It was time for a cultural celebration. African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The end of bondage had not brought the promised land many had envisioned. Instead, white supremacy was quickly, legally, and violently restored to the New South, where ninety percent of African Americans lived. Starting in about 1890, African Americans migrated to the North in great numbers. This Great Migration eventually relocated hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. Many discovered they had shared common experiences in their past histories and their uncertain present circumstances. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, the recently dispossessed ignited an explosion of cultural pride. Indeed, African American culture was reborn in the Harlem Renaissance.

The 1920s was a decade of increasing conveniences for the middle class. New products made household chores easier and led to more leisure time. Products previously too expensive became affordable. New forms of financing allowed every family to spend beyond their current means. Advertising capitalized on people's hopes and fears to sell more and more goods.

Commercial radio in America had humble beginnings. Frank Conrad, an engineer for Westinghouse, set up an amateur radio station above his garage in a Pittsburgh suburb. Since the wireless technology was developed by Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century, thousands of enthusiasts across the world experimented with the new toy. After World War I, Conrad began broadcasting a variety of programming from his "station." High school music groups performed, phonograph records were played, and news and baseball scores were reported. Conrad had dramatically improved the transmitter, and soon hundreds of people in the Pittsburgh area were sending requests for air time. The bosses of Westinghouse knew that Conrad was on to something and convinced him to make his hobby commercially profitable.

The Roaring Twenties was a time of great change. As exciting as dynamic times may seem, such turmoil generates uncertainty. Sometimes, in an effort to obscure tensions, people seek outlets of escape. Fads — sometimes entertaining, sometimes senseless — swept the nation. Another coping strategy in a time of great uncertainty is to find role models who embody tried and true values. National heroes heretofore unknown to peacetime America began to dominate American consciousness.

Not all Americans embraced the new way of life. Many saw the United States as a civilization in decline. The original purpose of the Puritan city upon a hill seemed to be slipping away in the pursuit of materialism and self-gratification. The morals of the Victorian Age were forgotten in the age of Freud and the flapper. Immigrants brought new cultures, religions, and languages to the increasingly complex American mosaic. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution brought a widespread suspicion of socialists, radicals, and labor unions. There were those in America who clung tenaciously to the values of the past. They would not give up without a fight.

Progressive and conservative Americans believed that labor activism was a menace to American society and must be squelched. The hatchetman against American radicals was President Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer was determined that no Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union led the charge of evolution's supporters. It offered to fund the legal defense of any Tennessee teacher willing to fight the law in court. Another showdown between modernity and tradition was unfolding.

Old versus new was not a conscious topic to be discussed calmly at the nation's dinner tables. In an effort to preserve so-called true American values, the forces against change sometimes displayed intolerance ranging from restrictive legislation to outright violence.

They were called the Lost Generation. America's most talented writers of the 1920s were completely disillusioned by the world and alienated by the changes in modern America. The ghastly horrors of trench warfare were a testament to human inhumanity. The ability of the human race to destroy itself had never been more evident. The materialism sparked by the Roaring Twenties left many intellectuals empty. Surely there was more to life than middle-class conformity, they pined.

Despite all the verve of the American social scene in the 1920s, the Presidential leadership of the decade was quite unremarkable. Warren Harding won his bid for the White House in 1920 with the campaign slogan "Return to Normalcy." Republicans believed Americans had grown weary of the turmoil caused by World War I and promised tranquility. Harding found himself mired in scandals unknown in America since the Grant Administration. Although Harding himself was above the graft, his friends were more than willing to dip into the public treasury. Fraud and bribery plagued the Veterans Bureau and the Justice Department. The Teapot Dome Scandal exposed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for accepting bribes for allowing private oil companies to lease public lands. Harding fell ill in 1923 and died shortly thereafter.

Although the United States had little history of massive social upheaval or coup attempts against the government, hunger has an ominous way of stirring those passions among any population. As bread riots and shantytowns grew in number, many began to seek alternatives to the status quo. Demonstrations in the nation's capital increased, as Americans grew increasingly weary with President Hoover's perceived inaction. The demonstration that drew the most national attention was the Bonus Army march of 1932.

No nation could emerge from the cauldron of national crisis without profound social and cultural changes. While many undesirable vices associated with hopelessness were on the rise, many family units were also strengthened through the crisis. Mass migrations reshaped the American mosaic. While many businesses perished during the Great Depression, others actually emerged stronger. And new forms of expression flourished in the culture of despair.

Runs on banks were widespread during the early days of the Great Depression. In 1929 alone, 659 banks closed their doors. By 1932, an additional 5102 banks went out of business. Families lost their life savings overnight. Thirty-eight states had adopted restrictions on withdrawals in an effort to forestall the panic. Bank failures increased in 1933, and Franklin Roosevelt deemed remedying these failing financial institutions his first priority after being inaugurated.

Farmers faced tough times. While most Americans enjoyed relative prosperity for most of the 1920s, the Great Depression for the American farmer really began after World War I. Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery. When the stock market crashed in 1929 sending prices in an even more downward cycle, many American farmers wondered if their hardscrabble lives would ever improve.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Which of the polygons are right triangles? Choose a measuring tool to help you determine this. These are right trianglesThese are not right triangles F...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Look at each figure. Read each of the descriptions. Place an X in the box if it appears to describe the figure pictured. A. B. C. D. 4 vertices Four si...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Each shape below has a line of symmetry. Draw a line of symmetry for each shape. Not every shape has an line of symmetry. Which of the four shapes belo...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Letters can be thought of as geometric figures. How many line segments are needed to make the letter A? How many angles are there? Are they acute, obtu...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Say what a trapezoid is in your own words. Compare your definition with a partner. Is this parallelogram a trapezoid according to your definition? Expl...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Draw at least two examples and two non-examples of each of the quadrilaterals defined below. Parallelogram: A quadrilateral with 2 pairs of parallel si...