This unit will encompass two to three weeks of lessons; including activities listed in Part II. There will also be a major analytical question included in a Document Based Test. The question will relate to the title of the unit. In this Narrative Section, I shall enumerate the objectives and the strategies, which I will use. In this section, it will also become evident why I chose this title.

Although my own historical time was not in the decade of the 1920’s, my parents and my close relatives who had fled Soviet Russia were then in the United States. They remained poor immigrants who envisaged America as the Golden Medina (the Rich State). Their political and social activities in the 1920’s were related to their poverty and were due in part to the reaction of the established Americans to their non-assimilation. In the decade of the 1930’s, they were even revolutionary in terms of their attitudes, and at times even their deeds. There is no doubt that the historical socio-economic situation, actions, and attitudes of the middle and upper classes in the America of the 1920’s had effects on their economic and social positions in the 1930’s. These variables also created the reality for my parents and relatives to whom I became close. A number of decades later, many of those close relatives and my in-laws would feel the effects of the McCarthy period. The victims of the 1950’s were denounced as Communists and rounded up because they associated with actors and writers in the same way that the victims of the 1920’s who associated with politically radical groups were arrested and deported back to the Soviet Union. It was the government’s way of continuing the witch-hunt and anti-immigrant policies of their predecessors in the 1920’s.

My curriculum narrative is intended to inspire interest in the 1920’s and set the stage for the study of the 1930’s, 1940’s, and the 1950’s in my four United States History C.A.S. (Center For Advanced Studies) classes. The major topics will include the American "Red Scare" reaction to the Leninist Revolution in Russia in 1917, the continuing emancipation of the American woman; the revolt of youth against the Victorian mentality and culture of their parents; the cigarette smoking and excessive drinking of the young rebels, aided and abetted by the gangsterism of the anti-Prohibition mobsters; and the secular revolution of individuals such as Clarence Darrow. These were in juxtaposition to the fundamentalism of the Christian Endeavor Society, the South Church of Christ, and individuals such as William Jennings Bryan who had a major role in the Scopes Trial. There will be a review of the accomplishments of the Women’s Trade Union Movement led by such lights as Rose Schneiderman, and the I.W.W (the Wobblies), led by Bill Haywood whose offices were attacked during the Palmer Raids. It will also include the political rise of the socialists and anarchists in the early 1900’s. These left wing labor movements, and even the Progressives such as Mencken, Ida Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair, created fear in the minds of the conservative population and government officials of the 1920’s.

Although Debs ran for President in 1920, albeit from jail, and La Follette ran in 1924 against Coolidge and a conservative Democrat John Davis, there were few changes created by legislation or the justice system which can be attributed to progressive politicians’ fulfilling the party platform or long-range goals of their movement. During World War I, for instance, the I.W.W. had attempted to sabotage military installations in America, and in 1919, their offices were attacked and a member who had been jailed was lynched. This occurred in Centralia Washington. Strikes by the Boston police, steel workers, and miners were categorized as part of the "Red Menace" and led to Attorney General Palmer using the Labor Department’s right to deport dangerous foreigners, sending Russians on the "Soviet Ark" back to the Soviet Union, after he had executed his famous Palmer Raids. (He rounded up over 4,000 foreigners.)

We will also delve into the change in materialism, manifested by the advertising explosion, and the culture of the times as manifested by the literature, music, and the arts of the Harlem Renaissance, amongst other "revolutions." Much of the attitudes, which were expressed in African-American literature, were the result of the frustration of blacks in World War I and the continuing discrimination against blacks from 1917-1925, the years of the Twentieth Century during which the Klan reached its peak. It will become evident that the Boom of the 1920’s became a bust, and that there was a "Lost Generation," a generation lacking values and the struggles by which to develop strength of character. The large number of deaths in Europe in World War I had psychologically devastated that generation. The search for a new set of values both in America and in Europe began, but it was confronted by an outcome from World War I, which spiritually weakened and created a politically impotent people. In America this was especially true after the Red Scare of the early 1920’s.

In that respect, the period of World War I and the 1920’s parallels the 1940’s and the 1950’s. The flight to the suburbs and the advertising blitz through the television tube had similar effects after the Holocaust and the deadening roars of World War II. The second Red Scare, which was created by our own movies, and McCarthyism created fear in the minds of the bravest of liberals and leftists. It was not unusual for creative artists to name their colleagues when they appeared in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in the 1950’s the W.L.F.I.P. (Women’s League For International Peace) feared to speak out because women within their own group might turn against them. The Front with Woody Allen and Zero Mostel depicts that ideological trap. It is an excellent film to show students as an example of the fragile filmmaking industry in the 1950’s. Although there is the claim that the Harlem Renaissance was the seed for the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1950’s, the historical truth is that black advances were stymied not only by the Klan, but also by the Presidents and Congress until at least the freedom rides and sit-ins of the 1960’s and such moral high ground-taking speeches as that of John F. Kennedy in 1963 after the Birmingham debacle.

We will also learn that once the relatively small number of stockholders bought available housing and durable consumer goods, sales began to dip because the incomes of factory workers and farmers did not rise. Of course, we will have to examine the reactions of nativists, as expressed by the Sedition Act of World War I, the Espionage Act, and the Schenk vs. the U.S.A. decision, which set the "clear and present danger" definition. Finally, the quotas of 1921 and 1924, which were strongly biased against Italians, Poles, and Russian Jews, can claim a high position on the ladder of "The Reaction". The first one stated that immigrants could enter America based on three percent of the population in this country as of 1910, and the second one allowed immigrants to enter based on two percent from a particular country’s existing population in the U.S.A. as of 1890. The greatest numbers of the New Immigration came from Eastern and Southern Europe between 1890 and 1920.

After the initial investigation in 1911 of the Shirt Waist Factory fire, the lieutenants of Tammany Hall set up their own investigation, and thus arose the political careers of Al Smith and Joseph Wagner Sr. Eugene Debs, jailed for speaking out against the draft of 1917, captured almost one million votes in 1920. Such progressive, anti-war, and strike-oriented attitudes before 1920 certainly helped create the rebellion of the Italian Catholics, Jewish and Irish working classes, and middle class ideologues of the 1920’s. After World War I, they were the Battling Generation. Fighting Bob (La Follette) had led the Political Progressives in the decade before Wilson became President, but Debs, Darrow, Schneiderman, and Sacco and Vanzetti were the shining stars of the 1920’s.

In most respects, however, the activities of the Progressives were curtailed in the 1920’s. For instance, conservatives were placed on the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the investigative committees of the Sherman Anti-Trust Division. Eventually, a catastrophe would have to occur in order to stimulate the society to swing back toward the reforms of the years of the Progressives. The Depression of the 1930’s provided it, and the momentous activities of the New Deal necessarily created the changes so that America could survive as a democracy, not under the heels of a fascist dictatorship.

There will be parallels drawn to the 1950’s, when we discuss such topics as the Red Scare and the Lost Generation. Most of our students who studied Civics already know about McCarthyism and the so-called Beat Generation of Jack Kerouac. However, the focus of our discussions will revolve around whether the 1920’s were a decade of rebellion and revolution, not just political reaction. We will study the major themes and events which I have listed in the first two paragraphs, analyzing the extent to which they coincide with one or more of the "Three R’s:" The Soviet Ark (the Buford), the Palmer raids, the lynching and burning of black people following World War I, the Scopes Trial, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the reactions of Dr. Clarke, the Christian Endeavor Society, The South Church of Christ, and the Baptists’ fundamentalism, as well as the Volstead Act which followed on the heels of Prohibition.

All of the above will illuminate for us the repressions and reaction of the 1920’s. Even Jesus Christ was considered the best executive by the ingenious advertiser Barton who led the way to mass consumption of a rebellious society. In some ways, it was like our own Calvinist Corporate Consumerism fighting the anarchist anti-World Free Trade Convention youth movement. This is the type of analogy my students will understand.

During the early 1920’s, Warren G. Harding was President. In a speech in 1921 (See the Activity Section, Appendix IV), he connected freedom and nationalism. In one sentence of that radio address, he actually proclaimed, "American freedom would affect the liberation of all mankind." He then expressed the disclaimer that we were a fascist state by saying that our Republic never endangered civilization. Many people in the Soviet Army in the Archangel area (an eastern city in Siberia) felt the force of the American troops who fought the "Reds" and held back the potential Japanese invasion there during the Post-World War I period. In U.S.A. vs. Abrams in 1919, an I.W.W. worker‘s conviction was upheld because he protested our troops being in Archangel. He then called for a General Strike. Some Eastern European political refugees who had hoped to reach our shores after 1921 would also disagree with Harding’s evaluation.

It is no wonder that paradoxically the 1920’s were the epitome of Eastern and Southern immigrant disillusionment with American liberty. The quotas were set against Eastern and Southern Europeans, amongst who were Russian Jews and Italian Catholics readily considered "Reds" or anarchists.

In the 1930’s, the isolationists also reacted negatively to our being in Archangel in 1919. They did not wish to upset the Stalinist regime nor to send troops to aid the British, as they slowly saw Europe being chewed up by the Nazi war machine. The 1930’s were still part of that Lost Generation’s disengagement from Europe. The idealistic national liberalism of the F.D.R. administration only assisted the American men and women to get bread, not to create a peaceful world, free of the Axis powers.

The so-called immigrants, "green horns", were either threatened with deportation or, even if apolitical, were not accepted without the patriotic cloth of citizenship wrapped tightly around them. They felt a sword over their heads due to anti-Semitism and the old-fashioned anti-Catholic venom, overtly enforced by our government’s willingness to send as many as possible back to Russia or Italy. My grandmother Frank left us with the story of how she was told to learn English quickly or get out. My Bobbe (grandmother) Winerman and my mother Sonya had barely escaped the hated Bolsheviks, moving out of the U.S.S.R. by covered wagon and steam ship to make it to the U.S.A. in 1922. At 16, my mother worked in the neighborhood stores of Squirrel Hill, never having a chance to finish high school. By the 1930’s, my uncle Abe Frank and aunt Anne Frank were pro-Soviet, as was most of that generation of Jewish youth who came of age in the 1920’s. In the 1920’s, six brothers and sisters and my grandmother lived in two bedrooms, and no one knows how they survived after my grandfather died. In the 1930’s, most Jewish youth of their generation had become "either Communists, Socialists, or gornisht" (nothing).

The Progressive Era had left many of the youth with the feeling that Dewey’s permissive and democratic attitudes were the wave of the future. However, Babbit and the description of "petting parties" in Middletown left a bitter taste of the conformism and repression of the solid middle class on the lips of the young rebels. Supposedly, nice girls were smoking cigarettes openly and defiantly even if they were awkward and self-conscious. "They were drinking, somewhat less openly but efficaciously."(Allen,75) It was not until 1920 when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side Of Paradise that the middle and upper class fathers and mothers realized what was afoot. Many people from that particular adult population learned to appreciate jazz in Harlem, while the youth could smoke the semi-forbidden cigarettes as they drove with their dates to the small neighboring town dances. My students will see a W.Q.E.D. film, which depicts this phenomenon. My father-in-law who was a Yiddish actor in the Hill District caroused with left-wing actors in the 1930’s and listened to jazz in Pittsburgh in the famous African-American bar known as Crawford’s.

In the 1920’s, the strength of 39,000 Socialist Party members and the 30,000-60,000 Communist Party members certainly did not create more violence than was created by Prohibition and the actions of the New Klan, which reached its highest membership in the 1920’s. My curriculum will study the weakening of the New Klan after Stephenson of Indiana, while on trial for abuse, revealed how its leaders had bribed government officials. We will also discuss the non-violent and relative weakening of the left wing in the early 1920’s. The reaction of the N.A.A.C.P. and W.E.B. Dubois to the Klan also must be analyzed, since at one point, there were 26 race riots, 60 lynchings, and 14 public burnings of black people from May 1919 to early 1920. These events led Dubois to state, "Where the armed lynchers gather, we must gather arms." (from the video of a WQED program, "A History of W.E.B. Dubois.") My students will view the entire film since it also analyzes the struggle between Dubois and Booker T. Washington and the Back To Africa Movement of Marcus Garvey who led the U.N.I.A. in America until he was deported to Jamaica. One of the activities for this unit will be to write a position paper on Dubois and his early moderate years, climaxed by the change that came about after he saw the brutal treatment of his race during and after World War I. At one point, he must have felt so frustrated when Black Units were honored by the French and dishonored by the racism of the American Army.

In the entertainment world, Al Jolson was a talkie, but in the same decade our culture produced The Birth of a Nation (a racist film which glorified the Klan). I do not blame Cohn in The Sun Also Rises for being wary of anti-Semitism in the 1920’s. Louis Armstrong tried to express a new type of freedom, as did Langston Hughes and other black literary figures and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, but the white Protestant leadership never really accepted nor integrated the black people’s world into its bosom. The black leadership would react to that lack of equality, that Jim Crowism which helped to destroy the Populist Movement in the late 1890’s, as well the general feeling of eternal separation, even after the heroism of Black Regiments at San Juan Hill and in World War I. This was manifested by its desire to return to the African homeland. Dubois himself eventually made his way to revolutionary communism a la the Soviet Union, but he also had been a proponent of the Back to Africa Movement for a short period of time (before his split with Garvey), and he did spend years in Ghana.

By the 1920’s, Russian Jews, mostly middle class intellectuals, were leaving Mother Russia to start up the collectivist societies of the "new man/woman" in communes referred to as kibbutzim. Very few could break through the quotas and reach the Golden Medina. My students will definitely learn about them in terms of the percentages of those quotas for Eastern Europeans and the effect they had on American life in the 1920’s. The reaction to anarchists and socialists of the Abraham Cahan variety (the editor of the Yiddish Socialist Forward newspaper) by the American industrial society will have been integrated into the curriculum in the previous unit on the Progressive Movement, and my students will have seen film clips on the General Strike begun by 16 year olds who spoke Yiddish at the U.N.I.T.E. meetings in 1911.

Of course, in this curriculum the names of Freud and Jung will play a part, since the sexual revolution was met by the Victorian morality of the oppressive decade. Most working class immigrants had no trouble loosening up and did not need Freud to explain to them the terms "inhibitions" and "repression" of sexual urges. During Prohibition, the working class knew that the rich could afford liquor and find it through illegal channels. It was not really prohibited to them. We will read at least two chapters of Only Yesterday on the Revolution in Morals and Manners and the Red Scare by Allen and a chapter on advertising in the 1920’s in Retrieving the American Past, 1920-1970 by Albert Churella in order to understand the issue of the rebellion and consumerism of young people, the middle class housewives, and businessmen of the decade. The theme of revolution was in the air in 1919 and early 1920 before the Palmer Raids. At the same time, there was the peaceful revolt of the working class in cities such as Seattle where in 1919, a General Strike was called; and the army officer who was called in said that he had never seen such a peaceful city being struck by radicals.

In business, Coolidge was on his way to create "the new cult of enterprises." The scandals of Teapot Dome and other paths which business and government took was a return to the government robberies of the Gilded Age. This was certainly another prime set of examples of the Decade of Reaction. After the reforms of Robert La Follette, Hiram Johnson, and Teddy Roosevelt and the government intervention of Woodrow Wilson, the 1920’s were a period of pure reaction. There will be background knowledge on the period just before World War I, interspersed with the 1920’s when the Progressives made little or no headway at all.

The literature of the time will certainly play a major role in this curriculum narrative. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises depicts the disillusioned generation of post World War I America in Europe, and the constant drinking of alcohol in Paris is certainly symbolic of it. The inability to love and live in a creative way also symbolizes the reaction to the stifling nature of mankind’s excessive amount of dying in it. We can read the poems of Sasoon and Rosenberg to feel the disaster in the "flesh." One interpretation of Hemingway’s bullfight scenes in The Sun Also Rises was that this was a form of building new values without an ideology from the ground up. I do believe that some of the Beats of the 1950’s were formulating a new set of values based on socialism. I remember that in 1957 my United States History professor, himself a sponsor of the Young People’s Socialist League, teased me when I came to class wearing a brown leather jacket, "You look like a left-wing beatnik." Yes, we hung out in darkened cafes, and the discussions were not about the next drink, but the next socialist meeting and who was a Stalinist and who read The Militant (the newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party).

I honestly believed then that we represented working class elements, even though we were middle class, and had the cash to travel in our Chevrolets across country, take off from college for a year or two, and survive comfortably in our parents’ homes. I spoke to many History and Far East Political Science majors in those days, most of them older than me. They were not completely lost, nor seeking to build from ground zero; nor were they the "new men/women" of the Israeli utopian socialist world whom I would see and spend time with in a kibbutz in Northern Israel in 1958.

My sense is that they were searching for a new set of values, but not of the idealistic variety. They were very pragmatic, seeking careers as diplomats. (The G.I. Bill of Rights and N.D.E.A. money helped.) The History Department, however, was much farther to the left than my American History teachers at Peabody High School had been; and for me, it was easy to have a smooth transition into the 1960’s and those socialist movements. I also did not find it hard to gravitate toward the Civil Rights Movement and then to the Anti-Vietnam Movement, and finally later to the Chavez Migrant Workers’ Movement and its lettuce boycott.

There are other authors to be studied besides the well-known T.S. Eliot and his The Waste Land. The writings of Dos Passos, Claude McKay, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Richard Hofstadter will find their way into my curriculum. This Side of Paradise will play a role. The Trilogy of Dos Passos could be examined also. I will include The American Political Tradition by Hofstadter, and I will certainly add Only Yesterday by Fredrick Lewis Allen. The latter two books are ones which I have enough copies of for every student. I will also include the political history, The Perils of Prosperity, by Leuchtenburg, since there is a very good chapter on the Red Scare in it; and I hope that one or two students in every class will read books by Mencken or Dewey in order to understand how the Progressive Era’s writers educated the generation of the 1920’s. Dewey, of course, was a menace to the reactionary corporate world of the 1920’s. He was seen as a dangerous brain washer of young men and women.

Finally, many A.P. and C.A.S. teachers are still in the process of deciding whether to compare the decade of the 1920’s to the 1950’s, i.e., the Red Scare II, the Beat Generation’s literature, and McCarthyism in particular to the Red Scare, the Palmer Raids of the 1920’s, and the literature of the Lost Generation. There is a lot more which can be analyzed, such as parallel social and political phenomena during those two decades, but while studying the 1920’s, the comparison will be kept in perspective, since we will later study in depth the 1950’s and its culture, while looking back on the 1920’s. We will have a thorough knowledge of the major themes of that decade. How we interpret the 1920’s will play a major role in our drawing comparisons between the 1950’s and the 1920’s.

My own first curriculum for the Pittsburgh Teacher’s Institute on the 1950’s was very much a personal adventure. To relate my own romantic ideological parallels would create more interest amongst my students. Since we will study the 1950’s in depth in our C.A.S., A.P. curriculum during this semester, I then could motivate my students to make their own comparisons. The 1950’s curriculum has been published by the Pittsburgh Teacher’s Institute, and it is available to me and other teachers who wish to use it as a resource.

Another major class discussion and for which I will provide a handout explaining the factors leading to Recessions and Depressions in America, including a film The Great Depression, revolves around conditions which actually led to the Great Depression. Edwin Fenton of Carnegie Mellon University joined forces with the Pittsburgh Public Schools to help develop a curriculum for teaching Social Studies. In the curriculum, he points out that students should be able to discover the causes of the Great Depression. He includes four of them: G.N.P. fell almost 50% between 1929-1933; in the three year periods of 1920-1923, 1926-1929, and 1929-1933, the earnings of manufacturing workers rose the slowest while the dividends were skyrocketing. Once stockholders did buy the housing and durable goods that were available, the sales would dip, unless the income of workers and farmers rose; and although population grew in the 1920’s, the rate of growth declined after 1924. One more additional factor was that during the years just before 1927, the reduced demands for housing and furnishings contributed to over-production, while at the same time, the factory workers’ wages were rising slowly.

In 1927 and 1928, there was a sharp rise in unemployment and Hooverizing, then defined as not giving relief, since it was preferable to allow the rugged American individualists to pull themselves through after 1930, created the huge increase in unemployment and the Depression itself. There were 4 million unemployed by 1930 and 12 million by 1932. (Bailey, 792)

In short, my narrative contains its theme and its literature; and the activities, which I am developing in order to inspire interest in the decade of the 1920’s, will become part of the overall curriculum. In the Activities Section, the reader will be able to view a number of these activities. These include reports and the teaching of particular topics by small groups of students in the class, as well as a Document-Based test (see Appendix II). The reports will be on the Red Scare, the Scopes Trial, Prohibition, Women in American Society, and The Mob in the 1920’s. Other special reports will be from Zinn’s The History of the American People, The Diplomatic History of the United States, and Perils of Prosperity. We will also use films on the history of W.E.B. Dubois and the Harlem Renaissance so that students can write position papers.

The theme of the 3 R’s will be the foundations upon which I can build the cultural, social, economic and political themes, which I believe will help the students better, understand the decade of the 1920’s. There were many economic acts by the government, which also relate to the 3 R’s. For example, in 1922, the Railroad Board, a national agency, called for a 12% wage cut for all railroad workers. Another prime example of the reaction would be using the Food and Fuel Act of World War I to stop miners’ strikes, even though World War I was over. In discussing the political isolation of that generation of leaders, we can analyze the ending of our Security Treaty with France in 1921, and the Nine Power Treaty, which allowed the Open Door to China to remain intact. These two policies and acts were as reactionary as any others we had taken in the 1920’s.

The revolutionary acts of the anarchists such as placing bombs on Wall Street and in front of Palmer’s home, and the purely adolescent rebellions of young people who joined the Margaret Sanger’s sexual revolution will also find a place in the curriculum of the 3R’s. Even the slang of the time, about which some of my students have reported to the class, has already been used and has given insight into the 1920’s to all four of my classes. My students have made posters of the flappers and watched films of the Harlem Renaissance and the Dubois’ Revolution to add to the visual impact of the changes during the period. Although Garvey can be viewed as a reactionary and was belittled by Dubois, the two of them are revolutionary in that they did create change in the black society’s movement to gain more acceptance. One of my astute students claimed that the Harlem Renaissance created acceptance of black authors and artists by white intellectuals. He even connected its results to my generation’s civil rights adventures of the late 1950’s and 1960’s when black and white youth rode together during the Freedom Rides, or picketed lunch counters in the South and in the chain stores of Northern cities as well. This also was not at all unusual in Pittsburgh.

Finally, there is no doubt in my mind that the creative energy of my eleventh grade C.A.S. students will develop interesting activities which will add to the visual and verbal images of the 1920’s which I have already provided. The decade of the 1920’s is certainly a challenging one with many mixtures of culture and the social revolution and reaction; and since the economic and former progressive drives were being turned away from the needed political and economic reform, while the technological revolution was creating a new conspicuous consumption, the decade left America stunned and unable to make a comeback throughout the decade of the 1930’s.

The final unit test, a Document Based Test (see Appendix VII), mirrors much of the culture and a great deal of the social problems of the 1920’s. It also creates the opportunity to discuss the decade’s other aspects in one or two introductory paragraphs. Since students will delve into the economic and political aspects of that decade, I am sure that they would express a clear understanding of the 3R’s of the 1920’s, as well as all four disciplines, which relate to that decade.

In this Activity and Lesson Plans Section, I have included outlines, assignment sheets, lesson plans, cartoons, a presidential speech, a Document Based Test, a number of pages on the Red Scare, and the platform of Robert La Follette in the 1924 Presidential election. There will be eight Appendices in the Activity Section, including the Content Standards and one major evaluation.

The first handout in Lesson I will be an assignment sheet which will include probing questions on the 1920’s, a list of reports on major topics of the 1920’s, and a few extra topics for special reports from the speeches of the 1920 and 1924 Presidential elections, including the Progressive party candidate Robert La Follette’s platform in 1924 (Appendix I). The teacher can also give out the reading on the Red Scare during that first lesson (Appendix VI). During that lesson, the teacher can introduce the concept of the 3 R’s and discuss with the students why those terms are being used (Reaction, Rebellion, and Revolution). We will also review World War I, using the outline during that lesson or possibly in a separate lesson (Appendix II). Lessons II and III will be the follow- up lessons, answering the eight probing questions from the assignment sheet.

After we summarize the answers, relating them to the 3R’s, we will continue during Lessons IV-VI with the reports on the five topics and the special reports on the speeches and platforms, relating them to the goals of the Progressives, the Red Scare, the disillusionment of the Lost Generation, social and political writers of the decade, and the Dubois’ swing to the left due to exploitation and racism in America (Appendices III and IV). On day VI, we will also view and discuss the political cartoons relating to corruption and scandals in the Republican administrations of the 1920’s (Appendix V).

During Lessons V or VI, we will study in depth the Red Scare and the rise of the Klan and the Scopes Trial to analyze the reactionary social and political aspects of the decade (Appendix VI). During this lesson or Lesson VII, we will be comparing the 1920’s and the 1950’s. As the Narrative describes them, parallels are very evident in the disillusionment caused by World Wars I and II, the Red Scares after both Wars, and the economic boom and emphasis on materialism.

In Lesson VIII, we will show the film, which describes how Du Bois became more militant and also broke from Marcus Garvey in the 1920’s. In Lesson IX, we will discuss the literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald in more depth and use the chapter of Lewis’ book, Only Yesterday, to discuss the rebellion of the 1920’s and analyze the attempts at limitation of armaments without the United States being in the League of Nations. The Washington Conference, the Five Power Treaty and the Nine Power Treaties, the Spirit of Locarno, and the Kellog Briand Pact were all futile efforts of the Western allies to limit the rise of fascist militarism. All of the efforts will be viewed as futile in the discussion. In Lesson XI, we will summarize the economic conditions which led to the Depression, and how Hoover was too slow to react and did too little to stop it from creating a 25 percent unemployment rate by the early 1930’s

Our Lesson XII will be a full review and summary of the 3 R’s, and Lesson XIII will be the evaluative Document Based Essay (Appendix VII). This outline of the Lesson Plans will be used in a flexible way so that there can be one or two more lessons in the unit, if deemed necessary. The transition to the 1920’s, as well as the discussion of World War I, could easily add those two more lessons.

The Content Standards will be shown in Appendix VIII. We will be relating to all of them during this unit on the 1920’s. The reader will notice that they are mainly for the Social Studies field, but they also include Math skills as well.

Because of the bulk of the appendices they will not all appear on the website. The titles of the appendices, which will be available in the Institute office, follow:

    II      Outline of World War I
    III     The Progressive Platform
    V       The Political Cartoons
    VI      The Red Scare
    VII     College Board Document Based Test.

The following will appear on the website:

    I       Assignment Sheet
    IV     President William Harding’s Speech 1921
    VIII   The Content Standards

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Frederick. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s.New York, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1931.

Bailey, Thomas. The American Pageant. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Churilla, Albert. Retrieving the American Past. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Customs Publishing, 2001.

Craven, Avery. A Documentary History of the American People. Boston, Massachusetts: Ginn and Company, 1951.

Fenton, Edward. A New History of the United States: An Inquiry Approach. New York, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1969.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York, New York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1920.

Glad, Paul. The Process of American History, Vol.II. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926.

Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1974.

Leuchtenburg, William. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Meyerowitz, Joanne, Ed. Not June Cleaver, Women and Gender in Postwar America. Philadelphia Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1994.

Oates, Stephen. Portrait of America, Vol. II. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.

Pelling, Henry. American Labor. Chicago Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1960.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York, New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

C.A.S. UNITED STATES HISTORY READING, QUESTIONS, AND SPECIAL REPORT SHEET USING THE BOOKS: ONLY YESTERDAY,THE AMERICAN

PAGEANT, AND A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

ANSWER THE PROBING QUESTIONS BELOW IN ESSAY FORM.

A. Probing Questions:

1. Who really created the Revolution of the 1920's and how was it expressed?

2. What was the connection between Prohibition, Gangsterism, and Mass Consumption?

3. What characteristics of American society did Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Mencken's writings depict in the 1920's?

4. What "Revolution" was also occurring in the Entertainment world in regard to music, dancing, radio, and the Renaissance, which occurred in Harlem?

5. Discuss the Red Scare and the reasons for its development?

6. Identify some Black leaders and organizations. How did they attempt to counteract racism?

7. Analyze the Sacco Vanzatti Case?

8. Explain how Prohibition and the Scopes Trial were expressions of intolerance and repression as seen in the Red Scare and the racism in the 1920's?

B. The following general question can be analyzed and answered during the third, fourth, and fifth days of our studying this unit: Analyze the following social and cultural topics as examples of the social changes that occurred in the 1920's. This could also be an A.P. Document Based Test Question on the 1870-1925 period. The creator of this test could emphasize a specific decade or even compare a decade of the Guilded Age to the 1920's. The Topics to report on in small groups are:

1. The Emancipation of Women

2. Family Life

3. Prohibition

4. The Harlem Renaissance

5. The Mob

C. Special Reports:

Report Number I: Using Zinn., A People's History of the United States,pages 354-355 and 364-367, report on Dubois' left-wing attitude toward America's exploitation of the poor. The same reporter with a partner to help should then discuss the disillusionment as expressed by Hemingway, and Dos Passos. Then discuss the reactions to the Palmer Raids.

Report Number II: Using The Perils of Prosperity, pages 66-83, report on how the Red Scare did suppress the American Communists, Socialists, and I.W.W. members. Also discuss the views of J.Edgar Hoover, John Reed, and John L. Lewis

C.A.S. UNITED STATES HISTORY READING, QUESTIONS, AND SPECIAL REPORT SHEET USING THE BOOKS: ONLY YESTERDAY, THE AMERICAN PAGEANT, AND A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. ANSWER THE PROBING QUESTIONS BELOW IN ESSAY FORM.

Report Number III: Use A Documentary History of the American People, pages 684-689. This includes William Allen White, President Harding, and La Follette's writings and speeches. Discuss with the class these speeches and writings and analyze what motivated them. White Wrote as a Progressive. To what extent was he objective and does his description give you a clear picture of the Republican Convention of 1924?

APPENDIX IV
PRESIDENT WILLIAM HARDING'S SPEECH 1921

William Harding’s 1921 Speech Transcript (as interpreted by Cedric Yoedt):

My countryman, the first framing starts with Americanism, with the writers framing the Federal Constitution in 1787. The Pilgrims find their central and suggestive covenant, a full (century and a half before, and set aflame their beacon of liberty on the coast of Massachusetts. Others pioneered this new world freedom, were really varied standards of liberty from Jamestown to Plymouth, for 5 generations before Lexington and Concord harrowed its demeanor. It was All-American to destine yourself, yet all of us lacked the goal of nationality. Intrinsically, there was no thought of nationality in the revolution for American Independence. The part of them were resisting alarm, and freedom was their soul. Once it was achieved, nationality was the only agency treated to its preservation. Americanism, really began when [involved] in nationality. The American Republic began the great struggle of Representative, popular government. Representative Democracy was proclaimed [to preserve] higher human freedom. America itself empowered civil, human and religious liberties, which ultimately would affect the liberation of all mankind. The Federal Constitution is the very face of all Americanism, the art of the covenant of American liberty, the very sample of equal rights. The Constitution Justifies another will, so long as the Republic survives. Let us hesitate before we surrender the nationality, which is the very soul of pious Americanism. This Republic has never failed humanity, nor endangered civilization.

This is one of 50,000 voices from the collection of the Vincient Voice Library at Michigan State University.

APPENDIX VIII
THE CONTENT STANDARDS

Citizenship

1. All students demonstrate an understanding of major events, cultures, groups and individuals in the historical development of Pennsylvania, the United States and other nations, and describe the patterns of historical development.

2. All students demonstrate understanding of themes and patterns of geography, know the location of major bodies of water, landmasses and nations, and describe the relationships between geography and historical, economic and cultural development.

3. All students describe the development and operations of economic, political, legal and governmental systems in the United States, assess their own relationships to those systems, and compare them to those in other nations.

4. All students examine and evaluate problems facing citizens in their communities, state, nation and world by incorporating concepts and methods of inquiry of the various social sciences.

5. All students develop and defend a position on current issues, confronting the United States and other nations, conducting research, analyzing alternatives, organizing evidence and arguments, and making oral presentations.

6. All students explain basic economic concepts and the development and operation of economic systems in the United States and other nations, and make informed decisions about economic issues.

7. All students demonstrate their skills of communicating, negotiating and cooperating with others.

8. All students demonstrate that they can work effectively with others.

9. All students demonstrate an understanding of the history and nature of prejudice and relate their knowledge to current issues facing communities, the United States and other nations.

10. All students demonstrate an understanding of the various roles they can play as citizens through participation in a community service project.

11. All students demonstrate the ability to resolve conflicts In peaceful ways, including but not limited to peer mediation, anger management, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving.