Changing Minority Roles

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Changing Minority RolesReligious Fundamentalism
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Eugenics

• Pseudo-science that taught that the unfit or
  inferior should not be allowed to have children,
  since they would pass on their undesirable
  genetic traits
• This belief was used to support racism, nativism,
  and to discriminate against the mentally ill and
  mentally handicapped

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Return of the Ku Klux Klan(KKK)

• The Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915, this time
  with the purpose of protecting American purity
  from not only blacks, but also immigrants
• This new Klan started an organized membership
  drive, leading to as many as 15 million members
  joining in the 1920s

4
The NAACP

• Began to flex its political power during the
  1920s by pushing for anti-lynching laws
• In 1930, organized a successful campaign to keep
  racist judge John J. Parker from being appointed
  to the Supreme Court

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Marcus Garvey

• 1887 1940
• Endorsed Negro Nationalism or taking deep pride
  in black culture
• Founded the Universal Negro Improvement
  Association (UNIA), whose purpose was to promote
  black pride and unity, as well as education for
  blacks
• Also supported his Back to Africa movement, a
  call for blacks to leave America (and its white
  government) and return to Africa, the only place
  they could find true justice and freedom
• Failed to win widespread support, especially
  after being sent to prison and then deported for
  mail fraud

6
The Great Migration

• Between 1910 and 1930, about 2 million blacks
  left the South in an effort to escape racism and
  to find good industrial jobs in Northern and
  Midwestern cities
• This migration continued into the 1970s, but has
  since reversed today, many blacks are leaving
  the North and moving south

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Emergency Quota Act

• 1921
• Restricted immigration to 3 per year of the
  total number of people within that ethnic group
  living in the US in 1910 (for example, if 100
  Koreans were living in the US, then only 3 more
  Koreans per year would be allowed into the
  country)
• Designed to limit immigration from Southern
  Eastern Europe (since these groups had only begun
  immigrating recently, they had small numbers)
  these were the areas where communism and
  anarchism were the strongest

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National Origins Act of 1924

• Placed permanent restrictions on immigration
• Lowered quota to 2 per year and changed base
  year from 1910 to 1890
• In 1929, immigration was capped at 150,000 total
  people per year

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Hispanic Immigration

• Emergency Quota Act and National Origins Act led
  to a major drop in available labor in the US
• Hispanics took advantage of the fact that they
  were excluded from the quotas set by both acts,
  and over 600,000 moved to the US to fill the
  labor gap

10
19th Amendment

• 1920
• Finally granted women suffrage (the right to
  vote) in federal elections
• Suffrage had been sought by women since the
  Seneca Falls Convention of 1848!

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Women in the Workforce

• Thousands of women began to enter the workforce
  during the 1920s, primarily in low-wage,
  low-skill jobs such as secretarial work, and as
  sales clerks and telephone operators
• Most of these workers were single women seeking
  financial independence from their restrictive
  parents

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Flappers

• Many young women rebelled against the mores of
  their parents by wearing shorter skirts, shorter
  hairstyles, smoking, drinking, dancing, and
  dating without adult chaperones

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Margaret Sanger

• 1879 1966
• Nurse
• Believed that large families led to poverty and
  to fewer opportunities for women
• Began to promote use of birth control, especially
  amongst the poor and minorities
• Opened her own chain of birth control clinics,
  mostly in poor ghettos

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American Birth Control League

• Founded by Sanger in 1921
• Promoted education about, and access to, harmless
  means of birth control
• Also promoted sterilization of the mentally
  insane and mentally retarded (eugenics)
• Merged with other birth control advocacy groups
  in 1942 form Planned Parenthood

15
The New Morality

• Marriage began to be redefined among the younger
  generation they began to believe that a
  successful marriage required romance, friendship,
  and sexual compatibility rather than just a sense
  of duty to ones family
• Young people also began to focus on having fun,
  something that became more available to them with
  the increased mobility offered by automobiles

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Religious Fundamentalism

• The relaxed morality and growing materialism of
  the US during the 1920s led many people,
  especially the older and more rural population,
  to embrace a new wave of religious fundamentalism
• Fundamentalists placed much of the blame on
  immigration, alcohol, science, and new
  technologies for Americas slide into immorality

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Billy Sunday

• 1862 1935
• Former Major League baseball player who left
  sports to become a wildly popular revivalist
  minister, preaching to over 1 million people
  during his career
• One of the driving forces behind Prohibition, he
  also opposed unrestricted immigration and the
  teaching of evolution in schools

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Aimee Semple McPherson

• 1890 1944
• Revivalist minister who sometimes engaged in
  faith healing and speaking in tongues, she
  operated her own 5000 seat church in LA and
  broadcast her sermons over the radio
• Lifelong opponent of the teaching of evolution
• Complicated personal life included several
  marriages, a faked kidnapping publicity stunt,
  and death by accidental overdose of sedatives

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Tennessees Butler Act

• Passed in 1925
• The state of Tennessee banned all schools,
  including universities, from teaching human
  evolution and required the teaching of
  creationism
• Punishment for breaking the law was a fine of
  100 - 500 per offense

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ACLU

• The American Civil Liberties Union had been
  founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the
  individual rights and liberties guaranteed to
  every person in this country by the Constitution
  and laws of the United States.
• In 1925, the ACLU sought out a teacher who would
  be willing to intentionally violate the Butler
  Act in order to test the constitutionality of the
  Act

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John Scopes

• 1900 1970
• Tennessee high school teacher who agreed to be
  the ACLUs test case
• Used the state-approved biology textbook (which
  contained a chapter on evolution) to teach the
  subject, thereby breaking the law and triggering
  the Scopes Monkey Trial
• Encouraged his own students to testify against
  him!

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Scopes Monkey Trial

• Tried in July 1925
• Case drew high-profile coverage from all over the
  world as science faced off against religious
  fundamentalism
• Defense would argue both that evolution was not
  necessarily in conflict with creationism and that
  the law was unconstitutional on the grounds that
  it was designed to benefit the beliefs of a
  specific religious group

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William Jennings Bryan

• 1860 1925
• 3-time candidate for president and former
  Secretary of State
• Served as a special prosecutor for the state
  during the Scopes trial and even testified as an
  expert witness (his testimony was largely
  damaging to his own case and was struck from the
  record)
• Died 5 days after the trial ended

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Clarence Darrow

• 1857 1938
• Celebrity criminal lawyer, fresh off a nationally
  covered murder case in Chicago where he had saved
  the lives of his teenage clients
• Brought in as a hired gun by the ACLU both for
  his skill as a lawyer and for the publicity his
  reputation would bring

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The Decision

• Scopes was found guilty by a jury and fined 100
  by the judge
• On appeal, his conviction was overturned on a
  technicality, but the constitutionality of the
  Butler Act was upheld (it was repealed in 1967
  and laws like it were declared unconstitutional
  by the US Supreme Court in 1968)