Topic 4: America and the World (WWI & the 1920s)

Scopes Trial (1925)

"Monkey Trial" over John Scopes's teaching of evolution in his biology classroom in violation of a Tennessee law; it pitted the Bible, fundamentalism, and William Jennings Bryan against evolution, modernism, and Clarence Darrow. Scopes was convicted, but fundamentalism was damaged and shrank from public view for several decades.

Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)

"Pact of Paris" or "Treaty for the Renunciation of War," it made war illegal as a tool of national policy, allowing only defensive war.

Schenck v. United States

A 1919 decision upholding the conviction of a socialist who had urged young men to resist the draft during World War I. Justice Holmes declared that government can limit speech if the speech provokes a "clear and present danger" of substantive evils.

Modernism

A cultural movement embracing human empowerment and rejecting traditionalism as outdated. Rationality, industry, and technology were cornerstones of progress and human achievement.

Lost Generation

A group of American writers that rebelled against America's lack of cosmopolitan culture in the early 20th century. Many moved to cultural centers such as London and Paris in search for literary freedom. Prominent writers included T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway among others.

National Origins Act of 1924

A law that severely restricted immigration by establishing a system of national quotas that blatantly discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and virtually excluded Asians. The policy stayed in effect until the 1960s.

Jazz (music)

A new type of American music that combined African rhythms, blues, and ragtime that emerged in the 1920s.

Consumerism

A preoccupation with the purchasing of material goods. Advertising intensely targets specific groups to persuade them to purchase goods as a perceived necessity.

Labor strikes of the 1920s

A series of strikes occurred due to need for higher wages and better working conditions. Though strikes were still illegal.

Christian Temperance Movement

A social movement against the consumption of alcohol beverages. Criticized excessive alcohol consumption, promote complete abstinence, or use its political influence to press the government to act alcohol laws to regulate the availability of alcohol or even it's complete prohibition

Protestant Fundamentalism

A socially and politically conservative form of Protestant Christianity that arose in the late 1800s as a reaction against modernism. Protestant fundamentalists insist that the Christian Bible is literally true in both religious and historical terms.

League of Nations

A world organization established in 1920 to promote international cooperation and peace. It was first proposed in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson, although the United States never joined the League. Essentially powerless, it was officially dissolved in 1946.

Modernization of Warfare (WWI)

Advancements in weapons technology made war much more violent due to more deadly weapons that made it easier to inflict carnage on enemies

92nd and 93rd Infantry

All African American Infantry units that went to fight in WWI (allowed to fight with the French); referred to as Harlem Hellfighters

Economic causes of U.S. entry into WWI

American businesses & banks made loans primarily to the Allied Powers. The U.S. had a vested interest in the Allies winning since their loans may not have been paid back if the Central Powers won. Trade routes were also being disrupted by German U-Boat activity which seriously hampered U.S. trade.

Katherine Magnolia Johnson

An African American political activist who began working as a teacher before becoming one of the first members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After criticizing the organization's all white leadership roles, Johnson joined the Young Men's Christian Association. Spent her life dedicated to spreading African American activism across the states through book selling to help in the campaign for civil rights

Welfare Capitalism

An approach to labor relations in which companies meet some of their workers' needs (healthcare, retirement, general benefits) without prompting by unions, thus preventing strikes and keeping productivity high

Birth Control Movement

An offshoot of the early twentieth-century feminist movement that saw access to birth control and "voluntary motherhood" as essential to women's freedom. The birth-control movement was led by Margaret Sanger.

Efficiency Progressivism

Argued that managing a modern city required experts, not politicians. Didn't want democracy because democratic process led to compromise and corruption

Red Scare (1919-1920)

Brief period of mass anti-communist paranoia in the U.S. after WWI, during which a number of legislatures passed anti-red statutes that often violated the right to free speech.

Christian Masculinity

Characterized by the importance of the male body and physical health, family and romantic love, the notions of morality, theology and the love for nature and, the idea of healthy patriotism, with Jesus Christ as leader and example of truest manhood.

Early Suburbanization

Communities developed outside of cities as people began to move out of industrial cities wanting more space and cleaner living. Automobiles and increased public transportation made it easier for workers to commute.

Culture of Escape

Developed during the 1920s as U.S. population groups utilized their increasing free time to focus on sports and general entertainment as an escape from industrial/economic realities.

Agricultural Depression

Farmers went into debt during WWI trying to buy more land and equipment due to an increase in demand on American agricultural production. Prices of crops dropped after the war as European food production began to return to pre-war levels.

Alice Paul

Head of the National Woman's party that campaigned for an equal rights amendment to the Constitution. She opposed legislation protecting women workers because such laws implied women's inferiority. Most condemned her way of thinking.

Committee on Public Information

Headed by George Creel. The purpose of this committee was to mobilize people's minds for war, both in America and abroad. Tried to get the entire U.S. public to support U.S. involvement in WWI. Creel's organization, employed some 150,000 workers at home and oversees. He proved that words were indeed weapons.

Moral Diplomacy (Wilson)

Foreign policy proposed by President Wilson to condemn imperialism, spread democracy, and promote peace through a system in which support is given only to countries whose moral beliefs are analogous to that of the U.S.

Women's Peace Party

Founded in 1915 and was the first autonomous national women's political organization in the U.S. It was considered the most radical organization of its time. The chairwoman was Jane Adams. Its main purpose was for women to connect the responsibilities of the home with political rights.

post-war demobilization

Global economy shrank to pre-war levels in the immediate aftermath of WWI due to no longer needing a vast amount of war materials/resources. This resulted in a temporary global economic recession

Technological Innovation

the discovery and development of new or improved products, services, or processes for producing or providing them

Associationalism

Herbert Hoover's approach to managing the economy. Firms and organizations in each economic sector would be asked to cooperate with each other in the pursuit of efficiency, profit, and the public good

Buck v. Bell (1927)

In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of forced sterilization laws such as the 1907 Indiana law authorizing doctors to sterilize insane and "feeble-minded" inmates in mental institutions so that they would not pass on their "defective" genes to children. The decision was largely seen as an endorsement of eugenics.

Great Migration (of the 20th century)

Influential migration movement by southern African Americans to the Northeast, Midwest, and West; began as a consequence of the "Great War"/World War I and nationalized race issues

Expansion of Credit Economy (1920s)

Led to the booming economy of the 1920s with people able to buy more big ticket items such as the automobile and household appliances

Harlem Renaissance (1920s)

Movement of African American artists, intellectuals, and social leaders who lived in Harlem in the 1920s. They were termed the New Negroes by black professor Alain Locke because they had risen from the ashes of slavery to proclaim African American creative genius and work toward defeating racial prejudice. Langston Hughes (poet); Zora Neale Hurston (author) Duke Ellington (jazz musician) were important artists.

Technology Advances in Entertainment (1920s)

New technological developments (Automobiles, radios, motion pictures, & phonographs) contributed to the rise of the entertainment industry and culture of escape that developed in the 1920s

1920's Republican Presidents

Presidents adopted business-friendly economic policies and supported the "Business of America" economic ideology pushing consumerism and production

Espionage Act of 1917

Prohibited any attempt to interfere with military operations, to support U.S. enemies during wartime, to promote insubordination in the military, or to interfere with military recruitment

Psychological Consequences of Industrial/Modern Warfare

Soldiers were forever mentally impacted by more violent conflict and seeing bloodier incidents occurring during WWI

New Negro

Term used in the 1920s, in reference to a slow and steady growth of black political influence that occurred in northern cities, where African-Americans were freer to speak and act. This political activity created a spirit of protest that expressed itself culturally in the Harlem Renaissance and politically in "new Negro" nationalism.

Red Summer of 1919

Term used to describe the bloody race riots that occurred during the summer and autumn of 1919. Race riots erupted in several cities in both the North and South of the United States. The three with the highest number of fatalities happened in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Elaine, Arkansas.

100% Americanism

The end of WWI brought about this movement which celebrated all this American and attacked all ideas and people it viewed as foreign or anti American. People were afraid that immigrant ideologies would lure Americans into radically revolting against the government.

Home Economics Movement ("Mrs. Consumer")

With the increase of consumerism and access to consumer goods, women were the target consumer for household products & appliances in the 1920s.

Second KKK

The Ku Klux Klan was also reborn out of American fear of foreign immigrants. The second KKK was different from the old in that it was a more nationwide organization (with national headquarters in Indiana) and also widened its scope of hate to become "anti- Black, Jewish, Catholic, and immigrant."

Economic Recession of 1921

The Recession of 1920-21 was a sharp deflationary recession in the United States and other countries, beginning 14 months after the end of World War I.

Feminism

The belief that women should have economic, political, and social equality with men

Tulsa Massacre of 1921

The burning and destruction of the neighborhood of Greenwood, which was also known as Black Wall Street. Many residents were killed and those who held insurance policies on their homes and businesses never received compensation for their losses. The White perpetrators of the violence were not held accountable

Hollywood

The movie industry was centered here. The industry grew rapidly in the 1920s. Sound was introduced to movies in 1927. By 1929 over 80 million movie tickets were sold each week.

Middlebrow Culture

The offspring of universal education and the belief, unique to the United States, that education is a lifelong process.

Prohibition

The period from 1920 to 1933 when the sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the United States by a constitutional amendment. Developed due to the Christian Temperance Movement.

Fourteen Points

The war aims outlined by President Wilson in 1918, which he believed would promote lasting peace; called for self-determination, freedom of the seas, free trade, end to secret agreements, reduction of arms and a league of nations. The Treaty of Versailles will fail to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Debs v. United States

This was a Supreme Court decision that upheld the Espionage Act of 1917. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party, fought the draft during World War I. In Canton, Ohio, he made a speech that protested U.S. involvement in the war. After the speech, he was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917. After being convicted, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Wilsonianism (Wilson Liberalism)

Traditional American principles and an ideology of internationalism, exceptionalism, and democracy; only the US could lead the world into a new peaceful era of unobstructed commerce, democratic politics, and free market capitalism in the post-WWI world

Treaty of Versailles (1920)

Treaty imposed on Germany by the Allied powers in 1920 after the end of World War I which demanded exorbitant concessions from the Germans

Women in the Workplace 1920s

Women sought financial independence by pursuing jobs as sales clerks in department stores, secretaries, telephone operators. 25% of female workers were in clerical and sales work in 1920. Graduates of women's colleges began to seek jobs in business rather than in more traditional jobs such as teaching

Return to Normalcy

a return to the way of life economically and politically before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign promise in the election of 1920.

Sedition Act of 1918

added to Espionage Act to cover "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the American form of government, the Constitution, the flag, or the armed forces.

KKK Women's Auxiliary

also known as Ladies of the Invisible Empire, held to many of the same political and social ideas of the KKK but functioned as a separate branch of the national organization with their own actions and ideas. Fought for educational and social reforms like other Progressive reformers but with extreme racism and intolerance.

Consumer Capitalism

consumer demand is manipulated, in a deliberate and coordinated way, on a very large scale, through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers.

Women during WWI

worked in clerical jobs at gov't agencies; served as Red Cross nurses in Europe; worked in war industries factories; were less likely to serve in the US armed forces, and then only in non-combatant jobs (not in the actual fighting)