Name __________________________
Date: ________________
Section: 11.1
11.2
(circle one)
U. S. History II
Classwork: The Cultural Civil War
Do Now
1. What do you think of when you think about the word “culture”? You can be as
specific or as general as you want.
2. In the chart below, list as many specific examples of “traditional” and “modern”
culture, practices, or beliefs as you can think of. There are no right or wrong
answers – at this point, I just want to know what you associate with these two
terms.
Traditional
Modern
Exit Ticket
In at least 5 complete sentences, explain: How did cultural change in the 1920s represent
the conflict between traditional and modern values? Your answer should refer to specific
aspects of American popular culture.
Name __________________________
Date: ________________
Section: 11.1
11.2
(circle one)
U. S. History II
Classwork: The Cultural Civil War
Instructions: Use your lecture notes, the attached reading, and other classwork from this
unit to fill in the following chart. Bullet points are fine (see the first example) – but make
sure you are capturing the disagreements between the traditional and modern sides of the
“cultural civil war.”
Urban vs. rural
The Scopes Trial
The economy
Alcohol
Music
Women’s lives
Fashion


What’s traditional?
Living in rural areas
People lived and worked on
farms



What’s modern?
Living in cities
(urbanization)
Often crowded, unsanitary
Factory work
Reading: The Cultural Civil War
Note: This reading is adapted from a transcript of a video called “1920s: A Cultural Civil
War,” narrated by Peter Filene. The video, the transcript, and related resources can all be
found at http://www.dlt.ncssm.edu/lmtm/docs/culture.htm.
Most people think history is about kings and presidents, wars and elections. But historians
also study what ordinary people were doing and thinking in their everyday lives. This is
what we call social and cultural history.
Today I want to take you back to the 1920s and focus on some social and cultural
developments: namely, sexuality, drinking, and religion. By the end I hope you’ll
understand that Americans were engaged in a cultural civil war. They were fighting with
words and laws, not guns—arguing about what kind of society America should be. On one
side were those groups who wanted to loosen the rules of behavior and attitudes. On the
other side were groups who defended traditional behavior and attitudes.
The Rebels
Let’s begin with a front-page story from the New York Times in February 1922.
Several boys were having a problem dealing with girls. But it wasn’t the problem you may
be imagining. The boys went to their mothers and said: “Mother, it is so hard for me to be
decent and live up to the standards you have set me, and to always keep in mind the
loveliness and purity of girls. How can I do it with this cheek dancing, and if I pull away
they call me a prude. And when I take a girl home in the way that you have told me is the
proper fashion she is not satisfied and thinks I am slow.”
Girls like these were called “flappers.” They had bobbed hair and powdered noses. They
wore fringed skirts just above the knees and stockings rolled below the knees. They held a
cigarette in one hand and a man in the other. They checked their corsets in the coatroom
before they danced to jazz.
A revolution in morals was taking place… among certain Americans, at least: young,
college-educated Americans who lived in large cities like New York and Chicago. The
revolution had begun years earlier. Already in 1906 a journalist had proclaimed that “sex
o’clock had struck.” But the new attitudes and behavior became more widespread and
visible after the First World War.
The Consumer Economy
The consumer item that was most influential in fueling the revolution in morals was the
automobile—especially the Model-T Ford. By the middle of the 1920s, a new Model T was
rolling off Henry Ford’s assembly line every 10 seconds. And at $290 almost everybody
could afford one. By the end of the decade there were 26 million Ford owners, one for
every five Americans.
But you may be wondering, how did these cars change morality? Well, picture a young
couple on a Friday night in a small town. Instead of sitting on the front porch or strolling
along Main Street, they could drive off in their Model-T. Away from scrutiny by parents and
others, they could do whatever they wanted together.
Dating was invented in the 1920s. Previously, young people had gone around in groups. But
now they began to go out as couples. The average Ohio State coed [female college student]
dated four nights a week. At Northwestern University, things got so out of hand that the
women declared “dateless nights.”
If the automobile permitted dating and petting, movies encouraged it. Movies were a big
part of the consumer economy. They were America’s favorite form of entertainment.
Middle-class people sat in overstuffed seats in lavish theaters—”movie palaces”—and
listened to live music as they watched silent films.
There was also a new meaning for “making love.” Before the 1920s, people said they made
love when they flirted or wrote passionate words in letters to each other. Now they meant
what we mean by that phrase: sexual intercourse. By the end of the 1920s, almost 2/3 of
college women said they were willing to sleep with a man before marriage. And one fourth
of them did. Among couples who were engaged to be married, the rate was even higher.
The Traditionalists
On the contrary, a large number of Americans did NOT think such girls could retain moral
integrity. I want to turn our attention to these Americans—the ones on the traditionalist
side of the cultural civil war.
Who were the defenders of tradition against the new morality? The defenders of
established values had antithetical [opposite] characteristics:
 The rebels were young. So their opponents were older.
 The rebels tended to be better-educated. So their opponents were less-educated.
 The rebels lived in cities, especially in the north and west. Traditionalists lived in
small towns or rural areas, especially in the south.
Older, less-educated, small-town or rural Americans wanted to preserve the kind of society
they had grown up in. It was a society
 where women acted not like men, but acted “womanly,”
 where people enjoyed sex only after they married,
 where people didn’t think that happiness came from buying things,
 where people defined right and wrong according to the Bible.
How did they defend these values against the new morality? They organized two social
movements.
Prohibition
The first movement had already achieved its goal when the decade opened. Prohibition of
liquor became nationwide law in 1920, once the 19th Amendment was ratified. The “drys”
had won. Who were they? As you just learned, the supporters of Prohibition tended to be
older Americans, living in the rural South and Midwest, and strongly Protestant.
We know that Prohibition didn’t succeed. On the contrary, people began drinking illegally.
And to supply illegal liquor, organized crime grew more powerful. So the traditionalists’
victory backfired.
The New KKK
The second movement was the Ku Klux Klan. Note: I’m talking about the second Klan. It
was significantly different from the first Klan, which organized in the South to repress
newly freed blacks.
The second Klan existed primarily in the Midwest and Southwest, small towns and cities
such as Cincinnati and Akron. Indiana was the heart of Klan country. At its height, one-third
of all native-born white Protestant men of Indiana were dues-paying members of the Klan.
The second Klan wasn’t Southern and it wasn’t concerned with defending white
supremacy. Instead, the Klan members believed that modern America was becoming
immoral: money-making, drinking, extra-marital sex. They blamed people not like
themselves: namely, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and young people, especially young
women.
By 1923, 3 to 4 million Americans were members of the Klan. That was 1 of 10 white,
Protestant, native-born men.
But like the Prohibitionists, the Klan was defeated in the cultural civil war. In 1925
corruption and scandals among leaders became public - Grand Dragon [KKK leader] David
Stephenson allegedly kidnapped and raped a woman who later died, either from taking
poison or from infections by bites on her body. Stephenson was convicted of 2nd-degree
murder.
Conclusion
What lesson do I want you to draw? You’ll forget the details, but want you to take away a
pattern of meaning.
This story about the 1920s also holds true for eras before and since then. Innovation
triggers resistance.
Certain Americans—usually younger, better educated and urban Americans—calf for new
ways of behaving and thinking. In response, other Americans—usually older, less educated,
non-urban, Protestant— defend traditional values.