The ‘Roaring Twenties’

The ‘Roaring Twenties’ or the ‘Jazz Age’, these are descriptions of America in the 1920s that create images of a society enjoying life to the full. It is the America that gave birth to the modern age: the age of the skyscraper and the car, the age of mass entertainment: the radio, jazz, nightclubs and dancing, the cinema and sport that attracted crowds measured in tens of thousands.

So what exactly was the ‘Roaring Twenties’?

• • Also known as the ‘Jazz Age’

  • It was very much an urban phenomenon as for the first time, half of Americans lived in cities

  • It was driven by a society with money to spend and determined to enjoy itself

  • The cinema was hugely popular with its stars becoming household names

  • It was jazz and dance bands, blues and soul too

  • Jazz music provided excitement to whites who were exposed to black music for the first time

  • It was a time when nightclubs became popular, such as the Cotton Club of Harlem

  • The age of dance crazes like the Charleston, the Black Bottom

  • and the Jitterbug

  • Sport became a mass spectator phenomenon with many sports stars becoming popular heroes

  • Entertainment entered the home with the radio

  • The car liberated the family as they drove out of the city and to the beach or into the countryside

  • It was an age that pushed the existing boundaries as social attitudes changed radically

  • Younger Americans broke away from traditional values

  • Many women were determined to liberate themselves and wore short skirts and smoked and drank in public

  • One group became known as ‘flappers’

  • Attitudes regarding sex was one of the biggest changes American society faced with a generational gap between young people and their parents growing ever wider

But at the same time it was an age in which people struggled. There was poverty in both town and countryside and 60% of Americans were living on or below the poverty line (those without the means to provide basic shelter, food or clothing). There were times of mass unemployment, and farmers struggled in a land that produced more food than it could eat. It was the age of prohibition, rising crime and gangsters. It was also a time when the Ku Klux Klan grew in strength and influence, taking the law in its own hands.

So it could be said to have been a myth. But what a myth!