Unit 4—Chapter 7The Roaring Twenties

CSS 11.5

Daily Start 3

• What was the first silent movie with a plot?

• What was the first “talkie” called?• Who is Babe Ruth?• What was a flapper?• What did the Equal Rights Amendment

do for women?

A New Mass CultureEQ: How did the new mass culture reflect technological

and social changes?

Rise off Mass Media – Radio and Movies

• Radio, 1920• created a national rather than

regional culture• encouraged consumption• new avenues for fame

• Phonograph, 1877• allowed music and speeches to

spread nation wide• mass production became available in

the 1890s

• Silent Movies• silent movies vied with radio for

popularity• serial films were followed like TV

today

Mass Media – Birth of Cinema

• Great Train Robbery, 1903• this 12-minute film was one of the

first to tell a story• it was proceeded by the shorter nickelodeon

• Birth of a Nation, 1915• D.W. Griffith showed the KKK saving

America from blacks after the Civil War

• the NAACP protested the film• it led to violence and even killing• highest box office of the silent movie

era ($10 million)• equivalent of $200 million today

• Jazz Singer, 1927• first of the “talkies” and the end of

the silent-movie era• starred Al Jolson in black face

Mass Media –The American Past-Time

• Baseball• became immensely popular with

the advent of radio• Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb

• the 1919 Black Sox scandal was bigger than Tea Pot Dome

• It became “America’s Pastime”

• Babe Ruth (The Great Bambino, The Sultan of Swat)• paid more than the President• greatest baseball player of all time

• lifetime batting average .342, 714 home runs

G AB R H HR RBI BB SO Avg. OBP SLG

2,503 8,398 2,174 2,874 714 2,217 2,062 1,330 .342 .472 .690

Mass Media – America Leads the way

• Charles Lindbergh (Lucky Lindy)• first solo flight across the Atlantic

from New York to Paris in 1927• became the first Time Man of the Year

in 1927

• pioneered commercial aviation

• his baby son was kidnapped and murdered in 1932

• ten-week search led to false negotiations and ultimately the baby’s body was found

• kidnapping became a federal offense

Women’s Rights

• Changes in Employment for Women• some broke into journalism,

aviation, medicine, and the law• most women still worked in

domestic service and manufacturing

• The Flapper (The New Woman)• symbol of new feminine

freedom• followed the same rules as men• shorter hair, shorter hemlines,

makeup

Women’s Rights

• Nineteenth Amendment, 1920• women voters helped elect

female governors in WY and TX and the first female senator

• originally most female voters supported the Republican Party but today most support the Democrats

• Equal Rights Amendment, 1924 (ERA)• attempted to require equality

under the Constitution• most states require it today and

it failed in the 1970s• child custody, divorce, and equal pay

were still major issues• Gertrude Ederle swam the English

Channel in 1926 at the age of 21 (only 5 men had done it)

• she swam over 20 miles in just over 14 hours

Modernism vs. Fundamentalism

• Modernism• new emphasis on science and secular

(non-religious) values• strongest in urban areas• Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Modernism in Art and Literature

• The Lost Generation• writers from the 1920s who

had become disillusioned by the romanticism of the late 1800s

• they questioned tradition, religion, and society • Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott

Fitzgerald

Modernism