The Roaring Twenties: Societal Changes and Cultural Shifts

They were sustainable because of the continuous floods of immigrants. As it stopped, working conditions had to be improved.

There were jobs available for black people as a consequence of the huge demand for American products.

There was a movement of black people from the South to the North which received the name of Great Internal Migration and it had a sociological, demographic and cultural effect. They went to industrial centres such as Chicago, New York etc. They took their music with them.

The Roaring Twenties (Jazz Age)

The music of the period is the consequence of the Great Internal Migration.

People were tired from war and wanting to enjoy life. It was a period of music.

It had some negative aspects:

• Red Scare: the Soviet Revolution made American industrialists feel nervous because they had fears for anarchism. Later that fear would change into fear for communism when the Red Scare took place conducted by Senator Palmer,

who prosecuted those who were suspected to be communists.

• Rise of the Ku Klux Klan related to the political and moral conservativism. The twenties brought one aspect of conservativism: Nativism. Americans were concerned about immigrants bringing wrong practises or ideas to the country. They grew anxious about immigrants changing the country. Political candidates would mention being 100% Americans.

Great International Migration

On the one hand, in the South there were vacancies, farmers needed people to work cheap. It was difficult for the elites to find those workers and people blamed the black people who emigrated from the South.

On the other hand, in the North black people were competing again whites who had been to war and working conditions were not as good as they used to be (hence, there was even more resentment against black people).

By 1929 the Ku Klux Klan had several million members. It was stronger in the South but it affected the whole country. Lynching became an ordinary practise in the South and it wasn't prosecuted by the Southern states. Their targets were:

• Black people.
• Hispanic (particularly in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico).
• Jewish and Catholic people.

Following the aftermath of the World War I the Spanish flu arrived carried by the soldiers.

All those things favoured a new spirit in the country: ideal of normally (ordinary, back to normal). They wanted a period without war, revolutions or riots and that contributed to political conservatism. Society was being transformed by black people, people were traumatised by the war, new women etc. but they tried to keep the same.