The 1920s: Old vs. New America
“The World War was the signal for greater alarm than the average American has
been willing to admit . . . . it has taken the Ku Klux Klan to awaken even a portion of the
population of the United States to our national peril. Our religious and political foes are
not only within our gates, but are coming by the hundreds of thousands, bringing the
chaos and ruin of old European and Asiatic countries to un-Americanize and destroy our
nation, and to make it subserve the purposes of the Pope in his aspiration for world
supremacy. One of the great efforts of the Roman hierarchy . . . is to get control of our
public schools by placing Roman Catholics on school boards and in the schoolrooms and
taking the Bible out of the schools. In the event of their success in their efforts . . . there
would be a string of beads around every Protestant child’s neck and a Roman Catholic
catechism in his hand. [And] The money-grasping Jew, who has no use for the Christ of
Calvary, does all in his power to bring discredit on Christianity . . . . The sons of
Abraham have therefore become a strong ally to the Papacy, not because they have
anything in common with it in religion, but in their political propaganda against
American institutions and principles.
Stanley Frost, The Challenge of the Clan (1924).
Key Questions
1. Why did Americans seek a return to “normalcy” in the 1920 election and after?
2. What were the most important social, cultural, and economic changes in the
1920s?
3. Why were these changes so disturbing to many Americans?
4. How did they help produce Old versus New America? How should these groups
be defined?
5. What were the most important examples of this dichotomy?
Useful Sources
Cooper, William J. and Thomas E. Terrill, The American South: A History. 4th ed.
Lanham , MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009. Chapter 23 and 24 for the 1920s.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009
(revised ed.). Chapters 20 for the 1920s.
Parrish, Michael E. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1929-1941.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. A comprehensive, straightforward account of the 1920s.