Thursday, January 30, 2014
A Clash of Values
-A Resurgence of Nativism
-Changing Roles for Women
-Fundamentalism and Prohibition
Resurgence of Nativism

Nativism While the economy prospered in
the 1920s, racial fears and ethnic intolerance
grew. The aftermath of World War I saw
prejudice toward Germans and Communists.
Crime and other social problems were often
blamed on immigrants. This led many
Americans to support nativism—the belief
that immigrants threatened the American
way of life and that the United States must
take steps to keep its culture, society, and
people safe from outsiders.
Resurgence of Nativism

Sacco and Vanzetti The murder trial of
Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti increased antiimmigrant sentiment. The men, who were
anarchists, were found guilty and executed
despite flimsy evidence.
Resurgence of Nativism

KKK The Ku Klux Klan, which had sought
to terrorize African Americans in the
South after the Civil War, expanded in the
1920s to target Catholics, Jews,
immigrants, and other “un-American”
groups. Its goal was to preserve the
United States as a nation they believed
belonged to white Protestants.
Changing Roles for Women

Suffrage Passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment led women to push for social
change in other aspects of American life.
For example, changing attitudes toward
marriage emphasized the romance,
pleasure, and friendship between
partners.
Changing Roles for Women

Social Mores The automobile allowed
young people to socialize in public rather
than at home. Shorter “bobbed” hair and
movie-star glamour changed fashion.
Women known as flappers smoked
cigarettes, drank liquor, and wore more
revealing clothing.
Changing Roles for Women

Educated Professionals Increasing
numbers of working-class married women
worked to support their families. Single
women entered the workforce to establish
financial independence. Women’s earnings
allowed them to become greater consumers.
Women’s colleges encouraged their students
to pursue careers and to challenge
traditional ideas about women’s roles in
society.
Fundamentalism

Culture Clash Fundamentalist
Americans viewed the consumer culture,
relaxed ethics, and changing roles of
women as evidence of moral decline. In
their opinion, the Christian Bible was
without error and was to be taken
literally. They pointed to the biblical
version of creation as proof that the
theory of evolution was wrong.
Fundamentalism

Scopes Trial Trial lawyer Clarence
Darrow and former presidential candidate
William Jennings Bryan matched wits in
the highly publicized 1925 Scopes trial
over the teaching of evolution. Although
the teacher, John Scopes, was convicted
and fined $100, the court ruling was
overturned, and the Fundamentalist
movement suffered a set back.
Prohibition

Temperance Some Americans
supported a ban on the sale and
consumption of alcohol. Formed in the
1830s, the American Temperance Society
spearheaded the Temperance
Movement—as it was known—for
religious and social reasons.
Prohibition

Enforcement Failures Passed in 1920,
the Eighteenth Amendment, or Volstead
Act, proved very difficult to enforce.
Under the Volstead Act, U.S. Treasury
personnel had authority to enforce the
new law, but many Americans ignored it.
In cities they bought alcohol in
"speakeasies"; in rural areas, they bought it
from bootleggers.
Prohibition

Organized Crime Organized crime
flourished by smuggling and distributing
liquor. Gangsters such as Al Capone paid off
politicians and law enforcement officials to
turn a blind eye to the illegal activity. The
struggle by federal agents to enforce the law
was a bloody one, claiming the lives of more
than 70 agents. In 1933 the Twenty-first
Amendment ended Prohibition.