Articles from 1921
The excitement that was 1920’s Harlem can clearly be felt in this article by the journalist and Congregational minister, Rollin Lynde Hartt:
Greatest Negro city in the world, it boasts magnificent Negro churches, luxurious Negro apartment houses, vast Negro wealth, and a Negro population of 130,000…
The Backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance (The Independent, 1921) Read More »
There is little doubt that the French Composer Eric Satie had wished that the bellyaching dilettantes who were charged with the task of writing music reviews for the Paris papers had spent more time in school in order that they might show greater erudition in their writings. However, Satie recognized that we can’t change the past and so he took his critics out to the woodshed with this column.
Eric Satie Goes After the Critics (Vanity Fair, 1921) Read More »
The war that Germany began and lost cost the Allies, according to a recent estimate, the stupendous total of $177,000,000,000. The Reparations Commission has named a principal sum of about $32,000,000,000 as the damages for which reparations by Germany is due under the Treaty of Versailles. The Supreme Council of the Allies, sitting at Paris in January, placed the amount to be paid by Germany at a present value of $21,000,000,000, which when paid with interest and in installments covering forty-two years, would amount to about $55,000,000,000.
‘Why Germany Must Pay” (The Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »
A tight little essay that clarifies the force behind Italian fascism. This was an editorial penned by Dr. Frank Crane, a pastor who appeared regularly in the pages of CURRENT OPINION.
The Fascisti is a name given to a political party in Italy. Political parties, and indeed almost all organizations, as has often been pointed out, hold together and get their strength by hating something. The Fascisti hate the Bolshevists, Communists and the like.
Click here to read about those who resisted Mussolini.
The Fascisti (Current Opinion, 1921) Read More »
Ten million people a day go to the movies in the United States, but how many of them know who made the first movie? The Noes have it. The man who made the first motion-picture, as we know it today, is C. Francis Jenkins (1867 – 1934). Many [actresses] who have not been ‘in pictures’ a month are better known.
C. Francis Jenkins was also one of the brainiacs who contributed his talent to the invention of television.
He Made the Pictures Move (The Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »
Here is an article that deals with the money aspect of the First World War. Illustrated with two tables, the journalist explains that the United States laid out far more money than any of the combatant nations. Albeit the funds extended were in the form of loans to the Entente powers rather than the creation of their own military, in the end the U.S. ended up being the one nation that invested the most in the war.
The Biggest Investor In The War (The Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »
This is a brief editorial from 1921 that pointed out how amazing and promising pre-war Germany once was and then remarks how far off the mark the nation had fallen since the war ended:
• Her empire dismantled.
• Occupied by alien armies.
• Worthless currency.
• Widespread despair.
Click here to read about Anti-Semitism in W.W. I Germany.
Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.
You might also want to read about the inflated currency of post W.W. I Germany.
‘Deutschland Unter Alles” (Current Opinion Magazine, 1921) Read More »
Whether Georgia Governor Hugh M. Dorsey (1871 – 1948) was overwhelmed by a sense of humanity or whether he simply wished to reduce the northern flow of African-Americans from his state in the Great Migration – we’ll never know, but the fact stands that in late April, 1921, the Governor stood before the State Committe on Race Relations and spoke of 135 instances in which Black citizens were unjustly treated by White Georgians (The Georgia Government document pertaining to his address can be read here).
Restraining The Terror In Georgia (The Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »
A 1921 report on the state that would not go dry: New York.
When New York wants Prohibition it will have it. So long as New York doesn’t want Prohibition there will be wholesale lawbreaking to avoid it.
– The New York World
The Most Rebellious State (The Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »
