-up, short skirts and very bright clothes.
• They smoked and drank in public and went out to speakeasies and to the cinema without a
  chaperone.
• Flappers openly danced with men in public, especially the new craze, the Charleston, and listened
  to controversial new music known as jazz.
• Many drove cars and even motor bikes and wore very revealing swimming costumes on public
  beaches.
• Actress Joan Crawford was the most famous flapper of them all. She kissed, drank, smoked and
  danced the Charleston in films such as Our Modern Maidens (1929).

Question 12

1920s Mass Immigration

Answer 12

• For many Americans in the 1920s, the ideal citizen was a ‘WASP’ – a White, Anglo-Saxon
  Protestant.
• Asian immigrants were not white, while many recent European immigrants were Catholics, Greek
  Orthodox or Jewish.
• Finally, the ‘Red Scare’ fuelled even more feelings against immigrants. Many Americans feared
  that immigrants would bring with them dangerous political beliefs, especially Communism.

Question 13

Changing attitudes towards Immigrants

Answer 13

• Immigrants became less welcome in the years after 1900 because they provided competition for
  jobs and brought different customs and attitudes.
• In addition, US involvement in the First World War fuelled anti-German feelings and encouraged
  support for restrictions on immigration. For example, German was banned in schools in several
  states.
• Furthermore, most Americans did not want to be dragged into another major war.
• They blamed the First World War on rivalries between countries in Europe and wanted the USA
  to isolate itself from events in Europe.
• This included restrictions on immigration from these European countries.
• Many of the new immigrants were poor labourers with little formal education.
• Immigrant ghettos began to appear in the big northern cities of America. These were often
  dangerous places with high incidences of drunkenness and violence.
• Many Americans believed that the immigrants were to blame for these problems.

Question 14

Changes in Immigration Policy

Answer 14

• In the 1920s Immigration was restricted by a series of measures:
• The 1917 Literacy Act – all foreigners wishing to enter the USA had to take a literacy test. They
  had to prove that they could read a short passage in English. Many people from poorer countries,
  especially in Eastern Europe, could not afford to take English lessons and failed the test.
• The Immigration Quota Act of 1921 – this introduced a quota system. New immigrants were
  allowed in as a proportion of the number of people of the same nationality who had been in
  America in 1910. The figure was set at three per cent per year. For example, if there had been 100
  Italian immigrants in the USA since 1910, then three were allowed in. This therefore reduced the
  number of immigrants from Eastern Europe because relatively few had emigrated before 1910.
• The 1924 National Origins Act reduced the quota to two per cent of the 1890 census. In other
  words, since there had been a lot more people from Northern Europe in 1890, proportionately
  more of these groups were allowed to enter. Five years later, the Immigration Act restricted
  immigration to 150,000 per year. There were to be no Asians at all. Northern and Western
  Europeans were allocated 85 per cent of places.
• By 1930, immigration from Japan, China and Eastern Europe had virtually ceased.

Question 15

The Sacco and Vanzetti Case

Answer 15

• On 5th May 1920, two Italian labourers – Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – were arrested
  and charged with the murder of Fred Parmenter.
• Parmenter was the paymaster of a factory in South Braintree.
• He, together with a security guard, was shot by two armed robbers on 15 April 1920.
• The security guard and Parmenter died but not before he had described his attackers as slim
  foreigners with olive skins.
• Their trial began in May 1921 and lasted 45 days. It took several days to find a jury of twelve men
  who were accepted by both the prosecution and defence because of the strong publicity given to
  the case.
• In fact, 875 were called to the court. On 14 July 1921, the jury delivered a verdict of guilty.
• There were demonstrations all over the USA in support of the two men.
• Their case was taken to appeal in higher courts but all failed. The last appeal was in 1927.
• The two men were executed by electric chair on 24 August 1927.

Question 16

Importance of the Sacco and Vanzetti Case

Answer 16

• The Sacco and Vanzetti case was important because the trial was reported all over the world and
  showed the intolerance of US society
• As Italian immigrants, the two men were victims of racial discrimination and were denied rights
  entitled to them.
• It exposed the unfairness of the American legal system.
• The two men were convicted on flimsy evidence although subsequent evidence suggests that
  Sacco may have been guilty.
• In the 1970s, the Governor of Massachusetts granted Sacco and Vanzetti a formal pardon and
  agreed that a mistrial had taken place.

Question 17

Reasons for the revival of the KKK

Answer 17

• The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) had been set up in the 1860s by former soldiers after the American Civil
  War. It was revived for several reasons:
• The release of a film, The Birth of a Nation, in 1915 which was set in the South after the Civil War
  and showed the Klan saving white families from gangs of African-Americans intent on raping and
  looting. The film attracted huge audiences and seemed to reinforce the idea of white supremacy.
• After the First World War, labour tensions rose as veterans tried to re-enter the workforce. In
  reaction to these new groups of immigrants and migrants, the membership of the Klan increased.
• Increasing industrialisation, which brought more and more workers to towns and cities. The Klan
  grew rapidly in cities such as Memphis and Atlanta, which had high growth rates in the years after
  1910.
• Many of these workers were immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe or African Americans
  migrating from the Southern states to the urban centres of the North.
• Southern whites also resented the arming of African-American soldiers during the First World
  War.

Question 18

Organisation and Activities of the KKK

Answer 18

• The new Klan was founded in Atlanta by a Methodist preacher, William Simmons.
• The Klan members were WASPS. They were fighting for ‘native, white, Protestant supremacy’.
• They were anti-Communist, anti-blacks, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and against all foreigners.
• The members dressed in white sheets and wore white hoods.
• This was to hide the identity of the original Klan members who often attacked their victims at
  night. The white colour symbolised white supremacy.
• They carried American flags and lit burning crosses at their night-time meetings.
• Their leader was a dentist called Hiram Evans, who was known as the Imperial Wizard.
• Officers of the Klan were known as Klaliffs, Kluds or Klabees.
• In 1920, the Klan had 100,000 members. By 1925, it claimed to have over 5 million.
• It attracted members all over the USA, but especially in the Southern States, and generally white,
  Protestant and racist. Oregon and Oklahoma had governors who were members of the Klan.
• Members of the Klan carried out lynchings of African Americans and beat up and mutilated
  anyone they considered to be their enemy.
• They stripped some of their victims and put tar and feathers on their bodies.
• For example, in 1921 Chris Lochan, a restaurant owner, was run out of town because he was
  accused of being a foreigner (His parents were Greek).

Question 19

Decline of the KKK

Answer 19

• The Klan declined after 1925 when one of its leaders, Grand Wizard David Stephenson, was
  convicted of a sexually motivated murder.
• When the Governor of Indiana refused to pardon him, Stephenson produced evidence of illegal
  Klan activities.
• This discredited the Klan and led to a decline in membership.
• There were also divisions about tactics among Klan leaders and some politicians, who had
  originally supported the Klan, were quick to dissociate themselves when public opinion began to
  turn the other way, against the activities of the KKK.

Question 20

The Scope-Monkey Trial (1925)

Answer 20

• The Monkey Trial was a famous trial that showed the great differences between the beliefs of
  rural and urban Americans at the time.
• Most people living in the towns and cities of the USA accepted Charles Darwin’s theory of
  evolution, which suggested that over a period of millions of years human beings had evolved from
  ape-like creatures.
• These views, however, were not accepted by many people in rural areas, especially the so-called
  ‘Bible belt’ states such as Tennessee.
• Many in these areas were known as Fundamentalists.
• They held strong Christian beliefs, including the belief that the biblical account of the creation in
  which God created humans on the sixth day, was literally true.
• Six US states, led by William Jennings Bryan, a leading member of the Democrats, decided to ban
  the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in their schools.
• A biology teacher called John Scopes decided to challenge this ban.
• He deliberately taught evolution in his class in Tennessee in order to be arrested and put on trial.
• Both sides hired the best lawyers for a trial, which took place in July 1925, and captured the
  imagination of the public.
• Scopes was convicted of breaking the law and fined $100.
• However, the trial was a disaster for the public image of the Fundamentalists.
• Bryan was shown to be confused and ignorant while the media mocked the beliefs of those who
  opposed the theory of evolution.