Given the changing nature of the Internet, you may wish to preview these sites. Always check for updated links to U.S. history sites.

Allow two class periods on a 45-minute traditional bell schedule or one session on a 90-minute block schedule.

By the beginning of the fall semester, the College Board Web site lists the time period for that year's DBQ. Always refer students to the graphs, charts, and maps in the textbook. Be sure students understand that they should be looking for the significance of any documents they read or of the information presented on graphs, charts, and maps. The significance means the change involved.

A major theme of the chapter is the uneven distribution of wealth in the United States during the 1920s. It is important that students understand that the lives of average farmers, African Americans, and Mexican Americans were not touched by the prosperity of the decade. Students should also make the connection between Marcus Garvey's philosophy and those of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Students should also be aware of the international underpinnings of the nation's prosperity. 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. After 1929, the United States joined the depression that had already hit Europe in the early part of the 1920s.

To connect history and literature, design a cross-curricular unit with the Language Arts/English Department in your school. 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 research the Harlem Renaissance and its contributions to literature.

You might also find these additional readings useful in developing students' background knowledge or for DBQ activities: