In this exhibition, you are a voter faced with making an important choice in a moment of profound change.
A global war followed by a global pandemic has brought the United States into a deeper relationship with the rest of the world. On the home front, long campaigns for national prohibition and women's suffrage seem to have reached their end while, in the previous summer, unrest around race, immigration, and the economy show that challenges that have existed since the founding of the republic remain unresolved.
What direction do you chose? Forward into a new decade or a return to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century?
Learn about the issues, meet the candidates, experience the campaigns, and cast your ballot. Decision 1920 offered a choice where the stakes are big and the consequences real.
Decision 1920 was part of the recurring From the Stacks exhibition series, generously supported by Joan and William Brodsky.
Digital Resources
- Decision 1920: A Return to “Normalcy” – Promo video for the exhibition.
- Live Tour of “Decision 1920”
- Newberry Live: “What is “Normalcy”? - Paul Durica, curator of the exhibition, explains the concept of normalcy as campaigned by Warren G. Harding for the 1920 presidential election.
- One Decade, Four Amendments, and the Transformation of America - In this virtual conversation part of programming for the exhibition, a panel of experts from across the country discuss how these four amendments radically transformed American politics, culture, and everyday life and set the stage for the 1920 presidential election.
- An Unlikely Legacy of the 1918 Influenza - To reduce coughing, spitting, and the spread of germs during the 1918 influenza, Chicago implemented a ban on smoking on public transportation. When the epidemic subsided, the ban stayed in place. Paul Durica, the Newberry's former Director of Exhibitions, discusses why the ban on smoking struck a nerve and inflamed Chicagoans' anxieties over changing social mores in the 1920s.