Summary
Highlights
The 1920s, after President Harding's promise of a 'return to normalcy,' experienced significant cultural upheavals and changes, leading to debates about American identity. Factors included the aftermath of World War I, race riots, the Red Scare, and the Spanish Flu epidemic.
The 1920s saw a massive spike in urbanization, with more Americans living in cities than rural areas. This shift, driven by industrialization, wartime production, and declining farm profitability, made cities centers of economic opportunity and cultural innovation. Urban economies created opportunities for women (clerical jobs, retail), international immigrants (factory work, construction), and internal migrants (African-Americans from the South, white farmers from Appalachia).
Increased migration and immigration led to a significant nativist backlash. Nativism, surged after WWI due to economic instability, labor strikes, and fear of radical political movements. The Ku Klux Klan expanded its terror beyond anti-Black activities to target Catholics, Jews, bootleggers, and gamblers, advocating for '100% Americanism.' The Sacco and Vanzetti trial, involving two Italian anarchist immigrants accused of murder, highlighted these nativist sentiments and sparked national debate.
The nativist surge resulted in legislative actions, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, the National Origins Act of 1924 (restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe), and the Immigration Act of 1924 (banning Asian immigrants), all aimed at preserving the racial purity of white Americans.
Internal migration, particularly the Great Migration, led to the flourishing of regional ethnic art movements. The Harlem Renaissance, a black artistic movement in New York City, provided new cultural expressions that challenged American stereotypes. Artists like Billie Holiday and Langston Hughes used their art and literature to assert identity and resist assimilation.
The 1920s brought rapid cultural changes, including debates over changing gender roles. After the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, some women, known as flappers, pushed for social equality. They expressed independence through short hair, public smoking, and controversial fashion choices like knee-length skirts, which scandalized conservatives.
The growing influence of modernism, a philosophical movement embracing secularization and rejecting traditional norms, also caused controversy. Influenced by the destruction of WWI, modernists became skeptical of scientific progress and embraced irrationality. The 'Lost Generation' writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, explored themes of disillusionment.
A debate between religion and science about the nature of truth intensified. Protestant Christians, feeling their beliefs attacked by Darwin's theory of evolution, gave rise to the fundamentalist movement, advocating a literal interpretation of the Bible. The Scopes Trial of 1925, where a teacher challenged laws banning evolution teaching, became a national contest between modernism and fundamentalism, reinforcing fundamentalists' belief that urban values threatened traditional values.
Race issues continued to inflame controversy as Black Americans sought self-expression and racial pride. Marcus Garvey, a prominent figure, embraced black separatism and rejected inclusion in American society. His Universal Negro Improvement Association promoted self-sufficiency through business and advocated a 'Back to Africa' movement, believing Black Americans would never achieve equality in the U.S., a stance that put him at odds with other Black reformers like W.E.B. Du Bois.