It’s been 100 years since the birth of America’s “Roaring Twenties.” In 1921, alcohol was contraband, headlines were shouted from street corners and much of American life was racially segregated by law.
These photos show American life — the strange, the quaint, the funny, the disturbing — in the early 1920s.
In this photo from 1921, NYPD Deputy Commissioner John A. Leach watches agents pour liquor into the sewer following a Prohibition-era raid.
In the 1920s, thousands of women were arrested and fined for breaking laws regulating their clothing. Expose too much thigh or shoulder, and it could land you in jail.
The first baseball game to be broadcast on the radio was one between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies on August 5, 1921.
Technological advances drove down car prices in the early 1920s. With a car, Americans could take road trips or move to the suburbs and drive to jobs in urban centers.
In this photo from December 1921, William C. Durant, head of Durant Motors, inspects cars at a factory in Queens.
America’s road systems were growing, but many major roadways looked pretty different.
In this photo from 1922, a car drives up an unpaved Topanga Canyon Road near Los Angeles.
The very first public American high school was established 200 years ago, in 1821, but for a long time secondary education wasn’t for everyone. By 1921, public high schools were emerging as an integral part of society, a stepping stone between childhood and the more adult worlds of college and employment.
Following in the footsteps of scientists like Marie Curie, this high school student studies chemistry in a laboratory at Green Bank Consolidated School in West Virginia
