The 1920s

1
The 1920s

• Immigrants and the Red Scare

2
President Warren G. Harding promotes a return to
normalcy

• Renewed isolationism
• Resurgence of nativism
• Trend toward political conservatism

3
A New Threat to Normalcy

• After the Russian Revolution, the newly formed
  American Communist Party in the United States
  attracts some members
• What does this lead to?
• How do Americans feel about communism today?

4

• Communists advocate worldwide revolution
• Encourage the overthrow of all capitalist systems
  and the abolition of free enterprise and private
  property
• In response to the widespread Red Scare, the
  government hunts down suspected Communists,
  socialists, and anarchists.

5
Sacco and Vanzetti

• The Red Scare feeds peoples suspicion of
  foreigners and immigrants, sometimes leading to
  ruined reputations and wrecked lives
• Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists and Italian
  immigrants are executed for a crime they may not
  have committed

6

• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are Italian
  immigrants and anarchists who evaded the draft
  during WWI.
• April 1920 factory paymaster and his guard are
  shot, 15,000 is stolen
• Witnesses say the perpetrators appeared to be
  Italian
• 3 weeks later, Sacco and Vanzetti are arrested
• Provide alibis
• Evidence is circumstantial
• Judge makes several prejudicial remarks
• Jury still finds them guilty and they are
  sentenced to death.
• August 23, 1927 Both men are executed in the
  electric chair amid international protest

7
The Immigration Act of 1924

• Establishes quotas
• Discriminates strongly against people from
  outside Western Europe

8
The blaze of revolution was sweeping over every
American institution of law and order eating its
way into the homes of American workman, its sharp
tongues of revolutionary heat licking at the
altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry
of the school bell, crawling into the sacred
corners of American homes, burning up the
foundations of American society.
-A. Mitchell Palmer
9
Palmer Raids

• A. Mitchell Palmer Attorney General of the
  United States
• August 1919 J. Edgar Hoover appointed to head
  the antiradical division of the Justice
  Department (a.k.a. The F.B.I.)
• Government officials sent to hunt down suspected
  Communists, socialists, and anarchists
• Civil Rights are trampled

10
The re-emergence of the KKK

• Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan use
  anti-communism as an excuse to harass ethnic and
  religious minorities

11
The New Klan

• Devoted to 100 Americanism
• 1924 Membership rises to 4.5 million white male
  persons, native-born gentile citizens who
  believed in keeping blacks in their place,
  destroying saloons, opposing unions, and driving
  Roman Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born people
  out of the country.

12

• Threatened by the changes happening in society.
• Resent small advances made by African Americans
  during WWI
• Feel moral values are being attacked by urban
  intellectuals
• Fear job competition from immigrants
• Convinced foreigners are going to overthrow the
  American way of life.

13
The KKK asserts power

• Racial violence
• Try to influence national and state politics
• Indiana