1920’s Intolerance

From 1901-1910 immigration was at an all-time-high.

Many of the immigrants were Jews coming from eastern Europe & Russia fleeing persecution.

While those coming from Italy were fleeing poverty.Irish Americans, French Canadians, & German

Americans competed for the best jobs and best housing.

They looked down on the recent eastern European & Italian immigrants who in turn had only hatred for black Americans & Mexicans, who were the lowest of them all.

Prejudice & Intolerance

In the 1920’s racist attitudes increased towards immigrants due to fear of Communism spreading into the USA after the Russian Revolution.

In 1919 there was evidence that confirmed the fears the USA had.400,000 workers went on strike.Race riots in 25 towns.Boston police went on strike which allowed

looters and thieves to roam the city.

The Red Scare

The country’s fears were not totally unjustified.Many immigrants in the USA did hold radical

political views.Anarchist published and distributed pamphlets

calling for the overthrow of the government.On April 1919 a bomb in a Milwaukee church

killed 10 people.More bombs in June, one of them almost

succeeded in killing Mitchell Palmer , the US Attorney General.

Those known to have radical beliefs were rounded up by J Edgar Hoover, a young clerk appointed by Palmer.

Hoover built up files on 60,000 suspects1919-1920 around 10,00 of them were informed

of deportation from the USA.When Palmer found out the purges were popular

he decided to use fear of a revolution to build up his own political support and run for president.He accused trade unionist, blacks, Jews, Catholics,

& mostly all other minority groups of being communists.

Palmer had predicted a Red Revolution in May 1920

But nothing happened and the papers made fun of him.

Officials in the Justice Department who were sickened by Palmer’s actions, undermined him.

Secretary of Labor, Louis Post, examined the files that Hoover prepared and only 556 out of the thousands had any basis in fact.

Downfall of Palmer

http://youtu.be/1zywzzl9AiU

Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti were 2 high-profile victims of the Red Scare.

They were arrested in 1920 on suspicion of armed robbery and murder. Soon after it came out that they admitted to being anarchists.

Sacco & Vanzetti

Anarchists: hated the American system of government and believed in destroying it by creating social disorder.

There trial soon became less of a trial for murder and more of their radical ideas.

The prosecution relied mostly on stirring up fears about their radical beliefs.

Both were convicted and eventually executed in 1927.

http://youtu.be/C3SuTTcj2u8

A white dominance movement.

Used violence to intimidate black Americans.

Had been declined, but was revived after the release of the film, The Birth of a Nation in 1915.

With support from prominent figures, the Klan became a powerful political force in the early 1920’s.

Klu Klux Klan

Blacks throughout the south faced fierce racism and thousands of them were lynched.

Due to intimidation, discrimination, and poverty many blacks left the rural south and moved to the cities of Northern USA.

In the 1920’s the black population almost doubled in Chicago and New York.

Chicago from 110,000 to 230,000 New York from 150,000 to 300,000

Blacks had a better chance of getting jobs and a good education in the North. Howard University was exclusively black institution for higher education.

Chicago & New York were small but there was a growing black middle class.

There was a successful ‘black capitalist’ movement that encouraged black people to set up businesses.

In Chicago a boycott was successfully ran where blacks protested not to shop at the stores unless black staff was employed.

As a result of the boycott, by 1930 almost all shops in the south side of the belt where blacks lived had black employees.

Improvements

There were also Internationally famous blacks.

Singer & actor Paul RobesonThe popularity of jazz music made black

musicians into high-profile media figures.Harlem Renaissance

In the black neighborhood of Harlem, NYThis was where black musicians and singers

made Harlem centre of creativity and a magnet for white customers in the near by bars and clubs.

Black writers and artists also flourished.

Blacks also entered into politics

WEB DuBois founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1919 there were 300

branches and over 90,000 members

The NAACP campaigned to end racial segregation laws and to get laws passed against lynching .

Although it didn’t make much of an improvement at the time, the number of lynchings did fall.

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

The UNIA encouraged blacks to be proud of their race and color.

It helped black people set up their own businesses.

By the mid 1920’s there were UNIA grocery stores, laundries, restaurants and printing workshops.

Garvey also set up a shipping line to support the UNIA businesses and to support his plan of helping blacks flee to Africa to get away from white racism.

Marcus Garvey

Eventually the businesses collapsed due to his prosecution for the exaggeration of the value of his shares.

Garvey was one of very few business men to be charged for this offense.

His movement attracted over 1 million members in 1921.

The life expectancy for blacks increased from 45-48 between 1900-1930.

But they were still far behind the whites whose increased from 54-59.

Many blacks were living in great poverty. In Harlem, NY the blacks lived in poorer

housing then whites did but they still paid higher rent.

They also received a poorer education and health services then the whites.

Problems

In Chicago blacks suffered prejudice from longer-established white residents.

If they attempted to move out to adjacent neighborhoods, they received a hostile reception.

They also received a similar reception from poor whites.

There was also prejudice within the black communities.The middle class blacks who were restless in

ghettos blamed the newly arrived migrants from the south for increasing white racism.

Also known as native Americans in the 1920’sNative Americans were the original settlers of North

American continent. In the 1920’s the government became concerned about

the treatment of native Americans.12,000 of them served in the armed forces in WWI,

which helped to change the attitudes that whites had towards them.

When the government did a census in the 1920’s and a major survey showed that most of them lived in poverty. Their life expectancy was lower than the whites. They were in worse health than the whites and also had

poorer education and poorer paying jobs.

‘The Vanishing Americans’

They suffered extreme discriminationThey were quickly losing their land and their

culture.Mining companies could legally seize large

areas of Indian land.Their children were sent to boarding schools.

The aim of the schools was to incorporate them into white American culture.

This involved destroying native American beliefs, traditions, dances, and languages.

Became focus of ill-feeling between rural and urban USA.Many urban people believed in evolution while the rural

people were very religious and mostly protestants.

The Monkey Trial

Those in rural areas believed in the Bible and were referred to as fundamentalists.

Fundamentalists were particularly strong in the ‘Bible Belt’ states such as Tennessee.

However , at schools in the ‘Bible Belt’ the children were taught evolution.

Fundamentalists felt that this undermined their own religion and saw this as another example of the USA abandoning traditional values in a rush to modernize in the 1920’s.

The Fundamentalists, which were led by William Jennings Bryan, managed to get six states to pass a law banning the teachings of evolution.

John Scopes, a biology teacher, broke that law so that he could be arrested and to put his case up against Fundamentalism in the courts.

The best lawyers were brought in for both sides.

In July of 1925 the USA traditionalists joined battle with its modernists.

The trial captured arguments on both sides that were reported in the press.

Scopes was convicted of breaking the law.

But, American Fundamentalism was the one really on trial, and lost!

At the trial the anti-evolutionist were subjected to great ridicule.

Their arguments were publicly ridiculed and spokesman Bryan , who claimed to be an expert on religion and science, was shown to be ignorant and confused.

After the trial the anti-evolution lobby never recovered.