The Roaring TwentiesSocial Change and Conflict

Post War Period

• Period after WWI witnessed social change in the United States– Woman’s Suffrage– The New Negro– Disillusionment– Change in American morality: “The New

Morality”– Enactment of Prohibition and rise in crime– Response to changing social conditions

The New Morality• Prevalent among younger generation• Jazz age, theater, radio, Freud• Sex openly discussed between men and

women• Women began to dress and act differently

– Flappers, the “New Woman”– Skirts go from 6 in. above ground to women’s

knees– Bobbed hair, rolled stockings, cigarettes,

drinking, lipstick, sensuous dancing

Myth of New Morality

• The twenties only “roared” for a small portion of the population

• By 1930, the rebellion was over

• Extreme expressions led to doubts about liberation

• Half of college women had pre-marital sex, but ¾ was with their future husbands.

Reaction to Prohibition

• Eighteenth Amendment (1919) banned manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquors nationwide.

• Not adequately enforced

• Bootlegging, speakeasies, hip flasks, cocktail parties

• Organized crime in big cities

• Al Capone, machine gun, automobile

Reaction to New Morality

• Nativism– Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti– Emergency Immigration Act (1921)– Ku Klux Klan, revised and remodeled

• Fundamentalism– Reaction against “modernism”– John T. Scopes and evolution– William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow