Lesson Plans

Out of Many: A History of the American People ©2000

by Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, and Armitage

Focus Lesson 20

Chapter 23: "The Twenties, 1920–1929"

AP* Course Description

• The New Era: The 1920s
  • Republican governments
    • Business creed
    • Harding scandals
  • Economic development
    • Prosperity and wealth
    • Farm and labor problems
  • New culture
    • Consumerism: automobile, radio, movies
    • Women, the family
    • Modern religion
    • Literature of alienation
    • Jazz age
    • Harlem Renaissance
  • Conflict of cultures
    • Prohibition, bootlegging
    • Nativism
    • Ku Klux Klan
    • Religious fundamentalism versus modernists
  • Myth of isolation
    • Replacing the League of Nations
    • Business and diplomacy

Key Components

• Instructor's Manual: pp. 128–133
• Study Guide, Vol. II: pp. 61–69
• Documents Set, Vol. II: pp. 324–340
• Test Item File: pp. 210–219

Key Web Sites

• Jazz Online
• Black History
• Major League Baseball Statistics
• The Crash of 1929

Key Words and Terms

Suggested Pacing

Test Strategy

Key Concepts

• The prosperity of the 1920s
  Through class discussion, assist students in understanding how unevenly distributed the prosperity of the United States was in the 1920s. Discuss the life of average farmers, women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans. Continue the dialogue by making the connection between Marcus Garvey's philosophy and those of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois.
  
  
• Roots of World War II
  The peace treaty that ended World War I contained the root causes of World War II. Some of those causes related to the division of territory, but perhaps the most important was the growing worldwide depression. One of the measures that hit Germany hardest was the demand that it pay the Allies reparations, which led to highly inflated currency worth little.
  
  
• Global economy
  The United States began the decade as the world's creditor nation. While European nations were able to borrow money, they could buy U.S.-made goods, but once the United States began to demand repayment of war loans, the market for U.S. goods began to dry up. The internal market for goods also began to decline because there was a finite number of consumers who could afford to buy goods—even on credit. Business expansion had been fueled by stock prices, and once businesses stopped expanding, prices began to fall. The United States joined the depression that had already hit Europe in the early part of the 1920s.
  
  

Summing Up Student Understanding

1. To connect history and literature, design a cross-curricular unit with the Language Arts/English Department. Together, plan a unit in which students will read an example of literature from the 1920s, such as The Great Gatsby, in English class and in your class will learn about the society that created the environment that spawned Jay Gatsby. Larger themes to include in the unit would be how writers like Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway represent the era. Include African American writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and have students do research on the Harlem Renaissance and its contributions to literature.
   
   
2. Reinforce the significance of events in the 1920s by having students write a timed essay. Possible essay topics are listed on p. 218 of the Instructor's Manual. Remind students that in answering a question about the significance of an event or person, they should discuss how the person or event influenced other people or events.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• American Issues: Vol. II Since 1865, edited by Unger and Tomes—Chapter 8
• The Power of Words: Vol. II From 1865, edited by Breen—Chapter 7
• Constructing the American Past, Vol. II, edited by Gorn, Roberts, and Bilhartz—Chapter 8
• American Experiences: Volume II From 1877, edited by Roberts and Olson (secondary source readings)—Part Four