What Were the Main Trends of the 1920s?

“Ev’ry morning, ev’ry evening, ain’t we got fun?” went a hit song of 1921. During the “Era of Wonderful Nonsense”—yet another nickname for the 1920s—fun came in many forms.

Fun Fads 

Fads caught on, then quickly disappeared. A fad is an activity or a fashion that is taken up with great passion for a short time. Flagpole sitting was one fad of the 1920s. Young people would perch on top of flagpoles for hours, or even days. Another fad was the dance marathon, where couples danced for hundreds of hours at a time to see who could last the longest. Crossword puzzles and mah-jongg, a Chinese game, were other popular fads of the 1920s.

Dance crazes came and went rapidly. The most popular new dance was probably the Charleston. First performed by African Americans in southern cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, the dance became a national craze after 1923. Moving to a quick beat, dancers pivoted their feet while kicking out first one leg, and then the other, backward and forward.

Flapper Fashion 

Perhaps no one pursued the latest fads more intensely than the flappers. These young women rebelled against traditional ways of thinking and acting. Flappers wore their hair bobbed, or cut short. They wore their dresses short, too—shorter than Americans had ever seen. Flappers shocked their parents by wearing bright red lipstick.

To many older Americans, the way flappers behaved was even more shocking than the way they looked. Flappers smoked cigarettes in public, drank bootleg alcohol in speakeasies, and drove fast cars. “Is ‘the old-fashioned girl,’ with all that she stands for in sweetness, modesty, and innocence, in danger of becoming extinct?” wondered one magazine in 1921.

Only a few young women were flappers. Still, they set a style for others. Slowly, older women began to cut their hair and wear makeup and shorter skirts. For many Americans, the bold fashions pioneered by the flappers symbolized a new sense of freedom.

Analyze Images Young women known as flappers defied expectations.

Synthesize Visual Information In what ways did flappers depart from tradition?

The Rise of Jazz Music 

Another innovation of the 1920s was jazz. Born in New Orleans, jazz combined West African rhythms, African American work songs and spirituals, and European harmonies and band music. Jazz also had roots in the ragtime rhythms of composers such as Scott Joplin.

Louis Armstrong was one of the brilliant young African American musicians who helped create jazz. Armstrong learned to play the trumpet in the New Orleans orphanage where he grew up. Armstrong had the ability to take a simple melody and experiment with the notes and the rhythm. This allowed his listeners to hear many different versions of the basic tune. Other great early jazz musicians included “Jelly Roll” Morton and singer Bessie Smith.

Jazz quickly spread from New Orleans to Chicago, Kansas City, and the mainly African American section of New York City known as Harlem. White musicians, such as trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, also began to adopt the new style. Before long, the popularity of jazz spread to Europe as well.

Many older Americans worried that jazz and the new dances were a bad influence on the nation’s young people. Despite their complaints, jazz continued to grow more popular. Today, jazz is recognized as an original art form developed by African Americans. It is considered one of the most important cultural contributions of the United States.

Analyze Images Jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong brought crowds of listeners into the Cotton Club in Harlem.

Infer Why did jazz appeal to so many people?

Athletic Heroes 

Radio, movies, and newspapers created celebrities known across the country. Americans followed the exploits of individuals whose achievements made them stand out from the crowd. Some of the best-loved heroes of the decade were athletes. Each sport had its stars. Bobby Jones won almost every golf championship. Bill Tilden and Helen Wills ruled the tennis courts. Jack Dempsey reigned as world heavyweight boxing champion for seven years. At the age of 19, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

College football also drew huge crowds. Many Americans who had never attended college rooted for college teams. They were thrilled to watch the exploits of football stars like Red Grange, the “Galloping Ghost” of the University of Illinois.

Americans loved football, but baseball was their real passion. The most popular player of the 1920s was Babe Ruth. He became the star of the New York Yankees. Fans flocked to games to see “the Sultan of Swat” hit home runs. The 60 home runs he hit in one season set a record that lasted more than 30 years. His lifetime record of 714 home runs was not broken until 1974.

Analyze Images Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs in his career, a record that stood for nearly 40 years.

Understand Effects How would an exciting player like Ruth cause baseball to surge in popularity?

“Lucky Lindy” 

The greatest hero was Charles A. Lindbergh. On a gray morning in May 1927, he took off from an airport in New York to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean—alone. His was the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight.

For more than 33 hours, Lindbergh piloted his tiny single-engine plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, over the stormy Atlantic. He carried no map, no parachute, and no radio. At last, he landed in Paris, France. The cheering crowd carried him across the airfield. “Lucky Lindy” returned to the United States as the hero of the decade.

READING CHECK 

Classify and Categorize What traits defined a flapper?

A Renaissance in Harlem

In the 1920s, large numbers of African American musicians, artists, and writers settled in Harlem, in New York City. “Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro Intellectual,” said one African American writer.

This gathering of African American artists and musicians led to the Harlem Renaissance, a rebirth of African American culture.

During the Harlem Renaissance, young black writers celebrated their African and American heritages. They also protested prejudice and racism. For the first time, too, a large number of white Americans took notice of the achievements of African American artists and writers.

Langston Hughes 

Probably the best-known poet of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. He published his first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” soon after graduating from high school. The poem connected the experiences of African Americans living along the Mississippi River with those of ancient Africans living along the Nile and Niger rivers. Like other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes encouraged African Americans to be proud of their heritage.

In other poems, Hughes protested racism and acts of violence against African Americans. In addition to his poems, Hughes wrote plays, short stories, and essays about the African American experience.

Other Poets and Novelists 

Other poets such as Countee Cullen and Claude McKay also wrote of the experiences of African Americans. Orphaned when his grandmother died, Cullen was raised by a Harlem minister and his wife. He went on to graduate from New York University and Harvard. He published award-winning books of poetry in the 1920s, and later wrote novels and plays.

McKay came to the United States from Jamaica. In his poem “If We Must Die,” he condemned the lynchings and other mob violence that African Americans suffered after World War I. The poem concludes with the lines “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, / Pressed to the wall, dying but fighting back!”

Zora Neale Hurston, who grew up in Florida, wrote novels, essays, and short stories. Hurston grew concerned that African American folklore “was disappearing without the world realizing it had ever been.”

In 1928, she set out alone to travel through the South in a battered car. For two years, she collected the folk tales, songs, and prayers of African American southerners. She later published these in her book Mules and Men.

Analyze Graphs The Harlem Renaissance was a time of immense change.

Infer What changes in the south might have encouraged African Americans to move north?

READING CHECK 

Identify Main Ideas What did many Harlem Renaissance writers hope to achieve with their writing?