1920S
The decade was called the "Roaring '20s." Hollywood movies and television make it look like one big dance party with a few gangsters thrown in for dramatic purposes. Historians, journalists, and novelists are fascinated with the 1920s as the beginning of modern America—a decade that helped set the tone for the rest of the century. But the twenties also saw the Scopes trial, a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, new restrictions on immigration, and ongoing rural poverty. The 1920s saw people began to experiment and traveled to new boundaries. In fact, the 1920s may have been the decade of the greatest social change in American history. “The Age of Experimentation” is a great way to describe the roaring 1920s.
Woman stood at the center of much of the social change of the early 1920s. Many women had been in the workforce for some time, achieving higher positions and better pay during the war. Muller versus Oregon brought about key issues in women in the workplace. The Supreme Court declared, “history discloses women depend on men” (Spirit Ch. 34 D3). In a preceding case, Adkins versus Children’s Hospital, women were declared to equal to men in the work force—“woman employer contracting with a woman employee as it does when it is a man” (Spirit Ch. 34 D4). In 1920, women also gained the right to vote. For many women, these changes made them less ready to fit into the retiring social mode previously allowed to them. All women began to explore their sexuality as men did. Margaret Sanger was a feminist that strove for female equality in the male dominant society. She said, “The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against her sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is free motherhood.” (Spirit Ch. 34 D1) Sanger was referring to the development of birth control—a new way for women to take control of their body and prevent unwanted pregnancies. Now it became apparent that men were not the only ones who...
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