American Society - 1920s and 1930s - Term Paper Example

It was a period which signified the rise of League of Nations. After elections, the nest President, Harding died and the vice president, Calvin Coolidgetook over the office as president. He was a promoter of moral values and honesty. The United States witnessed an era of excessive prosperity and growth during his reign which was from 1923-1929. The first document is taken from Pathways to the present. It starts with early American history from the time of early European explorers till the development of European colonies.

Three different cultures mixed up to form the culture of these new colonies. They included the Native American culture, the European culture and the West African culture. The Native Americans resided mostly in North America. These natives had come from Asia. The beliefs of these Asians were quite different from the beliefs of the Europeans who had come. The picture/cartoon in document 1 shows this clash of cultures. On the one hand there were Africans who were completely unsophisticated and Europeans were quite civilized with their own distinct tastes in Music.

They were quite well-dressed also. The next picture shows the people of choir discussing the person in the first picture. The person shown is quite tall and huge. He is improperly dressed. Europeans had come to America in search of riches. Their culture was very different. The Europeans, during that time were going through a period of very high economic growth. The renaissance or more commonly called the French revolution was characterized by an outburst of knowledge in European countries and European countries focused more on competition between states rather than kinship or strong fraternal relationships.

Thus, the discrimination between Africans and Europeans existed (Cayton, 2007). The culture of the Africans, on the other hand, was based on strong tribal ties and fraternal relations. This was completely at odds with the European culture. Slavery was a part of the African culture. Africans captured slaves from other tribes. Africans and Europeans continued to trade with each other for sometime but later on, some African people were sold in trading. This gave rise to slave trade. The picture also signifies the clash and disparity.

The second document explains the role of women in 1920s. The status of women in 1920s was greatly uplifted. Now the employers were more acceptable to take women as their employees. Previously they were only restricted to clerical roles nut now they had started taking up better jobs. The society at large was becoming broader minded with respect to females. They had started participating in sports and had also started going to different cities for acquiring good jobs. The period following the war was characterized by massive growth as is discussed previously.

The author has written this book in such a way that the reader would feel as if he also living in the same era. The third document was written after the First World War when the period of renaissance had actually started. African Americans were of the thought that discrimination against the, would now come to an end, however, this was not the case. Document 4 highlights that the generation following the end of world war had become spoilt with regard to excessive spending as compared to their forefathers who had witnessed the period of war and were hence deemed as frugal by this generation.

Animosity between grand parents and grand children also started to grow as grand