National Humanities Center
Teaching The Great Gatsby: A Common Core Close Reading Seminar
The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...
Musicals 101
Musicals 101: Black Musicals
This is an article about 1920s musical theatre and revues. It focuses on black musicals with links to black performers.
Curated OER
National Park Service: Archive: New Orleans Jazz: Music!
Dozens of audio clips of New Orleans-style jazz music from different time periods: 1920s and 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and the year 2000.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: America in the 1920s: Divisions: Black & White
The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards - historical documents, literary texts, and works of art - thematically organized with notes and discussion...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: American Culture in the 1920s
The First World War had a crippling effect on any notions of positivity in the artists, writers, and intellectuals of that time and they became known as the Lost Generation. This page discusses this group of people, the emergence of jazz...
Musical Cyberspace
Musical Cyberspace: Forgotten Musicals Friday: The Garrick Gaieties
The Garrick Gaieties revue, from the 1920s, gave a jump start to the careers of Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. This page provides information about the revue, and the music of the these composers and others who wrote for the Gaieties.
Stanford University
Riverwalk Jazz: Speakeasies, Flappers, and Red Hot Jazz: Music of Prohibition
Script of a radio broadcast about Prohibition and Jazz Age America comments on black market bootlegging, jazz music, speakeasies, flappers, and women`s suffrage.
PBS
Pbs: Cole Porter: You're the Top
A high school lesson plan designed to delve deeper into the life of Cole Porter and the meaning in his music.
Library of Congress
Loc: Musical Revue
A detailed explanation of the musical revue, a form of variety theatre popularized at the turn of the century and through the 1920s and 30s. Most famous of the genre were The Ziegfeld Follies.
PBS
Pbs: Culture Shock: The Devil's Music: 1920s Jazz
The story of how jazz swept through America and the world and how it "left delight and controversy in its wake."
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Dallas Symphony Orchestra Kids: Listen by Composer: George Gershwin
A brief overview of composer George Gershwin, accompanied with audio samples of his music.
Library of Congress
Loc: The Gershwin Legacy: George and Ira Gershwin
With their famous music and lyrics, the Library of Congress presents an in depth exhibit of primary source materials from the Gershwin brothers.
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Learning Through the Duke
Describe the life of Duke Ellington and his contributions to the field of jazz, write an original poem using a variety of popular vocabulary from the 1920's and respond to Ellington's composition "Mood Indigo" by creating a painting.
OpenStax
Open Stax: The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation 1919 1929: A New Generation
Looks at the new morality that emerged in the 1920s. It changed the role of women and the perception of African Americans, the latter facilitated by the Harlem Renaissance and its impact on the music and dance of the Jazz Age. Also...
PBS
Pbs: Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns: Jazz in Time: Roaring Twenties
Essay considers the impact of jazz on American society in the 1920s.
Digital History
Digital History: Formation of Modern American Mass Culture
A mass culture developed in America in the 1920s due to several factors. Read about the influence of radio, movies, and spectator sports in the adoption of common speech. Find out about the creativity of the time in literature and music.
Digital History
Digital History: Avant Garde
Synopsis of the huge cultural shifts that occurred in America in the 1920s in art, music, literature, and among intelligentsia.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: The Roaring Twenties
This activity involves comparing turn of the century music with the music from the Jazz Age. Students will listen to musical selections and analyze how the change in the music reflects the change in cultural attitudes. They will also...
Other
For Many, One: Don't Fuss, Mother, This Isn't So Fast.
Over the course of the 1920s, flappers became "modern young women." Trace the transformation by reading a series of ads from an ad campaign and seeing how even music changed minds.
Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press.
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Fletcher Henderson 1897 1952
Uncover biographical facts about African American jazz musician, Fletcher Henderson, who formed the first big band orchestra in the early 1920s.
A&E Television
History.com: How Al Capone Spent His Time in Alcatraz
Public Enemy #1 was transferred to the now-infamous island prison a few weeks after it opened. To Americans of the 1920s and '30s, he was the notorious gangster Scarface Al, Public Enemy No. 1. But when he arrived at Alcatraz in late...
Other
Mad River Theater Works: The Ballad of John Henry [Pdf]
Scroll down this study guide to find the lyrics to the Ballad of John Henry, which was collected from individuals in the West Virginia mountains in the 1920's. Discusses the different versions of the song and the history behind it.
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: The Jazz Age
A comprehensive overview with many interesting facts and information on the Jazz Age, a period in U.S. history associated with exuberance and the introduction of jazz music.
Digital History
Digital History:the Great Migration
The Great Migration for African Americans began during World War I as blacks left the segregated south to find jobs in the north. Read about how segregation followed them into their northern neighborhoods. See also how the Harlem...