MODULE 7
Sunday, January 26, 2025, 8:46 AM
Number of replies: 1
Please respond to all prompts, providing specific examples from the readings/viewings. Make sure to cite to your sources and elaborate! Explain your reasoning.
1. How do you define the 1920s? What characteristics are most important in defining this decade?
After the Great War, The United States was considered the most powerful nation in the world; American life changed dramatically in that period. In the 1920s (called the "Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age"), the growing economy in the United States created an era of mass consumerism in various spheres and branches of society described as prosperous, decadent, and modern, capturing the economic boom, consumerism, and cultural changes of the era. The celebration of new technologies, jazz, secular values, the first trans-Atlantic phone call, the radio, the first movie with sound, the first enclosed car at affordable prices, the discovery of penicillin, and radium, the radioactive component used in medical therapies, evolved very difficult to obtain enough for studies, all these and more others were just the beginning of inventions. With a booming, unregulated stock market, working-class residents getting in on the action of technological invention, and high employment, there was more disposable income than ever.
The building and construction of automobile industries are supported by the nation's principal physical science research laboratory. Many modifications in regional building and plumbing: codes and zoning regulations published a popular handbook for prospective home buyers; automobile research focused on fuel economy and safety. It began developing techniques to test the fire persistence of building structures; this work led to test procedures that became universal worldwide.
Women joined in the party like they had never done when alcohol was legal. This was also the decade women had won the right to vote. Some of these fully emancipated women took well-paying jobs, bobbed their hair, adopted daring new fashions, did high-energy dances, drank, smoked, fast-tempo jazz music was the rage, used birth control, and celebrated their liberated, independent lives in style.
Americans began their long-distance auto excursions, and Yellowstone National Park became a popular destination. Affluent families sent their children to Europe to broaden their experience. Aspiring literary figures also went to Europe and made Paris their headquarters. The black American artists and writers contributed to the complete emancipation of their race and the artistic enrichment of all Americans. The Roaring Twenties saw rapid growth in cities, increased consumer culture, and increased mass entertainment. By the mid-1920s, many people enjoyed prosperity, leading to the time known as the "Golden Twenties." This exciting period of change, freedom, and confidence came to an end with the stock market crash in October 1929, which marked the start of the Great Depression and brought years of economic struggle worldwide.
Works Cited:
“The Roaring Twenties Explained in 11 Minutes.” , Captivating History, 16 Mar. 2021.
2. Last week, we were introduced to the Prohibition Era. In the podcast, Billie Holiday v. the United States, connections are made between that era and the modern War on Drugs. How did the end of Prohibition lead to Billie Holiday becoming a target of the federal government?
When Prohibition ended (the nationwide ban on the deal and import of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933), it led directly to the rise of organized crime. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency created to pursue crimes related to the possession, distribution, and trafficking of listed narcotics. The federal government pursued Billie Holiday for nearly two decades due to her performance of “Strange Fruit,” a song written by Abel Meeropol. Meeropol noted that Holiday’s interpretation captured the song's bitterness and shocking quality. Despite confronting harassment from the FBI, losing her cabaret license, and being charged with drugs, Holiday continued to sing the song, risking her career and freedom, involved in the civil rights movement. Holiday's struggles with addiction and her turbulent romantic relationships made her a target. Billie’s traumatic childhood is a place to try and understand her. Being constantly abandoned, having no good relations with her mother, and lack of moral discipline, the emotional rape as an 11-year-old, and her arrest at the age of 14 for prostitution could well have contributed to the reduced sense of self those close to her spoke of. Holiday’s life featured dramatic highs and lows, including a year-long prison sentence in West Virginia. After her release, she could not perform in venues serving alcohol. Throughout her vocation, she appeared never to comprehend from her background life. Despite her remarkable talent, she always appeared to throw away what she had gained not once but time and again. In 1959, she collapsed and was hospitalized, only to be arrested in her hospital bed. After being cut off from methadone treatment, Billie Holiday died on July 17, 1959, leaving behind a powerful legacy intertwined with the civil rights movement. Eventually, Billie Holiday was an outstanding artist who achieved so much using her talent to bring attention to racial injustices she had witnessed.
Works Cited:
“The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” Apple Podcasts, 8 Oct. 2020, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-united-states-vs-billie-holiday/id1451109634?i=1000493988024.
3. And finally, the push back against Eastern European immigration leads to a new wave of nativism and the rise of the Eugenics movement. Explain the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell.
Between 1900 and the late 1920s, America had a strong eugenics movement. Supporters believed improving society meant removing genes linked to low intelligence, crime, and anti-social behavior. Starting in Connecticut in 1896, states began requiring medical exams before issuing marriage licenses to prevent unfit people from having children. Indiana passed the first law for compulsory sterilization in 1907, although other states had previously tried and failed to do so. Many supporters saw eugenics as a progressive reform, connecting it to the broader Progressive movement, which valued the good of society and relied on science and rationality. However, eugenics had its critics. Some governors refused to support eugenics laws, and not every state passed them. Courts often found forced sterilization laws unconstitutional because they were cruel or denied equal treatment. Many conservative Protestants and Catholics opposed eugenics. Despite facing opposition, eugenic sterilization persisted, partly due to Buck v. Bell's case, and the Court considered that the sterilization of Carrie Buck was constitutional. Supporters wanted the Supreme Court to approve sterilization across the country, overruling state courts that had stopped it.
Buck’s guardian, chosen by those wanting to sterilize her, took her case to Virginia’s courts and eventually to the Supreme Court, which agreed with the lower court that there were no grounds to stop the sterilization. Eight of nine justices, led by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, decided that the U.S. Constitution allowed Virginia to sterilize Buck. Even after the popularity of eugenics faded, sterilization remained legal. Eventually, 31 states had sterilization programs, often using language from the Virginia law approved by the Supreme Court to pass legal scrutiny. Sterilizations continued and did not stop until the 1960s. In North Carolina, the sterilization program lasted until 1977. California, a leading Progressive state, sterilized around 20,000 people, making up about a third of the nearly 70,000 people sterilized in the United States.
"So when we think about the fact that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, we are often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans. That is true, but to some extent, Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the U.S. Congress believed that as well." (“The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations.”) This statement hints at the dark outcomes of the Holocaust and reminds us that Hitler cited America’s eugenics movement and laws as inspiration.
Works Cited:
“The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations.” NPR, NPR HEARD ON FRESH AIR, 7 Mar. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations.
Sunday, January 26, 2025, 8:46 AM
Number of replies: 1
Please respond to all prompts, providing specific examples from the readings/viewings. Make sure to cite to your sources and elaborate! Explain your reasoning.
1. How do you define the 1920s? What characteristics are most important in defining this decade?
After the Great War, The United States was considered the most powerful nation in the world; American life changed dramatically in that period. In the 1920s (called the "Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age"), the growing economy in the United States created an era of mass consumerism in various spheres and branches of society described as prosperous, decadent, and modern, capturing the economic boom, consumerism, and cultural changes of the era. The celebration of new technologies, jazz, secular values, the first trans-Atlantic phone call, the radio, the first movie with sound, the first enclosed car at affordable prices, the discovery of penicillin, and radium, the radioactive component used in medical therapies, evolved very difficult to obtain enough for studies, all these and more others were just the beginning of inventions. With a booming, unregulated stock market, working-class residents getting in on the action of technological invention, and high employment, there was more disposable income than ever.
The building and construction of automobile industries are supported by the nation's principal physical science research laboratory. Many modifications in regional building and plumbing: codes and zoning regulations published a popular handbook for prospective home buyers; automobile research focused on fuel economy and safety. It began developing techniques to test the fire persistence of building structures; this work led to test procedures that became universal worldwide.
Women joined in the party like they had never done when alcohol was legal. This was also the decade women had won the right to vote. Some of these fully emancipated women took well-paying jobs, bobbed their hair, adopted daring new fashions, did high-energy dances, drank, smoked, fast-tempo jazz music was the rage, used birth control, and celebrated their liberated, independent lives in style.
Americans began their long-distance auto excursions, and Yellowstone National Park became a popular destination. Affluent families sent their children to Europe to broaden their experience. Aspiring literary figures also went to Europe and made Paris their headquarters. The black American artists and writers contributed to the complete emancipation of their race and the artistic enrichment of all Americans. The Roaring Twenties saw rapid growth in cities, increased consumer culture, and increased mass entertainment. By the mid-1920s, many people enjoyed prosperity, leading to the time known as the "Golden Twenties." This exciting period of change, freedom, and confidence came to an end with the stock market crash in October 1929, which marked the start of the Great Depression and brought years of economic struggle worldwide.
Works Cited:
“The Roaring Twenties Explained in 11 Minutes.” , Captivating History, 16 Mar. 2021.
2. Last week, we were introduced to the Prohibition Era. In the podcast, Billie Holiday v. the United States, connections are made between that era and the modern War on Drugs. How did the end of Prohibition lead to Billie Holiday becoming a target of the federal government?
When Prohibition ended (the nationwide ban on the deal and import of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933), it led directly to the rise of organized crime. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency created to pursue crimes related to the possession, distribution, and trafficking of listed narcotics. The federal government pursued Billie Holiday for nearly two decades due to her performance of “Strange Fruit,” a song written by Abel Meeropol. Meeropol noted that Holiday’s interpretation captured the song's bitterness and shocking quality. Despite confronting harassment from the FBI, losing her cabaret license, and being charged with drugs, Holiday continued to sing the song, risking her career and freedom, involved in the civil rights movement. Holiday's struggles with addiction and her turbulent romantic relationships made her a target. Billie’s traumatic childhood is a place to try and understand her. Being constantly abandoned, having no good relations with her mother, and lack of moral discipline, the emotional rape as an 11-year-old, and her arrest at the age of 14 for prostitution could well have contributed to the reduced sense of self those close to her spoke of. Holiday’s life featured dramatic highs and lows, including a year-long prison sentence in West Virginia. After her release, she could not perform in venues serving alcohol. Throughout her vocation, she appeared never to comprehend from her background life. Despite her remarkable talent, she always appeared to throw away what she had gained not once but time and again. In 1959, she collapsed and was hospitalized, only to be arrested in her hospital bed. After being cut off from methadone treatment, Billie Holiday died on July 17, 1959, leaving behind a powerful legacy intertwined with the civil rights movement. Eventually, Billie Holiday was an outstanding artist who achieved so much using her talent to bring attention to racial injustices she had witnessed.
Works Cited:
“The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” Apple Podcasts, 8 Oct. 2020, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-united-states-vs-billie-holiday/id1451109634?i=1000493988024.
3. And finally, the push back against Eastern European immigration leads to a new wave of nativism and the rise of the Eugenics movement. Explain the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell.
Between 1900 and the late 1920s, America had a strong eugenics movement. Supporters believed improving society meant removing genes linked to low intelligence, crime, and anti-social behavior. Starting in Connecticut in 1896, states began requiring medical exams before issuing marriage licenses to prevent unfit people from having children. Indiana passed the first law for compulsory sterilization in 1907, although other states had previously tried and failed to do so. Many supporters saw eugenics as a progressive reform, connecting it to the broader Progressive movement, which valued the good of society and relied on science and rationality. However, eugenics had its critics. Some governors refused to support eugenics laws, and not every state passed them. Courts often found forced sterilization laws unconstitutional because they were cruel or denied equal treatment. Many conservative Protestants and Catholics opposed eugenics. Despite facing opposition, eugenic sterilization persisted, partly due to Buck v. Bell's case, and the Court considered that the sterilization of Carrie Buck was constitutional. Supporters wanted the Supreme Court to approve sterilization across the country, overruling state courts that had stopped it.
Buck’s guardian, chosen by those wanting to sterilize her, took her case to Virginia’s courts and eventually to the Supreme Court, which agreed with the lower court that there were no grounds to stop the sterilization. Eight of nine justices, led by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, decided that the U.S. Constitution allowed Virginia to sterilize Buck. Even after the popularity of eugenics faded, sterilization remained legal. Eventually, 31 states had sterilization programs, often using language from the Virginia law approved by the Supreme Court to pass legal scrutiny. Sterilizations continued and did not stop until the 1960s. In North Carolina, the sterilization program lasted until 1977. California, a leading Progressive state, sterilized around 20,000 people, making up about a third of the nearly 70,000 people sterilized in the United States.
"So when we think about the fact that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, we are often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans. That is true, but to some extent, Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the U.S. Congress believed that as well." (“The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations.”) This statement hints at the dark outcomes of the Holocaust and reminds us that Hitler cited America’s eugenics movement and laws as inspiration.
Works Cited:
“The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations.” NPR, NPR HEARD ON FRESH AIR, 7 Mar. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations.