The 1920's was a time of prosperity, as a result of this the feeling in America was one of joy and as a result of which the 1920's was nicknamed the 'roaring twenties'. America was a land of intolerance and racism.
Immigrants were targeted by Americans for abuse. From 1901 to 1910, there were over eight and half million immigrants in America. These were mainly Jews from Eastern Europe and Russians escaping prosecution. There were also Italians and Irish fleeing poverty. With the immigrants came competition for jobs and housing.Hostilities between different immigrants began to appear in America.
The red scare (Communism) was a sourse of hostility towards Russian immigrants. Americans feared that Russian immigrants would bring communism to America, the very thing they had fled from. In 1917 immigrants went on strike after race riots in twenty five towns. The strikes were instigated as a result of low pay and bad working conditions. Anarchists sent off bombs in 1919. J Edgar Hoover had compiled a list of sixty thousand suspects.
In 1920 ten thousand people were deported out of the U. S. A. The majority of these people were of minority groups, such as black people, Jews and Catholics. In 1929 immigration fell to 150 thousand per year. By the 1920's the Ku Klux Klan were a powerful political force in America.
They formed in the 1850's this was part of a growing hostility towards blacks in America. At this time the Clue Klux Clan did decline but started up again in 1915. They held a lot of support in the south. Black people were not just targeted by white Americans but by immigrants as well.
Black people were isolated and formed communities known as 'ghettos' in America. However, things started to improve in 1924 when black people started to become better educated and by the end of the First World War the government realised the twelve thousand Americans had served in the armed forces and decided to give them the vote white attitudes changed towards native Americans where changing. In 1928 the Merriam report proposed improvements in laws consigning Native Americans the laws where passed in 1934.The Monkey Trial in the 1920's sparked a massive row in America. The Monkey Trial came to place after a biology teacher called John Scopes broke the law by teaching evolution in a class.
Many people in rural America did not believe in evolution and where very religious, these people where called fundamentalist. A man called William Jennies passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in schools believing it to be blasphemy. When John Scopes taught evolution in his class he broke the law and was took to court, this was called the Monkey Trial; it was evolutionVs. religion, the first trial of its kind. In the trial the prosecution on behalf of the fundamentalists where mocked.
They were asked if they really believed that god made the world in 6 days. After the trial evolution was allowed to be taught in schools and it was a much more widely accepted view. People who believed in god where humiliated during the trial they where made to flea that the prospect of religion was ridicules and the views that where first taken about Darwin's where now take about god.Another high profile case took place in the 1920s as well the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti where Italian Americans who became victims of the red scare in America arrested in the 1920 on suspicion of murder and armed robbery there trial turned in to a racist slur after it had bean revealed that they where both self-confessed anarchists.
They hated the American ideals and government and condoned social disorder as a means of improvement.The case agenised them was flimsy the prosecution relied heavily on raciest slurs about there Italian origin and creating fear upon there radical beliefs. The judge referred to them as 'those anarchist bastards' Sacco and Vanzetti where convicted and after six years of appeals, were eventually executed in 1927. A lot of protest about how unjust the trial was took place all around the world.
So things were good in America in the 1920's - if you were white and American, if not, you were hidden beneath the veneer of the roaring 20's.
