The Roaring Twenties: A Complete Guide to America’s Jazz Age

The 1920s were America’s most transformative decade. In ten short years, the country went from a nation of horses and buggies to one of automobiles and airplanes. From silent films to talkies. From telegraphs to radio. From the rigid Victorian era of corsets and chaperones to the loosened, jazz-soundtracked world of flappers and speakeasies.

The Roaring Twenties — also called the Jazz Age, the Modern Age, or the Decade of Prosperity — was the period between the end of the First World War (1918) and the stock market crash of October 1929 that ushered in the Great Depression. It was an era of explosive economic growth, revolutionary cultural change, and contradictions that are still being debated by historians a century later.

What Was the Roaring Twenties?

On the surface, the 1920s were a decade of boundless optimism. The economy boomed. Wages rose. New consumer goods filled American homes. Radios brought music and news into the living room. Cars gave families unprecedented freedom. Movies became America’s dominant form of entertainment. The first commercial airlines took to the sky. For the first time, women voted in a presidential election. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic alone.

Beneath the surface, the decade hid deep tensions. Rural America struggled with a chronic agricultural depression. Immigration had been drastically restricted by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924. The second Ku Klux Klan reached an estimated 3 to 6 million members and held real political power in several states. The Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 crystallized the cultural clash between modernism and traditionalism. Prohibition, intended to make America sober, instead created a vast underground economy run by organized crime. And the stock market was propped up by a frenzy of margin buying that would prove unsustainable.

Explore the Roaring Twenties

Use the topics below to explore the major themes of the decade. Each section contains a broad overview, in-depth articles on specific subtopics, and focused pages that answer particular questions about the era.

The Roaring Twenties: A Comprehensive Guide to the Jazz Age

The complete overview of the 1920s decade. Covers the post-WWI optimism, the new morality, the timeline of the era, daily life for ordinary Americans, and the warning signs of the 1929 crash. Start here for a wide-angle view.

The 1920s Economy: From Boom to Bust

The economic story of the decade: Andrew Mellon’s tax cuts, the rise of mass production and consumer credit, the explosive growth of the automobile industry, the bull market of the late 1920s, and the devastating Wall Street Crash of October 1929.

The cultural revolution of the 1920s. The flapper movement and the new woman, jazz music as the soundtrack of an era, Prohibition and the speakeasy, and the Harlem Renaissance that redefined American arts.

1920s Politics: From Harding to Hoover

The political landscape of the decade. Three Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover), the business-friendly policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, the rise of the second KKK, the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, and the lead-up to the Great Depression.

1920s Technology: Innovations That Changed the World

The technologies that defined the modern age. Commercial radio broadcasting from KDKA in 1920, the silent film era and the introduction of sound, the dawn of commercial aviation culminating in Lindbergh’s 1927 transatlantic flight, and the spread of electricity to nearly every American home.

1920s Arts and Entertainment: The Cultural Renaissance

The artistic movements of the 1920s. Art Deco architecture that gave us the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, the Harlem Renaissance that produced a generation of Black American writers and artists, and the Golden Age of Hollywood with its silent film stars and the first talkies.

1920s Sports: Heroes and Legends of the Golden Age

The sports superstars who defined the 1920s. Babe Ruth and the 1927 “Murderers’ Row” Yankees, Jack Dempsey and the golden age of boxing, Bill Tilden’s tennis dominance, Bobby Jones’s amateur golf career, and the Olympic Games of Antwerp, Paris, and Amsterdam.

Why the Roaring Twenties Still Matter

The 1920s established many of the patterns that define modern American life. The consumer culture of installment buying, brand-name goods, and mass advertising that emerged in the 1920s is the direct ancestor of the credit card economy of today. The radio networks NBC and CBS, founded in 1926 and 1927, still broadcast today. The Hollywood studio system created in the 1920s shaped global entertainment for the rest of the century. The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy mistakes in the late 1920s are studied as a cautionary tale of speculative excess. The cultural battles over modernism, science, and race that defined the decade are still being fought in different forms.

To understand the present, it helps to understand the Roaring Twenties.