Roaring Twenties | Henderson Heritage

The Roaring Twenties was the age of economic prosperity.
The decade saw the large-scale use of automobiles, telephones, motion pictures with sound and radio.
The automobile industry’s effects on the economy were widespread, contributing to such industries as steel production, highway building, motels, service stations and car dealerships.
This was the golden age of radio with a variety of programming. In 1926, electrical recording became available for commercially issued phonograph records.
Hollywood boomed as movies were cheap and accessible. Downtown movie theaters were built and sound appeared between 1927 and 1929. Cartoon shorts were popular in the movie theaters and Mickey Mouse made his debut in 1928.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight.
Electric production quadrupled and most industries switched from coal power to electricity.
Indoor plumbing began for the first time in many regions.
Jazz music blossomed and dancing rose in popularity and the period also became known as the Jazz Age. Famous jazz performers and singers included Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. The blues also began a rise in the 1920s. And by the end of the decade early forms of country music appeared.
The Art Deco style of architecture peaked.
It was a period of famous literary works and authors. There was the “Lost Generation” of writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There were the social critics such as Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Edith Wharton and H.L. Mencken.
It was the era of the Harlem Renaissance when African-American literary and artistic culture developed rapidly with phonograph recordings, basketball teams, plays, music and dance clubs, and writers such as Langston Hughes.
The African-American culture contributed the largest part to the rise of jazz.
Dance clubs became popular and dance music dominated popular music. Musical films were extremely popular. The most popular dances were the tap dance, foxtrot, waltz, American tango, the Charleston and the Lindy Hop which later evolved into the swing dance.
Young, rebellious, middle-class women, called “flappers,” did away with the corset and began wearing knee-length dresses that exposed their legs and arms. And they also began cutting their hair. The hairstyle of the decade was a chin-length bob. Cosmetics became popular among mainstream women for the first time.
Wringer washing machines, electrical refrigerators and vacuum cleaners were invented.
Prohibition made illegal the manufacture, import and sale of beer, wine and hard liquor. This led to a rise in organized crime figures such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugs Moran and others. Speakeasies, saloons or nightclubs selling alcoholic beverages illegally, were popular. Many of the speakeasies offered food, live bands, and floor shows.
The decade began the rise in modern sports, with arenas and stadiums built throughout the nation. Sports journalism began. High school and junior high school students began sports teams. Golf and tennis became more popular to mainstream society. The most popular American athlete of the 1920s was baseball player Babe Ruth. Jack Dempsey won the world heavyweight boxing title. College and professional football became popular.
The people of Henderson County joined the rest of the nation in this period of rapid change and modernization.