<P> Black culture, especially in music and literature, flourished in many cities such as New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago but nowhere more than in New York City, site of the Harlem Renaissance . The Cotton Club nightclub and the Apollo Theater became famous venues for artists and writers . </P> <P> Radio was a new industry that grew explosively from home - made crystal sets, picking up faraway stations to stations in every large city by the mid-decade . By 1927 two national networks had been formed, the NBC Red Network and the Blue Network (ABC). The broadcast fare was mostly music, especially by big bands . </P> <P> In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in an attempt to alleviate high rates of alcoholism and, especially, political corruption led by saloon - based politicians . It was enforced at the federal level by the Volstead Act . Most states let the federals do the enforcing . Drinking or owning liquor was not illegal, only the manufacture or sale . National Prohibition ended in 1933, although it continued for a while in some states . Prohibition is considered by most (but not all) historians to have been a failure because organized crime was strengthened . </P> <P> Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of three entirely different organizations (1860s, 1920s, post 1960) that used the same nomenclature and costumes but had no direct connection . The KKK of the 1920s was a purification movement that rallied against crime, especially violation of prohibition, and decried the growing "influence" of "big - city" Catholics and Jews . Its membership was often exaggerated but possibly reached as many as 4 million men, but no prominent national figure claimed membership; no daily newspaper endorsed it, and indeed most actively opposed the Klan . Membership was verily evenly spread across the nation's white Protestants, North and South, urban and rural . Historians in recent years have explored the Klan in depth . The KKK of the 1860s and the current KKK were indeed violent . However, historians discount lurid tales of a murderous group in the 1920s . Some crimes were probably committed in Deep South states but were quite uncommon elsewhere . The local Klans seem to have been poorly organized and were exploited as money - making devices by organizers more than anything else . (Organizers charged a $10 application fee and up to $50 for costumes .) Nonetheless, the KKK had become prominent enough that it staged a huge rally in Washington DC in 1925 . Soon afterward, the national headlines reported rape and murder by the KKK leader in Indiana, and the group quickly lost its mystique and nearly all its members . </P>

Prohibition occured during world war ii when gas was rationed and travel was restricted