Chapter 8: The Jazz Age

Lesson 4: Cultural InnovationLesson 5: African American Culture

and Politics

Art and Literature

• American Artists and writers challenged traditional ideas as they searched for meaning in the modern world• Bohemian Lifestyle- artistic and unconventional

• Manhattan’s Greenwich Village• Chicago’s South Side

• Individual, Modern experience

• Painters• John Marin- drew urban dynamics of NYC• Charles Sheeler- added cubism to rural American landscapes• Georgia O’Keeffe-landscapes and flowers

John Marin Charles Sheeler Georgia O'Keeffe

Poets and Writers

• Writers• Carl Sandburg• Willa Cather• Sinclair Lewis• Edith Wharton• Edna St. Vincent Millay

• Poets• Amy Lowell• Ezra Pound• William Carlos Williams• T.S. Elliot

• Diverse writers• Individual ideas broken from

tradition• Expressed moments in time• Realism, modern life, loss of

spirituality• Consumerism

T.S. Elliot Carl Sandburg

Artists who Criticized the modern American way of life• Poets and Artists disillusioned by WWI moved to Paris, the center of

artistic life• Gertrude Stein dubbed the artists in America “The Lost Generation”• Ernest Hemmingway

• A Farewell to Arms• The War and it’s aftermath

• F. Scott Fitzgerald• Great Gatsby

• A look a the superficial lifestyle of Americans

F. Scott Fitzgerald Hemmingway

Popular Culture

• Sports, Music, Theater, Movies, Radio• Silent films and “talkies” (The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture)• Creation of the celebrity• Air conditioned theaters• Radio made baseball more popular than ever

• National Community• Shared Experiences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48T9BoKxlI

Lesson 5: African American Culture and Politics• During WWI and the 1920s hundreds of thousands of African

Americans joined the Great Migration from the rural South to the industrial Northern cities to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ybTyhiaVY

The Harlem Renaissance

• Writers• Claud McKay, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston

• Jazz• Luis Armstrong, Duke Ellington

• Blues• Bessie Smith

• The Apollo Theater in Harlem• Shuffle Along, first African American Musical• Emperor Jones, Show Boat

Claud McKay Langston Hughes • 1922 poetry collection

Harlem Shadows• Expressed a proud

defiance and bitter contempt of racism

• Leading voice of African Americans

Zora Neal Hurston

Wrote about African American woman

Claude McKay, 1889 - 1948If We Must DieIf we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gcgeX20x3g

LANGSTON HUGHES Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,And splinters,

And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,And sometimes goin’ in the darkWhere there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.Don’t you set down on the steps’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX9tHuI7zVo

Jazz and Blues

Luis Armstrong Edward “Duke” EllingtonBessie Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3GhDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCDOr6au_H8

The NAACP

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People• Economic and political improvement

• Battled against discrimination• Lobbying public officials• Protested lynching and passed anti-lynching laws in the House of

Representatives in 1922- Denied at the Senate- reduced the number of lynchings that took place• Joined Labor Unions to overturn alleged racist politicians into office

Black Nationalism• Black pride and heritage • Some called for African Americans to

separate from White Americans• Jamaican, Marcus Garvey enthused millions

of African Americans with his “Negro Nationalism” • UNIA• Black pride and unity• Individuals can gain political power by

educating themselves • Separation and unity from whites…proposed

leading them to Africa• President Coolidge used Garvey’s immigrant

status as a way to have him deported to Jamaica.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d08ZnxapXFQ