Transcript America`s History Seventh Edition

James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History
Eighth Edition
America: A Concise History
Sixth Edition
CHAPTER 22
Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust,
1919‒1932
Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
A. Racial Strife
1. White Violence
-Return of black war veterans and increase
of black migrants to the North led to backlash
by whites; lynchings in the South rose; several
lynched in uniform; lynching in Rosewood,
Florida, mobs of whites burned houses and
attacked black citizens with no intervention by
police.
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
A. Racial Strife
2. Competition
-Large numbers of blacks, immigrants, and
whites seeking work and housing increased
tension in northern cities; deadly riots in East St.
Louis (1917) and Chicago (1919); alleged rape in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, led to a white mob burning 35
blocks of Greenwood, Oklahoma
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
B. Erosion of Labor Rights
1. National War Labor Board
-Increased workers’ expectations employers led to
frustration; during 1919 one in five U.S. workers went on
strike; U.S. Steel hired Mexican and black workers to
break strikes;
2. Public employees
-1919, Boston police force went on strike over the right
to form a union; Gov. Coolidge fired entire force and was
supported by the public and by antilabor Supreme Court
rulings; union membership fell
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
B. Erosion of Labor Rights
3. Welfare capitalism
-Henry Ford and some other employers took on some
responsibility for employees’ well-being, providing health
insurance, old-age pensions, athletic facilities, and paid
vacations.
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
C. The Red Scare
1. Bolsheviks
-Fear of Russian Bolsheviks grew in the United
States; some new immigrants were socialists; U.S.
Communist Party was small but increased fears
among Americans that they would seek a revolution in
the United States.
2. Palmer raids
-In April 1919, 34 mail bombs were sent to
government officials; Palmer established an
antiradicalism division in the Justice Department (FBI)
and named J. Edgar Hoover to direct it; raids of
radical organizations began; arrest of 6,000 radicals;
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
C. The Red Scare
3. Sacco and Vanzetti
-May 1920, Nicola Sacco (shoemaker) and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti (fish peddler) were arrested in
Massachusetts for the murder of two men during a
holdup; these self-proclaimed anarchists were
convicted and sentenced to death despite lack of
evidence and clear bias of prosecutor.
II. Politics in the 1920s
A. Women in Politics
1. Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and
Infancy Act
-This act provided federal money for medical
clinics, prenatal education, and visiting nurses;
first time Congress gave money directly to
states to administer social welfare; ended in
late 1920s.
II. Politics in the 1920s
A. Women in Politics
2. Equal Rights Amendment
-1923, Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party
pushed for consideration of an Equal Rights
Amendment to the Constitution which stated: “men
and women shall have equal rights throughout the
United States;”
3. Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom
-International peace organization created in 1919;
Jane Addams founding member; protested
imperialism and the negative repercussions of
militarism; criticized during Red Scare.
II. Politics in the 1920s
B. Republicans and Business
1. Warren Harding
-Ohio senator who promised normalcy;
appointed Herbert Hoover as secretary of
commerce; died of a heart attack in August 1923;
scandals revealed, included leasing of oil reserves
to private companies (Teapot Dome scandal).
2. Calvin Coolidge
-Wanted limited government, isolationism, and
tax cuts for businesses; Republicans did not want
to continue most progressive measures from the
1910s, did not enforce antitrust laws.
II. Politics in the 1920s
C. Dollar Diplomacy
1. Foreign affairs
-Republican presidents wanted private banks to
make loans to foreigners, hoping to stimulate the
U.S. economy by increasing demand for products;
banks gave loans with conditions such as oversight
by bank commissions and military force by the
United States; U.S. Marine occupation of
Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and Haiti began
as part of forced repayment;
II. Politics in the 1920s
C. Dollar Diplomacy
2. On the defensive
-Critics denounced loan guarantees and military
intervention as dollar diplomacy; African Americans
criticized American involvement in Haiti; WILPF
visitors to Haiti claimed that U.S. soldiers were
exploiting Haitian women;
II. Politics in the 1920s
D. Culture Wars
1. Prohibition
-Rural and native-born Protestants wanted prohibition;
Eighteenth Amendment ratified by 1920; prohibited
manufacture, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquors.
2. Evolution in the Schools
-State and local school boards wanted curricula based
on Biblical teachings; Tennessee outlaws counter-Biblical
teachings central to the existence of humans; American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) intervened in the case of
John Scopes who faced a jail sentence for teaching
evolution; jury find Scopes guilty, Tennessee Supreme
Court later overturned.
II. Politics in the 1920s
D. Culture Wars (cont.)
3. Nativism
-Fears about unrestricted immigration; Catholics and
Jews were targets of hostility; Coolidge: “America must
be kept American;” arguments that immigrants
undermined Christianity and imported anarchism and
socialism; the National Origins Act (1924) used 1890
census to determine how many people could enter from
individual nations; further restricted immigration from
Europe in 1929; immigrants from Western Hemisphere
were unrestricted; Great Depression led to cuts in
immigration from Mexico; hostility towards Asians grew in
CA which passed a law making it illegal for noncitizens to
own property.
II. Politics in the 1920s
D. Culture Wars (cont.)
4. The National Klan
-Following Birth of a Nation (1915 film) the KKK grew,
targeting Jews and Catholics; ran for political offices and
won;.
5. The Election 1928
-Catholic Governor Al Smith (D-NY) ran against
Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce; opponents: “No
Governor can kiss the papal ring and get within gunshot
of the White House;” Hoover won 58 percent of popular
vote and 444 electoral votes.
III. Intellectual Modernism
A. Harlem in Vogue
1. Black Writers and Artists
-Writers like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay,
and Jean Toomer published works that
championed black pride; Zora Neale Hurston
documented black folklore, songs, and religious
beliefs that she incorporated into short stories and
novels.
III. Intellectual Modernism
A. Harlem in Vogue
1. Jazz
-Started in New Orleans before World War I;
improvised solo made trumpeter Louis Armstrong a
star; radio helped grow the nationwide popularity of
jazz; 1920s saw advent of companies producing
race records for black audiences, records for
immigrant communities in native languages.
III. Intellectual Modernism
A. Harlem in Vogue
3. Marcus Garvey and the UNIA
-Universal Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA) formed in 1920s in Harlem; Garvey:
Jamaican, advocated black separatism; published
Negro World and sought to create a steamship
company to bring blacks back to Africa, Black Star
Line; Garvey imprisoned (fraud) and deported in
1925; symbol of emerging pan-Africanism: idea
that people of African descent had a common
destiny and should cooperate in political action.
III. Intellectual Modernism
B. Critiquing American Life
1. The Lost Generation
-Gertrude Stein called those who survived the war the
Lost Generation; John Dos Passos criticized the war in
The Three Soldiers (1921), as did Ernest Hemingway in A
Farewell to Arms (1929).
2. The dark side
-Examinations of the dark side of human beings:
Eugene O’Neill in Desire Under the Elms (1924) and The
Emperor Jones (1920); Sinclair Lewis criticized
conformity in Babbitt (1922); Lewis was first American to
win Nobel Prize for literature in 1930; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby (1925) criticized the pursuit of pleasure
and wealth.
IV. From Boom to Bust
A. The Postwar Economy
1. Corporate monopolies
-1920s, corporations were major form of business in
the United States; a few major producers were at the
top of most markets (oligopoly); Wall Street the financial
center of the United States; post-World War I inflation
was followed by two years of recession with 10 percent
unemployment;
2. Languishing industries
-Despite boom, U.S. economy had weak agricultural
sector due to falling prices; coal and textile industries
languished for similar reasons; rural Americans did not
benefit from prosperity.
IV. From Boom to Bust
B. Consumer Culture
1. The Automobile
-Mass production led to Americans spending $2.58
billion on automobiles in 1929; steel, petroleum,
chemical, rubber, and glass stimulated; suburbs grew
and new shopping centers were developed; hurt the
railroad industry;
2. Hollywood
-By 1910, moviemaking industry growing in California
on cheap land; young people followed the fashions of
movie actors and actresses, including flapper Clara
Bow; flappers represented social and sexual
emancipation for women.
IV. From Boom to Bust
C. The Coming of the Great Depression
1. Causes
-Too much lending; drop in consumer spending as
credit became more difficult to get; global economic
problems; adherence to the gold standard, British and
Germans had abandoned with some positive results in
1931.
2. Effects
-Industrial production fell 37%, construction fell 78%,
and, by 1932, unemployment had reached 24%;
Americans cut back dramatically and falling demand
deepened crisis; bank failures; desperate people turned
to private charity for aid; birthrate fell; African Americans
were affected more deeply than whites.