#1920 Election

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The city's welcome to the Democratic National Convention delegates was inaugurated on June 22, 1924, when 25,000 colored lamps were turned on on Fifth Avenue.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America

[deadpresidents]

"Please accept my sincere sympathy."

-- Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, jokingly "congratulating" Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge via telegram upon Coolidge's nomination as Vice President at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

[thepopculturearchivist]

LIFE, August 9, 1928.

For context, Republicans in 1928 were accused of exploiting anti-Catholic bigotry in their campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith, and of pandering to Protestant extremism in their continued support for the widely-unpopular national ban on alcoholic beverages. Democrats in much of the country were still bigoted against racial and other minorities, but better was expected of the "Party of Lincoln."

[weirdyearbook]

Source details and larger version.

Here's my gallery of unusual imagery from vintage college yearbooks.

[effluvlia]

Eugene Debs

1920

Runs for President from Atlanta Federal Penitentiary

Socialist Party

914,911 votes

[wiserebeltiger]

The media landscape for the next however many years:

A split between 1) mature nonfiction/independent media and 2) AI immersive fiction (AI video games, TV, film)

The influencer (reality TV), internet personality, YouTuber, has fallen away, matured into the few surviving indie media personalities (Hasanabi, Tuck Carl, Jordone Petersone, etc.).

The YouTuber/influencer ecosystem has died—it was held together by inter-creator drama. We are done with the drama.

This split is comparable to the one that occurred after the invention of sound film in the early 30s—between film “narcotics industry,” and political folk art.

For the record: the split that previous existed (from 2014-2024) was between legacy media (TV news, prestige TV, traditional journalism) and internet culture (which hosted independent media).

Now, shockingly and overwhelmingly, internet culture has won out completely. So now the internet splits between the AI boosters (who want immersive fiction) and the nonfiction/independent journalism people, who are the matured successors of the narcissistic social media ecosystem.

The other mediums that exist on the internet—the artists, the graphic novelists, the forum people—are a more marginal group, tossed too and fro on the sea of AI boom and bust.

[shrawanij]

"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" 💠

Oil on paper

Original and prints on sale

Dm for more info 💋

[xzazzletheclownx]

“I voted for Trump” So you hate every woman in your life? So you despise the very woman who held you dearly in her womb for months and the woman that held her? The Virgin Mary hears your proclamation and turns away, not much can make her do that. You claim to not be a fa$cist and you claim to not be a naz! but you have voted for the hand that promises to starve our women.

[princetonarchives]

Princeton University Presidential Straw Poll, October 21, 1920

Harding: 877 Cox: 464 Debs: 9 Watkins: 9 Christiansen: 5 (Source)

[newyorkthegoldenage]

In the first national election held after the passage of the 19th Amendment, women line up to cast their ballots at 111th Street and Broadway, November 2, 1920.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America

[deadpresidents]

Was there any relationship between Calvin Coolidge and FDR? And was Coolidge planning to attend FDR’s inauguration before he died 2 months beforehand in 1933?

Calvin Coolidge was barely interested in his own Presidency, so he probably wasn't making plans to attend FDR's inauguration before he suddenly died in January 1933 (to which the writer Dorothy Parker famously asked, "How can they tell?").

There wasn't really any relationship between Coolidge and FDR. They were the Vice Presidential nominee of their respective parties during the 1920 election, but it's not like today where they debated one another. As far as I can tell, their first and possibly on meeting was in 1919, when Coolidge was Governor of Massachusetts and FDR, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was returning from President Wilson's first trip to Europe for the Paris Peace Conference. FDR's tenure as Governor of New York overlapped with President Coolidge's time in the White House by just two months, during the lame duck period before President-elect Hoover's inauguration, so I doubt that they had any meetings during that time. It seems like their paths should have crossed more frequently, but Coolidge's political career was pretty provincial before 1920 and Roosevelt's lengthy struggle with polio largely took place during Coolidge's Vice Presidency and most of his Presidential term. FDR's political comeback didn't really take off until Coolidge had one foot out the door.

[air--so--sweet]

This made me look into if anyone had run from prison before and I found about Eugene V. Debs, who ran as The Socialist Party candidate while in prison for sedition in 1920. He received 6% of the popular vote, which to this day is the highest percentage of the vote for a Socialist Party Candidate (which is particularly interesting when you consider that he ran four times previously).

Also he wrote an amazing statement the night of the election:

[marywoodartdept]

Jacob Lawrence at the Everhart

Abigail, our #arthistory blogger, reflects on Jacob Lawrence’s powerful work, The 1920’s…The Migrants Cast Their Ballots, now on display at the Everhart Museum in #Scranton It’s a timely reminder of the importance of #voting #MarywoodArt #JacobLawrence

At the Everhart Museum in Nay Aug Park, a gallery showcases artworks discussing American politics and the importance of voting. One such artist is Jacob Lawrence, a social realist painter who documented the multitude of struggles that African-Americans had to face in not only gaining freedom but a voice in their countries political future. “Jacob Lawrence grew up in Harlem in the 1930s, where,…

[thepopculturearchivist]

LIFE, August 30, 1928

[visohyenadraws]

Ya this slogan was real and I love it, would you vote for him? 🦅🇱🇷🗽🔵🫏

[wiserebeltiger]

Film is a metaphor for the twentieth century. And it lived and died in the twentieth century.