President Warren G. Harding

in the cab of a Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ("Milwaukee Road") Electric Locomotive, 1923.

AP U.S. History Period 7: 1890-1945

Topics on the page

"The Roaring 20's" Overview

• The Roaring 20's: Crash Course US History #32 

The Great Migration

• The Great Migration (1910-1970) | National Archives  

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

• Dramatic Event CROSS-LINK: The Tulsa Race Massacre

 
Presidents in the 1920s

 
Women in the 1920s

 
The Scopes Trial

• Dramatic Event CROSS-LINK: The Scopes Trial

 
Native American Experience and Citizenship

 
The Stock Market Crash of 1929 

• Special Topic page: Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange
  

Resources on Struggles between Traditionalism and Modernity in the 1920s with material on the following topics.

• Prohibition
• CROSS-LINK: Harlem Renaissance & the Jazz Age
• Women's Roles and Women's Suffrage
• The Scopes Trial
• The Red Scare
• The Boston Police Strike of 1919
• Post-War Prosperity and the Automobile

 eBook Connection: Alice Paul and the History of the Equal Rights Amendment

Example of Children's Fashion in the 1920s

The Great Gatsby with materials related to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

Influential Biography page: Woody Guthrie, Singer, Songwriter and Activist

Prohibition Era Songs of Reform

Film Review: Prohibition Historian Tona Hangen examines Ken Burns's documentary.

  Cross-Link to Important Domestic Events of World War II

The Great Migration

• African Americans left the South for the industrial opportunity that presented itself in the North during what would be called The Great Migration

• The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow 

• African Americans headed northbound where in many cases they would find better pay, better living standards, and an improved political prowess.

• The migration ended in the 1970s, when the South had sufficiently changed so that African-Americans were no longer under pressure to leave and were free to live anywhere they chose. 

For more, listen to an NPR podcast, The Great Migration: The African American Exodus North (September 10, 2010).

Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration from the Library of Congress African-American Mosaic.

Click here for an interactive map showing the Great Migration. 

• Map shows a few different ways of understanding and tracking the migration to help students understand it in a way that is visually meaningful for them.

Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

Destruction from the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot

Remember the Tulsa Race Riot from Teaching Tolerance Magazine. This riot, started on May 31, 1921, was the bloodiest attack on African-American citizens in U.S. history.

• For more information, see Tulsa Race Riot from the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture and Tulsa Race Riot from the Tulsa Historical Society.

Tulsa Race Riot Photographs from the University of Tulsa Library.

• As Survivors Dwindle, Tulsa Confronts the Past from The New York Times, June 19, 2011.

The Eruption of Tulsa: An NAACP Official Investigates the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 from Nation, June 29, 1921.

 
Tulsa Race Riot: Survivors and Descendants Recall posted on YouTube.

• Reparations for the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 reports on efforts by U. S. Representative John Conyers to establish a commission to study reparations for slavery and racial injustice in this country.

President Calvin Coolidge

Presidents and their Accomplishments

• 28. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) Established his "14 Points" during WWI which led the the creation of the League of Nations.

• 29. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) Although his presidency was littered with scandals,

Harding did sign a joint resolution officially ending the state of war between Germany and America.

• 30. Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) was best known for his Laissez-Faire approach to economics. His most contentious issue was providing relief for struggling farmers, who to this day are viewed as people who need to be protected in a global economy. The 30th President of the United States "Silent Cal" is best known for proclaiming that " the business of America is business"

• 31. Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) was the president during The Great Depression. Hoover was in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1900), and he organized the relief efforts for trapped foreigners.

For information on foreign policy, see 1921-1936: Interwar Diplomacy from the State Department's Office of the Historian.


American Jazz Culture in the 1920's

• According to Paul Reuben of the Perspectives in American Literature website, the "Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay."

Women in the 1920's

• August 18, 1920 - Women are given the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the United States constitution grants universal women's suffrage.

• Also known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment, in recognition of her important campaign to win the right to vote.
• Visit here for a summary of the legal fight for the amendment.

Visit here for the National Archives image of the 19th amendment (as well as related teaching materials).

 eBook Connection: Alice Paul and the History of the Equal Rights Amendment

It is important to note that the effects of the 19th Amendment were not immediately felt, but that the women's movements in the 1920s laid the foundation for social change in the following decades.

Louise Brooks, 1927

• June 17th, 1928 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman and second person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

• Perceived social norms became obsolete. Young women began to express their personalities with new hair styles and more modern, shorter clothes.

• To the older generation, these women were known as flappers. Young women began to be arrested for what society at the time saw as indecent exposure.

 Click here for "How Gay Culture Blossomed In the Roaring Twenties"Gay Culture Blossomed During the Roaring Twenties

The Scopes Trial

• July 10, 1924 - The Scopes Trial or "Monkey Trial" began.
• John T. Scopes would later be convicted of teaching Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory at a Dayton, Tennessee high school
• violated Tennessee law.
• A fine of 100$ would be given to Scoped.
• Darwin's evolutionary theory is still a contentious topic today in education, for it counters the Christian belief of creationism.
• Cross-Link: Darwin and Evolution: resourcesforhistoryteachers / Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution 

 Documents and Teaching Materials on the Scopes Trial from the National History Education Clearinghouse

Native American Experience and Citizenship

Indian Citizenship Act of 1924

Photo to the left is U.S. President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians after Coolidge signed the bill granting Indians full citizenship, 1924

President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation granting citizenship to Native Americans.

 For more on the impacts of westward expansion on Native peoples