T RANSFORMING A MERICA F INAL S CRIPT

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1 T RANSFORMING A MERICA F INAL S CRIPT TITLE: Lesson 10: Modern Times PREPARED FOR: Dallas TeleLearning WRITER: Julia Dyer PRODUCER: Julia Dyer DRAFT: FINAL DATE: December 15, 2004

2 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 1 FADE IN: Introduction (2:23) 1. Montage of modern art and music from the twenties MUSIC (jazz) NARRATOR: The New Era, the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties Actor silhouette 3. Gertrude Stein ACTOR (as Gertrude Stein): You are the Lost Generation. 4. Continue montage of art, music and 20s footage. NARRATOR: The generation that had come of age during the Great War now lived in a world quite different than the one they d been born into. Numbed by the carnage of the war and discouraged by the outcome, some rejected tradition and embraced a more reckless, pleasure-seeking lifestyle. Others, fearful of the moral vacuum, retrenched and resisted the coming changes. 5. Modern art renditions of Sacco and Vanzetti Caught in the crossfire were a pair of Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Following the war massive, sometimes 6. Transition to archival footage of labor strikes and Red Scare violent strikes, had paralyzed industry and

3 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 2 seemed to threaten America s capitalist system. With the spectre of a successful worker s revolution in Russia, the U.S. government cracked down in a Red Scare of unprecedented intensity. In this highly charged atmosphere, 7. Archival photographs or footage of Sacco and Vanzetti, headlines of the trial, pics and headlines of protests Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and accused of a robbery-murder outside Boston. In a trial that focused more on their politics than on evidence of their guilt, the two anarchists were quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Their execution, however, was continually postponed due to widespread protests against the verdict. 8. Segue back to modern art pics of Sacco and Vanzetti NARRATOR: Sacco and Vanzetti sat in prison awaiting their deaths throughout most of the twenties, providing a strange backdrop to a 9. Conclude with montage of modern art and music complex decade. The lure of modernity clashed with the weight of tradition in the schools, in the courtrooms, in the pages of novels and in bold new strokes on the canvas. The time was also ripe with contradiction for even the most traditional still loved their Model T s; while even the most liberal understood that for all its

4 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 3 excitement and convenience, modern American life seemed to have a hole at its center. Segment #1: The Business of America (7:08) Learning objective: 1. Analyze the changing nature of the American economy and the extent of prosperity in the 1920s. 2. Assess the political leadership of the era. 10. Film clip from MODERN TIMES, Charlie Chaplin caught in the madness of the machine 11. Jeffrey Moran on camera Super: Jeffrey Moran, University of Kansas MUSIC JEFFREY MORAN (9426, 10:10:35): I always see the 1920s as being the first recognizably modern decade. In some ways it s the first decade that s kind of aware of itself as a decade. There s a self-consciousness about people doing something new, breaking away from the past in the 1920s, that was not evident in American culture before. 12. Lisa McGirr on camera Super: Lisa McGirr, Harvard University LISA McGIRR (9316, 9:15:00) In the 1920s, the census acknowledges that more Americans are living in cities than in rural areas for the first time. There s a sense of the new power of urban 13. Archival footage: city life in the 20s centers. There s a fundamental shift in social

5 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 4 norms with the growth of consumer culture away from these older puritan values of thrift, of saving, toward a kind of emphasis on pleasure, on leisure, on consumption. 14. Archival footage of automobiles in the 20s NARRATOR: Perhaps the most important engine of change in the twenties was the economy. And the engine that drove the economy was, literally, the piston engine. 15. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as Muncie, IL resident): Why on earth do you need to study what s changing this country? I can tell you what s happening in just four letters: A-U-T-O! 16. Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (9423, 8:15:41): Fundamentally, the prosperity of the twenties rests upon the automobile. The automobile 17. Archival footage: more cars and car manufacturing industry gave us credit and for the first time you have people who are able to spend money that they don t have. And automobile construction has all sorts of multiplier effects. You get the steel industry takes off, the glass industry takes off, the rubber industry takes off.

6 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Archival footage: Ford assembly line from early teens to twenties NARRATOR: The explosion of the automobile industry was due in large part to mass production strategies pioneered by Henry Ford. In 1909, Ford produced less than two thousand cars and sold them for $950 apiece. Five years later, with the moving assembly line, the Ford Motor Company could turn out a Model T every ninetythree minutes and sell it for less than $500. By 1920, Ford produced well over a million automobiles, one every sixty seconds. The impact of this transformation was captured in a shrewd appraisal from Will Rogers. 19. Actor silhouette 20. Pic: Will Rogers ACTOR (as Will Rogers): So good luck, Mr. Ford. It ll take a hundred years to tell whether you ve helped us or hurt us, but you certainly didn t leave us like you found us. 21. Pic and/or footage of Henry Ford 22. Pamela Laird on camera Super: Pamela Laird, University of Colorado at Denver PAMELA LAIRD (9334, 15:22:41): Fordism became a catch-phrase for all that some people thought was good and all that other people thought was bad about the teens and the 20s.

7 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Archival footage: assembly line manufacturing, products and workers Technically it simply refers to cranking out a whole lot of products that are all identical in the most efficient way. But to expand on that, in order to crank out a whole lot of products that are identical, you ve got to have a whole lot of workers who are doing the exact same thing, hour after hour, month after month, and so they become cogs in the machinery. 24. Susan Strasser on camera Super: Susan Strasser, University of Delaware 25. Archival pics/footage: working class people buying and/or driving automobiles SUSAN STRASSER (9335, 05:22:53): The idea of Fordism as Ford himself introduced it, was the idea that the worker would be able to have a Ford car, and what he introduced he s famous for the five dollar day. Five dollars sounds like nothing now, but it was quite a lot of money for an industrial worker to make at the time. At the same time, the work in the factory was extremely hard. 26. Actor silhouette 27. Archival footage: workers on Ford assembly line ACTOR (as English immigrant): Ya get the wages, but ya sell your soul at Ford s. Ya re worked like a slave all day, when ya get out ya re too tired to do anything. Ya go to sleep on the car coming home.

8 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Archival pics/footage: Corporate executives and images of large corporations in the 20s (e.g., Sears, Heinz); images of early human relations or human resources departments; more impersonal assembly line-type footage of workers 29. Pamela Laird on camera NARRATOR: Some corporations tried to offset the dehumanization that accompanied work on the assembly line through a business trend called welfare capitalism. PAMELA LAIRD (15:21:42): Companies would provide benefits and some security and 30. Archival pics/footage of workers at a company picnic entertainment and annual picnics and so on and so forth for their workers, to try to generate human relationships in a world where those had been stretched by the growth of corporations beyond which people couldn t imagine. 31. Susan Strasser on camera SUSAN STRASSER (05:25:58): It was a way, also, of trying to keep workers from responding to 32. Archival footage: workers on the line these new conditions by joining unions. It was a way of saying we can no longer take care of you in the way that the old-fashioned employer did, but we will still take care of you and you won t need to organize. 33. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as banker Charles E. Mitchell): This new era is bringing all classes of the population to a more equal participation in the fruits of

9 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 8 industry. 34. Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (8:15:41): We think of the 1920s as the great boom time in American 35. Archival footage illustrating prosperity of 1920s, especially the very rich history low inflation, low unemployment and kind of general happy productivity. However, the prosperity of the 20s is very much unequally distributed. Like every decade, the 1920s were a good decade to be rich. 36. Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (8:17:01): The 1920s also turn out to be a good decade to be middle class. 37. Archival pics/footage of middle class and well-paid blue collar workers Increasingly, you begin to get some workers moving into what we would consider to be middle class status. 38. Archival pics/footage of 1920s farmers, using big tractors; poor farmers, white and black (8:17:40) The one great missing area of prosperity in the 1920s and that s farming. They re using these great new industrial innovations like tractors to plow their land, but they re running into a lot of problems. Prices are dropping through the 1920s even while farm productivity is growing. Farmers have gone deeply into debt to buy these tractors but all of a

10 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 9 sudden, you re not getting the same kind of money for your bushel of wheat that you would have ten years before. 39. Jeffrey Moran on camera And so, the prosperity is not really trickling down to them. It s trickling down a little bit to urban laborers but it s really much more concentrated in the people who are well to do to begin with and the rising middle class. 40. Archival pics/footage of 1920s politicians interacting with businessmen, including Harding, Coolidge, Hoover NARRATOR: In the federal government, the inclination of the Progressives to regulate big business had been reversed by a succession of conservative Republican administrations. 41. Pics/footage of Coolidge JEFFREY MORAN (08:20:13): Calvin Coolidge aspired in some ways to be the least president that we had ever had, and in many ways he 42. Archival footage of 1920s business, productivity succeeded. The government essentially took a hands-off approach to the economy, except for supporting exports and kind of encouraging business to do well. And occasionally, trying to ensure that unions didn t get too strong. It s essentially a government run, more or less, in the

11 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 10 name of big businesses that Calvin Coolidge famously said, the business of America is business. Segment #2: The Old Radio Won t Do (6:35) Learning Objective: 3. Describe the major cultural developments occurring in the 1920s. 43. Pics or archival footage of radios & radio performers 44. Pics or footage of amateur radio operators from the teens. Super: Susan Strasser, University of Delaware SFX: Radio static SUSAN STRASSER (VO) (9335, 5:27:08): When radios were introduced, there weren t any radio stations and they were sort of like what we think of as ham radio now. They were, they were kind of an amateur thing. 45. Pamela Laird on camera Super: Pamela Laird, University of Colorado at Denver PAMELA LAIRD (15:25:34): But after World War I, people were very excited about this new technology and so many companies were working on ways to use it. 46. Pics/footage of early radio stations, especially KDKA Pittsburgh RADIO ANNOUNCER: Just one moment now, KDKA in cooperation with the Pittsburgh Post and Star will present the latest presidential election returns.

12 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 11 PAMELA LAIRD: The first broadcasting station was KDKA in Pittsburgh. It was actually set up by Westinghouse primarily to sell radios. SINGING RADIO COMMERCIAL: There s a great sensational wonder today we know. everyone is talking and fooling with radio. 47. Series of pics of early radios as they develop technically and stylistically SUSAN STRASSER (5:27:53): As radios developed, they became more and more technically developed. You stopped having to have earphones. They would get more stations. You could get better reception. And they were also at the same time developed stylistically, as 48. Susan Strasser on camera furniture. So radio is really a product that got people used to both technological obsolescence and stylistic obsolescence and, in other words, got people used to the idea that the old radio won t do you re going to have to buy a new radio. 49. CU of a 1920s radio 50. Pics of radio advertising (e.g., studio shots including sponsors) RADIO COMMERCIAL: As you watch your small son trudge off to school, do you sometimes

13 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 12 ask yourself, Am I doing everything in my power to keep him well and happy? NARRATOR: The development of radio advertising helped to drive the rapid acceleration of the consumer culture. 51. Pamela Laird on camera PAMELA LAIRD (15:25:34): Now you have a technology which makes it possible to extend 52. Pics of families listening to radio together at home 53. Pics of magazine version of Listerine ad your advertising reach even further and to do so in a very intimate way. So for example, you ve got the famous Listerine ad poor dear Edna was reaching the tragic 30 mark and she wasn t married. What was the problem? The problem was that she had bad breath, and as the line said in the ad, even your best friends won t tell you. So in other words, you have no way of measuring your personal worth unless you use these products and that really is the essence of modern advertising. RADIO COMMERCIAL: You know it s a wise lady who treats her good friends considerately and come wash day, your washer is one of the

14 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 13 best friends you have. So don t run. 54. Pics/footage/ads: electric stoves, refrigerators, toasters, irons, vacuum cleaners, washing machines. NARRATOR: Women, radio and the consumer culture became inextricably intertwined in the 20s. 55. Pics/footage: women listening to the radio at home 56. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as Christine Frederick, marketing expert): The radio, it seems to me, is primarily an invention for the benefit of women. Its greatest achievement is banishing isolation. RADIO ANNOUNCER: And now, when a girl marries, the story of Joan and Harry Davis. 57. Pics: studio shots of radio production NARRATOR: As radio grew increasingly commercialized, with its programming guided and often produced by advertising agencies, daytime radio targeted women as the household s primary buyer. 58. CU 1920s radio RADIO ANNOUNCER: The General Mills Hour (organ music) 59. Pics: studio shots of soap operas in production; sponsors NARRATOR: The soap operas that emerged to dominate daytime radio featured all the familiar 60. Pics: women listening to daytime

15 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 14 radio 61. Print ads for soap operas? elements the product sponsor, the loyal audience, the melodrama. Their purpose, then as now, was to sell household goods. RADIO ANNOUNCER: We bring you three outstanding serial dramas The Guiding Light, Today s Children, and The Woman in White. 62. Studio shots or ads for Today s Children NARRATOR: But they also served another function. The agonizingly slow progress of the plot permitted a thorough exploration of the questions that were on women s minds in the 20s. (Organ Music) NARRATOR: In this episode of Today s Children, a crisis has been provoked by Frances s opportunity to take an important job, which could threaten her impending marriage to Bob. 63. Actor silhouette 64. superimposed with CU radio ACTOR (Frances): Must a woman s only reason for living be the raising of a family? That just because women didn t realize their

16 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 15 capabilities and possibilities in the past, should they ignore them, or suppress them, now that they have found them? 65. Actor silhouette 66. superimposed with CU radio ACTOR (Judge): Look around you, my child, look about you today and what do you find? The result of the attempted compromise of careers and marriage divorce, children whose lives are being ruined, lives of men and women that have been wrecked. The male has ever been the provider and protector. The female has ever been the bearer of the young. Do you women of today think you can suddenly and completely change the natural laws that have gone on since time began? 67. CU radio NARRATOR: Frances s final scene clearly expresses her ambivalence. 68. Actor silhouette 69. superimposed with CU radio ACTOR (Frances): (sobs) My dream my painted dream. I guess yes, I guess my place is here with Bob. MUSIC

17 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Archival pics/footage of 1920s women working in office jobs, out socializing with men NARRATOR: The radio helped to negotiate changing gender roles at a time when women were entering the workforce in increasing numbers and enjoying more social freedom than ever before. 71. Pics/footage: flapper girls with men in cars NARRATOR: The popular image of the flapper girl may not have reflected the majority of women in the 20s, but it did point to important social trends. The mobility offered by the automobile 72. Pics/footage: young people engaging in leisure activities: bowling, sports games, movie palaces, speakeasies & nightclubs 73. Also, pics of typical 20s-style antics, e.g., flagpole-sitting, goldfish-swallowing put a whole generation on wheels, offering young people a means to socialize away from their parents. Less restricted by community and family oversight, they eagerly went out and enjoyed themselves, at nightclubs, sports events, movie palaces. 74. Pics/footage: people listening to radio in community: at home, at work, in diners or stores NARRATOR: Out of these shared experiences arose a truly national popular culture and radio was its primary agent. For the first time, millions 75. Pics/footage: rural people listening to radio in community or alone at home of Americans heard the voice of the president, the World Series, the latest episode of Amos n Andy. In the city and the countryside, radio was

18 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 17 one thing that all Americans had in common. 76. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as Missouri farmer): We hillbillies out in the sticks look upon radio as a blessing direct from God. We farmers are going broke anyway, but we would like to have our radios, to sort of ease the pain. Segment #3: The Tribal Twenties (8:26) Learning Objective: Learning Objective: Analyze the reaction to the social and cultural changes s radio console RADIO BROADCAST - William Jennings Bryan: How does the man come out of this slimy mess of bugs and serpents according to your uh, professor? Student: Men are sort of e-vo-luted from the old world monkeys. William Jennings Bryan: Did you hear that, my friends? Old world monkeys. Ha! 78. Headlines about Scopes Monkey Trial NARRATOR: In 1925, radio became the medium for a national debate on American

19 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Pics/footage from Dayton Tennessee, focusing on radio broadcasters values, when a special network was set up to broadcast the Scopes Monkey Trial from the rural town of Dayton, Tennessee. 80. Pics/footage/headlines from trial: religious protesters, Scopes, Darrow NARRATOR: In a test case brought by the newly formed American Civil Liberties Union, the notorious attorney Clarence Darrow led the charge to challenge a state law against teaching evolution in the public schools. 81. Jeffrey Moran on camera Super: Jeffrey Moran, University of Kansas JEFFREY MORAN (9:13:58): Here was a wonderful opportunity for radio to really broadcast something that would excite everybody. You had the greatest criminal defense lawyer in the country, the most 82. Famous pic of Darrow and Bryan celebrated agnostic, going up against William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic candidate for the presidency, the Great Commoner. 83. Film clip (Film clip from INHERIT THE WIND) Actor as William Jennings Bryan: Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic?

20 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 19 Actor as Clarence Darrow: Yes! The individual human mind! NARRATOR: Immortalized in the play and later film, Inherit the Wind, the Scopes trial went to the heart of the cultural tensions of the 20s. 84. Jeffrey Moran on camera 85. More footage from INHERIT THE WIND JEFFREY MORAN (9:00:43). The Scopes trial becomes in some ways a microcosm of this larger clash over whether we re going to be a country governed by some of these new forces expertise, urbanism, legal attributes, rather than the older verities of religion, community agreement, things like that. 86. Film clip (Film clip from INHERIT THE WIND): Actor as William Jennings Bryan: These priests of e-vo-lution, what would they have them do? They would have them measure the distance between the stars and forget him who holds the stars in His hand. They are lost, my friends. For I tell you, if man believes he is descended from beasts, he must remain a beast.

21 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Jefffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (9:15:56) The trial created a national conversation and, you know, you can go 88. Political cartoons about trial (see back of Moran s book) back and look in the newspapers, look in the magazines at the time, and you see people beginning to wrestle with some of these issues, in some ways for the very first time. 89. Political cartoon including image of lynching (Moran s book) JEFFREY MORAN (9:17:40): W.E.B. DuBois and his fellow African-American intellectuals were intensely interested in the Scopes Trial, first of all, because they saw anti-evolution as a peculiarly southern activity. A lot of white southerners, in their minds, were afraid that 90. Pic: W.E.B. DuBois, cover of Crisis magazine evolution proved that blacks and whites were in fact related, that there was a common humanity. And at the same time, it was DuBois and his 91. Jeffrey Moran on camera allies chance to stand up and make common cause with progressive ideas like science, like progress itself, in the north. 92. Pics/footage of Harlem and Harlem residents in the 20s NARRATOR: In the Harlem neighborhood of New York, DuBois and others began recruiting young talent to take the lead in the ongoing battle

22 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 21 for respect and civil rights. 93. David Levering Lewis on camera Super: David Levering Lewis, New York University DAVID LEVERING LEWIS (10:02:16): There were great disappointments and there was great retrenchment of the gains that had occurred in just the brief time during the World War. And so the leadership decided that one of the most Pics: W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, and other efficacious ways of achieving the civil rights would be by presenting the African-American as the conduit of the soul of America. 94. David Levering Lewis on camera 95. Slowed-down footage of 1920sera urban life and architecture DAVID LEVERING LEWIS (9387, 10:04:00): As people looked at the success of America, many said, in terms of steel and in terms of brick, this is a phenomenon what this country has done, but its inner life is dessicated. It s hollow. Where are the energies that are needed for this new opportunity? And the African-American in his novels and in his art seemed to provide those sources of vitality, elán and what have you. NARRATOR: Given the opportunity, black writers and artists exploded in a sustained burst of creativity known as the Harlem Renaissance.

23 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Pics of paintings, authors and book jackets 97. Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (09:22:24): You just have this ferment of ideas. And this art is not just art for its own sake, but it s art with a real political purpose and this was the idea that you could come out and show that African-American culture can be a separate culture of its own, partaking of white culture, but contributing to white culture as well. 98. Actor silhouette 99. Pic: Langston Hughes 100. B-roll: 135 th Street subway sign ACTOR (as Langston Hughes): I can never put on paper the thrill of the underground ride to Harlem. At every station I kept watching for the sign 135 th street. When I saw it, I held my breath and went up the steps and out into the bright September sunlight. Harlem! 101. Pics/footage of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston 102. Book Covers: e.g., The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Their Eyes Were Watching God, White Shadows JEFFREY MORAN (9:23:00): You have this flowering of literature African-American writers who are writing extremely interesting works that are not simply about the black condition, but about the American condition more broadly Actor silhouette 104. Pic of author and/or book ACTOR (reading excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston novel): Sometimes in his dreams he

24 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 23 cover was a prince, riding away in a gorgeous carriage. At other times he was a steamboat captain piloting his craft down the St. John River to where the sky seemed to touch the water. No matter what he dreamed or who he fancied himself to be, he always ended by riding away to the horizon, for in his childish ignorance, he thought this to be the farthest land Pics/footage: Aaron Douglas 106. Pics of paintings by Aaron Douglas and other black artists of the period JEFFREY MORAN (9:24:12) And you also have visual artists like Aaron Douglas, in particular, are really beginning to have a lot of impact during the 1920s. And they re partaking of this kind of common background of European modernism and what they saw as an African background reaching back much farther. (JAZZ MUSIC) 107. Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (9:23:36) The best known expression we would think of as the Harlem Renaissance is, of course, jazz music; which actually a lot of black leaders were less enthusiastic about because jazz had all sorts of

25 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 24 less respectable connotations Pics/footage of jazz bands and clubs (Jazz music from the 20s) 109. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as Langston Hughes): Black Harlem. Had I not had to earn a living, I might have thought it even more wonderful. But I could not eat the poems I wrote Final images of African- American pride NARRATOR: The music, art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance reflected a surge of racial pride in the black community, in which their common African heritage was explored and 111. B-roll: Street sign at 135 & Lenox 112. Pics/footage: Marcus Garvey, ads for Black Star Line (see feature essay in America Past and Present, p. 746) celebrated. This impulse found political expression in the vision of Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, who regularly mounted a soapbox at 135 th and Lenox to urge pan-african identity, economic independence, and black separatism Pics/Footage: Klan marches from the 1920s with antiimmigrant signs A campaign for racial purity was also taken up by many whites, as the Ku Klux Klan was reborn and briefly rose to power in the South and Midwest. This new Klan borrowed the robes of its predecessors, but expanded its targets to

26 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 25 include not only blacks, but also the Catholics and Jews pouring into U.S. cities from southern and eastern Europe Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (10:03:13): I call the 1920s The Tribal Twenties really to convey this idea that there is a strong upsurge of nativism which 115. Pics/footage of Italian and Eastern European immigrants coming into Ellis Island, immigrant neighborhoods 116. Pics/footage of Congress/Capitol in 1920s 117. COPYSTAND: Heading of National Origins Act had been pretty quiet prior to that time. NARRATOR: Determined to stop taking people from what they considered inferior lands, the nativists were able to push through Congress the National Origins Act Jeffrey Moran on camera JEFFREY MORAN (10:07:07) You get a quota system that really puts a very significant cap on the numbers that could come in from eastern and southern Europe. So the Italian migration more or less dries up. The Polish migration, the Jewish migration from Russia, more or less dries up Pics/footage of ethnic urban neighborhoods Now the long-term effect of the National Origins Act can t be denied. You don t have these fresh

27 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 26 infusions of new immigrants from these older countries. You begin to have immigrant populations in the cities that are more first generation, second generation. They re not immigrants, they become American ethnics. So this is critical for the development of a kind of American national identity Statue of Liberty JEFFREY MORAN (10:09:07): At the same time, you begin to get Americans thinking of themselves as belonging to an immigrant nation. You only have comfort with this idea that we re an immigrant nation once you no longer have immigrants. And this is one of the long-term effects of this as well. Summary Analysis: The America We Recognize (2:28) Learning Objective: Assess the significance of the postwar decade in shaping a modern America Sacco and Vanzetti NARRATOR: In August of 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair. By then the dignity of the two men had turned them into

28 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/04 27 powerful symbols of social justice throughout the world Pics/footage of protests and mourning after execution of Sacco and Vanzetti NARRATOR: As news of the executions spread around the world, American embassies were stoned, diplomats were assaulted, and the American flag was defamed. In the U.S., novelist John Dos Passos wrote of a crowd of fifty thousand mourners following the coffins through the rain. He grimly concluded 123. Actor silhouette ACTOR (as John Dos Passos): All right, you have won. All right, we are two nations Lisa McGirr on camera Super: Lisa McGirr, Harvard University 125. Reprise program footage LISA McGIRR (9:17:23): This is where we see the roots of many of the dividing lines and battles that we still see today in American culture between a kind of evangelical and religious based group of conservatives and a more sort of, those who embrace a kind of modern tolerant kind of political culture that embraces diversity and heterogeneity. And you see that really emerging in the 20s.

29 Transforming America TA110 FINAL Modern Times 12/15/ Jeffrey Moran on camera Super: Jeffrey Moran, University of Kansas 127. Reprise program footage JEFFREY MORAN (10:11:08): You have a much more integrated society in a lot of ways by the end of the 1920s integrated culturally, integrated to some extent spatially because you have the rise of people living in cities and people are now connected by automobiles in a way that they hadn t been before. But I think the 1920 s is critical to look back, if we want to understand how it is that we relate to one another as difference races and as different ethnicities, because the 1920 s is when we re trying to work out some of these ideas for the first time Susan Strasser on camera Super: Susan Strasser, University of Delaware 129. Reprise program footage SUSAN STRASSER (06:01:01): The Model T Ford and the crackly radio of the 1920s may seem like they re kind of rudimentary compared to a modern car and a modern television set or the Internet, but in fact, they are recognizably the beginnings of what we have today. They were the changes that were essential to the creation of the America that we recognize.