The Jazz Age and the KKK

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The Jazz Age and the KKK
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Klan Resurgence Timeline of Klan History

• founded during Reconstruction, collapsed in
  1870s
• revived in 1915 (in part because of the movie
  Birth of a Nation)
• resurgence of popularity in the 1920s, but
  collapsed again by the 1930s
• again reappears in the 1950s

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Klan Resurgence Poster for the Film The Birth
of a Nation by W.G. Griffith (1915)
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Klan Resurgence NAACP Protest the Screening of
The Birth of a Nation, 1947
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Klan Resurgence Key Scenes in The Birth of a
Nation

• intertitles drawn from A History of the American
  People (1902) by then-president Woodrow Wilson
• black legislators lolling in their chairs in the
  South Carolina legislature in the early 1870s
• white children don white sheets and scare black
  children nearby, inspiring Klan outfits
• Klansmen dump the body of the character Gus, an
  African American, who they had killed for causing
  a young white woman, Flora, to jump off a cliff

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Klan in the 1920s Washington, D.C. Parade
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Klan in the 1920s Social Movements Supported by
the Klan

• prohibition
• anti-immigrant sentiments
• anti-radicalism
• religious fundamentalism
• morality and family values

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Klan in the 1920s Different Historical
Explanations of the Klan

• racist and nativist movement
• populist movement
• reform movement
• reactionary movement

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Immigration Restriction Ku Klux Klan Marching
in DC
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Immigration Restriction Cartoon on the Literacy
Test
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Immigration Restriction Cartoon on the Quota
Act of 1921
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Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)

• Based ceilings on the number of immigrants from
  any particular nation on 2 percent of each
  nationality recorded in the 1890 census
• Was directed against immigrants from Southern
  and Eastern Europe who arrived in large numbers
  after 1890
• Barred all immigrants ineligible for citizenship
  on racial grounds, including all south and east
  Asians (including Indians, Japanese, and Chinese)

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Immigration Act of 1924 Annual Immigration
Quotas

• Germany - 51,227
• Great Britain - 34,007
• Ireland - 28,567
• Italy - 3,845
• Hungary - 473
• Greece - 100
• Egypt - 100

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Immigration Act of 1924 Map of Europe, Literary
Digest, 1924
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Immigration Restriction U.S. v Bhagat Singh
Thind, 1923
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Prosperity Who Prospered in the 1920s?

• 1200 mergers caused the disappearance of over
  600 independent enterprises
• top 0.1 of U.S. families in 1929 had combined
  income as large as bottom 42
• i. e. approx 24,000 families had combined income
  as large as 11.5 million poor and lower-class
  families
• per capita income in the U.S. rose 9 between
  1920-1929
• per capita income for the top 24,000 families
  rose 75
• 80 of families had no savings
• farmers did not prosper - 1/4 of all employment
• less than 10 invested in the stock market

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Prosperity Bruce Barton, author of The Man
Nobody Knows, here with Hollywood producer
Cecil B. DeMille, 1920s
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Prosperity Welfare Capitalism Shoe Companys
Billboard Ad, 1923
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Prosperity Comic Strip on Workers Owning
Shares, 1929
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Automobile Automobile Sales and Registration
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Automobile Ford Model T, 1920s
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Automobile Ford Model T French Ad, 1924
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Automobile General Motors Ad, 1925
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Automobile Cadillac Ad, 1925
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Automobile Ford Assembly Line, Model A, 1928
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Automobile Ford Model A Ad, 1929
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Automobile Song about Ford Model A, 1928
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Automobile Chevrolet Ad, 1931
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Automobile Paige-Jewett Car Ad, 1929
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Great Migration Social Patterns

• from rural areas to cities
• from the South to the North
• Appalachian whites
• Puerto Ricans
• African Americans

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Great Migration Motives

• immigration slows down because of WW I
• more work because of WW I
• more jobs for groups previously left out--women,
  rural migrants, racial minorities
• racial segregation and violence in the South
• sharecropping
• natural disasters such as floods and boll weevil
  infestations
• conscious choice on the part of migrants (many
  did not leave)

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Great Migration Railroad Routes
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Great Migration Painting by Jacob Lawrence, 1940
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Great Migration Painting by Jacob Lawrence, 1940
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Harlem Renaissance Marcus Garveys Supporters
Parade in Harlem
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Harlem Renaissance NAACP Anti-Lynching Ad in
the New York Times
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Harlem Renaissance Zora Neale Hurston Photo by
Carl Van Vechten
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Harlem Renaissance The Crisis Ad for Black Swan
Records, 1923
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Harlem Renaissance The Crisis Cover, 1929
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Leon Bix Beiderbecke, Sorry, 1928
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Louis Armstrong, Weather Bird, 1928
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New Woman Magazine illustrations Gibson
Girls by Charles Gibson--a beauty standard of
the 1900s--and a flapper by John Held, Jr. from
the 1920s
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New Woman Suffragists picketing the White
House, January 1917
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New Woman Department Stores and Consumer Culture
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New Woman Working-class women at the turn of
the century
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New Woman John Held, Jr. Flappers have no
manners or brains
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New Woman John Held, Jr. Its all right,
Santa-- you can come in. My parents still
believe in you.
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New Woman John Held, Jr., dustjackets for F.
Scott Fitzgerald novels
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New Woman Film Actress Louise Brooks and a
comic strip she inspired
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New Woman Actress Clara Bow, the ultimate
flapper in It (1927) and Dangerous Curves (1929)
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Fundamentalism Timeline

• Word coined at around 1910
• Denotes religious groups that take the Bible
  literally
• Popular and active in the 1920s
• Then the movement retreats from politics until
  1980s, in part because of the Scopes Trial

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Fundamentalism Church Membership
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Fundamentalism Actor Lionel Barrymore and
Modern Christ
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Scopes Trial Cartoon on Evolution
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Scopes Trial W. J. Bryans Cartoon against
Modernity, 1924
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Scopes Trial Cartoon comparing Bolsheviks and
Scientists, 1925
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Scopes Trial Bryan and Darrow
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Scopes Trial Bryan as Don Quixote
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Scopes Trial Darrow as a Street Player
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Scopes Trial Monkeys Vote on Evolution