Arts & Culture:
In February of 1924, George Gershwin’s acclaimed musical composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered in the concert “An Experiment in Modern Music” at Aeolian Hall in New York. Written for a jazz band and solo piano, Gershwin’s piece combined the musical influences of both classical and jazz to produce a vanguard artistic work that defined the new era of music for Modernist composers. Moreover, as jazz entered the music halls, a distinctly American aesthetic began to make its way into the elite high culture.
War & Politics:
On April 10, 1928, vast violence sparked by the bootlegging trade erupted in Illinois during their primary election, which came to be known as the “Pineapple Primary.” The main issues behind the election were crime and Prohibition, and both factions of the Republican party were notorious for corruption. In fact Mayor William Thompson, a campaign leader, was known for accepting money from Al Capone to redirect state money from fighting bootlegging gangs to fighting government reformers. Charles Deneen, heading the other Republican faction were accused of setting bombs off in their own homes to exaggerate the public focus on crime. During the campaign, supporters of each faction committed numerous acts of violence including grenade usage, hence the term “Pineapple Primary.” The violence got so bad that the Illinois Supreme Court, special federal Prohibition officers, and a federal grand jury were called upon. The result was a ruling that aimed to cut stolen votes, poll-watching, and poll intimidation in the notoriously corrupt Illinois political arena.
Science & Technology:
In February 1927 at the University of Copenhagen, Werner Heisenberg published information on his famous Uncertainty Principle, which changed the world of Physics and had theoretical and metaphysical repercussions in fields as far-reaching as philosophy, literature, and art. Stating that one could never precisely know more than one of the properties of fundamentally dual-propertied particles simultaneously, entailing that one could only conclusively work with probability in mathematical formulations. This shook the very foundations of mathematics in its declaration that the very means of proof could not be proven. This discovery both echoed and informed the atmosphere of uncertainty, irony, and disjunction that defined every aspect of Modernist culture.
Social Change:
Women continued to gain social status and power as the roaring twenties developed, and in November of 1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross was elected as the governor of Wyoming, becoming the first woman state governor in the United States. Her progressive policies included government assistance for farmers, banking reform, laws protecting children, women workers, and miners, and strengthening of prohibition laws.