From the Editor | Phillip Guerty | Revisiting the 1920s | Vol 21 No 3 | July 2007

Table of Contents

OAH Magazine of History
Volume 21, No 3
July 2007

From the Editor

Revisiting the 1920s

Phillip Guerty

One of the first books to truly catch my imagination was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which was required reading in my English class. I was captivated by the wealthy life of Jay Gatsby including the endless parties and large mansions. Growing up in Palm Beach, Florida, added further to the book’s allure. Developed by Standard Oil magnate turned hotelier Henry Flagler in the 1890s, Palm Beach became a popular destination for the county’s elite and by the 1920s was a booming city which had seen such well-known visitors as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, and Carnegies. The character Nick Calloway, in fact, mentioned Palm Beach at one point in the novel when discussing the travels of golfer Jordan Baker. These connections made the book, and the 1920s, seem more real to me and allowed me to imagine what life was like at the time. In particular, The Great Gatsby spoke to notions of class, wealth, and status and helped me contextualize, at least in a small way, what I saw in the mansions, shopping districts, and private clubs of South Florida. One of my favorite places to visit back then, in fact, was Worth Avenue which was constructed in 1918 and remained a popular shopping venue throughout the twenties and beyond.

What I discovered, however, as I continued to read and learn about the decade, was a much more complex picture than what I had taken from the pages of Fitzgerald. For all of the wealth in Palm Beach, there was also economic hardship and racial division, especially in the neighboring city of West Palm Beach. In the early twenties the city underwent an economic boom fueled by rapid population growth, increased agricultural production, and an accompanying housing explosion. By 1926, this growth began to slow as the cycle of speculation, especially in the housing market, ran its course and prices began to fall. The result was a devastating economic collapse which sent the area into a depression. For most people in the area, the late 1920s was not a time of wealth and celebration, but rather poverty and hardship.

The hurricane of 1928, which contributed to the economic catastrophe, also provided me with a glimpse into race relations at the time. On Sunday, September 16, 1928, the category-four storm, with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour and waves over twenty feet, slammed into southern Florida just north of Palm Beach. As it slowly moved inland, the hurricane’s strong winds and rain caused a breech of the south levee of Lake Okeechobee. In the devastating floods that followed, thousands of people—mostly African American migrant agricultural workers—drowned as water engulfed towns like Pahokee, Canal Point, South Bay, and Belle Glade. The estimated death toll from the hurricane ranged from 2,500 to 3,000. Because the soil around the lake was saturated, the remains of the dead were transported to higher ground for burial. In West Palm Beach, sixty-nine white victims were buried at Woodlawn Cemetery near downtown. The bodies of the nearly seven hundred African American victims that were brought to the city, however, were buried in a mass, unmarked grave further away. It was not until December 2000—seven decades later—that the city, moved by local activists, acquired the site and erected a historical marker.

In the same way that learning history helped me better understand Palm Beach during the twenties and beyond, this issue of the Magazine of History, under the masterful work of Lynn Dumenil, offers an excellent selection of articles that reexamine our understanding the 1920s. David Goldberg explores the ways that historical interpretations of the decade have changed to better incorporate social and cultural perspectives. Mae M. Ngai looks at the immigration restriction act of 1924 and racial definitions of citizenship during the twenties and beyond. Lawrence Glickman examines the varying ways that individuals understood the power of consumerism during the decade—ranging from Henry Ford to consumers themselves. In "New Woman and the Politics of the 1920s," Dumenil analyzes gender, race, political activism and reform movements in post-Nineteenth Amendment America. Dumenil has done a superb job putting together several teaching strategies that convey the complexity of the decade. Emily Bernard explores the ways that the Harlem Renaissance can be used to teach the twenties. Michael O’Malley demonstrates how teachers can use the web site Historical Thinking Matters to teach students not only about the Scopes Trial but also show them how to think and write historically. Using the flapper image and a wide range of primary sources from popular culture, Heather Owen explores the ways that teachers can help students understand changing and competing gender constructions during the decade.

I also want to thank Diana Selig for answering my recent request for subscriber-submitted lesson plans. Selig's "Celebrating Cultural Diversity in the 1920s" uses the writings of Rachel Davis DuBois to reexamine the traditional view of the 1920s as a time characterized most by racism and nativism. As Selig suggests, the 1920s can also be viewed through the efforts of individuals, like DuBois, who looked to embrace America’s cultural diversity. I want to also thank the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for providing this month's primary source document—A women’s suffrage broadside.

This issue also features Mark Noll’s "Nineteenth-Century Religion in World Context," the final article in the America on the World Stage series. Thanks to Noll for such a wonderful piece that insightfully analyzes the ways that American religious life has always been connected to individuals, events and movements beyond the borders of the United States. I want to also thank all of the authors and editors involved with the "America on the World Stage" project as we look forward to the book version, to be published by the University of Illinois Press, due out in Spring 2008.

—Phillip M. Guerty