Key Terms You Must Know

📖 Key Terms You Must Know

Flapper

A young, fashionable woman of the 1920s who rejected traditional ideas of femininity — wearing short skirts and bobbed hair, smoking, drinking, dancing to jazz, and going out without a chaperone. Flappers symbolised the social changes of the decade but were only about 2% of women, mainly young, white, urban, and middle-class. The flapper was a cultural symbol, not a typical experience.

19th Amendment (1920)

The constitutional amendment that gave all American women the right to vote, regardless of race. This was the culmination of decades of suffragist campaigning. However, in practice, women in Southern states were often prevented from voting by the same methods used against Black men (literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation). Black women in the South were effectively disenfranchised despite the amendment.

Suffragist

A person (usually a woman) who campaigned for women's right to vote. Key figures include Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who campaigned from the 1840s onwards. By 1920, after more than 70 years of campaigning, they finally won. The movement used petitions, marches, and civil disobedience to advance their cause.

Margaret Sanger

A nurse and activist who campaigned for women's access to birth control and opened America's first birth control clinic in 1916. She founded the organisation that would become Planned Parenthood. Sanger's work was controversial — birth control was illegal in many states — but it represented a significant effort to give women control over their reproductive lives, which was essential for economic independence.

Double standard

A social rule applied unequally to different groups. In the 1920s, men could drink, date multiple people, and behave freely without social judgement. Women who did the same were considered "immoral" or "fallen." The flapper challenged this double standard, but it remained deeply embedded in American society throughout the decade.