The 1920s: The Roaring Twenties
A Clash of Values and Cultural Conflict
Name: ______________________________
I. The Resurgence of Nativism
A. The Sacco-Vanzetti Case, 1920 – intolerance of the decade is embodied in the murder trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
(anarchists)
a. The men were believed to be followers of ___________________________ (Italian anarchist who advocated violence,
bombing and assassination)
B. Return of the Ku Klux Klan (three events in 1915 acted as catalysts to the revival of the Klan)
1.) The film ____________________________ was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan.
2.) In 1915, Jewish businessman __________________ was lynched near Atlanta.
3.) Based on a new anti-___________________, anti-___________________, prohibitionist and anti___________________ agenda – developed in response to social tensions.
C. Controlling Immigration
a. _____________________________________ restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually
to 3% of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States as of the U.S. Census of 1910.
b. _____________________________________ limited immigration from countries where 3% of the total U.S.
population, per the 1890 census (not counting African Americans), were immigrants from that country. Thus, the massive
influx of Europeans that had come to America during the first two decades of the century slowed to a trickle.
II. A Clash of Cultures
A. Women in the 1920s
a. The "new" woman was less invested in social service than the Progressive generations, and in tune with the capitalistic
spirit of the era, she was eager to compete and to find personal fulfillment.
b. ______________________________________ in 1923 and working to remove laws that used sex to discriminate
against women. But many women shifted their focus from politics to challenge traditional definitions of womanhood.
c. Individuals noted that sex was not only central to the human experience but that women were sexual beings with
human impulses and desires just like men and restraining these impulses was self-destructive.
d. The emergence of the co-ed, "Husband and Wife", "Motherhood" and "The Family as an Economic Unit".
e. The ‘___________________________’
B. The Scopes Trial and Fundamentalism (____________________________ vs. ____________________________)
a. Religious fundamentalists saw the Bible as the only salvation from a materialistic civilization in decline.
b. Darwin Banned – In 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Law and John Scopes
c. Lawyer ____________________________vs. ____________________________, three-time presidential candidate and
former secretary of state.
d. A Media Circus with Monkeys – The trial became the first ever to be broadcast on radio. Scopes himself played a
rather small role in the case: the trial was reduced to a verbal contest between Darrow and Bryan.