About the Exhibition
This exhibition provides an overview of what Evansville and the country experienced in the 1920s. This includes entering the radio age, women voting rights, the unexpected death of a long serving mayor, the opening of new schools, changes in the city’s infrastructure, and other key elements of the decade.
Through costumes from the Museum’s collection, the flapper era is addressed as are Evansville’s experience during prohibition—one that involved the opening of speakeasies where one could imbibe.
Also covered is a regrettable part of the 1920s—one that touched the nation, state, and Evansville as the Ku Klux Klan reemerged and attracted thousands of followers in Indiana alone. Portraying themselves as the defenders of “true American values”, the Klan were anti-immigrant, anti-Catholics, anti-African American, and anti-Jew.
A century later it is interesting to look back at a decade when many changes occurred, that is associated with economic prosperity, and that ended with the beginning of the most protracted financial downturn in the nation’s history.
Thomas R. Lonnberg
Chief Curator and Curator of History
