Quia



Social Impact

I. Minorities (African Americans)

• Segregation – Many African Americans in the South were still facing segregation, as a result, millions migrated to the North in what was known as the Great Migration.

• The Great Migration – When many African Americans sought a better life for themselves in the North, eventually settling in their own neighborhoods, some of which, like Harlem, became famous for their music (Jazz) and culture.

African Americans in urban communities developed extensive commercial networks and business organizations. Of special note are the activities of the National Association of Wage Earners, National Negro Business League, National Urban League, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The National Association of Wage Earners worked to standardize and improve living conditions for women, particularly migrant workers, and to develop and encourage efficiency among African American workers. The National Negro Business League, directed during the 1920s by Robert Russa Moton, was a national network of African American entrepreneurs and small businessmen. The papers of the league, preserved in this collection, describe African American commercial endeavors and economic aspirations and confirm that African American small businessmen enjoyed a measure of success in the 1920s economy. The National Urban League developed training programs intended to help African Americans migrating from the South to the North and to this end published several surveys of black populations in northern cities. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey, had over a million members; it advocated racial separatism and provided self-help and self-improvement services and was a source of start-up assistance for small businesses.

African American society in the 1920s expressed a strong sense of cultural identity. The Harlem Renaissance was the center of African American literary and artistic activity during this period. National African American magazines, such as The Messenger, founded in 1917 by A. Philip Randolph, featured articles, fiction, poetry, and advertisements for African American-owned businesses. The back covers of many of its issues feature full-page advertisements for entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker's famous hair- and skin-care products. Opportunity, the magazine of the National Urban League, carried fiction and poetry as well as some advertising and published a regular year-end feature on outstanding African American newspapers. The Southern Workman defended the rights of African American workers. This collection also provides access to two rare catalogs of so-called "race records," a consumer product that African Americans in the 1920s purchased in significant quantities.

Q1) What was one African American organization and what did it do?

Q2) What specific example of African American culture developed during the Harlem Renaissance?

Q3) What do you think of African American Marcus Garvey’s position on racial separatism? Explain.

Q4) Why do you think it was important for many African Americans to develop their own music, novels, poetry, etc.?

II. Women

• Suffrage – the ability to vote.

i. Women finally got the right to vote in 1920.

Q5) REVIEW: The 15th Amendment granted what group of people the right to vote back in 1870?

• Education – women for the first time began entering college in large numbers.

• Flashy Flappers – Women started wearing clothing that showed their arms and legs and began cutting their hair short. Women also began smoking in public (before that it was considered a man’s habit).

[pic]

Q6) Why do you believe women began dressing and acting differently and pursuing an education?

Q7) What economic affect do you think shorter women’s dresses would have? Explain.

Q8) How do the women of today compare to the women of the 1920s?

III. Music

• Dance clubs – became popular for the first time.

Q9) What economic technology below would make dance clubs more popular? Explain.

• Jazz music – became the most popular form of music for young people, particularly the flashy flappers.

Q10) Listen to the music played and describe it in as many adjectives as you can think of.

Political Impact

IV. Isolationism – After the Great War (1914-1918), the United States entered into a period of isolationism (it limited its contact with other countries).

Q11) Why do you think the United States would focus on itself, rather than contact with other countries?

Q12) How does the United States act today, is it isolationist? Is this a good or bad thing? Explain.

Economic Impact

V. Mass Production – the creation of many items all at the same time, usually in a factory. All of the following were made possible by mass production.

o Automobiles

Q13) How would this technology change the lives of ordinary people? Explain.

o Radios

Q14) How would this technology change the lives of ordinary people? Explain.

o Highways

Q15) How would this technology improve the ability of companies to make more money?

o Skyscrapers

Q16) Why would people want to build a building upwards rather than outwards?

I. Prohibition

What was it?

• The period of time from 1920 – 1933 in the United States when the sale, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol was illegal according to the 18th Amendment.

Why did it happen?

• The American Public was very fervently White and Protestant, and therefore they tended to view many things through this particular viewpoint, and alcohol was no different. In many Protestant churches, alcohol was seen as the devil’s drink and was seen as the source of much marital strife, e.g. Domestic violence

How did people react to Prohibition?

• Organized criminals

o Gangsters

▪ Al Capone

Q17) Who was Al Capone?

Q18) What did he do?

Q19) How did the government respond to Al Capone’s activities?

Q20) Do you agree with how the government dealt with Al Capone? Why?

• Ordinary people

o Speakeasies: A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition (1920–1933, longer in some states). During this time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States.

o Bootlegging (smuggling over land)

o Rum running (smuggling over water)

Q21) How do you think they came up with the term “speakeasy”?

Q22) What do you think the origin of the term “blind pig” or “blind tiger” is?

Q23) What do you think is the origin of the terms “bootlegging” and “rum running”?

How would you create your own speakeasy?

• Explain in one paragraph or more how you would create your own speakeasy and draw a diagram of your establishment in the space provided below. Be sure to include a title for your speakeasy.

Explanation:

Diagram

The Red Scare/Anarchists

During World War I (WWI), patriotism was common throughout America. While American soldiers were fighting the "Huns[1]" overseas, many Americans fought them at home.  Anyone who wasn't as patriotic as possible--conscientious objectors, draft dodgers, "slackers," German-Americans, immigrants, Communists[2]--was suspect.  It was out of this patriotism that the Red Scare began.

At the time the peace treaty was signed in 1918 ending World War I, approximately nine million people in America worked in war industries (e.g. steel, weapons, etc.), while another four million were serving in the armed forces.  Once the war was over, these people were left without jobs, and war industries were left without contracts.  Economic difficulties and worker unrest increased.

Two main Union/Socialist groups stood out at the time--the International Workers of the World (the I.W.W. or Wobblies) centered in the northwest portion of the country and led by "Big" Bill Haywood, and the Socialist party led by Eugene Debs.  Both groups were well know objectors to WWI, and to the minds of many Americans therefore, unpatriotic.  This left them open to attack.  Any activity even loosely associated with them was suspicious.

One of the first major strikes after the end of the war was the Seattle shipyard strike of 1919 which, mistakenly, was attributed to the Wobblies.  On January 21, 35,000 shipyard workers in Seattle struck.  A general strike resulted when 60,000 workers in the Seattle area struck on February 6.  Despite the absence of any violence or arrests, the strikers were immediately labeled as Reds [3]who and charges that they were trying to incite revolution were leveled against them. Panic struck the city as department stores, grocery stores, and pharmacies were flooded by frightened customers trying to ensure that they would be able to survive a prolonged strike.  The Seattle strike suddenly became national news, with newspaper headlines across the country telling of Seattle's impending doom and potential loss to the Reds and urging for the strike to be put down. Seattle mayor Ole Hansen, who had long hated the Wobblies and took the strike as a personal affront to him, took the offensive against the strikers.   He guaranteed the city's safety by announcing that 1,500 of the city's policemen and an equal number of federal troops were at his disposal to help break the strike and keep the peace.  On February 10, realizing the strike could not succeed and could even damage the labor movement in Seattle, orders were given to end the strike.  Mayor Hansen took credit for the termination of the strike, proclaimed a victory for Americanism, quit his job, and became a national expert and lecturer on anti-communism.

After the Seattle strike, all strikes during the next six months were demonized in the press as "crimes against society," conspiracies against the government," and "plots to establish communism."  A bomb plot was then uncovered on April 28, and among its intended victims was Mayor Hansen, apparently a target for his ending the strike.  On May Day (May 1), 1919, rallies were held throughout the country and riots started in several cities, including Boston, New York, and Cleveland.  On June 2, another bomb plot was uncovered, leading to more fear of unseen anarchists[4] who could inflict destruction and death from afar.  Since one cannot defend against an unknown enemy, the "known" enemies (those workers who chose to strike) became increasingly tempting targets for persecution.

On September 9, the Boston police force went on strike. A panic that "Reds" were behind the strike took over Boston despite the lack of any radicalism on the part of the striking police officers.  Although the city experienced primarily looting and vandalism (as well as some rioting), papers around the country ran inflammatory and polemical headlines.  Stories told of massive riots, reigns of terror, and federal troops firing machine guns on a mob.  On September 13, Police Commissioner Curtis announced that the striking policemen would not be allowed to return and that the city would hire a new police force, effectively ending the strike.  Weeks later, a nation-wide steel strike occurred.  On September 22, 275,000 steel workers walked off their jobs, and soon the strikers numbered 365,000.  Three quarters of Pittsburgh's steel mills were shut down, and the strikers estimated that the strike was 90% effective.  Riots, attributed only to the strikers with no newspapers laying any blame on police or political leaders, resulted in many places.  In Gary, Indiana, for example, unrest was so widespread that martial law was declared on October 5.  The steel owners refused to give in to the protestors’ demands, and in January of 1920, with less than a third of the strikers still out, the strike ended without the strikers gaining a single demand.

As a result of the strikes and unrest, the strikers were branded as "Reds" and as being unpatriotic.  Fear of strikes leading to a Communist revolution spread throughout the country.   Hysteria took hold.  "Red hunting" became the national obsession.  Colleges were deemed to be hotbeds of Bolshevism[5], and professors were labeled as radicals.  The hunt reached down to public secondary schools where many teachers were fired for current or prior membership in even the most mildly of leftist[6] organizations.  The American Legion was founded in St. Louis on May 8, 1919 "[t]o uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred per cent Americanism."  By the fall, the Legion had 650,000 members, and over a million by year's end.  While most of the Legion engaged in such relatively innocuous activities as distributing pamphlets, the patriotic and anti-communist fervor of the Legion led many to engage in vigilante justice meted out against Reds both real and suspected.  The Legion's prevalence in the country and reputation for anti-communism was so great that the phrase "Leave the Reds to the Legion" became the "Wazzzzup" of the late early 20th century.

The government, too, was not immune to anti-communistic hysteria.  The Justice Department, under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, started the General Intelligence (or antiradical) Division of Bureau of Investigation on August 1, 1919 with J. Edgar Hoover as its head.  Its mission to uncover Bolshevik conspiracies, and to find and imprison or deport conspirators. Eventually, the antiradical division compiled over 200,000 cards in a card-filing system that detailed radical organizations, individuals, and case histories across the country.  These efforts resulted in the imprisonment or deportation of thousands of supposed radicals and leftists.  These arrests were often made at the expense of civil liberties as arrests were often made without warrants and for spurious[7] reasons.  In Newark, for example, a man was arrested for looking like a radical.  Even the most innocent statement against capitalism, the  government, or the country could lead to arrest and incarceration. Arrestees were often denied lawyers and contact with the outside world, beaten, and held in inhumane conditions.  If the national press is any indicator of the predominant mood of the country, then the efforts of the Justice Department was overwhelmingly supported by the masses because the raids, deportations, and arrests were all championed on the front page of most every paper.  All told, thousands of innocent people were jailed or deported, and many more were arrested or questioned.  On January 2, 1920 alone over 4,000 alleged radicals were arrested in thirty-three cities.

Legislatures also reflected the national sentiment against radicals.  Numerous local and state legislatures passed some sort of ordinance [8]against radicals and radical activity. Thirty-two states made it illegal to display the red flag of communism.  The New York Legislature expelled five duly elected Socialist assemblymen from its ranks.  While Congress was unable to enact a peacetime anti-sedition[9] bill, approximately seventy such bills were introduced.

The national mood, however, began to shift back to normal in the spring of 1920.  In May twelve prominent attorneys issued a report detailing the Justice Department's violations of civil liberties. The New York Assembly's decision to bar its Socialist members was met with disgust by national newspapers and leaders such as then-Senator Warren G. Harding, former Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes and even Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer who felt it unfair to put Socialists and Communists in the same category.   Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes criticized proposed anti-sedition bills.  Possibly because the proposed bills were viewed as censorship[10], most newspapers came out against the anti-sedition bills.  Industry leaders, who were early proponents of anti-communism, began to realize that deporting immigrants (as many of the communists were alleged to be) drained a major source of labor, which would result in higher wages and decreased profits.  Suddenly, political cartoons in newspapers that months earlier had been vehemently opposed to Reds now featured overzealous Red-hunters as their objects of scorn and ridicule.

The Red Scare quickly ran its course and, by the summer of 1920, it was largely over. The nation turned its collective attention to more leisurely pursuits.

Q24) In your own words, what was the Red Scare?

Q25) Why did the Red Scare happen?

Q26) How did ordinary people react to the Red Scare?

Q27) How did the media react to the Red Scare?

Q28) How did the government react to the Red Scare?

Q29) Compare and contrast the Red Scare with the War on Terror below.

Q30) Using the index cards provided, with your partner create flash cards on the 10 vocabulary terms footnoted in our reading about the Red Scare. On the other side of your flash card, create a picture to illustrate that particular term.

| |The Red Scare |The War on Terror |

|Why did it happen? | | |

| | | |

|How did ordinary people react? | | |

| | | |

|How did the media react? | | |

| | | |

|How did the government react? | | |

| | | |

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[1] A nickname for Germans.

[2] A follower of Communism, which is the belief that all people should be paid equally, unlike the Capitalist views of America which believes that you should be paid based on the work you do.

[3] A nickname for Communists.

[4] Someone who believes there should be no government at all. People should be free to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

[5] Russian Communism.

[6] Someone who believes in individual freedoms, a socialist, or even a communist.

[7] Ridiculous.

[8] Local law.

[9] Sedition is working against the government.

[10] The practice of disallowing certain forms of speech.

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