12 Pre-Code Movies That Prove Hollywood Was Always Obsessed With Crime, Violence, and Sex
The K.K.K. in Vermont, 1924 — Vermont Historical Society
Grab the picture from this site and ask students where they think it was most likely taken? This shows how the overarching general narrative we teach (The Klan rose to prominence in the 1920s) has within it many important and local details and implications
Immigration Act of 1924 Legacy | C-SPAN Classroom
Tulsa Race Riot, A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921,
Official report on the 1921 Tulsa Riot
Annual report of the New England Watch and Ward Society : New England Watch and Ward Society : Internet Archive
Plenty of material for the side that argues that the 1902s were more repressive and expansive, more boring than roaring. This can also be used for a "free-range" lesson in which students search words like"sex' to see how it is discussed
Glamourdaze - YouTube Channel - Vintage Fashion and Instructional Films
Fascinating collection of fashion films and dating instructional films from the 1930s, 40s and 50s
Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926) | The American Yawp Reader
<hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"> </hypothesis-highlight><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content">The races and stocks of men are as distinct as breeds of animals, </hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content">and every boy knows that if one tries to train a bulldog to herd sheep, he has in the end neither a good bulldog nor a good collie</hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content"><hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content">.</hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight></hypothesis-highlight>
The second word in the Klansman’s trilogy is “white.” <hypothesis-highlight class="hypothesis-highlight other-content">The white race must be supreme, not only in America but in the world.</hypothesis-highlight>
1920 Census - Color or Race, Nativity, or Parentage
This 87 page report on racial classifications published by the US Census provides considerable support for the conception of race as a social construct. Anyone having difficulty proving this to someone can show them the way in which the US Census discussed the way in which the count of people as "Negro" (in the language of the time) or "white" depended, to some extent, on the census worker - whether they were white or not
Racial Integrity Laws (1924–1930) - Encyclopedia Virginia
Detailed article replete with primary source documents
Virginia Health Bulletin: The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity, March 1924 · Document Bank of Virginia
Telling students of the existence of this law is important, having them read excerpts of it tells much more about the thinking of some Americans in the 1920s
Only Yesterday : Frederik Lewis Allen :
This chapter is easily cut into different sections, each describing the effect of one force of social change on manners and morals in the 1920s. This material is well-suited to a reading lesson in which students in groups each take one section and dissect it, then jigsaw to meet with other students to compare and contrast the forces they read about
True Story Magazine, July 1922 :
Primary source of popular culture that would sell 1.5 million copies by 1925. Flipping through the stories and advertisements gives a snapshot of life in the 20s - perfect for a free range primary source lesson
Warren G. Harding: Family Life | Miller Center
Just a few short sentences in a presidential biography that would shock both teachers and students and prove the assertion that the past is not only stranger than you think, it is stranger than you can think. Note that Harding saw Nan Britton in the oval office
His affair with Carrie Phillips, wife of his longtime friend James Phillips, ran for more than fifteen years, beginning in Marion, Ohio in 1905. At one point, Phillips, a tall attractive woman ten years younger than Harding, had tried to blackmail him into voting against a declaration of war on Germany. As a German sympathizer who had lived in Berlin off and on, she had fallen under the surveillance of the U.S. Secret Service. In 1920, the Republican National Committee bribed Mr. and Mrs. Phillips with a free, slow trip to Japan, $20,000 in cash, and the promise of monthly payments to keep them quiet. She lived until 1960.
About this Collection | Warren G. Harding-Carrie Fulton Phillips Correspondence | Digital Collections | Library of Congress
This correspondence (240 items; 1910-1924) consists primarily of letters written by President Harding (1865-1923), before and during his tenure as a U.S. senator, to his paramour Carrie Fulton Phillips (1873-1960), wife of a Marion, Ohio, store owner. Also included are drafts and notes for correspondence written by Phillips during her approximately fifteen-year relationship with Harding, as well as a handful of other related items.
This collection had been closed for fifty years as a result of court
orders, settlement papers, and gift agreement. When the restriction expired on July 29, 2014, the
Library digitized the originals and released the entire contents of the collection online
Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Urgent National Problems | The American Presidency Project
April of 1921, President Harding asks for federal anti-lynching law
Somewhat related to the foregoing human problems is the race question. Congress ought to wipe the stain of barbaric lynching from the banners of a free and orderly, representative democracy.
One proposal is the creation of a commission embracing representatives of both races, to study and report on the entire subject. The proposal has real merit. I am convinced that in mutual tolerance, understanding, charity, recognition of the interdependence of the races, and the maintenance of the rights of citizenship lies the road to righteous adjustment.
Congressional Debates - Johnson Reed Immigration Act of 1924
Hundreds of pages make this source unusable in the classroom. "Ctrl-F" make it accessible - search "moron", search "crime" - pick any section and skim through the text until you find something that catches your attention. Much of the language in these debates of 1924 sound very familiar to 21st century readers
On the Music of the Gross – Seventeen Moments in Soviet History
This is just the sort of primary document never found in published educational resources but excellent for instruction. This Soviet view of Jazz Music (last third of article) is readable to high school students. This could play a role in World History or as well as US History of the 1920s
This is music for the fat men. In all the luxuriant cabarets of the “cultured” countries, fat men and women are lewdly wriggling their thighs to its rhythm, wallowing in obscenity, simulating the procreative act.
Jazz Music Primary Sources - Newspaper articles detailing threat to society
The cultural influence of Jazz, was frowned upon by some Americans. Jazz was blamed for unruly youths, promiscuity, crime, divorce, murder and suicide. The concern was generally racially motived.
glamourdaze - Vintage US film from 20th century
Vintage Fashion Film Archive from Glamourdaze.com. For education and preservation of women's culture and fashion in the 20th century.
A Day at Palm Beach Florida - c.1920 | AI Enhanced Film [60 fps] - YouTube
Just a minute of film, cleaned, colorized and upscaled to current quality, though from 1920. Worthwhile "do now" material or just something to have on the screen as students come in the room. Lots of conversations could start from just a minute of film
What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History | History | Smithsonian Magazine
The largest civil; insurrection since the Civil War (maybe?) and it is not covered in the US History survey course. Well, it is labor history - - which is ignored in the standard survey course
Letter from Mrs. Hillyer concerning her husband's drinking activities.
Although teachers have a lot of materials on prohibition, maybe just one document can open everyone's eyes to an aspect of alcohol regulation that doesn't appear in the slidedeck. . In this letter, a wife is asking law enforcement to help her stop her husband spending money on whisky
The Seattle General Strike and the "Great Red Scare" | AHA
This is a college professor's description of a lesson in which he uses primary source documents directly related to the Seattle General Strike of 1919 as well as articles from Mitchel Palmer and Jane Addams. This might provide a high school teacher with enough to come up with their own version of the lesson. But it also provides and example of a lesson that does not provide specific answers, it is more open-ended. In that way, it is more like the discipline of history rather than the teaching of history
Vintage Motivational Posters From the 20s and 30s | The Art of Manliness
It's all to easy to assume that popular concepts of manhood haven't changed over time - haven't Americans always been a "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps people? This short article explores how concepts of manhood have changed and is replete with motivational posters of the 20s and 30s that show how self-improvement and hard work were being advertised
Keeping Tabs [2016] | BackStory with the American History Guys
Several 10 to 15 minute podcast segments with an historian talking about the way in which slave records, and blood was used to enforce segregation in Virginia in the 1920s. Check out One Data Point, One Drop
Edward Bernays 3: The Legacy - YouTube
Dancing with a legend: Edward Bernays, the 'father of public relations' - News - Melrose Free Press - Melrose, MA
t Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, kept a copy of his 1923 groundbreaking book, <em>“Crystallizing Public Opinion,”</em> on his desk.
He recruited a willing editor from <em>House & Garden</em> magazine to create menus suggesting cigarettes instead of dessert, and persuaded dance instructor Arthur Murray to say that women should smoke rather than overeat and embarrass themselves on the dance floor.
Years later, when research linking smoking to cancer was finally revealed, Bernays turned around and worked to have cigarette commercials banned from television. In 1972, Bernays told the <em>Boston Globe</em> that when he’d work for American Tobacco, “no one had yet discovered that cigarettes caused cancer.
werful their profession could be in shaping America’s economic, political, and cultural life. At work, he thought bigger and bolder than anyone had before.”
PR! A Social History Of Spin -Chapter 1
In October of 1929, Bernays also originated the now familiar
"global media event," when he dreamed up "Light's Golden Jubilee," a worldwide celebratory
spectacle commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the electric light bulb,
sponsored-behind-the-scenes-by the General Electric Corporation.
Eddie
Bernays
Public
relations was about fashioning and projecting credible renditions of reality itself.
twentieth century preoccupation: the systematic molding of public opinion.
Repeatedly, he maintained that, while most people respond to their world
instinctively, without thought, there exist an "intelligent few" who have been charged with
the responsibility of contemplating and influencing the tide of history.
"just interrupt...the continuity of life in some way to
bring about the [media] response.
The Original Influencer | History Today
Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of “Freedom”’, read the front page of the <em>New York Times</em> on April 1st, 1929. It was no April Fools’ joke; rather, this spectacle of liberated, smoking women was one of Bernays’ most celebrated publicity stunts.
To get young feminists to light up cigarettes – torches of freedom – in public as an act of emancipation during New York’s Easter Parade. This, he believed, would make its way into the nation’s newspapers.
Bernays’ secretary
She had to pass herself off as a women’s rights advocate and drum up comrades-in-arms for the ‘feminist torches of freedom campaign’; no inference to American Tobacco was to be permitted.
In the interests of equality of the sexes and to fight another sex taboo I and other young women will light another torch of freedom by smoking cigarettes while strolling on Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday.’ These were the first lines of the telegram – signed by Bertha Hunt – which was sent to selected American debutantes.
When a reporter from the <em>New York World</em> approached Hunt to ask how she had arrived at the idea of a women’s smoking march, she answered that ‘she first got the idea for this campaign when a man with her in the street asked her to extinguish her cigaret [sic] as it embarrassed him. “I talked it over with my friends, and we decided it was high time something was done about the situation”.’
processed the findings of the blossoming psychological disciplines by coming up with new methods of manipulating the public.
Larry Tye described thus: ‘He generated events, the events generated news, and the news generated a demand for whatever he happened to be selling.’
He himself labelled it as the ‘creation of circumstances’, the staging of apparently spontaneous events to influence people’s behaviour, according to the wishes of the clients.
(employing a third, opinion-leading party as the mouthpiece for the client’s interests) using a PR tactic which at that time was novel but has since become common. He began to field ‘front groups’, that is, seemingly independent organisations which profess to support concerns of the common good: the Committee for the Study and Promotion of the Sanitary Dispensing of Foods and Drink; the Radio Institute of the Audible Arts; the Temperature Research Foundation; the Middle America Information Bureau – all seemingly innocuous associations that were, in reality, set up by Bernays solely for PR purposes.
‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the <em>Harvard Business Review</em>. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’
‘If this [propaganda] can be used for war, it can be used for peace.’
He was considered vain, obtrusive and arrogant. It was said that he referred to his secretaries as ‘Little Miss Nitwits’ and that the word ‘failure’ was missing from his vocabulary (despite numerous setbacks
965 autobiography: ‘This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.’ Bernays frequently produced campaigns for charities free of charge, for example, that of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Bernays’ first piece of advice to Sylvia Lawry, the then chairperson was that: ‘The name Multiple Sclerosis is too difficult for the public. Shorten it to the initials MS.’ It was a recommendation the wisdom of which remains true to this day.
manufacturing of public approval
<p>In October 1990 on Capitol Hill, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named ‘Nayirah’ stated in a public hearing of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that, while volunteering in a Kuwaiti hospital, she saw Iraqi soldiers take babies out of their incubators, leaving them ‘on the cold floor to die’. More than 700 TV stations broadcast the appearance of ‘Nurse Nayirah’, which shocked the US public and finally convinced it to take military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.</p>
<p>Three months later Operation Desert Storm began. There was only one problem: the incubator story was not true and the 15-year-old ‘nurse’ turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. This, however, did not come out until after the war was over when, in January 1992, it became known that the New York PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, was behind the story. Hill and Knowlton’s client was the front group Citizens for a Free Kuwait, an organisation funded by the Kuwaiti government in exile. It wanted to convince the US public to strike against Iraq and did so. This was what was meant by the ‘engineering of consent’. </p>
The essence of reality itself had begun to alter: what is an authentic event and what is merely an apparently authentic one? What is information and what is manipulation disguised as information?
‘If anything, the 21st century has witnessed the encroachment of Bernays’ ideas into every crevice of our lives’, concludes the historian Stuart Ewen in his introduction to Bernays’ classic text <em>Crystallizing Public Opinion</em>.
Crystallizing Public Opinion by Edward Bernays (1923)
In this book, Bernays describes a new industry, possible with the knowledge and technology of the 1920s, public relations.