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This page provides a sample of the music and films available during the period 1920-1929. The music links here appear courtesy of the sites listed at the bottom of the page; please visit them for more information about the music of this era. Films are listed with their principal star or director. Music files on this page are in RealAudio unless otherwise noted.

The Jazz Age: Flapper Culture and Style

In the 1920s, a new woman was born. She smoked, drank, danced, and voted. She cut her hair, wore make-up, and went to petting parties.

"They're all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; maybe more than the boys."

--- from "Flaming Youth," by Warner Fabian

PBS The Roaring Twenties: History in the Key of Jazz

The decade following World War I would one day be caricatured as "the Roaring Twenties," and it was a time of unprecedented prosperity — the nation's total wealth nearly doubled between 1920 and 1929, manufactures rose by 60 percent, for the first time most people lived in urban areas — and in homes lit by electricity. They made more money than they ever had before and, spurred on by the giant new advertising industry, spent it faster, too — on washing machines and refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, 12 million radios, 30 million automobiles, and untold millions of tickets to the movies, that ushered them into a new fast-living world of luxury and glamour their grandparents never could have imagined. Meanwhile, at the polls and in the workplace as well as on the dance floor, women had begun to assert a new independence

Ku Klux Klan: A Hundred Years of Terror

The Ku Klux Klan's long history of violence grew out of the resentment and hatredmany white Southerners felt in the aftermath of the Civil War. Blacks, having won the struggle for freedom from slavery, were now faced with a new struggle againstwidespread racism and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished.

The Harlem Renaissance

In the early 1900s, particularly in the 1920s, African-American literature, art, music, dance, and social commentary began to flourish in Harlem, a section of New York City. This African-American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage.

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