The War to End WarAP U.S. History

How were the changes in the 1920s reflective of America’s past and future?

Essential Question

Seeing Red

The “red scare” of the early 1920s was initially set off by The Bolshevik revolution in Russia

Power to the proletariat!

Vladimir LeninBilly Sunday

Union strikes are led by

Bolsheviks!

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer violated civil liberties while searching for radicals and communists in immigrant communities.

States passed anti-red statutes, which made it unlawful to even mention communism – especially in schools (We’re talking about you ACADECA!).

Seeing Red

Anti-redism and antiforeignism were reflected in a infamous case. Nicola Sacco, a shoe-factory worker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish seller, were convicted in 1921 of the murder of two Massachusetts men. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers. They were found guilty and executed in 1927, despite weak evidence against them.

We ‘re Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers. Yeah, we’re

screwed.

Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

The Ku Klux Klan resembled the antiforeign “nativist” movements 1850s. Besides attacking minorities like Catholics, blacks, and Jews, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s opposed contemporary cultural and social changes such as evolution, bootlegging, and birth control. In short, the KKK was a manifestation of the intolerance and prejudice people felt about the fast pace of social change.

We need to go back to the good ‘ol days.

The popularity of the KKK was reflected in a march women members conducted in Washington D.C. in 1928. The KKK was especially popular in the Midwest and the South.

A. Mitchell Palmer

Stemming the Foreign Flood

The quota system established for immigration in the 1920s was based partly on the idea that immigrants from northern and western Europe were superior to those from southern and eastern Europe. Oh, and the Immigration Act of 1924 totally slammed the door on Japanese immigration. Yup, they get mad.

The concentration of many American ethnic groups in separate neighborhoods with their own distinct institutions, cultures, and values meant that it was almost impossible to organize the American working class across ethnic and religious lines.

What? No Japanese immigrants are

allowed to the U.S.? Good thing I’m

Korean.

That sucks.

Samuel Gompers, president of the AF of L.

The Prohibition “Experiment”

The American city where gangsterism flourished most blatantly in the 1920s was Chicago –ruled by Al Capone.

I’ve got my hatchet and bible ready

Carrie Nation, who died in 1911, would have loved to see the 18th Amendment passed.

The 18th Amendment, as implemented by the Volstead Act, abolished the manufacture, sale, distribution, and transport of alcohol.

Beer on your breath will cost

you your job

Henry Ford, creator of the Ford automobile, was a fervent prohibitionist.

Prohibitionism overlooked the American tradition of strong drink and weak control by the federal government. An unintended consequence of prohibition was the growth of organized crime.

Monkey Business in Tennessee

Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of evolution; John Scopes, a science teacher, did it anyway. Thus, the essential issue in the Scopes Trial was whether Darwinian evolutionary science could be taught in the public schools.

William Jennings Bryan was the lead attorney prosecuting the science teacher in the Scopes Trial.

High school graduation doubled in the 1920s. Although, teaching science and progressive principles, like allowing students to do more than just sit there and listen to the teacher, alarmed Fundamentalists, who were concerned evolution and jazz music were replacing the biblical truth.

I’m back baby!

People learn by doing.

John Dewey

The Mass-Consumption Economy

One of the primary social effects of the new automobile age was a weakening of traditional family ties between parents and youth.

The most highly acclaimed industrial innovator of the new mass-production economy was Henry Ford. He perfected the assembly line in Detroit, Michigan – a finished automobile emerged from his factory every 10 seconds.

The automobile changed the American economy. Two major American industries that benefited economically from the widespread use of the automobile were rubber and petroleum

John D. Rockefeller

I am the Man.

God bless oil.

Goodbye railroad

The Radio Revolution

The speed of the airplane was outpaced by the speed of the radio and movies. Both had the cultural effect of increasing mass standardization and weakening traditional forms of culture, like sitting around the fireplace. For the first time in U.S. history, a technology could knit the country together by allowing millions of people to listen to the same commercials, radio shows, baseball games, politicians, church sermons, etc.

Billy Sunday

Jazz, cars, evolution, movies,

communists. When will the evil stop?!

To many, Charles Lindbergh symbolized a wholesome alternative to cynicism and the jazz age. The airplane also further changed the American economy.

The Jazz Singer was the first movie with sound (“talkie”).

The Dynamic DecadeIn the 1920s, the major changes pursued by American women were cultural freedom and expanded sexual experience

Flappers, who bobbed their hair and shortened their dresses, danced, drank, smoke, and dated men.

Margaret Sanger, seen in this newspaper ad, promoted contraceptives.

Advertisers exploited sexual allure to sell everything from soap to car tires.

Jazz music encouraged men and women to dance closely. Jazz was the music of the new, sexually liberated consumer age.

The Dynamic Decade

The literary figure who promoted many new writers of the 1920s in his magazine, The American Mercury, was H.L. Mencken

Many of the prominent new writers of the 1920s were highly critical of traditional American “Puritanism” and small-town life .

The primary achievement of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association was Its positive impact on black racial pride.

Langston Hughes wrote about black pride.

A consequence of the Great Migration (blacks migrating to northern factories during World War I) was a new racial pride in northern black communities. Dubbed “The Harlem Renaissance,” this black cultural revolution created jazz music, nourished poets like Langston Hughes, and spawned a new appreciation of the “African homeland.”

Democracy is also a form of

worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

1. How did women and minorities fair in the 1920s?

2. How did America go back to “normal” in the 1920s?

3. How was America changing in the 1920s?

Questions to Consider