California content standards
11.5 Students analyze the major political, social, economic, technological, and cultural developments of the 1920s.
1. Discuss the policies of Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.
2. Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey’s “back-to-Africa” movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration quotas and the responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation League to those attacks.
3. Examine the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act (Prohibition).
4. Analyze the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the changing role of women in society.
5. Describe the Harlem Renaissance and new trends in literature, music, and art, with special attention to the work of writers (e.g., Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes).
6. Trace the growth and effects of radio and movies and their role in the worldwide diffusion of popular culture.
7. Discuss the rise of mass production techniques, the growth of cities, the impact of new technologies (e.g., the automobile, electricity), and the resulting prosperity and effect on the American landscape.
1. Discuss the policies of Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.
2. Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey’s “back-to-Africa” movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration quotas and the responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation League to those attacks.
3. Examine the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act (Prohibition).
4. Analyze the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the changing role of women in society.
5. Describe the Harlem Renaissance and new trends in literature, music, and art, with special attention to the work of writers (e.g., Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes).
6. Trace the growth and effects of radio and movies and their role in the worldwide diffusion of popular culture.
7. Discuss the rise of mass production techniques, the growth of cities, the impact of new technologies (e.g., the automobile, electricity), and the resulting prosperity and effect on the American landscape.
Lesson one: Postwar Problems
Lesson One Vocabulary
The Red Scare
The KKK The Anti-defamation League The Scopes Monkey Trial Sacco and Vanzetti W.E.B. Du Bois/NAACP Marcus Garvey |
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Lesson two: prohibition
Lesson three: women's suffrage
Lesson four: 1920's Popular Culture
Lesson four VocabularyLost Generation Writers
Flapper Speakeasy The Jazz Singer The Birth of a Nation Vaudeville Minstrel Shows |
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Lesson five: The Harlem Renaissance
Lesson five vocabularyHarlem Renaissance
The Great Migration Jazz Blues The Apollo The Cotton Club Langston Hughes Louis Armstrong Harlem: Walter Dean MyersThey took the road in Waycross, Georgia
Skipped over the tracks in East St. Louis Took the bus from Holly Springs Hitched a ride from Gee’s Bend Took the long way through Memphis The third deck down from Trinidad A wrench of heart from Goree Island A wrench of heart from Goree Island To a place called Harlem Harlem was a promise Of a better life, of a place where a man Didn’t have to know his place Simply because He was Black They brought a call A song First heard in the villages of Ghana/Mali/Senegal Calls and songs and shouts Heavy hearted tambourine rhythms Loosed in the hard city Like a scream torn from the throat Of an ancient clarinet A new sound, raucous and sassy Cascading over the asphalt village Breaking against the black sky over 1-2-5 Street Announcing Hallelujah Riffing past resolution Yellow, tan, brown, black, red Green, gray, bright Colors loud enough to be heard Light on asphalt streets Sun yellow shirts on burnt umber Bodies Demanding to be heard Seen Sending out warriors From streets known to be Mourning still as a lone radio tells us how Jack Johnson Joe Louis Sugar Ray Is doing with our hopes. We hope We pray Our black skins Reflecting the face of God In storefront temples Jive and Jehovah artists Lay out the human canvas The mood indigo A chorus of summer herbs Of mangoes and bar-b-que Of perfumed sisters Hip strutting past Fried fish joints On Lenox Avenue in steamy August A carnival of children People in the daytime streets Ring-a-levio warriors Stickball heroes Hide-and-seek knights and ladies Waiting to sing their own sweet songs Living out their own slam-dunk dreams Listening For the coming of the blues A weary blues that Langston knew And Countee sung A river of blues Where Du Bois waded And Baldwin preached There is lilt Tempo Cadence A language of darkness Darkness known Darkness sharpened at Mintons Darkness lightened at the Cotton Club Sent flying from Abyssinian Baptist To the Apollo. The uptown A Rattles past 110th Street Unreal to real Relaxing the soul Shango and Jesus Asante and Mende One people A hundred different people Huddled masses And crowded dreams Squares Blocks, bricks Fat, round woman in a rectangle Sunday night gospel “Precious Lord…take my hand, Lead me on, let me stand…” Caught by a full lipped Full hipped Saint Washing collard greens In a cracked porcelain sink Backing up Lady Day on the radio Brother so black and blue Patting a wide foot outside the Too hot Walk-up “Boy, You ought to find the guys who told you you could play some checkers ‘cause he done lied to you!” Cracked reed and soprano sax laughter Floats over a fleet of funeral cars In Harlem Sparrows sit on fire escapes Outside rent parties To learn the tunes. In Harlem The wind doesn’t blow past Smalls It stops to listen to the sounds Serious business A poem, rhapsody tripping along Striver’s Row Not getting it’s metric feel soiled On the well-swept walks Hustling through the hard rain at two o’clock In the morning to its next gig. A huddle of horns And a tinkle of glass A note Handed down from Marcus to Malcolm To a brother Too bad and too cool to give his name. Sometimes despair Makes the stoops shudder Sometimes there are endless depths of pain Singing a capella on street corners And sometimes not. Sometimes it is the artist looking into the mirror Painting a portrait of his own heart. Place Sound Celebration Memories of feelings Of place A journey on the A train That started on the banks of the Niger And has not ended Harlem. |
If We Must die: Claude McKayIf we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, let it not be like hogs So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monster we defy Shall be constrained to honor us, though dead! Oh kinsman! We must meet the common foe; Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What thought before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but--fighting back! America: Claude MckayAlthough she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. Yet Do I marvel: Countee CullenI doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! Oh Black and Unknown Bards: James Weldon JohnsonO black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre? Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? Who first from out the still watch, one and long, Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song? Heart of what slave poured out such melody As “Steal away to Jesus”? On its strains His spirit must have nightly floated free, Though still about his hands he felt his chains. Who heard great “Jordon roll”? Whose starward eye Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, “Nobody knows de trouble I see”? What merely living clod, what captive thing, Could up toward God through all its darkness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That note in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown. Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears. Not that great German master in his dream Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars At the creation, ever heard a theme Nobler than “Go down Moses.” Mark its bars How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were That helped make history when Time was young. There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, That from degraded rest and servile toil The fiery spirit of the seer should call These simple children of the sun and soil. O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, You—you alone, of all the long, long line Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed, Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine. You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings; No chant of bloody war, no exulting paean Of arms-won triumphs; but your humblestrings You touched in chord with music empyrean. You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed Still live,—but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ. I, Too: Langston HughesI, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America. |
Lesson six: Republican Presidents of the 1920's
lesson six vocabulary
Lesson Seven: Economics of the 1920's
Lesson seven vocabulary
"Age of Prosperity"
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