THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1877-1945

LECTURE FIVEAMERICA IN THE 1920’S

PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE

• Failure of Wilson to realize his goals• Main goal: League of Nations• Composition: Body of Delegates, Executive

Council, Court of Justice• Main function: guaranteeing peace in the

world

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AT HOME

• Both houses of Congress are Republican dominated

• Chief opponent: Henry Cabot Lodge• Unilateralism v. collective security• Treaty is defeated, U.S. does not ratify the

treaty• Wilson suffers a stroke, wife, Edith B. Wilson

takes over (unofficially)

WOODROW and EDITH WILSON

HENRY CABOT LODGE

THE RED SCARE

• Fear of Communist Russia, American troops in Russia

• Rapid demobilization, inflation, unemployment• Strike wave: Boston police strike• 1919: Comintern is formed• Americans are afraid of the spread of

Communism• Formation of the Communist Labor Party, (John

Reed, Benjamin Gitlow)

RESPONSE TO RADICALISM

• A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General• Palmer Raids• Deporting aliens to Soviet Union• Explosions, letter bomb attacks• Crushing labor unions Centralia, WA, labor

organizer Wesley Everest lynched• Fear of anarchism

RACIAL TENSIONS

• 1917: East St. Louis riots• 1919: Race riots in Washington D.C.• Racial violence in Chicago• Great migration-blacks move into the

industrial cities of the North

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

• Lost Generation:”here was a new generation. . . grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken”

• Fault lines in American culture:• Rural v. urban• Nativist v. immigrant• Traditionalist v. cosmopolitan• Modernism v. fundamentalism

NATIVISM

• Nationalism, Anglo-Saxon racism, militant Protestantism

• Backlash against radicals: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

• Arrested for robbery and murder in 1920, executed in 1927

• Johnson-Reed Immigration Act: first limitation on immigration ”America must be kept American”

SACCO AND VANZETTI

THE KLAN

• Formed in 1867 in Pulaski, TN, intimidates blacks

• 1920’s revival of Ku Klux Klan, goes national• Devoted to 100% Americanism• Enemy list expanded: Catholics, Jews,

immigrants• Protects morals: against divorce, and roadside

parking ”clean moving pictures, literature, protect homes”

FUNDAMENTALISM

• Evolution v. creation• Rural America: against evolution• Anti-evolution bills in state legislatures• 1925: Scopes trial, Dayton Tennessee• Test case brought on by ACLU (American Civil

Liberties Union)• John T. Scopes teaches evolution

THE SCOPES TRIAL

• Defense: Clarence Darrow, the only causes are worth fighting for are lost causes

• Prosecution: William Jennings Bryan• Fundamentalism v. modernism• Defeat for fundamentalism• Bryan dies soon after the trial

THE SCOPES TRIAL

PROHIBITION• Idea promoted by the Progressive Movement• 1917: Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the

manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages or intoxicating liquors

• But determined Americans kept drinking (Tindall)• Boot legging, speakeasies, hip flasks• Increasing crime, Al Capone, automobile and

submachine guns ”I have given people light pleasures (alcohol, gambling, prostitution) and all I get is abuse”

SOCIAL TENSIONS

• Criticism of small town life, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920)

• ”A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking chairs, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves the greatest race in the world”

• Small town: banal, narrow-minded, city: vice, crime, corruption, and foreigners

THE NEW MORALITY

• Sexual freedom (automobile, petting parties)• Freudian thinking (Oedipus complex, sublimation,

repression)• Sexuality in media (radio, motion pictures)• New Dances (Charleston, Black Bottom) • Rise of the flapper, (female rebel against

Victorian mores)• Bobbed hair, rolled stockings, cigarettes, lipstick,

alcohol, sensuous dancing-new woman

THE NEW WOMAN

• An expression of rugged American individualism

• ”the flapper has established the feminine right to equal representation in such hitherto masculine fields of endeavor as smoking, and drinking, swearing, petting, and upsetting the community peace” New York Times 1929

THE FLAPPER

THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

• 1848 Seneca Falls NY Convention: Declaration of Sentiments „”all men and women are created equal”

• Since 1890’s: Suffrage movement• Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt: National

Suffrage Association• 1920: Nineteenth Amendment women are

given the right to vote

AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOCIETY

• Blacks leave the South-Great Migration• Rise of Negro nationalism: Marcus Garvey’s

Back to Africa movement• National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People, formed in 1910, led by W.E. B. DuBois

• Campaign against lynching, solution to social problems: education, successful in defending the Scottsboro Boys in a rape case (1931)