Demographic Shifts & Opportunities 1920s

Demographic Shifts and New Opportunities

• By 1920, over half of Americans resided in cities, which led to shifting demographics
• This shift created new opportunities for women, international immigrants, and internal migrants

Opportunities for Women

• Middle-class women were generally expected to focus on domestic duties
• Women in urban centers found increased workforce opportunities in nursing and teaching
• Women also held unskilled labor jobs in factories, typically earning less than men for the same work
• Some women defied conventions by adopting a flapper lifestyle, which included short hair, smoking, drinking, and revealing ankles, symbolizing women’s liberation in the 1920s

Opportunities for International Immigrants

• There was a large influx of immigrants after World War I, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia
• This influx led to a resurgence of nativism
• Nativism sought to protect the rights of native-born citizens (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) against immigrants
• Workers feared job loss due to immigrants accepting lower wages and concerns about the pollution of the white race grew
• The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 limited immigration to 3% of the population based on the 1910 census
• The National Origins Act of 1924 further restricted immigration

Internal Migrations

• The Great Migration involved large numbers of the Southern Black population moving to the North and Midwest
• Many settled in New York, particularly Harlem
• The Harlem Renaissance followed, marking a revival of arts and intellectual pursuits by the Black population
• Jazz music emerged with musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
• Writers like Langston Hughes and Claude McKay captured the Black experience in America
• The Lost Generation included writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway
• Common themes explored by this group of writers included materialism and the waste of life and resources during World War I

Cultural Crisis: Urban vs. Rural Protestants

• A growing division formed between urban and rural Protestants
• Urban Protestants were considered modernists, embracing changing gender roles and evolutionary theory
• Rural Protestants were seen as fundamentalists, condemning the perceived degradation of morals in cities
• Fundamentalists believed in taking the Bible seriously, though not always literally

Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925

• Tennessee had a law against teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution
• John Scopes, a teacher, taught Darwin and was arrested
• The trial was highly publicized, with Clarence Darrow defending Scopes
• William Jennings Bryan, a populist hero, served as the prosecuting attorney
• Bryan's defense of fundamentalism appeared weak against Darrow's questioning
• Scopes was convicted but the conviction was overturned on a technicality
• Modernism was generally perceived to have triumphed over fundamentalism as America watched the trial unfold