Arts and Culture:
1925 was a year for the American arts. On February 21st, The New Yorker, a top-tier literary magazine still today, published its first issue. Even more vital to American literature was the publication of The Great Gatsby, the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. These two happenings of 1925 work to solidify America’s place as a powerhouse of literary output; the beginning of a flood of American literature began with the establishing of a literary magazine and the publishing of a classic American novel.
Mussolini
War and Politics:
There was another publication in 1925 that had extreme significance. That publication was Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler on July 18th. On January 3rd Benito Mussolini declared that he was assuming a dictatorial position over Italy. There were political changes that laid the founding tensions of World War II. However, the poems we have focused on for these years don’t touch on the subject of oppression in Europe, instead the poems on our schedule focus more on issues on the American home front.
Social Change:
And there was much to talk about on American soil. On a light note, October 1st saw the dedication of Mount Rushmore as a National Memorial. Much of the other news reflects the societal change seen in the poetry on the schedule. August 8th was the day that the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in the nation’s capital with over 40,000 male and female marchers. The largest organization in the United States, there was an estimated 5,000,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan. These numbers help to paint the picture of exclusion that was being faced by the African American poets of the 1920s.
Science, Technology, Ideas:
Even further into the ideas and social change of America, the Scopes Trial began. On March 21st a governor of Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools and John Scopes was arrested on May 25th for teaching evolution. He was found guilty on July 21st showing the nation’s thoughts on science. We have no poems on evolution on the schedule; nevertheless, the religious language is losing presence in modern poetry. Eventually America would realize their mistake, but for now evolution was just monkey business.