Prohibition and organized crime, as well as popular music and sports of the era. Morning,koe good everybody. Today we will discuss the jazz age. Or at least i will discuss it, and youre part of the discussion will be at the end, so please write down any thoughts you have, questions, responses. That would be good. Fromazz age is the period 1919 to 1929. It reminds me of the opening lines of the tale of two cities by charles dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It wasnt exactly the best of times. But for many people, it was certainly good times. It was the great age of literature, the golden age of sports, music, jazz. The 19th amendment to the constitution, which allowed women to vote in National Elections for the first time. Radio was becoming popular. It was the early days of the aged, and certainly of the automobile, the model t. Almostiles were for every budget. Times, which good we will discuss. And it wasnt exactly the worst of times, although there were some very bad times. And the failures of that decade led to the worldwide depression in the 1930s, and helped the rise of fascism in europe. So, lets begin with talking about the politics of the era. It was a republican decade. Three republican president s. Harding, coolidge and hoover. Controlled the presidency from 1921 until 1933, from theess from 1918, 1918 election until 1930. Was an era ofit laissezfaire. In other words, give business a free hand. That might be surprising to you, because we had discussed the progressive era, when there were a great many, there was a federal trade commission, there were other commissions to control business. Those the 1920s, commissions were manned by people from the industry, so they were not doing much controlling. Ourrnationally, we cut commitments abroad, beginning with the failure of the senate to ratify the league of nations, Wilsons League of nations. Please two policies of these two policies taken together, oursezfaire and reluctance to take our place in the world even though we had emerged from world war i as the most powerful nation, would prove disastrous, to the United States and to the world in the 1930s. Words me just say a few about each of the presidencies, beginning with warren harding. I think the best thing you can say about warren harding, he looked president ial. That was pretty much it. He looks president ial. It was the most corrupt had totration that we that time, and may be all of our history. He escaped a lot of the opprobrium, because he died in office. Before that, the teapot dome, the most scandalous of all the scandals, was revealed when it turned out the interior bribesry had accepted from private Oil Companies to oile public lands, public reserves. Ohio, heing came from brought his pals with him, the ohio gang. And they had a very good time. They drank a lot, even though it was during prohibition. Was wine, women and song. They really enjoyed national politics. Anyway, then he died rather suddenly. The person who took his place, his Vice President calvin coolidge, was probably as different from harding as two humans can be. Say . Ng, what can you he didnt do much. He didnt even talk. He knew how to talk, but he didnt talk. He was the taciturn new englander. He came from vermont, but he had made his name by being governor of massachusetts when there was a police strike, and he took a very hard line against the police, and that made him known nationally. As president , he worked very little. He brought his rocking chair with him, and he would put it out on the porch, facing pennsylvania avenue, and he would rock away. This is the person who said the business of america was business, and he did not interfere much with business. Kepthile, the stock market going up and up, and for not very good reasons, or for any reasons. And there were warnings about this, that the economy could not really could really bust. There were warnings from the Federal Reserve board, and others in his government, but he simply did nothing about it. There are lots of funny stories about silent cal, as he was called. One was when a woman was invited to the white house, to have lunch with him, and some other people. She was very chatty, and turned to him and said, mr. President , i have a bet with my friends i can make you say more than two words tonight. He said, you lose. And that was his conversation, for the entire meal. Then he could have easily run for president again. The country was quite prosperous. To in fact, he decided not run. He didnt tell anybody for a long time. He didnt tell his wife. He didnt tell his campaign manager. But at one point, he called reporters together and he handed each of them a slip of paper. The slip of paper had 10 words choose to runot for president in 1928. And then he walked away. The reporters were running after him saying, tell us more, why arent you running . He refused to say anything. But he stepped down in 1928. The person who did get the nomination, the republican nomination for president , was a very different kind, and a very interesting person. That was the mining engineer herbert hoover. Herbert hoover probably spend less time in the United States than any other president before or since. He was always involved in Great Projects in the world, and he was orphaned at the age of nine, but was sent to live with an uncle in california. The uncle sent him to stanford university, and he really became a selfmade millionaire. He was in his 20s when he was a millionaire. He had no political history, except for one. A ran for treasurer as College Student from stanford university. But he was secretary of commerce, and he had done a great deal. President wilson sent him to europe when world war i began, and his job was to get the american tourists out of europe, and he did that. And then he helped the belgians. Remember, belgium was overrun in the first world war, and he was responsible for belgian relief. When he came back to the United States, during the war, he was the food administrator. His job was to see that the military got fed, but the home front got fed as well. He did all that, and he did it very well. Now, think of the timing of this. He wasnt a democrat. He wasnt a republican. Both parties were interested in him running for president in 1920. Had he run for president in 1920, he would have been theident from 1921 to beginning of 1929, during prosperous times. And we would not, as we will be doing next week, be talking about hoovervilles, and president hoover taking responsibility for the depression. But in fact, that did not happen. 1928, for president in against al smith, the new yorker. Who wasted al smith, the first catholic to run for president. During the terms of these three president s, the country was disillusioned by the war. Remember, this was the war to save democracy, the war to end all wars. And many people vented their frustration and their anger on antisocial acts and legislation. It was a time when traditional values were shattered, but new standards had not yet emerged. A case in point, for example, scopes,es trial, john who faced William Jennings bryant. The issue was scopes teaching evolution in a tennessee public school. It was actually against the law, and Williams Jennings bryan William Jennings bryant defended the literal interpretation of the bible against evolution. Actually, William Jennings bryan hadthat, and john scopes in fact violated the law by teaching evolution. The redde began with a response191920, to a series of strikes in the United States. Onebestknown one was the that crippled seattle for five days. There was a strike there. It was also a time when the bolsheviks were in power in russia, and had created the com mintern, the communist inational, leading to the United States. Palmer was a progressive, a quaker, who was the attorney general of the United States. It resulted in the arrest of 4000 people, immigrants mostly, most of them hardworking just workers who did not speak english. They certainly were not going to start a revolution here. But many of them were beaten up. People were denied representation, and there was really, most of them had nothing to do with radicalism. But there were bombings, a series of bombings in this country, including the home of a. Mitchell palmer. Wall was a bombingo on street, can you can still go to wall street and see where the holes were. Anyway, it led to some people without representation being sent back to russia, and it was in the United States that perhaps had it been betterknown, we would not have had a second red scare. The second red scare of the 1950s, the mccarthy era, that one lasted much longer than the 19191920 one, and damaged the lives of thousands of americans. Writers, professors, people from hollywood, who were wrongly identified as being enemies of the United States. Xenophobia, very common. A fear of foreigners. And the popularity of eugenics. Say,ics is the, if i can pseudoscience of improving the human species by a kind of selective breeding. Both were very popular in the 1920s. I will let that era pretty much speak for itself. Zoologist and lawyer named madison grant, wrote a book published in 1916 passing of the great race. His thesis was that nordics were responsible for human development. By the way, in the 1930s, adolf hitler wrote a fan letter to bookon grant, calling the my bible. Another writer, a popular writer who wrote for the saturday evening post and millions of americans got it once a week, he urged immigration laws, because he said, and this is an exact quote, immigrants would result as a hybrid race of people, as thess and futile good for nothing mongrels of Central America and southEastern Europe. We use for a word animals, right, for dogs. And then there was henry ford, whose virulent antisemitism was spread in the newspaper the dearborn independent, beginning in 1920. By the way, henry ford is the only american named by hitler in mein kampf. The result of what these people believed, and what other people believed, was very restrictive legislation for immigration in this country. Dyspite the fact that the la with the lamp in new york harbor, you know the words, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses urging to be free. There was a temporary act in 1921 that restricted immigration, but then there was 1924, thee in National Origins act. What the National Origins act is, was to have a quota based on the population in 1890, and the purpose of it was to freeze the country ethnically. To say, whoever was here already, we will allow in a percentage of those people to enter the country, and by the way, not very many. 150,000 a year. Excluded. Were now, what that meant in practice was that the people who were allowed in were not necessarily the people who wanted to come. They came from northern europe. They came from western europe. The people who wanted to come were mostly catholics, jews, f rom Eastern Europe and southern europe, from italy, greece, poland, russia. But there were very severe restrictions on those people, because there were not a great many of them counted in the 1890 selection. This attitude towards immigrants led to many injustices. The bestknown one was the execution of two italian 1927 in 1927 for a crime they did not commit. The cases of sacco and vanzetti. When i say they were anarchists, these were kind of mild anarchists, not bombthrowing anarchists. It really divided the country. N you execute these men, or ot . And by the way, they did not commit the crime that they were theicted of having done, murders in the south braintree, massachusetts avenue two people. The novelist John Dos Passos wrote a poem in which he talks about the division of the vanzettion sacco and and the attempt to execute them, and they were executed. The night they were facing execution, all over the world people at american embassies were protesting the killings by the government of these two people. Poem to passos wrote a mark the event. He said, they have clubbed us off the streets. They are stronger. They are rich. They hire and fire the politicians, the newspaper editors, the old judges, the small men with reputations, the College President s. Listen, businessmen, College President s, judges, america will not forget her betrayers. All right. You have won. You will kill the brave men, our friends, tonight. All right. We are two nations. Madison grant was also responsible and active in the movement to prevent interma rriage between whites and africanamericans, which leads us to another subject. Kluxis the second ku klan. Remember, the first ku klux klan was right after the civil war. This was the second one. In some ways it was the same, and in some ways it was very different from the first one. It was actually a rather small, it didnt amount to much until it was taken over by two professional fundraisers, edward clark and elizabeth tyler. By the way, they made their money, they saw an opportunity nere, by selling sheets, i childrens sizes, adult sizes. Fiveecond kkk actually has million cardcarrying members. 5 million. This was not a fringe organization. And it was very powerful in the midwest. Klanna was the leading state with 350,000 members. Their targets, like the first utan, africanamericans, b mostly catholics and jews, but they also went after bootleggers. Remember, this was during prohibition. Also, there was a kind of auxiliary that was very powerful. Womens the wkkk, the ku klux klan. There were no women in the first ku klux klan. They acted quietly, but they did a lot of damage. Would talk as they were hanging up their clothes behind their homes, and they would talk about the italian butcher, saying he was roman catholic. Shoemaker. Sh and all of a sudden, the italian butcher, the jewish shoemaker, would not have any customers. They didnt know why. People who had been their customers for years and suddenly were not there customers anymore, and they would have to move away because they wouldnt have any business. It was mostly important in small towns. The smalltown americans, many of them believed they were losing out to urban americans. Forby the way, in the 1920, the first time in 1920, urban americans, there were more urban americans than rural americans. The klan was brutal. There were murders, church burnings, brandings, and then it ended very suddenly, with the grand dragon, as he called himself, of the ku klux klan in indiana, he was convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of a young woman. And since the klan prided itself on protecting young women, especially young protestant women, a lot of people gave up their klan membership at that time. But it did stay alive, and it had, people became a little more interested in the kkk in the 1928 election, when al smith, a roman catholic, ran for president. The 1920s of course course was a time of prohibition. The 18th amendment to the constitution went into effect in 1919. It is the only part of the constitution that was ever repealed. It was repealed in 1933, in the 21st amendment to the constitution. It was not just an experiment that failed. It turned out, most americans did not want to be told that they could not buy alcohol. It led to the rise of of course speakeasier, who did you know, of liquor being imported into the country, much of it from canada over the great lakes. But it didnt begin organized crime, but organized crime was very small until prohibition. This was the era of al capone, also of a great disrespect for the law, and of gang wars. And when prohibition ended, it did not end organized crime. By then, they moved into other fields. Prostitution, protection and so forth. It took well into the 1960s, actually, when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general for much of that, not all of that, but for much of that to end. Well, enough about the bad times. Lets Say Something about the good times. Ok. Charles lindbergh, 1927, the boy wonder, 25 years old when he left Roosevelt Field in long island to go to paris. Solo. Ars old and he flew he was probably the bestknown person in the world in the mid1920s. Luster, because he accepted a medal for Hermann Goering in nazi germany. He was very taken with the german air force, and was trying to make a point that we were not as well prepared as germany, which was the case. A great age of literature. I know some of you read the great gatsby. More than any other book, the great gatsby is the novel of the decade. F. Scott fitzgerald. Alsor later the sun rises, Ernest Hemingways book, was published. It was a golden era for american literature, and also the age of the harlem renaissance. Musicians, artists thewe know today from harlem renaissance were not from new york, but harlem became the center of this renaissance. And the center of the center was of home of the daughter madam c. J. Walker. I wonder if you remember her . She was the only woman millionaire not to inherit her wealth in an earlier era. Daughter, and her brownstone on 136th street in harlem was the center of the center. In 1931, the writer Langston Hughes said, the harlem renaissance is over. I have a painting up there, by my favorite artist of the harlem renaissance. You can take a closer look when you leave. Of course, it was the age of jazz. Lake, louis, eubie armstrong, duke ellington, so many others. It was a very rich period. A sexual was revolution in the 1920s. I think sometimes students think thats the 1960s. Yes, that was another one, the 1920s. There were actually new words in the lexicon. Dates from the 1920s. Appealession sex dates from the 1920s. And why the 1920s . Well, part of it was the liberation of women. A a lot of women going to college for the first time in the United States. Women gaining the right to vote. Age of of jazz, the hollywood. Sigmund freud. It wasnt so much that people read Sigmund Freud, but they had a sense of what Sigmund Freud<