The 1920s and Great Depression
Analyze consumer culture, cultural conflict, economic instability, stock market crash, unemployment, and social impact.
A lesson of US History, in Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, about 10 minutes.
The 1920s, the Great Depression, and the New Deal
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to describe the social changes of the 1920s, explain the causes of the Great Depression, and analyze how the New Deal responded to the crisis and changed the relationship between citizens and the federal government.
The 1920s: Prosperity and Social Change
Economic boom: mass production (Ford's assembly line → Model T affordable for workers); consumer culture (installment buying); advertising; radio; movies.
The Harlem Renaissance: Black cultural flowering in New York City — Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. An assertion of Black artistic and intellectual life amid Jim Crow.
Women: 19th Amendment (1920) — women's suffrage. "Flappers" symbolized changed social norms — shorter hair, shorter skirts, more public life. Women entered workforce in new clerical and retail jobs; but most still expected to be wives and mothers.
Cultural conflicts:
- Prohibition (18th Amendment, 1920): banned alcohol; led to speakeasies, bootlegging, organized crime (Al Capone); eventually repealed (21st Amendment, 1933)
- Scopes Trial (1925): John Scopes tried for teaching evolution in Tennessee; fundamentalism vs. modernism
- Immigration restriction: Emergency Quota Act (1921); National Origins Act (1924) severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and banned Asian immigration
- KKK revival: 4–6 million members by mid-1920s; Midwest and North, not just South; targeted immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Black Americans
The Great Depression
Wall Street Crash (October 1929): stock market collapsed; banks called in loans; businesses failed; a chain reaction.
Causes:
- Overproduction: industry producing more than consumers could buy
- Speculative bubble: stock buying on credit (margin) inflated prices unsustainably
- Weak banking system: no federal deposit insurance; bank runs caused bank failures (9,000 banks failed 1929–1933)
- Federal Reserve mistakes: contracted money supply rather than expanding it
- Agricultural depression: farms had been depressed since 1921
- Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930): raised tariffs; other nations retaliated; global trade collapsed
Human consequences:
- 25% unemployment (1933)
- Millions of families lost homes, farms, savings
- Hoovervilles: shantytowns named for President Hoover, who opposed direct federal relief