The years between 1920 and 1929 are called the Roaring Twenties, a term that calls up images of happy people dancing the Charleston (a popular dance of the period), listening to jazz in Harlem nightclubs, or piling into Model Ts (an inexpensive car made by the Ford Motor Company) for rides through the city streets. In many ways this was a decade dominated by optimism, as people enjoyed the conveniences that technology brought into their lives, advances in medicine, and an economy that was generally prosperous. Yet the 1920s were also marked by some troubling trends and events, and not everybody enjoyed the era.

Prohibition, the popular name for the constitutional ban on alcoholic beverages that went into effect in early 1920, is often cited as a source of conflict in the United States. Designed by social reformers as a "noble...