Chapter 25
Red Scare
(1919) the first and most intense outbreak of national alarm -The heightened nationalism of World War I, aimed at achieving unity at the expense of ethnic diversity, found a new target in bolshevism. The Russian Revolution and triumph of Marxism frightened many Americans. A growing turn to communism among American radicals (especially the foreign born) accelerated these fears -Although the numbers involved were tiny--at most there were sixty thousand communists in the United States in 1919--they were highly visible. Located in the cities, their influence appeared to be magnified with the outbreak of widespread labor unrest. -A general strike in Seattle, a police strike in Boston, and a violent strike in iron and steel industry thoroughly alarmed the American people in the spring and summer of 1919. -A series of bombings led to panic. First the mayor of strikebound Seattle received a package containing a bomb, then an alert NY postal employee detected sixteen bombs addressed to a variety of famous citizens, and finally a bomb shattered the front of Attorney General Palmer's home -In the ensuing public outcry, Attorney General Palmer led the attack on the alien threat. In a series of raids that began on Nov. 7, federal agents seized suspected anarchists and communists and held them for deportation with regard for due process of law. -Palmer rounded up nearly four thousand suspected communists in a single evening. Federal agents broke into homes, meeting halls, and union offices without search warrants. Even many native born Americans spent several nights in jail before being released; aliens rounded up were deported without hearings or trials -Instead of condemning government action,citizens voiced their approval and urged even more drastic steps (shooting, placing Bolsheviks on ships, firing them with a firing squad to save space on ships) -extremism of it led to its rapid demise. Department of Labor and public leaders began to speak out against the acts of terror -public began to react against Palmer's hysteria and it died out by the end of 1920. Palmer passed into obscurity, the tiny Communist party became torn with factionalism, and the American people tried hard to forget their loss of balance
National Quota Act
(1924) limited immigration from Europe to 150,000 a year; allocated most of the available slots to immigrants from Great Britain, Scandinavia; and banned all Asian immigrants -The measure passed Congress with overwhelming support -The rescitive new legislation marked the most enduring achievement of the rural counterattack. Unlike the Red Scare, prohibition, and the Klan, the quota system would survive until the 1960s, enforcing a racial bias that excluded Asian immigrants and limited the immigration of Italians, Greeks, and Poles to a few thousand a year while permitting a steady of Irish, English, and Scandinavian immigrants. -The large corporations, no longer dependent of armies of unskilled immigrant workers, did not object the 1924 law; the machine had replaced the immigrants on the assembly line -A growing tide of Mexican laborers, exempt form the quota act, flowed northward.
Scopes Trial
(1925) trial of teacher John Scopes of Dayton, Tennessee for the teaching of evolution. During this trial, lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan squared off on the teachings of Darwin versus the teachings of the Bible -did not end the court battles over teaching evolution. Numerous trials and appeals have taken place since. --On July 21, 1925, John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution to his students. Earlier that year, the Tennessee Legislature had passed a law making it illegal to teach "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." On appeal, Scopes' conviction was overturned on a technicality, but his constitutional challenge to the law never reached the Supreme Court. Laws banning the teaching of evolution remained in effect in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
21st Amendment
(ratified in 1933) the only one that repeals a previous amendment, namely, the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified in 1919), which prohibited "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." In addition, it is the only amendment which was ratified, not by the legislatures of the states, but by state ratifying conventions, as called for by the Amendment's third section. The Constitution, in Article V, allows for ratification by either method. --did not, however, restore the status quo ante. Had its first section stood alone, that would have been the result. But its second section has been interpreted by the courts and others as giving broad authority over the regulation of alcoholic beverages to the states and limiting the power of the national government to intrude upon state alcohol beverage control policies. States, in turn, can and in many cases have delegated authority to counties and localities. As a result, the availability of alcoholic beverages, their prices, and the terms and conditions under which they can be obtained (for example, whether a county is "dry," or whether a state itself exercises a monopoly on the sale of wines and spirits) have varied substantially across the country.
Henry Ford
-envisioned a vast industrial tract where machines, moving through a sequence of carefully arranged manufacturing operations, would transform raw materials into finished cars, trucks, and tractors -The key would be control over the flow of goods at each step along the way--from lake steamers and railroad cars bringing in the coal and iron ore, to overhead conveyor belts and huge turning tables carrying the moving parts past the stationary workers to the assembly line -began fulfilling his industrial dream in 1919 when he built a blast furnace and foundry to make engine blocks for both the Model T and his tractors
Xenophobia
-fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers -fear or dislike of the customs, dress, etc., of people who are culturally different from oneself -intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries
Louis Armstrong
An American Trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the influential figure in Jazz
Harlem Renaissance
1920s black literary and cultural movement that produced many works depicting the role of blacks in contemporary American society; Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were key members of this movement -As other African American writers gathered around them, Du Bois and Johnson became the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. The NAACP moved its headquarters to Harlem, and in 1923, the Urban League began publishing Opportunity, a magazine devoted to scholarly studies of race issues, including black nationalism and immigration to Africa. -African American literature blossomed rapidly. In 1922, critics hailed the appearance of Claude McKay's book of verses, White Shadows. In stark images, McKay expressed both his resentment against racial prejudice and his pride in blackness. Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes won critical acclaim for the beauty of their poems and the eloquence in their portrayals of the black tragedy. -Art and Music also flourished during Harlem's golden age. Plays and concerts at the 135th street YMCA; floor shows at Happy Rhone's nightclub; rent parties where jazz musicians played to raise money to help writers, artists, and neighbors pay their bills-- all were part of the ferment that made Harlem "the Negro Capital of the world" in the 1920s Significance: Although blacks were still an oppressed minority in the America of the 1920s, they had taken major strides toward achieving cultural and intellectual fulfillment
Duke Ellington
An American composer, Pianist and bandleader of Jazz orchestra which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years
Modernism
Advancements in science in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century fueled modernization, and Americans increasingly placed their faith in the authority of science and progress. There was growing acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution, which demonstrated that plants and animals-including humans-evolved form lower life forms by a process of natural selection.
Jazz
African Americans migrating northward brought the most significant contribution in adding a new vitality to American music -spread first to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago, and finally to New York -a form known as the blues, so expressive of the suffering of African Americans, became an authentic national folk music, and performers such as Louis Armstrong enjoyed popularity around the world
Flappers
Although women continued to crusade for equal rights, and even lobbied for an Equal Rights Amendment, some younger women deserted these causes in favor of exercising individual freedom. The "flapper" drank, smoked, and demanded sex with the same gusto traditionally reserved to men. For the most part, however, women played the same role in society in the 1920s as they had in the 1790s; the greatest change in family life was the discovery of adolescence. Teenaged sons and daughters of the smaller, middle-class families no longer had to work and could indulge their craving for excitement.
Billy Sunday
American Baseball athlete, became a celebrated American evangalist (converted in 1800s) left baseball for Christian Ministry. Strong supporter of prohibition. Born in poverty in rural Iowa, Billy was sent to orphanage at the age of 10.
Prohibition
Congress adopted the Prohibition Amendment in 1917, and in 1920 the production, sale, or transport of alcoholic beverages became illegal. Prohibition actually did cut down the consumption of alcohol in the general population, but the law was bitterly resented in urban areas and easily evaded by the upper classes. Bootlegging became a big business, and gangsters became socially respectable. By 1933, the Prohibition experiment had failed, and the law was repealed. --factors that contributed the failure of the noble experiment --The black market in alcohol quickly grew; and the inability or unwillingness of law enforcement agencies at every level to stop the illegal production, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors resulted in beverage alcohol being more or less easily available to anyone who wanted it --Prohibition had turned out to be a great boon to organized criminals, such as the notorious mobster Al Capone
Babe Ruth
During his five full seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth established himself as one of the premier left-handed pitchers in the game, began his historic transformation from moundsman to slugging outfielder, and was part of three World Series championship teams. After he was sold to the New York Yankees in December 1919, his batting performances over the next few seasons helped usher in a new era of long-distance hitting and high scoring
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Like other writers of the time period, he was equally disdainful of contemporary American life. -chronicled American youth in "This Side of Paradise" (1920) and "The Great Gatsby" (1925), writing in bittersweet prose about the haunting realization of emptiness and lack of human concern
1919 Race Riots
On July 27, 1919, an African-American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after violating the unofficial segregation of Chicago's beaches and being stoned by a group of white youths. His death, and the police's refusal to arrest the white man whom eyewitnesses identified as causing it, sparked a week of rioting between gangs of black and white Chicagoans, concentrated on the South Side neighborhood surrounding the stockyards. When the riots ended on August 3, 15 whites and 23 blacks had been killed and more than 500 people injured; an additional 1,000 black families had lost their homes when they were torched by rioters. Causes of growing racial tensions: The "Red Summer" of 1919 marked the culmination of steadily growing tensions surrounding the great migration of African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North that took place during World War I.
Sacco and Vanzetti Case
The Red Scare exerted a continuing influence on American society in the 1920s. The foreign born live din uneasy realization that they were viewed with hostility and suspicion. Two Italian aliens in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested in May 1920 and tried for a payroll robbery and murder. They faced a prosecutor and jury who condemned them more for their ideas than for any evidence of criminal conduct and a judge who referred to them as anarchists. Despite a worldwide effort that became the chief liberal cause of the 1920s, the courts rejected all appeals. Sacco, a shoemaker, and Vanzetti, a fish peddler, died in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. Their fate symbolized the bigotry and intolerance that lasted through the 1920s and made that decade one of the least attractive in American history.
Warren G. Harding
The Republicans regained the white house with the help of the dark-horse contender who wen the GOP nomination when the convention became deadlocked and he became the compromise choice -reflected both the virtues and problems of small-town America -Originally a newspaper publisher, he had become a legislator, lieutenant governor, and after 1914, a US senator -Conventional in outlook, he lacked the capacity to govern and who, as president, broadly delegated power -made some good choices in his Cabinet but failed to address scandals that sabotaged his administration * A "Return to Normalcy" * Significant opportunities... — Sec. of State Charles Evans Hughes — Sec. of Commerce Herbert Hoover — Sec. of Treasury Andrew Mellon — Chief Justice William Howard Taft * Reduced income tax, raised tariff — Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922) ---most obvious attempt to go back tot he Republicanism of William McKinley came in tariff and tax policy. * Lax (no) enforcement of Prohibition * Scandals... — Teapot Dome; Albert B. Fall (oil companies bribed him to drill the land himself) — Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty * Early Death
Fundamentalism
The most significant and long lasting challenge to the new urban culture -rooted in the traditional beliefs of millions of Americans who felt alienated from city life, form science, and from much of what modernization entailed -Sometimes this challenge was direct, as when Christian fundamentalists campaigned against the teaching of evolution in public schools -As middle and upper class Americans drifted into a genteel Christianity that stressed good works and respectability, the Baptist and Methodist churches continued to hold on to the old faith.
speakeasies
Urban clubs that existed in the 1920s where alcohol was illegally sold to patrons. The sheer number of speakeasies in a city such as New York demonstrated the difficulty of enforcing a law such as prohibition.
Calvin Coolidge
Vice President who assumed the presidency upon Harding's death, and his honesty and integrity quickly reassured the nation -hd gained national attention as a governor of Massachusetts in 1919 -"The business of America is business." -believed his duty was to preside benignly, not to govern the nation -Satisfied with the prosperity of the mid-1920s, the people responded favorably by electing him to a full term by a wide margin in 1924 * Limited government involvement; spending cut to the bone — Vetoed most acts out of Congress (Republican!) — Refused WWI veteran bonuses — Vetoed help to farmers
Charlie Chaplin
a comedic British actor who became one of the biggest stars of the 20th century's silent-film era -Through his work, he came to be known as a grueling perfectionist. His love for experimentation often meant countless takes, and it was not uncommon for him to order the rebuilding of an entire set. -moved from vaudeville days to a superstar
T.S. Eliot
a groundbreaking 20th century poet who is known widely for his work "The Waste Land." He published his first poetic masterpiece, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in 1915. In 1921, he wrote the poem "The Waste Land." -was born in Missouri but became a British subject, who displayed profound despair of the reality of the modern generation -In the Waste Land, which appeared in 1922, he evoked images of fragmentation and sterility that had a powerful impact on the other disillusioned writers of the decade. He reached the depths in "The Hollow Men" (1925), a biting description of the modern man. -For his lifetime of poetic innovation, Eliot won the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
William Jennings Bryan
a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a former senator and U.S. secretary of state, argued the case for the prosecution in the Scopes Trial, while Clarence Darrow, a famed defense attorney, represented Scopes
Charles Lindbergh
an American aviator who rose to international fame in 1927 after becoming the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis.
George Gershwin
an American composer and pianist -one of the most remarkable American composers of the 20th century, known for his Broadway musicals as well as his world famous orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and the opera Porgy and Bess. --A composer of jazz, opera and popular songs for stage and screen
Model T
automobile produced by Ford Motor Company using assembly line techniques -The first Model T's were produced in 1907; using the assembly line, Ford produced half of the automobiles made in the world between 1907 and 1926.
Herbert Hoover
became the Republican choice to succeed Coolidge -the ablest GOP leader of the decade, he epitomized the American myth of the self-made man. Orphaned as a boy, he had worked his way through Stanford University and had gained both wealth and administrative skills in directing Wilson's food program at home and relief activities abroad. -embodied the nation's faith in individualism and free enterprise -Protestant old-stock American -As secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge, he had sought cooperation between government and business -He used his office to assist American manufacturers and exporters in expanding overseas trade, and he strongly supported a trade association movement to encourage cooperation rather than competition among smaller American companies. -did not view business and government as rivals. Instead he saw them as partners, working together to achieve efficiency and affluence for all Americans
Margaret Sanger
birth control was more readily available thanks to her efforts - opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States. -An advocate for women's reproductive rights who was also a vocal eugenics enthusiast, she leaves a complicated legacy — and one that conservatives have periodically leveraged into sweeping attacks on the organization she helped found: Planned Parenthood
Grant Wood
born in Iowa, in 1891. He went to boarding school, labored for dimes in a metal shop, and eventually managed to get himself into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1913. His early paintings of the rolling Iowan landscape are appealing, if anonymous, but in the 1920s he made four trips to Europe and was stunned by the northern European painters he saw there, particularly in Munich. He admired Dürer, Van Eyck and Hans Memling; his paintings learn from their intense precision and simplicity of form. -focused on rural subjects unlike modern urban artwork --The magnitude of response to American Gothic shows how profoundly it speaks to Americans. Alongside other 1930s regionalist paintings praising the soil of the land, its meaning may be clearer. His idolizations of farm workers in solo paintings and the starring part he gave to the gothic couple.
Clarence Darrow
defends modernity, science, and education in the Scopes Trial -The defense strategy is to challenge the constitutionality of the law. On the second day of the trial, Darrow argues that a ruling upholding the law threatens not just the education of Tennessee school children, but the Enlightenment - In his time, there was a general belief that intellectual battles could be won, not just fought. That Science could beat Fundamentalism or that Fundamentalism could beat Science. -Oratorical skills were valued; whole speeches were heard and were read. The ability to use words well could make one a hero in Darrow's time (like Ruth, Lindbergh). -was at the same time one of the best loved and most hated men of his time-- it is hard to imagine a trial attorney who achieved that status
Volstead Act
effective January 16, 1920 -implemented Prohibition, banned most commercial production and distribution of beverages containing more than one-half of 1 percent of alcohol by volume --- charged the U.S. Treasury Department with enforcement of the new restrictions, and defined which "intoxicating liquours" were forbidden and which were excluded from Prohibition (for example, alcoholic beverages used for medical and religious purposes). -President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill, but the House of Representatives overrode the veto, and the Senate did so as well the next day. -set the starting date for nationwide prohibition for January 17, 1920, which was the earliest day allowed by the Eighteenth Amendment.
Marcus Garvey
emphasis on black solidarity reflected his belief that racial oppression and exploitation lay at the heart of most of the world's societies -Black equality, he insisted, would come not through integration or civil rights legislation, but only by transforming black heritage from a mark of inferiority into the basis of a program of pride and liberation -reinforced black disillusionment in white America, and advocated black nationalism and racial redemption -his upbringing in Jamaica, under the color-based caste system of the British-ruled West indies, convinced him that only black solidarity could lead his race out of subjugation (a subordinate state) -Dreaming of an independent black Africa, he embraced black nationalism and economic self-help, and molded these ideas into a vision of a return to Africa. -founded UNIA
Teapot Dome Scandal
major scandal in the scandal-ridden administration of President Warren Harding -Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had two oil deposits put under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior and leased them to private companies in return for large sums of money
Al Capone
notorious mobster who found that Prohibition had turned out to be a great boon to organized criminals -Chicago Outfit (South Side) -1931— guilty of income tax evasion
KKK
organization founded in the South during the Reconstruction era by whites who wanted to maintain white supremacy in the region -used terror tactics, including murder -The Klan was revitalized in the 1920s; members of the 1920s Klan also opposed Catholics and Southern and Eastern European immigrants -The most ominous expression of protest against the new urban culture was the rebirth of the Klan. -Membership grew quickly after 1920, fueled by postwar fears -Anglo-Saxon Protestant men sought to relieve their anxiety over a changing society by embracing the Klan's unusual rituals and by demonstrating their hatred against blacks, aliens, Jews, and Catholics
18th Amendment
prohibited "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquours" but not the consumption, private possession, or production for one's own consumption. In contrast to earlier amendments to the Constitution, the Amendment set a one-year time delay before it would be operative, and set a time limit (seven years) for its ratification by the states. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919, and the Amendment took effect on January 16, 1920. --The Amendment was in effect for the following 13 years. It was repealed in 1933 by ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment. This was the one time in American history that a constitutional amendment was repealed in its entirety
Ernest Hemingway
sought redemption from the modern plight in the romantic individualism of his heroes. -Preoccupied with violence, he wrote of men alienated from society who found a sense of identity in their own courage and quest for personal honor -His own vast experiences made him a legendary figure; his greatest effect on other writers, however, came from his sparse, direct, and clean prose style
John Scopes
teacher in Dayton, Tennessee who was charged with teaching evolution in Tennessee schools -a substitute high school teacher -charged with violating a newly enacted law that criminalized the teaching of human evolution in the state's public schools
Sigmund Freud
the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory which explains human behavior. -developed a topographical model of the mind, whereby he described the features of the mind's structure and function. -believed that when we explain our behavior to ourselves or others (conscious mental activity), we rarely give a true account of our motivation. -life work was dominated by his attempts to find ways of penetrating this often subtle and elaborate camouflage that obscures the hidden structure and processes of personality.
Welfare Capitalism
used by employers to discourage labor unions -spending money to improve plant conditions and winning employee loyalty with pensions, paid vacations, and company cafeterias -The net result a a decline in union membership from a postwar high of five million to less than three million by 1929
Langston Hughes
was first recognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. -portrayed life in New York's Harlem -had the wit and intelligence to explore the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll -more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations -the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures.
