{"id":813,"date":"2016-07-30T01:01:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T01:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=813"},"modified":"2020-07-30T21:19:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T21:19:12","slug":"22-the-new-era","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/22-the-new-era\/","title":{"rendered":"22. The New Era"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cAdvertising<\/a>

\u201cAdvertising Section\u201d Photoplay (October 1924) Museum of Modern Art Library, via Archive.org<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h1>\n

The 1920s so reshaped American life that it came to be called by many names: the New Era, the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper, the Prosperity Decade, and, perhaps most commonly, the Roaring Twenties. The mass production and consumption of automobiles, household appliances, film, and radio fueled a new economy and new standards of living, new mass entertainment introduced talking films and jazz while sexual and social restraints loosened. But at the same time, many Americans turned their back on political and economic reform, denounced America\u2019s shifting demographics, stifled immigration, retreated toward \u201cold time religion,\u201d and revived with millions of new members the Ku Klux Klan. On the other hand, many Americans fought harder than ever for equal rights and cultural observers noted the appearance of \u201cthe New Woman\u201d and \u201cthe New Negro.\u201d Old immigrant communities that had predated new immigration quotas, meanwhile, clung to their cultures and their native faiths. The 1920s were a decade of conflict and tension. Whatever the decade was, as the following sources reveal, it was not \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Documents<\/h1>\n

1. Warren G. Harding and the \u201cReturn to Normalcy\u201d (1920)<\/a><\/h2>\n

Republican Senator and presidential candidate Warren G. Harding of Ohio delivered the following address to the Home Market Club of Boston on May 14, 1920. In it, Harding outlined his hope that the United States would, after a decade of progressive politics and foreign interventions, return to \u201cnormalcy.\u201d In November, Harding received the highest percentage of the popular vote in a presidential election up to that time.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Crystal Eastman, \u201cNow We Can Begin\u201d (1920)<\/a><\/h2>\n

In the following selection, Crystal Eastman, a socialist and feminist, considered what women should fight for following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1921)<\/a><\/h2>\n

Inspired by the writings of Booker T. Washington, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey became the most prominent Black Nationalist in the United States. He championed the back-to-Africa movement, advocated for Black-owned businesses\u2014he founded the Black Star Line, a transnational shipping company\u2014and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Thousands of UNIA chapters formed all across the world. In 1921, Garvey recorded a message in a New York studio explaining the object of the UNIA. <\/em><\/p>\n

4. Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926)<\/a><\/h2>\n

The \u201cSecond\u201d Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence in the 1920s and, at its peak, claimed millions of Americans as members. Klansmen wrapped themselves in the flag and the cross and proclaimed themselves the moral guardians of America. The organization appealed to many \u201crespectable,\u201d middle-class Americans. Here, Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, a dentist from Dallas, Texas, outlines the Second Klan\u2019s potent mix of Americanism, Protestantism, and white supremacy. <\/em><\/p>\n

5. Herbert Hoover, \u201cPrinciples and Ideals of the United States Government\u201d (1928)<\/a><\/h2>\n

Republican Herbert Hoover embodied the political conservatism of the 1920s. He denounced the regulation of business and championed the individual against \u201cbureaucracy.\u201d In November 1928, Hoover, a Protestant from the Midwest, soundly defeated Al Smith, an Irish Catholic from New York City. Here, in a speech delivered in late October, Hoover outlined his vision of American government.<\/em><\/p>\n

6. Ellen Welles Page, \u201cA Flapper\u2019s Appeal to Parents\u201d (1922)<\/a><\/h2>\n

By 1922, \u201cthe Flapper\u201d had become a full-blown cultural phenomenon. In the following article, Ellen Welles Page, a self-described \u201csemi-flapper,\u201d attempted to explain the appeal of the flapper and pled with America\u2019s mothers and fathers not to reflexively judge their flapper daughters. <\/em><\/p>\n

7. Alain Locke on the \u201cNew Negro\u201d (1925)<\/a><\/h2>\n

Alain Locke, a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, was a distinguished academic\u2014the first African American Rhodes Scholar, he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard\u2014who taught at Howard University for 35 years. In 1925, he published an essay, \u201cEnter the New Negro,\u201d that described an African American population busy seeing \u201ca new vision of opportunity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Media<\/h1>\n

Advertisements (1924)<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"In<\/a>

\u201cAdvertising Section\u201d Photoplay (October 1924) Museum of Modern Art Library, via Archive.org<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the 1920\u2019s Americans across the country bought magazines like Photoplay in order to get more information about the stars of their new favorite entertainment media: the movies. Advertisers took advantage of this broad audience to promote a wide range of goods and services to both men and women who enjoyed the proliferation of consumer culture during this time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Klan Gathering (ca. 1920s)<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"This<\/a>

Underwood and Underwood, \u201cKlan assembles Short Distance from U.S. Capitol,\u201d (ca. 1920\u2019s). Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This photo by popular news photographers Underwood and Underwood shows a gathering of a reported 300 Ku Klux Klansmen just outside Washington DC to initiate a new group of men into their order. The proximity of the photographer to his subjects for one of the Klan\u2019s notorious night-time rituals suggests that this was yet another of the Klan\u2019s numerous publicity stunts.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Introduction The 1920s so reshaped American life that it came to be called by many names: the New Era, the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper, the Prosperity Decade, and, perhaps most commonly, the Roaring Twenties. The mass production and consumption of automobiles, household appliances, film, and radio fueled a new economy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":22,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-813","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1901,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813\/revisions\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}