Unit: 1920s Big Idea: America’s post-war “return to normalcy” and traditionalism comes into conflict with the modernity of the “roaring twenties” and progress. Unit Description: The Sacco-Vanzetti case exemplifies the divisions within the larger society. Nativists dwelled on the defendants’ immigrant origins. Conservatives insisted that these alien anarchists must die, despite the lack of evidence. By contrast, prominent liberals, such as the future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and the Socialist Eugene Debs, rallied around the convicted men. Despite these divisions, the 1920s was a decade of economic prosperity for many, as the business of America became business. The unit looks at the decline of labor, the shift in the women’s movement after the Nineteenth Amendment, and the predominance of the Republican Party overseeing business prosperity and economic diplomacy. The birth of civil liberties is explored next, discussing Hollywood, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Supreme Court. Meyer v. Nebraska gave a tremendous boost to the civil liberties that had been lost during World War I. However, the decade was still rife with social divisions, as seen within the context of the culture wars. The fundamentalist revolt is seen most vividly through the Scopes trial. In the wake of the anti-immigrant hysteria of World War I, the Ku Klux Klan emerged again, targeting Catholics and Jews as well as blacks. The anti-immigrant sentiment is capped with the 1924 Immigration Act, which strictly limited immigration. On the other hand, cultural pluralism and the Harlem Renaissance celebrated the diversity and pluralism of America. Widespread disillusionment with World War I, Europe’s post-war problems and communism in the Soviet Union made Americans fearful of being pulled into another foreign war but did not retreat into full isolationism. Instead, the US actively pursued arrangement in foreign affairs that would advance American interests while also maintaining world peace. Key Concept(s): New technologies and manufacturing techniques helped focus the U.S. economy on the production of consumer goods, contributing to improved standards of living, greater personal mobility, and better communications systems. By 1920, a majority of the U.S. population lived in urban centers, which offered new economic opportunities for women, international migrants, and internal migrants. Migration gave rise to new forms of art and literature that expressed ethnic and regional identities, such the Harlem Renaissance movement. As increased anxiety about radicalism led to a Red Scare and attacks on labor activism and immigrant culture. Several acts of Congress established highly restrictive immigration quotas, while national policies continued to permit unrestricted immigration from nations in the Western Hemisphere, especially Mexico, in order to guarantee an inexpensive supply of labor. The United States pursued a unilateral foreign policy that used international investment, peace treaties, and select military intervention to promote a vision of international order, even while maintaining U.S. isolationism. In the 1920s, cultural and political controversies emerged as Americans debated gender roles, modernism, science, religion, and issues related Key Terms by Historical Theme: (WXT) Strikes of 1919, Boston police strikes, falling farm prices, business prosperity, standard of living, open shop, welfare capitalism, consumerism, electric appliance, impact of the automobile, (POL) Warren Harding, Charles Evans Hughes, Andrew Mellon, Albert Fall, Teapot Dome, FordneyMcCumber Tariff Act, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Alfred Smith, Volstead Act, 21st Amendment, Red Scare, Palmer raids, quota laws of 1921 & 1924, (CUL) Jazz age, radio, phonographs, national networks, Hollywood, heroes, role of women, morals & fashion, Lost Generation, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, George Gershwin, Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey, Back to Africa movement, modernism, fundamentalism, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Scopes trial, Clarence Darrow, organized crime, Al Capone, anti-radical hysteria, Saco & Vanzetti Case, KKK, xenophobia, race riots (WOR) Disarmament, Washington Conference (1921), Kellogg-Briand Treaty (1928), Latin America policy, war debts, reparation, Dawes Plan (1924)