When I taught my college students, I tried to get across the diversity of 1920s American culture. I’d ask students their preconceptions about 1920s culture in the United States. Some thought it was a colorful time of flappers, speakeasys, dance halls, and so forth. Jazz music, the Harlem Renaissance, the radio. To some students, it all seemed a brilliant outburst of creativity, a wild ride, a fun decade.

All those things happened, sure. But the 1920s also saw massive growth in the Ku Klux Klan and the end of unlimited immigration to the United States. Moral reform (or repression?) reached its apex (nadir?) in the form of Prohibition. (Read my post about 1920s Prohibition here.) The country elected three conservative Republican presidents during the decade. (I’ve seen some scholars put forward that Herbert Hoover had some Progressive tendencies. Maybe so. I’ve not seen the same argument about Coolidge or Harding, however.)

So, which is it? Was 1920s culture creative and fun? Or was it stifling and regressive? This post and the next will examine 1920s culture in several of its aspects.

1920s Popular Culture

For people who lived in urban areas, 1920s culture saw a blooming of options for entertainment. Like I wrote in the introduction, Prohibition was on. But people could still go to clubs, dance to jazz, and get a drink if they knew how to ask. And, like I mentioned in my post about 1920s automobiles (read it with this link), autos gave young people a chance to go out on dates.

But that wasn’t all. Movies had been around for a while, but talking movies debuted as a form of cinema during the late 1920s. (The Jazz Singer was the first—1927.) Urbanites could also attend sports at major arenas holding tens of thousands. Yankee Stadium, for instance, could hold 58,000 spectators by 1925. Stadiums made of concrete and steel had replaced the wooden grandstands that were normal a generation prior.

In addition, thanks mainly to the radio, culture became more national and less regional during the 1920s. Variation still existed, certainly, and especially in more rural areas. But mass-circulation newspapers helped the radio bring the same information into the homes of millions of people, allowing them a more national outlook.

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The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance is a topic of great importance to 1920s culture. I’m going to be shamefully brief about it here, considering the talent it produced, but you can read more about it in a number of places.

Centered in, but not exclusive to, Harlem, New York City, this movement produced an explosion of music, literature, poetry, and general intellectual thought. Northern cities like New York were gaining in population of African Americans thanks to the Great Migration. Harlem was a center of this growth.

The Harlem Renaissance featured both jazz and blues music. Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway became famous. This music, in turn, popularized new forms of dance.

Literature and the arts likewise blossomed. Famous poets like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen are but a slice of the poetic talent of the 1920s. Likewise with literature, where Zora Neale Hurston and James Weldon Johnson are but two of the premier authors of the era.

Beyond the ability of the performers and writers, another important aspect of the Harlem Renaissance was that it gave voice to African Americans in general. And that voice wasn’t always the same as what White America expected to hear. Intellectuals like W.E.B. DuBois and others tried to give African Americans confidence in themselves and pride in their history as a people. In the process, they tore down stereotypes. These intellectuals made it clear that conforming to “White,” middle-class values shouldn’t be a basis for judgment of Black people. They had their own history and many group achievements to be proud of.

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What Defined the 1920s Culture?

Besides the growth of mass culture and the arts already described, a few other trends emerged in the 1920s. One was a greater emphasis on public health. Organizations like the Red Cross became more prominent. Nursing was a growing profession, or at least one that grew in visibility. This was a plus for those who wanted to see women play a larger public role in society.

However, if women were going to be more prominent in society, society maintained the stereotype that women must be beautiful. The mass-marketing of cosmetics and other beauty products to women also increased. One advertiser from the era was blunt. Women had sixteen square feet of skin and weren’t doing near enough to beautify those sixteen square feet.

However, it’s hard to say that one thing defined 1920s culture. Congress passed limits on immigration in 1921 and 1924, but the immigrants of the 1910s didn’t immediately forget the language, food, or music of their former homes during the 1920s. Consumer culture was more national than ever before, but remained mainly limited to people in urban areas with extra spending money. Farmers often lacked an option to participate. Working-class people often lacked the money to do so.

So, perhaps variation is what defined 1920s culture. Variation by region, by urban/rural status, and by economic status. In my next post, I’ll examine another variation of 1920s culture. This was the backlash to the things I’ve written about today.

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