The Roaring Twenties

• Many people in the Roaring Twenties listened to Jazz, on the radio and in films. The 20s were known as the 'Jazz age' which was due to the popularity of this African-American people. The 1920's were Broadway's prime years, with over 50 new musicals opening in just one season.
• 

Flappers-

Young people began to model themselves on movie and sports stars who represented a glamorous new age, but they also took on many of the negative traits of their idols like smoking, bad language, immorality, and selfishness.

• Many women went to dance clubs, sang, wore short skirts, hair styles became shorter, women drank, smoked and kissed in films
• flims also reflected the apperance of the 'flapper' a new more liberated young women.
• More women also went to work and in 1920 women got the chance to vote.
• the divorce rate doubled.

Prohibition and Gangsters

• During Prohibition, the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages were restricted or illegal. Members of the groups such as the 'Anti-Saloon League' were often christians who believed the use of alcohol was a sin.
• they blamed alcohol for vilence, the breakdown of marriage, crime and sexual immorality.
• Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law.
• Even though the sale of alcohol was illegal, alcoholic drinks were still widely available at "speakeasies" and other underground drinking establishments. Many people also kept private bars to serve their guests.

Because Prohibition banned only the manufacturing, sale, and transport - but not possession or consuming of alcohol, some people and institutions who had bought or made liquor prior to the passage of the 18th Amendment were able to continue to serve it throughout the prohibition period legally.

 Crime in America 1920s

Some Americans produced their own alcohol called moonshine or bath-tub gin- this was often damaging to there health because they used to make 100% of alcohol, if you drank a fraction of there own alcohol it come make you seriously ill or most probably kill you.

• 'Boot Leggers' smuggled alcohol across the canadian border overland and via the Great Lakes, or opened secret breweries to make their own drink.
• Al Capone and Bugs Moran ran rival gangs to control the bootlegging.