WEBVTT 00:00:01.109 --> 00:00:03.942 (dramatic music) 00:00:07.087 --> 00:00:09.007 - [Man] The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor-- 00:00:09.007 --> 00:00:10.327 - [Crowd] Sieg Heil! 00:00:10.327 --> 00:00:11.627 Sieg Heil! 00:00:11.627 --> 00:00:14.096 - [Kennedy] Ask not what your country can do for you-- 00:00:14.096 --> 00:00:16.165 - [Reporter] President Kennedy has been shot. 00:00:16.165 --> 00:00:17.838 - [Armstrong] One small step for man-- 00:00:17.838 --> 00:00:20.927 - We hold these truths to be self-evident, 00:00:20.927 --> 00:00:22.973 that all men are created equal. 00:00:25.710 --> 00:00:29.403 - [Reagan] Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. 00:00:36.868 --> 00:00:39.618 (dramatic music) 00:00:50.330 --> 00:00:53.693 - [Peter] New York City's Great White Way, Broadway. 00:00:55.154 --> 00:00:57.412 (upbeat music) 00:00:57.412 --> 00:01:00.400 Throughout the 1920s, the nightlife here glittered. 00:01:00.400 --> 00:01:03.720 Bands played and liquor flowed, 00:01:03.720 --> 00:01:06.633 and everyone who was drinking it was breaking the law. 00:01:08.430 --> 00:01:10.370 In the first month of the new decade, 00:01:10.370 --> 00:01:12.987 the 18th Amendment became the law of the land, 00:01:12.987 --> 00:01:16.773 and the sale and consumption of alcohol was now illegal. 00:01:23.233 --> 00:01:25.816 (upbeat music) 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:30.810 - There was Prohibition, but oddly enough, 00:01:30.810 --> 00:01:33.363 nobody paid any attention to it. 00:01:36.140 --> 00:01:37.540 - We went to people's homes. 00:01:38.741 --> 00:01:41.493 They served dreadful things called orange blossoms, 00:01:42.420 --> 00:01:44.163 which was gin and orange juice. 00:01:45.681 --> 00:01:48.843 Revolting. 00:01:48.843 --> 00:01:50.510 And bad gin at that. 00:01:51.870 --> 00:01:54.250 - [Peter] Liquor was now sold behind closed doors 00:01:54.250 --> 00:01:56.180 in places called speakeasies. 00:01:56.180 --> 00:01:59.373 Proprietors took the risks and reaped the profits. 00:02:00.620 --> 00:02:02.370 - There's good money in them. 00:02:02.370 --> 00:02:03.410 I was 15 years old. 00:02:03.410 --> 00:02:04.980 I was riding around with a Nash convertible. 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:06.680 We had four speakeasies, 00:02:06.680 --> 00:02:09.310 one by the Daily News, one by the Daily Mirror. 00:02:09.310 --> 00:02:11.390 You had people, you let them in, okay. 00:02:11.390 --> 00:02:12.680 A guy would explain who he was 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:15.330 and he'd show you ID or something and you let him in. 00:02:18.100 --> 00:02:20.493 You got to know, it was like family after a while. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:24.945 - Every corner had a saloon on it. 00:02:24.945 --> 00:02:27.100 Of course, you know, they were never raided by, 00:02:27.100 --> 00:02:29.477 the cops were a big part of the business too. 00:02:30.940 --> 00:02:32.597 People wanted to drink. 00:02:33.947 --> 00:02:34.947 It was a great game. 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:37.860 - [Peter] It became a dangerous game 00:02:37.860 --> 00:02:39.350 for the high stakes players. 00:02:39.350 --> 00:02:41.270 Battles between rival gangs 00:02:41.270 --> 00:02:43.990 for control of illegal liquor territories 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:47.780 riddled American cities with mushrooming murder rates. 00:02:47.780 --> 00:02:51.420 Prohibition's aim was to sweep liquor off the city streets. 00:02:51.420 --> 00:02:54.920 Now, they were flooded with gangsters and guns. 00:02:54.920 --> 00:02:57.320 - I used to carry two Persuaders myself. 00:02:57.320 --> 00:02:59.643 You had to have him (chuckles) or else. 00:03:05.290 --> 00:03:07.210 - Prohibition and the general disregard 00:03:07.210 --> 00:03:10.490 which followed it was the perfect symbol for the '20s, 00:03:10.490 --> 00:03:12.750 a decade which was about crossing the line, 00:03:12.750 --> 00:03:15.143 smashing tradition, breaking boundaries. 00:03:17.740 --> 00:03:20.920 As modern America came of age in the 1920s, 00:03:20.920 --> 00:03:22.640 boundaries of all sorts, 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:26.893 technological, geographical, and social, were shattered. 00:03:39.010 --> 00:03:40.730 The roar in the roaring '20s 00:03:40.730 --> 00:03:42.880 was the birth scream of the modern. 00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:45.360 America was now about to leave behind 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:48.520 the formative experience of its rural past 00:03:48.520 --> 00:03:51.530 and embrace the promise of an urban future. 00:03:51.530 --> 00:03:53.510 But progress would have its price, 00:03:53.510 --> 00:03:55.980 a sudden wrenching departure 00:03:55.980 --> 00:03:58.820 from the certainties of the traditional and the familiar 00:03:58.820 --> 00:04:03.380 spread by an emerging mass media, movies and the radio. 00:04:03.380 --> 00:04:05.060 Things that seem old and familiar mow 00:04:05.060 --> 00:04:08.473 were just beginning to take shape in the 1920s. 00:04:09.932 --> 00:04:12.349 (soft music) 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:18.890 At the dawn of the 1920s, 00:04:18.890 --> 00:04:21.940 America was clearly entering a new era, 00:04:21.940 --> 00:04:26.500 an era defined by a vast and complicated urban culture 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:28.950 that would dominate the rest of the 20th century. 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:31.740 After World War I, 00:04:31.740 --> 00:04:34.700 there was an eagerness to embrace the new. 00:04:34.700 --> 00:04:36.380 And it was in America's cities, 00:04:36.380 --> 00:04:39.530 most dramatically in its biggest, New York, 00:04:39.530 --> 00:04:41.493 where the modern age was born. 00:04:44.050 --> 00:04:45.750 The very architecture of the city 00:04:45.750 --> 00:04:50.123 spoke of America's new ascendancy and her aspirations. 00:04:56.700 --> 00:05:01.700 - The skyscraper was an example of the new form 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:06.353 achieving a kind of thrilling scale and nobility. 00:05:08.710 --> 00:05:10.730 More people worked there 00:05:10.730 --> 00:05:13.773 than lived in the average small town in America. 00:05:20.690 --> 00:05:21.620 - [Peter] A movement to the cities 00:05:21.620 --> 00:05:25.010 that had started during World War I accelerated. 00:05:25.010 --> 00:05:26.680 In 1920, for the first time, 00:05:26.680 --> 00:05:29.560 more Americans lived in urban centers 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:31.793 than in country towns and villages. 00:05:35.110 --> 00:05:37.490 - The pace was being set in the cities. 00:05:37.490 --> 00:05:40.710 The city is irresistibly attractive. 00:05:40.710 --> 00:05:44.093 It's really at a kind of high tide in this decade. 00:05:45.220 --> 00:05:47.453 It's a force, a magnet. 00:05:51.380 --> 00:05:53.150 - [Peter] The very names of New York streets 00:05:53.150 --> 00:05:57.220 would become synonymous with progress and innovation. 00:05:57.220 --> 00:05:58.480 Broadway would represent 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:01.023 the best and latest in American entertainment. 00:06:02.900 --> 00:06:05.010 Madison Avenue would come to stand 00:06:05.010 --> 00:06:07.250 for the bustling new business of advertising, 00:06:07.250 --> 00:06:09.370 which was uniting the nation 00:06:09.370 --> 00:06:12.303 in a set of shared fantasies and desires. 00:06:15.230 --> 00:06:16.910 And Wall Street came to represent 00:06:16.910 --> 00:06:19.333 the decade's expanding economic opportunities. 00:06:21.436 --> 00:06:26.436 (frantic music) (men shouting) 00:06:34.460 --> 00:06:36.930 Wall Street was where the action was. 00:06:36.930 --> 00:06:39.953 People came from everywhere to get in on it. 00:06:41.850 --> 00:06:44.800 - The reason I come to New York was there was nobody there 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:48.290 after they closed the mines in 1926 in Pennsylvania. 00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:49.890 There was no money coming there. 00:06:50.900 --> 00:06:52.983 This fella, Jerry, got me the first job. 00:06:53.900 --> 00:06:56.837 And he said, "C'mon down to Wall Street. 00:06:56.837 --> 00:06:58.657 "The streets are paved with gold." 00:07:01.820 --> 00:07:03.170 - [Peter] It seemed that way too 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:07.030 on Park and Fifth Avenues, where the tycoons lived. 00:07:07.030 --> 00:07:08.970 The number of millionaires in the 1920s 00:07:08.970 --> 00:07:12.240 jumped 400% over the previous decade. 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:15.160 The '20s feeling of limitless horizons 00:07:15.160 --> 00:07:18.203 was fueled by their lavish lifestyle. 00:07:23.080 --> 00:07:27.000 - Our family had a house at 934 Fifth Avenue 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:28.293 when I was growing up. 00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:34.450 We had a place in Tuxedo Park and a house in New York, 00:07:34.450 --> 00:07:37.250 and then we used to come to South Hampton in the summer. 00:07:38.860 --> 00:07:41.053 Everybody seemed to be having a good time. 00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:46.038 - In those days, you got lots of help. 00:07:46.038 --> 00:07:48.499 You had a cook, you had a kitchen maid, 00:07:48.499 --> 00:07:50.290 and you had a laundress. 00:07:50.290 --> 00:07:54.350 And then you had a parlor maid, 00:07:54.350 --> 00:07:55.483 a chambermaid, 00:07:56.950 --> 00:07:57.790 and mother's maid. 00:07:57.790 --> 00:07:59.220 How many does that make? 00:07:59.220 --> 00:08:01.453 Six, or I think there were eight, actually. 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:04.193 Terribly nice people. 00:08:05.770 --> 00:08:07.523 - Almost everybody had a boat. 00:08:09.170 --> 00:08:10.990 I recall in the '20s, 00:08:10.990 --> 00:08:15.090 you would see a harbor filled with yachts. 00:08:15.090 --> 00:08:18.550 I mean, really filled, almost gunnel to gunnel. 00:08:18.550 --> 00:08:20.970 And we didn't refer to yachts as such 00:08:20.970 --> 00:08:22.823 unless they were 100 feet or over. 00:08:30.443 --> 00:08:32.840 There was a great deal of entertaining, 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:36.550 and it was all done in people's houses. 00:08:36.550 --> 00:08:39.243 You see the dinner parties with 50, 60 people. 00:08:42.110 --> 00:08:43.960 Always, after dinner, 00:08:43.960 --> 00:08:48.113 there would be entertainment by guests. 00:08:50.650 --> 00:08:55.533 George Gershwin was there with his orchestrator, Bill Daly. 00:08:56.570 --> 00:08:59.120 They got up and played on two pianos. 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:01.160 Mother always had two grand pianos 00:09:01.160 --> 00:09:04.319 in the big room downstairs. 00:09:04.319 --> 00:09:05.720 (upbeat jazz music) 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:07.740 - [Peter] Gershwin, who wrote Rhapsody in Blue 00:09:07.740 --> 00:09:09.620 and other anthems of the decades, 00:09:09.620 --> 00:09:11.850 was profoundly influenced by the new music 00:09:11.850 --> 00:09:15.300 he had heard called jazz. 00:09:15.300 --> 00:09:17.100 The capital of jazz in the 1920s 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:20.403 was just a subway ride uptown, in Harlem. 00:09:22.420 --> 00:09:25.240 It was in Harlem clubs that one could see the artists 00:09:25.240 --> 00:09:29.060 at the forefront of this fresh and uniquely American music, 00:09:29.060 --> 00:09:31.373 performers such as Louis Armstrong, 00:09:34.810 --> 00:09:35.833 Bessie Smith, 00:09:37.640 --> 00:09:40.660 and a dapper young man named Edward Kennedy Ellington. 00:09:40.660 --> 00:09:42.710 His friends simply called him Duke. 00:09:49.439 --> 00:09:50.373 - Duke was the essence of What black music was all about. 00:09:55.470 --> 00:09:57.970 Everybody else was heading in that direction, 00:09:57.970 --> 00:09:59.073 but Duke was there. 00:10:03.905 --> 00:10:07.822 - The first time that I was seized by the music 00:10:09.770 --> 00:10:12.160 was the first time I heard Duke Ellington 00:10:12.160 --> 00:10:14.120 broadcast from the Cotton Club, 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:19.120 where Broadway, Hollywood, and Paris rubbed elbows. 00:10:21.010 --> 00:10:24.900 People came from all over the United States 00:10:24.900 --> 00:10:29.313 to experience what was going on in Harlem in the '20s. 00:10:31.677 --> 00:10:33.110 - I was young then and out, 00:10:33.110 --> 00:10:36.533 and we went up to Harlem at night to dance and everything. 00:10:37.760 --> 00:10:40.680 We all saved up for months 00:10:40.680 --> 00:10:44.453 to get the money to go out to a nightclub. 00:10:47.030 --> 00:10:48.980 And of course, the music was wonderful. 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:56.230 - [Peter] Harlem was contributing more than music 00:10:56.230 --> 00:10:58.650 to America's new urban culture. 00:10:58.650 --> 00:11:01.240 The world above New York's 125th Street 00:11:01.240 --> 00:11:03.490 was, in the 1920s, a hotbed 00:11:03.490 --> 00:11:07.290 of political, social, and cultural activity. 00:11:07.290 --> 00:11:10.020 It was later called the Harlem Renaissance. 00:11:10.020 --> 00:11:12.580 - The Harlem Renaissance was one of those fancy terms 00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:14.920 that white folks invent when they wanna take 00:11:14.920 --> 00:11:17.773 a particular look at some aspect of black folks. 00:11:19.140 --> 00:11:21.520 I don't think black folks run around saying 00:11:21.520 --> 00:11:22.410 that we're gonna have us a renaissance 00:11:22.410 --> 00:11:26.663 or something like that, but it was a holiday of the spirit. 00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:31.480 - In Harlem was born this idea of the new Negro, 00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:33.580 someone who stood up for the Negro, 00:11:33.580 --> 00:11:37.080 who advertised his and her contributions 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:40.453 to American culture, who was proud to be black. 00:11:42.290 --> 00:11:47.290 - Harlem was the end of the line, the promised land, 00:11:47.337 --> 00:11:51.323 the place where all our fantasies came true. 00:11:54.130 --> 00:11:56.980 If I had to choose between heavens and Harlem (chuckles), 00:11:58.390 --> 00:12:01.083 Harlem, of course, would win every time. 00:12:03.067 --> 00:12:05.484 (soft music) 00:12:07.290 --> 00:12:08.950 - [Peter] While Harlem seemed a promised land 00:12:08.950 --> 00:12:11.960 for black Americans, New York's Lower East Side 00:12:11.960 --> 00:12:13.640 was, for European immigrants, 00:12:13.640 --> 00:12:16.053 their gateway to the American dream. 00:12:21.050 --> 00:12:23.733 - We were blessed because we were in America. 00:12:25.950 --> 00:12:29.013 My father came from the Ukraine. 00:12:30.500 --> 00:12:33.950 He went to work in New York city and worked in a factory 00:12:33.950 --> 00:12:37.223 where they blocked hats, men's hats. 00:12:38.230 --> 00:12:42.370 And he was making, you know, like nine or $10 a week, 00:12:42.370 --> 00:12:44.560 working a six-day week. 00:12:44.560 --> 00:12:45.970 And he would tell me 00:12:45.970 --> 00:12:50.710 how he was able to buy lunch every day for 12 cents. 00:12:50.710 --> 00:12:53.310 And the lunch consisted of 00:12:54.980 --> 00:12:58.320 a herring, a big Schmaltz herring out of the barrel, 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:01.000 and my mouth waters now to think of it, 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:05.883 and a big roll with poppy seeds, and an onion. 00:13:06.750 --> 00:13:09.023 And life was beautiful. 00:13:12.110 --> 00:13:15.830 - This was perhaps the most mixed city, 00:13:15.830 --> 00:13:19.093 racially, ethnically, in the country. 00:13:20.850 --> 00:13:24.640 But cities all around the country had become more important 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:27.743 because change was centered in the cities, 00:13:29.190 --> 00:13:31.533 business, industry, culture. 00:13:36.030 --> 00:13:37.953 - Nothing was like rain in New York. 00:13:38.803 --> 00:13:41.010 It's the magic of everything, 00:13:42.830 --> 00:13:46.923 the world full of things to be explored. 00:13:49.270 --> 00:13:52.350 That time was one of the feeling of adventure, 00:13:52.350 --> 00:13:55.293 and your life is having a shape to it, 00:13:57.250 --> 00:14:00.143 sort of a thread, like a narrative, or a story, 00:14:01.260 --> 00:14:03.010 a feeling that anything may unfold. 00:14:04.450 --> 00:14:06.320 - [Peter] The decade's startling changes 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:09.310 would soon spread from America's cities 00:14:09.310 --> 00:14:11.263 to envelop the entire nation. 00:14:14.150 --> 00:14:16.567 (soft music) 00:14:18.900 --> 00:14:21.380 Far from the speakeasies and the dance halls 00:14:21.380 --> 00:14:25.480 and the nightclubs, there was another America in the 1920s. 00:14:25.480 --> 00:14:26.840 Here, people still lived 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:29.023 as their parents and grandparents had, 00:14:30.100 --> 00:14:31.450 and they liked it that way. 00:14:36.950 --> 00:14:41.117 - In the early 1920s, this was a quiet, easy life. 00:14:45.500 --> 00:14:47.329 Neighbors would come over, 00:14:47.329 --> 00:14:50.613 what we call the front porch visits. 00:14:50.613 --> 00:14:53.620 And that's where there would be discussion, 00:14:53.620 --> 00:14:55.370 maybe a little gossip. 00:14:57.481 --> 00:14:58.450 - [Peter] Throughout the 1920s, 00:14:58.450 --> 00:15:01.283 new technologies would transform daily life. 00:15:02.220 --> 00:15:03.670 At the beginning of the decade, 00:15:03.670 --> 00:15:06.260 most Americans lived without electricity. 00:15:06.260 --> 00:15:07.120 When night fell, 00:15:07.120 --> 00:15:11.230 only candles and lamps held off the darkness. 00:15:11.230 --> 00:15:13.897 (pensive music) 00:15:16.970 --> 00:15:20.170 America was electrified in the '20s. 00:15:20.170 --> 00:15:22.480 Electric lights extended the day, 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:25.323 opened up new possibilities for work and play. 00:15:28.860 --> 00:15:32.603 That surge of new power came first to the cities. 00:15:34.150 --> 00:15:35.500 And by the decade's end, 00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:38.773 the majority of American homes had electricity. 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:47.650 - You can't understand this century 00:15:47.650 --> 00:15:49.810 without understanding the effect, 00:15:49.810 --> 00:15:52.773 the impact of science and technology. 00:15:57.040 --> 00:15:58.230 - My father's generation 00:15:58.230 --> 00:16:00.803 is the one that really saw amazing changes, 00:16:02.040 --> 00:16:04.830 but he was born in 1900 in a world where the horse 00:16:04.830 --> 00:16:07.863 was still the main means of getting about. 00:16:13.040 --> 00:16:16.883 The car seemed to me more revolutionary in a way 00:16:16.883 --> 00:16:19.293 than anything that's happened since. 00:16:22.070 --> 00:16:25.363 It totally changed the kind of space we live in, really. 00:16:27.570 --> 00:16:28.910 - [Peter] The car would give Americans 00:16:28.910 --> 00:16:31.960 a sense of autonomy and freedom, 00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:35.480 the freedom to escape their city or town, 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:39.103 to go away on a vacation, or simply on a day's outing. 00:16:40.210 --> 00:16:42.350 By mid-decade, the government was spending 00:16:42.350 --> 00:16:44.020 more than $1 billion 00:16:44.020 --> 00:16:47.560 on the construction of highways, bridges, and tunnels, 00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:49.960 the beginnings of a national infrastructure 00:16:49.960 --> 00:16:51.603 which knit the country together. 00:16:56.790 --> 00:16:59.880 - My father took my mother and me in the car 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:04.023 for the first ride through the Holland Tunnel. 00:17:05.940 --> 00:17:08.170 This was opening night. 00:17:08.170 --> 00:17:10.803 All the cars were lined up to go through the tunnel. 00:17:12.722 --> 00:17:15.110 I was petrified. 00:17:15.110 --> 00:17:16.520 I cringed. 00:17:16.520 --> 00:17:18.470 Suppose the water leaks in. 00:17:18.470 --> 00:17:21.190 How did they build the tunnel under the water? 00:17:21.190 --> 00:17:22.090 Where's the water? 00:17:23.710 --> 00:17:25.333 And I imagined, as we were riding through the tunnel, 00:17:25.333 --> 00:17:27.613 that I heard the waves overhead. 00:17:34.180 --> 00:17:37.790 Out on the so-called highways of those days, 00:17:37.790 --> 00:17:41.883 outside of New York, we saw the billboards. 00:17:43.780 --> 00:17:45.160 - [Peter] Roadways were soon dotted 00:17:45.160 --> 00:17:47.863 with a new phenomenon, roadside advertising. 00:17:49.580 --> 00:17:50.980 - They were big and colorful 00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:56.030 and beautiful, I thought. 00:17:56.030 --> 00:17:57.690 - [Peter] Advertising helped transform 00:17:57.690 --> 00:18:00.990 not just the physical landscape, but the cultural one. 00:18:00.990 --> 00:18:04.060 Along with advertising came the expansion 00:18:04.060 --> 00:18:07.873 of a brand new consumer concept, credit. 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:12.220 The inhibition against debt came tumbling down 00:18:12.220 --> 00:18:16.540 as everything from cars to clothes could be bought on time. 00:18:16.540 --> 00:18:20.970 Buy now, pay later became the order of the day. 00:18:20.970 --> 00:18:25.970 By 1927, 75% of all household goods were bought on credit. 00:18:27.330 --> 00:18:28.910 And in the last years of the decade, 00:18:28.910 --> 00:18:31.898 the item desired most was the radio. 00:18:31.898 --> 00:18:33.645 - [Radio Announcer] In just a moment. 00:18:33.645 --> 00:18:35.837 But first, we'd love to ask you to let us know 00:18:35.837 --> 00:18:37.250 if this broadcast is reaching you. 00:18:37.250 --> 00:18:39.440 - [Peter] From its scratchy beginnings in 1920 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:42.970 as a mere hobby, radio would become a nationwide phenomenon 00:18:42.970 --> 00:18:45.180 as important as the car. 00:18:45.180 --> 00:18:49.090 Young radio enthusiast, Albert Sindlinger was there 00:18:49.090 --> 00:18:51.380 at the birth of modern radio. 00:18:51.380 --> 00:18:54.727 In 1920, the night station, KDKA, 00:18:54.727 --> 00:18:57.860 broadcasting from a factory rooftop in Pittsburgh, 00:18:57.860 --> 00:19:00.438 transmitted the results of the presidential election. 00:19:00.438 --> 00:19:01.340 - [Radio Announcer] The Republican ticket 00:19:01.340 --> 00:19:03.527 of Harding and Coolidge is running well ahead-- 00:19:03.527 --> 00:19:07.770 - One of the gentlemen was reading the election returns. 00:19:07.770 --> 00:19:08.830 He got sick. 00:19:08.830 --> 00:19:13.830 So for about 45, 35 or 45 minutes, I read election returns. 00:19:15.700 --> 00:19:19.420 Nobody had any comprehension of the significance 00:19:19.420 --> 00:19:21.210 of what was going on. 00:19:21.210 --> 00:19:22.043 But don't forget, 00:19:22.043 --> 00:19:24.033 there were only a couple of hundred listeners. 00:19:25.780 --> 00:19:28.050 Within six months, every store in America, 00:19:28.050 --> 00:19:30.783 even grocery stores were selling radio sets. 00:19:34.320 --> 00:19:38.020 - Suddenly, all Americans were listening to the same things 00:19:38.020 --> 00:19:40.250 and laughing at the same jokes. 00:19:40.250 --> 00:19:43.700 There was a kind of communal exercise here, 00:19:43.700 --> 00:19:45.780 and very much a strengthening of your notion 00:19:45.780 --> 00:19:48.160 of what it was to be an American. 00:19:48.160 --> 00:19:49.770 - Along with and sometimes propelled 00:19:49.770 --> 00:19:52.920 by the great technological leap in the 1920s, 00:19:52.920 --> 00:19:57.120 social patterns in place for decades also began to shift. 00:19:57.120 --> 00:19:58.640 Nowhere was this more obvious 00:19:58.640 --> 00:20:01.030 than with the changes for the American women. 00:20:01.030 --> 00:20:02.360 An expanding job market 00:20:02.360 --> 00:20:05.030 had given more and more women careers 00:20:05.030 --> 00:20:09.540 and the disposable income to do with what they wished. 00:20:09.540 --> 00:20:11.810 Throughout the 1920s, women would assert 00:20:11.810 --> 00:20:14.710 a newfound freedom and independence, 00:20:14.710 --> 00:20:18.570 and nothing symbolized it more than the 19th Amendment. 00:20:18.570 --> 00:20:23.160 In 1920, after 81 years of agitation, 00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:26.105 women won the right to vote. 00:20:26.105 --> 00:20:28.688 (upbeat music) 00:20:31.550 --> 00:20:36.550 - A woman's lot had changed in almost every way. 00:20:37.230 --> 00:20:41.420 She thought that she had the right to live for herself 00:20:41.420 --> 00:20:44.140 rather than for her family, for others, 00:20:44.140 --> 00:20:46.620 as women were always supposed to. 00:20:46.620 --> 00:20:48.240 She went to bars. 00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:50.350 She went to after-hours clubs. 00:20:50.350 --> 00:20:52.780 She went to wild parties. 00:20:52.780 --> 00:20:54.660 She had much shorter hair. 00:20:54.660 --> 00:20:57.593 She wore much more makeup. 00:20:59.950 --> 00:21:01.750 You go from having young women 00:21:01.750 --> 00:21:04.050 whose dresses reached to their ankles 00:21:04.050 --> 00:21:05.913 to flesh flashed everywhere. 00:21:09.760 --> 00:21:11.780 And a lot of '20s culture 00:21:11.780 --> 00:21:15.403 is about the fun of smashing prohibitions. 00:21:19.660 --> 00:21:21.030 - [Peter] The more daring women of the day 00:21:21.030 --> 00:21:23.463 were known as flappers and vamps. 00:21:24.600 --> 00:21:25.833 - Sure I remember flappers. 00:21:25.833 --> 00:21:28.210 They were all over the place. 00:21:28.210 --> 00:21:32.070 They were older than me, but you know, you look at, 00:21:32.070 --> 00:21:33.280 when you look at the flappers 00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:36.183 through the eyes of a young guy, wow, whoa. 00:21:39.050 --> 00:21:42.670 - I think a flapper was the type of young woman 00:21:42.670 --> 00:21:46.760 who just wanted to see how far she could go 00:21:46.760 --> 00:21:50.410 and then would stop because she'd be afraid to go too far. 00:21:50.410 --> 00:21:52.633 And a vamp didn't care how far she went. 00:22:02.770 --> 00:22:05.700 - [Peter] The shattering ways of 1920s city life 00:22:05.700 --> 00:22:09.553 were spread by the media to rural America, 00:22:11.150 --> 00:22:12.180 places where the changes 00:22:12.180 --> 00:22:14.793 were not always so easy to get used to. 00:22:17.810 --> 00:22:18.643 - Smoking, 00:22:19.620 --> 00:22:24.370 or drinking, being loose with talk, using profanity, 00:22:24.370 --> 00:22:29.123 this sifted down from the cities, from New York and Chicago. 00:22:30.180 --> 00:22:34.237 And this finally had a unwanted place 00:22:35.320 --> 00:22:37.227 in our rural community. 00:22:38.433 --> 00:22:40.720 Here was a girl who'd come home from, 00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:43.670 she'd been working in Chicago. 00:22:43.670 --> 00:22:46.344 She comes home with short dresses on. 00:22:46.344 --> 00:22:48.460 Well, they were not wearing short dresses. 00:22:48.460 --> 00:22:50.660 They were going to church with hats on 00:22:50.660 --> 00:22:51.910 and with white gloves on. 00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:56.110 They were decidedly concerned 00:22:56.110 --> 00:22:58.943 about what the future generation is gonna bring. 00:23:06.580 --> 00:23:09.390 - This company was founded on a respect for God 00:23:09.390 --> 00:23:10.850 and a sense of righteousness 00:23:10.850 --> 00:23:13.214 and keeping with the Sabbath day. 00:23:13.214 --> 00:23:15.310 And people brought their children up 00:23:15.310 --> 00:23:17.713 on the discipline and on reading the scripture. 00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:20.660 And all of those things were part of the things 00:23:20.660 --> 00:23:22.360 that bound us together in America. 00:23:24.150 --> 00:23:25.873 - The people were solid, 00:23:27.040 --> 00:23:30.743 with church going and very little crime and so on. 00:23:41.510 --> 00:23:44.470 - [Peter] As the cities grew in size and influence, 00:23:44.470 --> 00:23:47.840 many people in small town America found them threatening, 00:23:47.840 --> 00:23:51.633 a breeding ground for new and often alien ideas. 00:23:56.270 --> 00:23:58.160 In one small American town, 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:01.180 the forces of traditional religion and modern science 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:05.270 would clash in a battle heard around the world. 00:24:05.270 --> 00:24:07.330 Here in Dayton, Tennessee, 00:24:07.330 --> 00:24:10.570 in the summer of 1925, one of the century's 00:24:10.570 --> 00:24:13.603 most famous courtroom battles would take place. 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:17.200 John T. Scopes stood accused 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:20.140 of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:23.330 that man and ape shared a common ancestor. 00:24:23.330 --> 00:24:25.883 That was against the law in Tennessee. 00:24:28.170 --> 00:24:29.510 The Scopes trial attracted 00:24:29.510 --> 00:24:32.053 the best legal brains of the time. 00:24:33.340 --> 00:24:36.890 William Jennings Bryan, three times presidential candidate 00:24:36.890 --> 00:24:40.493 and a Christian fundamentalist himself, came to prosecute. 00:24:43.310 --> 00:24:46.650 Clarence Darrow, the celebrated Chicago trial lawyer, 00:24:46.650 --> 00:24:48.363 came to defend Scopes. 00:24:53.120 --> 00:24:55.180 Outside, as the trial progressed 00:24:55.180 --> 00:24:59.173 in the scorching summer heat, Dayton had itself a carnival. 00:25:01.580 --> 00:25:05.510 - People would bring in trained chimpanzees 00:25:05.510 --> 00:25:08.353 dressed in suits and ties, 00:25:09.410 --> 00:25:11.610 and they'd lead 'em up and down the streets. 00:25:13.910 --> 00:25:15.690 - Read your Bible was everywhere in town, 00:25:15.690 --> 00:25:18.140 posted up the street, across the street, banners. 00:25:19.800 --> 00:25:22.320 And you walk maybe 100 yards this way 00:25:22.320 --> 00:25:24.780 and you'd have a street preacher. 00:25:24.780 --> 00:25:26.880 I didn't know what he was preaching about. 00:25:28.284 --> 00:25:30.690 And you never saw the same people twice. 00:25:30.690 --> 00:25:32.200 You go to the same place next, 00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:33.530 the next day, there'd be some other people 00:25:33.530 --> 00:25:36.457 from some other parts of the United States there. 00:25:36.457 --> 00:25:37.873 But it was a lot of hoopla. 00:25:38.730 --> 00:25:39.573 I enjoyed it. 00:25:41.606 --> 00:25:44.480 - The Scopes trial became emblematic. 00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:46.730 Everybody had to make up their mind. 00:25:46.730 --> 00:25:48.800 People who've never been to Tennessee, 00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:50.250 couldn't even find Tennessee, 00:25:51.470 --> 00:25:53.203 had to think about this question, 00:25:54.410 --> 00:25:56.513 do I believe in modern science? 00:26:00.590 --> 00:26:02.750 - [Peter] At times, it seemed that the whole world 00:26:02.750 --> 00:26:04.093 had converged on Dayton. 00:26:05.695 --> 00:26:07.143 - The aisles were filled, 00:26:07.143 --> 00:26:10.270 and the walls were lined with newspaper people 00:26:11.460 --> 00:26:13.973 from England, from Spain, from France. 00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:17.740 We had so many newspaper people there 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:20.023 that you couldn't stir 'em with a stick. 00:26:23.770 --> 00:26:25.350 - When all the hoopla ended, 00:26:25.350 --> 00:26:29.720 John T. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, 00:26:29.720 --> 00:26:32.323 a ruling later overturned on a technicality. 00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:35.930 What Scopes represented in what the world came to witness 00:26:35.930 --> 00:26:38.600 was a colossal clash of ideals. 00:26:38.600 --> 00:26:42.080 The cool reason of science seemed to threaten 00:26:42.080 --> 00:26:44.810 the deep and abiding roots of religion. 00:26:44.810 --> 00:26:47.890 It was one thing to replace the family mule with a Model T, 00:26:47.890 --> 00:26:50.470 but quite another to trade Matthew, Mark, and John 00:26:50.470 --> 00:26:53.270 for Einstein, Freud, and Darwin. 00:26:53.270 --> 00:26:56.910 For many people, these were confusing times. 00:26:56.910 --> 00:26:59.240 And what may have been the most unsettling 00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:01.500 about the pace of change in the 1920s 00:27:01.500 --> 00:27:02.630 was that people really wanted 00:27:02.630 --> 00:27:05.010 both the benefits of the future 00:27:05.010 --> 00:27:08.173 and the familiar comforts of the past. 00:27:14.060 --> 00:27:15.860 - They want the fruits of modernity. 00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:20.123 They want the automobiles, electricity, radio. 00:27:21.180 --> 00:27:23.787 And at the same time, they want it to remain 1850, 00:27:23.787 --> 00:27:26.120 and they know they cannot have both. 00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:29.430 And this creates psychological tension 00:27:29.430 --> 00:27:30.820 within American society 00:27:31.700 --> 00:27:33.750 that is then looking for somewhere to go. 00:27:34.680 --> 00:27:37.740 And it goes into hatred towards immigrants, 00:27:37.740 --> 00:27:41.230 hatred towards people who are simply different. 00:27:41.230 --> 00:27:45.168 It goes into intolerance, and into the Ku Klux Klan. 00:27:45.168 --> 00:27:47.835 (ominous music) 00:27:48.700 --> 00:27:50.520 - [Peter] Ku Klux Klan membership 00:27:50.520 --> 00:27:54.063 soared to four million in the 1920s. 00:27:56.480 --> 00:28:00.700 - Almost everybody that was a good citizen of the South 00:28:00.700 --> 00:28:01.950 was a member of the Klan. 00:28:03.180 --> 00:28:05.080 I think they were encouraging morality 00:28:06.060 --> 00:28:07.610 by turning the light 00:28:07.610 --> 00:28:12.130 on immorality and deceit and unfairness. 00:28:12.130 --> 00:28:14.633 - It created a great deal of, 00:28:15.470 --> 00:28:19.063 I'd say consternation and debate and so on. 00:28:21.250 --> 00:28:24.130 They were not just opposed to the blacks, 00:28:24.130 --> 00:28:27.471 but they were opposed to the Catholics and the Jews 00:28:27.471 --> 00:28:30.740 or anybody else who came from somewhere else. 00:28:32.610 --> 00:28:35.590 Going to people's houses, and calling them out, 00:28:35.590 --> 00:28:37.340 and insulting them, and whipping them, 00:28:37.340 --> 00:28:38.933 and things of that kind. 00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:45.420 This was not just particular to the South or to the Alabama. 00:28:45.420 --> 00:28:46.320 It was nationwide. 00:28:50.380 --> 00:28:52.200 - [Peter] The clan was actively recruiting 00:28:52.200 --> 00:28:55.110 in many northern states. 00:28:55.110 --> 00:28:56.840 - My father was asked 00:28:56.840 --> 00:28:59.853 if he would like to join the Ku Klux Klan. 00:29:01.630 --> 00:29:03.270 He grabbed the guy by the collar 00:29:03.270 --> 00:29:04.843 and threw him down the stairs. 00:29:06.340 --> 00:29:10.310 Three nights later, almost directly across the street, 00:29:10.310 --> 00:29:12.543 there was a large cross burning. 00:29:15.280 --> 00:29:16.980 I still can see it in my mind. 00:29:16.980 --> 00:29:19.693 It was a dreadful, horrifying experience. 00:29:22.180 --> 00:29:23.257 My mother said, 00:29:23.257 --> 00:29:26.107 "it's just as though they're guarding the gates of hell." 00:29:28.550 --> 00:29:30.780 - And those white people who catered to us 00:29:30.780 --> 00:29:33.493 and were in sympathy with us, they caught hell too. 00:29:34.560 --> 00:29:36.530 - [Peter] James Cameron was living in Indiana 00:29:36.530 --> 00:29:38.370 when he and two childhood friends 00:29:38.370 --> 00:29:41.270 were seized by a Klan-inspired mob, 00:29:41.270 --> 00:29:45.513 enraged by reports of the rape and murder of a white couple. 00:29:49.421 --> 00:29:51.270 - The men there out in the crowd 00:29:51.270 --> 00:29:53.633 had their robes and hood on too. 00:29:54.890 --> 00:29:55.967 And then the leaders said, 00:29:55.967 --> 00:29:58.320 "Take all these niggers out and hang 'em." 00:29:58.320 --> 00:30:00.910 - [Peter] His two friends were lynched. 00:30:00.910 --> 00:30:03.860 James Cameron barely escaped with his life. 00:30:03.860 --> 00:30:06.010 - They put a rope around my neck 00:30:06.010 --> 00:30:08.690 and they throw the other end over the tree. 00:30:08.690 --> 00:30:11.787 And I kept crying and hollering, "I haven't done anything." 00:30:13.270 --> 00:30:15.180 But before they could hang me up, 00:30:15.180 --> 00:30:16.697 a voice said, "Take this boy back. 00:30:16.697 --> 00:30:19.977 "He had nothing to do with any killing or raping." 00:30:22.090 --> 00:30:24.740 I looked up to heaven and I said, "Lord, have mercy." 00:30:29.270 --> 00:30:30.340 - [Peter] Throughout the decade, 00:30:30.340 --> 00:30:34.410 an estimated 200 people were lynched by the Klan. 00:30:34.410 --> 00:30:36.830 This organization claiming to uphold 00:30:36.830 --> 00:30:39.320 the values and virtues of the past 00:30:39.320 --> 00:30:42.300 became so powerful in the 1920s 00:30:42.300 --> 00:30:46.130 that it seized political control in seven states. 00:30:46.130 --> 00:30:50.720 And in 1927, Klansmen marched 50,000 strong 00:30:50.720 --> 00:30:52.770 down the streets of the nation's capital. 00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:57.160 Clearly, the forces of '20s modernity 00:30:57.160 --> 00:30:59.253 had stirred a bitter resistance. 00:31:03.434 --> 00:31:05.030 - [Announcer] Then the Manassa Mauler lashed out 00:31:05.030 --> 00:31:08.880 in his old ferocious style, every punch deadly cunning. 00:31:10.580 --> 00:31:13.460 - [Peter] In a decade fraught with so many changes, 00:31:13.460 --> 00:31:17.880 people in the 1920 seemed hungry for old-fashioned heroes, 00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:21.123 and an explosion in spectator sports provided them. 00:31:22.780 --> 00:31:25.040 Sports giants became household names, 00:31:25.040 --> 00:31:27.630 their every move followed by radio 00:31:27.630 --> 00:31:30.090 and an eager tabloid press. 00:31:30.090 --> 00:31:34.453 One name was known in more households than any other. 00:31:35.550 --> 00:31:39.070 - In our family, we were never baseball oriented, 00:31:39.070 --> 00:31:41.370 but I would have had to be deaf 00:31:41.370 --> 00:31:43.113 not to have heard about Babe Ruth. 00:31:44.777 --> 00:31:45.810 (crowd cheers) 00:31:45.810 --> 00:31:50.313 - George Herman Ruth, the Babe, reshaped America's pastime. 00:31:51.270 --> 00:31:52.650 In an era of big events, 00:31:52.650 --> 00:31:56.400 he excelled at the game's biggest excitement, the home run. 00:31:56.400 --> 00:32:00.030 He hit 60 of them in a single season in 1927, 00:32:00.030 --> 00:32:03.270 a record that would stand for four decades. 00:32:03.270 --> 00:32:07.027 Fans drove from miles around to see him. 00:32:09.870 --> 00:32:11.340 - We used to get in a truck, seven of us, 00:32:11.340 --> 00:32:14.400 put hay in the truck and just sit on it. 00:32:14.400 --> 00:32:15.680 And in three and a half hours, 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:18.313 we head from Scranton to the Yankee Stadium. 00:32:20.490 --> 00:32:23.733 It was 35 cents to see the Babe, Lou Gehrig, 00:32:24.590 --> 00:32:25.740 all the Yankee players. 00:32:28.290 --> 00:32:30.973 - Babe Ruth was a hero. 00:32:32.800 --> 00:32:35.067 Lou Gehrig was always my hero. 00:32:36.540 --> 00:32:38.790 It seems like everybody back then was a hero. 00:32:41.570 --> 00:32:43.760 We'd write to get autographs. 00:32:43.760 --> 00:32:46.070 They graciously sent us pictures, 00:32:46.070 --> 00:32:48.563 three-cent postage stamp to get your picture back. 00:32:49.441 --> 00:32:51.350 A really nice time to live. 00:32:53.010 --> 00:32:54.763 It felt good to be an American. 00:32:59.046 --> 00:33:01.629 (engine whirs) 00:33:03.167 --> 00:33:04.450 - [Peter] The public's fascination 00:33:04.450 --> 00:33:07.290 with flying in the 1920 seemed fitting 00:33:07.290 --> 00:33:11.450 for a time when even gravity couldn't hold down progress 00:33:11.450 --> 00:33:14.403 and when every boundary seemed just waiting to be broken. 00:33:15.780 --> 00:33:19.330 - Once I got up about a thousand feet, 00:33:19.330 --> 00:33:20.803 it was like I was home. 00:33:22.112 --> 00:33:23.870 And that's the only way I can describe it to you. 00:33:23.870 --> 00:33:24.793 I was home. 00:33:26.840 --> 00:33:29.173 I never wanted to be any place else. 00:33:33.510 --> 00:33:38.380 - [Peter] In 1927, one pilot would put aviation and himself 00:33:38.380 --> 00:33:40.827 on every front page in the world. 00:33:43.010 --> 00:33:46.470 On a misty may morning outside New York City, 00:33:46.470 --> 00:33:48.720 a plane called the Spirit of St. Louis 00:33:48.720 --> 00:33:52.150 was ready to take off for Paris. 00:33:52.150 --> 00:33:56.210 No one had ever flown solo across the Atlantic before. 00:33:56.210 --> 00:34:00.093 Six others had tried, failed, and died. 00:34:01.120 --> 00:34:04.020 Ready to take the chance this time was Charles Lindbergh, 00:34:04.020 --> 00:34:07.253 the six-foot-two son of a former congressman from Minnesota. 00:34:09.700 --> 00:34:12.197 Thousands of people came to watch him take off. 00:34:18.660 --> 00:34:19.880 Once he was out of sight, 00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:23.573 it seemed as if all America held its breath. 00:34:25.670 --> 00:34:30.230 - In Yankee Stadium, they had framed minutes of silence, 00:34:30.230 --> 00:34:31.063 praying for him. 00:34:31.063 --> 00:34:33.270 Everybody in the company was praying for him. 00:34:37.490 --> 00:34:40.240 - [Peter] Flying the fuel-heavy single-engine plane 00:34:40.240 --> 00:34:44.073 was a battle against weather, hunger, and fatigue. 00:34:45.580 --> 00:34:48.200 For the entire 33-and-a-half-hour flight, 00:34:48.200 --> 00:34:49.650 the Western world wondered 00:34:49.650 --> 00:34:51.660 about the fate of that tiny plane 00:34:51.660 --> 00:34:53.763 somewhere over the vast Atlantic. 00:34:59.300 --> 00:35:00.733 - It was a Saturday night. 00:35:02.250 --> 00:35:05.620 They hadn't heard from him for a long time. 00:35:05.620 --> 00:35:08.917 And I was walking up 125th Street and someone shouted, 00:35:08.917 --> 00:35:09.913 "They found him. 00:35:10.767 --> 00:35:12.920 "He was flying over Ireland." 00:35:12.920 --> 00:35:17.920 And within an hour or so, he landed in Paris. 00:35:22.670 --> 00:35:23.910 - [Peter] 100,000 Parisians were there 00:35:23.910 --> 00:35:26.180 to welcome the shy young pilot. 00:35:26.180 --> 00:35:28.460 Lucky Lindy emerged from his plane 00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:30.763 carrying only a razor and a passport. 00:35:35.400 --> 00:35:38.560 His flight had represented the best of an era, 00:35:38.560 --> 00:35:40.570 a mastery of modern technology 00:35:40.570 --> 00:35:43.760 joined with old-fashioned values of courage, 00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:46.733 individualism, and hard-won achievement. 00:35:51.650 --> 00:35:53.260 - When Lindbergh came back, 00:35:53.260 --> 00:35:55.650 it was as though he walked on the water. 00:35:55.650 --> 00:35:57.550 The public couldn't get enough of him. 00:35:59.170 --> 00:36:00.303 He was the star. 00:36:02.360 --> 00:36:05.360 There wasn't a woman in America that wasn't crazy about him. 00:36:10.590 --> 00:36:12.130 - He was a hero. 00:36:12.130 --> 00:36:13.220 He was a nice guy. 00:36:13.220 --> 00:36:14.053 He was new. 00:36:14.053 --> 00:36:14.886 He was young. 00:36:14.886 --> 00:36:18.687 He was kind of gawky, but that was what they wanted. 00:36:20.210 --> 00:36:21.850 - [Peter] The parade for Lindbergh down Broadway 00:36:21.850 --> 00:36:23.900 was the biggest national celebration 00:36:23.900 --> 00:36:25.620 since the end of World War I. 00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:34.630 - Everybody became Lindbergh. 00:36:34.630 --> 00:36:38.270 They became the person that he was and represented. 00:36:38.270 --> 00:36:39.103 It was great. 00:36:40.269 --> 00:36:41.733 He made a big impression on me. 00:36:43.219 --> 00:36:45.580 - It was very exciting for all of us 00:36:45.580 --> 00:36:50.413 because we realized that a young man could do great things. 00:37:01.640 --> 00:37:03.150 - [Peter] After Lindbergh's triumph, 00:37:03.150 --> 00:37:05.180 there remained only one continent 00:37:05.180 --> 00:37:08.943 for the airplane to conquer, Antarctica. 00:37:09.810 --> 00:37:11.840 The frozen and forbidding landscape 00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:14.260 at the bottom of the world was the boundary 00:37:14.260 --> 00:37:17.740 one of the centuries great explorers, Admiral Richard Byrd, 00:37:17.740 --> 00:37:19.360 set out to break. 00:37:19.360 --> 00:37:22.230 His goal was to fly over the South Pole. 00:37:22.230 --> 00:37:25.320 His expedition was flooded with young and eager volunteers, 00:37:25.320 --> 00:37:27.803 all of them wanting to be heroes. 00:37:29.239 --> 00:37:31.290 - Admiral Byrd was gonna select, 00:37:31.290 --> 00:37:34.970 I forget how many Boy Scouts to go to the pole. 00:37:34.970 --> 00:37:37.450 Now, I was about 12 at that time, 00:37:37.450 --> 00:37:39.903 and I was nominated as one of the guys to go. 00:37:40.780 --> 00:37:41.880 Now, this was a big thing. 00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:43.130 It was in all the papers. 00:37:44.530 --> 00:37:47.327 When I came home, I says, "Ma, what do you think? 00:37:47.327 --> 00:37:49.660 "I'm gonna go to the North Pole with Admiral Byrd!" 00:37:49.660 --> 00:37:50.730 She says, "You can't go!" 00:37:50.730 --> 00:37:51.950 I says, "Why?" 00:37:51.950 --> 00:37:54.117 She says, "You'll catch your death of cold." 00:37:56.050 --> 00:37:56.883 I never went. 00:37:56.883 --> 00:37:58.277 My cousin went instead. 00:37:59.420 --> 00:38:03.030 Imagine that. 00:38:03.030 --> 00:38:08.030 There were 120 men connected with the Byrd expedition. 00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:12.310 - [Peter] 20-year-old Harvard student, Norman Vaughan 00:38:12.310 --> 00:38:15.200 dropped out of school trained for a year, 00:38:15.200 --> 00:38:16.260 and was finally selected 00:38:16.260 --> 00:38:18.110 to go on the adventure of a lifetime. 00:38:20.890 --> 00:38:22.510 - We stepped on land 00:38:22.510 --> 00:38:25.503 that had never been seen or touched before, 00:38:26.600 --> 00:38:30.580 and that just excited me beyond words. 00:38:30.580 --> 00:38:32.413 Absolutely a new frontier. 00:38:34.550 --> 00:38:35.950 - [Peter] The expedition's home base 00:38:35.950 --> 00:38:37.710 was called Little America. 00:38:37.710 --> 00:38:41.280 Its two-year mission was to conduct geological research 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:44.450 and prepare for Byrd's record-breaking attempt. 00:38:44.450 --> 00:38:47.000 - [Norman] We were responsible for getting out 00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:52.000 onto the interior of Antarctica, as far as we could, 00:38:52.020 --> 00:38:57.020 to be there for Admiral Byrd's rescue expedition 00:38:57.090 --> 00:38:59.163 should he have had a forced landing. 00:39:00.413 --> 00:39:02.996 (somber music) 00:39:19.730 --> 00:39:24.110 - [Peter] Just after midnight on November the 29th, 1929, 00:39:24.110 --> 00:39:26.750 Admiral Byrd's aircraft flew 500 feet 00:39:26.750 --> 00:39:28.763 above the geographic South Pole. 00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:33.173 He dropped a stone wrapped in an American flag. 00:39:35.050 --> 00:39:37.030 Americans and their airplane 00:39:37.030 --> 00:39:39.193 had reached the ends of the Earth. 00:39:51.630 --> 00:39:55.873 By the end of the 1920s, anything seemed possible. 00:40:03.960 --> 00:40:08.370 - The most extraordinary thing about the decade of the '20s 00:40:08.370 --> 00:40:13.033 was a pandemic air of optimism, 00:40:14.320 --> 00:40:17.993 a feeling that the future of the country was unlimited. 00:40:20.200 --> 00:40:25.200 One of the great jazz songs of the day was Blue Skies, 00:40:26.750 --> 00:40:29.263 only but blue skies do I see. 00:40:34.480 --> 00:40:36.120 - [Peter] The President promised blue skies 00:40:36.120 --> 00:40:37.660 in the country's future. 00:40:37.660 --> 00:40:40.370 At his inauguration in 1929, 00:40:40.370 --> 00:40:43.070 Herbert Hoover repeated the common wisdom of the day 00:40:43.070 --> 00:40:45.493 that Americans were on their way to riches. 00:40:46.530 --> 00:40:49.690 If proof was needed, all one had to do 00:40:49.690 --> 00:40:53.833 was look at the bubbling pool of wealth, the stock market. 00:40:54.890 --> 00:40:56.840 - The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, 00:40:56.840 --> 00:40:59.663 everybody, oddly enough, was in the stock market. 00:41:00.920 --> 00:41:04.420 One of our chauffeurs was in the market. 00:41:04.420 --> 00:41:07.500 If he can be in the market, anybody can be in the market. 00:41:09.587 --> 00:41:11.887 - There were no regulations, as we have now. 00:41:13.350 --> 00:41:15.560 People got away with murder all the time. 00:41:15.560 --> 00:41:17.380 The government didn't bother them. 00:41:17.380 --> 00:41:19.120 So they were all making money. 00:41:19.120 --> 00:41:20.743 They were doing very well. 00:41:22.170 --> 00:41:25.920 - [Peter] A boom in buying had driven up stock prices. 00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:28.490 Suddenly, in October of 1929, 00:41:28.490 --> 00:41:32.700 investors started cashing in their overpriced stock. 00:41:32.700 --> 00:41:34.433 A panic of selling started. 00:41:37.520 --> 00:41:41.950 - On October 29, 1929, 00:41:41.950 --> 00:41:44.590 it was obvious from the opening bell 00:41:44.590 --> 00:41:48.623 that things were wildly amiss. 00:41:49.840 --> 00:41:51.793 - At 9:30, 00:41:52.980 --> 00:41:55.963 there was a rumble on the floor. 00:41:57.530 --> 00:41:59.757 One of the pageboys said, "Hey, Mike, 00:41:59.757 --> 00:42:02.407 "look at the sell orders coming out of those phones." 00:42:05.030 --> 00:42:07.813 - The wheels really started to come off. 00:42:09.270 --> 00:42:11.573 The stock market went into a free fall. 00:42:12.430 --> 00:42:16.793 Crowds gathered in the street outside of the exchange. 00:42:18.320 --> 00:42:23.162 - At three o'clock, the bell rang, and that was it. 00:42:23.162 --> 00:42:25.579 (bell rings) 00:42:27.430 --> 00:42:30.150 - [Peter] More than $30 billion in paper value 00:42:30.150 --> 00:42:34.700 simply vanished that day as the stock market crashed. 00:42:34.700 --> 00:42:36.603 - The famous word, the crash. 00:42:37.653 --> 00:42:40.293 Overnight, it was like bombs fell. 00:42:46.930 --> 00:42:49.550 - [Peter] The '20s bubble had burst, 00:42:49.550 --> 00:42:52.033 and with it, the decade's optimism. 00:42:56.720 --> 00:42:59.193 - People lost every penny that they had. 00:43:00.950 --> 00:43:02.713 Nobody had any pensions. 00:43:04.256 --> 00:43:09.256 There was no Medicare and Medicaid, social security. 00:43:10.010 --> 00:43:13.180 If people lost their money, that was it. 00:43:13.180 --> 00:43:14.833 They were down and out. 00:43:17.200 --> 00:43:21.030 - People jumped off the George Washington Bridge, 00:43:21.030 --> 00:43:24.460 which had only just then, not long ago been built, 00:43:24.460 --> 00:43:25.293 people we knew! 00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:29.653 My father was wiped out! 00:43:31.100 --> 00:43:34.643 He never, psychologically, he never recovered. 00:43:37.070 --> 00:43:38.863 - The 29th, I lost $1 million. 00:43:40.930 --> 00:43:41.893 What do you do? 00:43:41.893 --> 00:43:43.230 It's the same story. 00:43:43.230 --> 00:43:44.980 Wash your face and hands and comb your hair 00:43:44.980 --> 00:43:46.243 and start all over again. 00:43:48.880 --> 00:43:51.350 - But as people would find out in the decade to come, 00:43:51.350 --> 00:43:55.570 a decade as different from the '20s as night is from day, 00:43:55.570 --> 00:43:58.330 starting over was not gonna be so easy 00:44:01.520 --> 00:44:03.720 America, along with much of the world, 00:44:03.720 --> 00:44:06.240 faced the Great Depression. 00:44:06.240 --> 00:44:10.170 That's on the next episode of The Century: America's Time. 00:44:10.170 --> 00:44:11.050 I'm Peter Jennings. 00:44:11.050 --> 00:44:12.300 Thank you for joining us. 00:44:13.286 --> 00:44:16.036 (dramatic music)