Intolerance and Suspicion
Essential Questions
o How do attitudes towards immigrants, blacks and other minorities reflect the intolerance of the decade?
o How does the nostalgia and attitudes from the past conflict with modern ideas of the decade? Vocabulary
Immigrant: A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
Anarchist: An advocate of a government-less society organized on a voluntary and cooperative basis. Communism: A political theory advocating that all property be publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. Race: A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc. Bolsheviks: People with politically subversive or radical views. Fundamentalism: A form of Protestant Christianity that upholds the belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible. Evolution: The process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms Quota: A fixed minimum or maximum number of a particular group of people allowed to do something. |
Key Points
o Immigration restriction was an idea pushed forward by the Nativists, who were a strong and influential group in the 20's . Immigration was restricted through the use of quotas to limit the amount of people of a certain nationality who could immigrate to the United States.
o The Ku Klux Klan was an extremist group of native, white Protestants who wanted to prevent cultural and moral change in America. In the 1920's they were especially hostile towards immigrants as well as the black population. o The Red Scare was a time of fear caused by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the Palmer Raids were a series of arrests on innocent people with radical political views. People became isolated and discriminated against anyone who could potentially be Bolshevik. o Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and tried for a double murder that they were not potential suspects for. They were found guilty and executed, which showed that America wasn't done having suspicions about its citizens. o The fundamentalists (old) believed that evolution (new) violated everything they believed in and undermined the human race. However, in the end evolution would win - because of a technicality. |
Thinking Like A Historian
One of the major social changes in the 1920's was definitely the public's views towards itself as well as the introduction of new ideas to society. American citizens became really tense in the 20's, and no one really benefitted from this change. In fact, immigrants and other minority groups such as blacks and Jews were faced with constant discrimination. The public was also subject to conflict between its own citizens about change itself; particularly between old beliefs and new ideas. The only thing all this discrimination and quarreling made was pressure and stress. However, in this country of intolerance and suspicion in the 1920's, one thing never changed: the people's morals. Even the KKK enforced the current morals of society!
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People in the 1920's were generally , for lack of a better word, intolerant. The general public was extremely tense throughout the decade: Nativists felt that immigrants were invading America and threatening the native-born Americans as a society, people couldn't trust their neighbors if they had certain views, and people who had old beliefs were reluctant to accept new ideas. Some of these people took militant action to defend their beliefs, while others pushed for governmental support. However, one thing that the people living in the 20's needed to and might have eventually realized is that just like differing religions and cultures, old and new had to coincide in some way - one could not simply be eliminated - whether someone agreed with it or not.
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apparts: analyzing the Johnson-reed act
authorThe Immigration Act of 1924 was written by the U.S. Government as a federal law. Major contributors to the act were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Congressman Albert Johnson, and Senator David Reed.
audienceThe audience in this case would be not only the citizens of America but also anyone around the world who planned or had thoughts of immigrating to the United States.
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place and timeThe act was passed by the federal government in 1924, due to intense lobbying and strong nativist beliefs in the 20's. It could be evident that the KKK supported the act and even assisted in it being passed.
reasonThe Johnson-Reed Act was passed because immigration to America spiked after WWI and many nativists feared that immigrants would overcome the native-born population.
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prior knowledgeImmigration restriction had been recently proposed in 1909 and had strong congressional support. However, Emanuel Celler and a few other members of the House of Representatives were strongly against the act.
the main ideaThe act was passed to limit immigration of people based on nationality. In a way this was racist, but it was a very efficient way of maintaining a limited number of immigrants to America.
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