American Decades Primary Sources: 1920-1929

The passage of the Volstead Act prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol and spawned a black market network of smuggling and speakeasies. Gangsters like Al Capone captured the publics imagination. Fashionable, fun-loving women wore short skirts and even shorter hair. Business was booming in many industries and, for the first time, people were buying on credit. Speculation in the stock market was at an all-time high as a get rich quick mentality took hold, but the artificially inflated bubble burst on October 24, 1929. The stock market crash closed out the 1920s with a bang.

The following documents are just a sampling of the offerings available in this volume:

New York Dada first and only issue of Dadaist magazine by Man Ray Maidenform Brassiere Patent drawings and documentation, text facsimile Alfred E. Smiths speech on Religious Bigotry Reports and memos by J. Edgar Hoover, both as a special agent and Justice Department Attorney, on the activities of black nationalist Marcus Garvey

The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame football: article by Grantland Rice and photograph of the players Far From Well, book review by author and poet Dorothy Parker Plan-Isometric and Elevation of a Minimum Dymaxion home and patent application by R. Buckminster Fuller Handbook for Guardians of Camp Fire Girls, 1924 Open Letter to the Pullman Company, by A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brot