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Grade 5 Social Studies · World 4: Hard Times · Level 40
Culture of the 1930s
Describe Duke Ellington, Margaret Mitchell, and Jesse Owens.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 40
- Even in hard times, people found joy. Tickets to the movies cost little, and radios brought music for free. Three Americans stood out.
- Duke Ellington was a pianist, bandleader, and one of America's greatest composers. Ellington's orchestra grew famous at the Cotton Club in Harlem, then around the world.
- Margaret Mitchell, of Atlanta, wrote Gone with the Wind, a best-selling novel of 1936 about Georgia in the Civil War. It became a famous movie. It also paints a false, gentle picture of slavery.
- Jesse Owens, the child of Alabama sharecroppers, ran for Ohio State. In 1936, the Olympics were held in Berlin, Germany, where Adolf Hitler's Nazi government claimed that some races were better than others.
- Owens won four gold medals, proving that claim wrong before the world. Back home, the hero still faced segregation.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:
- SS5H3.c — Discuss important cultural elements of the 1930s; include Duke Ellington, Margaret Mitchell, and Jesse Owens.