1. Politics

• Harding, Coolidge, Hoover "Return to Normalcy"
• "the extraordinary corporate influence on national policy"
• scandals: Charles Cramer of Veterans Bureau sold medical supplies, Jess W. Smith and Attorney General Harry Daugherty sold liquor licenses and paroles, oil companies bribed Secretary Interior Albert Fall for the Teapot Dome reserves
• Andrew Mellon, "The chief business of the American people is business"
• La Follette, Al Smith, John Davis in 1924 election
• Charles Evans Hughes and "Pax Americana" of global business
• Quota Act 1921, Johnson-Reed Act 1924 but "Mexicans and Canadians could immigrate freely"
• Coolidge vetoed McNary-Haugen parity bill
• Oscar De Priest first northern black Congressman 1928 from Chicago

2. Consumerism

• "The U. S. economy experienced a fundamental shift" from producer goods to consumer goods
• "the new capitalism" according to Charles Mitchell brought "all classes of the population to a more equal participation in the fruits of industry"
• "The single most important product in the new culture of consumption was the automobile" owned by "almost half the families"
• River Rouge, assembly line, Alfred Sloan, Paige Motor Cars advertising
• ready-made clothes, packaged foods, electric lights and vacuum cleaner and irons
• Amelia Earhart endorsed Camels
• conspicuous consumption in Flint, Michigan
• Henry Ford's paternalistic five-dollar day and hired 10,000 black auto workers, company unions, welfare capitalism
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters "the most important black union in American history" created jobs and "the pay was good" in the 1920s.
• Great Migration to northern cities "provided the basis for a relatively prosperous black urban culture"
• Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association opposed integration ideal of NAACP and instead emphasized black pride, self-respect, self-help
• Harlem Renaissance "expressed a new pride in black racial identity and heritage"
• Shuffle Along theater, Bill Robinson dancer, "juke joints" music, Duke Ellington jazz at the Cotton Club
• Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer

3. Inequality

• "workers in the automobile, electrical, and printing industries received wage increases of 10 to 28 percent, but those in the shoe, coal, and textile industries watched their wages drop"
• "unemployment in manufacturing, transportation, mining, and building averaged 13 percent between 1921 and 1926"
• "restrictive covenants" excluded blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Jews from suburbs
• "Farm homes lagged far behind city ones in houseehold technologies and utilities"
• one-third of all families lived in houses below "any decent standard
• "In 1930, fewer than 12% of all married women worked for wages"
• "In 1929, the average working woman earned only fifty-seven cents to a man's dollar"
• "only 14 percent of wage-earning women occupied professional positions in 1930"
• "For the first time in the nation's history, the total number of farms dropped."
• Non-Partisan League, Farmer-Labor Party
• migrant workers in Imperial Valley had "little opportunity for social life or schooling. Living conditions were atrocious."
• "Huge farms exploited both impoverished workers and new technologies."
• "For the quarter of all Americans who still lived on the land, economic hard times were a fact of life."
• in the small competitive nonunion West Virginia coal mines, "families lived in poverty"
• union membership declined, yellow dog contracts, conservative Bill Green of AFL
• "Most black Americans remained poor in the 1920s; they neither shared in the new profits nor enjoyed the new consumer goods."

4. Mass Culture

• radio, recorded music, motion pictures
• Amos 'n Andy, Farm and Home Hour, Bessie Smith, gasoline-powered movie house in Carrboro NC, movie palaces
• Rudolph Valentino, Babe Ruth, Harry Houdini
• Fatty Arbuckle, Will Hays, Kenesaw Landis
• "flapper" stereotype of the New Woman

5. Conflict

• H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis and Babbitt
• Prohibition, gays, lesbians, Gladys Bentley and Harlem nightclub
• fundamentalists, Aimee Semple McPherson, Scopes
• KKK, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism
• Secretary Interior Hubert Work v. "red progressives"
• Al Smith v. Herbert Hoover

Links:

• Prohibition
• Babe Ruth and Scopes Trial and Henry Ford
• The Jazz Singer and Movie Palace
• Recording Technology History
• Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 from American Memory
• Solemates: The Century in Shoes from the Marketing Store
• American Jewish Historical Society

References:

• "Gastonia NC mill known for bloody 1929 strike faces wrecking ball," article by Paul Nowell, Associated Press, June 15, 1997
• "Tulsa panel seeks truth from 1921 race riot" article from CNN, August 3, 1999, with pictures.
• "Old portrait encourages searchers for lesbian memorabilia," article by Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Examiner, July 19, 2000.
• "A Lynching, a List and Reopened Wounds," article by Kathy Sawyer, Washington Post, June 20, 2000, A1.
• "Teacher, school square off on evolution," article by Amy C. Rea, Boston Globe, Sept. 3, 2000
• 'Bamboozled': Trying On Blackface in a Flirtation With Fire," film review by Stephen Holden, New York Times, October 6, 2000.