the jazz age in the 1920s

Next lesson. Jazz, flappers, and the Lost Generation. The writers of the movement broke from common Southern cultural literary themes, notably the regrettable fall of the Confederacy, to address more personal and modernized viewpoints including opposition to industrialization and the South’s abiding racism. The movement opposed cultural and intellectual conformity in art and in society in general, usually displaying political affinities with the radical left.

Machines, technology, and Cubist elements were features of their work.Dada artists met and formed groups of like-minded peers in Paris, Berlin, Cologne, and New York City who engaged in activities such as public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art and literary journals.

The Jazz Age. It was not until the 1930s and 1940s, however, that female jazz and blues singers such as Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday were truly recognized and respected as successful artists throughout the music industry. The young set themselves free especially, the young women. The first state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill was Michigan in 1897, but the proposed law failed to garner enough votes by legislators to be adopted. Eugenicists, therefore, targeted mostly women in their efforts to regulate the birth rate, to “protect” white racial health, and to weed out theSterilization rates across the country were relatively low, California being the exception, until the 1927 Supreme Court case Prior to the sterilization ruling in the Supreme Court, eugenicists had already played an important role in government policy by serving as expert advisers on the threat of “inferior stock” from eastern and southern Europe during the Congressional debate over immigration in the early 1920s. Nativism and fundamentalism in the 1920s.

The theory of evolution made famous by Charles Darwin was used by English sociologist and anthropologist Francis Galton, a half cousin of Darwin, to promote the idea of a human survival of the fittest that could be enacted through selective breeding. Rather than considered scientific genetics, however, eugenics is now generally associated with racist and nativist elements who desired so-called “scientific” evidence for prejudicial beliefs and government policies. In 1920’s America – known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties – everybody seemed to have money. The most famous of all was Al Capone – the gangster boss who all but controlled Chicago.

Past Perfect Vintage Music 932,365 views. African Americans also began to merge with white artists in the classical world of musical composition, which had long been popular among white audiences, especially among the middle class and wealthy with roots going back to Europe where classical music had been dominant for centuries.The Harlem Renaissance rested on a support system of black patrons and black-owned businesses and publications. Films were also easily recognizable as the product of a specific studio largely based on the actors who appeared. High heels between two and three inches also became popular.Flappers did away with corsets and pantaloons in favor of “step-in” panties and simple bust bodices to keep their chests in place while dancing.

Box-office sales leapt to new heights as the studio system became the dominant business model in movie making.The public went wild for “talkies,” and movie studios converted to sound almost overnight. The second was the South’s conservative culture, specifically addressing how an individual could exist without losing a sense of identity in a region where family, religion, and community were more highly valued than one’s personal and social life.

Many emerging Southern writers, however, already highly critical of contemporary life in the South, were emboldened by Mencken’s essay.
The most famous jazzmen were Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Benny Goodman. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. As the 1920s progressed, jazz rose in popularity and helped to generate a cultural shift. This reaffirmed the existing class and racial hierarchies and explained why the upper to middle class was predominately white, with middle to upper class status being a marker of “superior strains.” Eugenicists believed poverty to be a characteristic of genetic inferiority, which meant that that those deemed “unfit” were predominately of the lower classes. It sprang up as part of the “New Negro” movement, a political initiative founded in 1917 and later named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.

The economy was booming and Americans could spend their disposable income on new radios, cars and trips to the cinema. The Southern Renaissance included famed writers such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren.